text:
Do goofs in a recommendation letter hurt a student applying for grad school?
When rereading my copies of letters of recommendation I wrote when a student of mine applied to multiple graduate schools, I was appalled to see mistakes I made where the wrong graduate program was mentioned in the letter.  For example, in a letter to CMU, I recommended the student to Georgia Tech.
Do mistakes like this hurt a grad student applicant, perhaps by showing they are applying to other programs, or do they only reflect poorly on the letter writer?  In this case, the schools were all in the same (top) tier.

FTR, she was admitted to two of the fours schools to which she applied.  I only know for sure that one (to a place that she was not admitted) had a mistake.

I've occasionally seen letters with incorrect graduate program names, and it's not something I'd worry about.  It's never bothered me, and while I've seen other committee members point it out, I've never gotten the impression that they particularly cared.  (They've pointed it out in the spirit of "Oops, someone messed up" rather than "Here's a negative factor we should keep in mind.")
There are two cases in which it could be harmful:

If you name a substantially lower-ranked program, then the reader might wonder whether this low ranking influenced your recommendation.  (Maybe you have several variants of the letter, and send more enthusiastic variants to lower-ranked programs.)
If you include any comments about how suitable this specific program is for the applicant, then of course these comments will become worthless if you name the wrong school.  However, most letters for applicants to graduate school don't include such comments, and even when they do it's rarely a crucial part of the letter.  (It's particularly awkward if you send Harvard a letter talking about what a perfect fit Yale would be and how you have encouraged the applicant to go there if accepted.)

You mention the possibility of hurting the applicant by revealing where else they have applied.  Theoretically, this could look weird or problematic if they've made eccentric choices about where to apply.  (If a top program knows they're also applying to a much lower-ranked program, then the committee might take it as an admission of weakness or an indication that the applicant has a strong personal reason to go elsewhere.)  However, I wouldn't worry about it in practice.  It's expected that everyone will apply to a range of schools, and I don't recall ever having seen a case I thought would really worry admissions committees.

I do occasionally see copy-and-paste errors in recommendation letters and I smile for a minute and move on.  Living in a glass house as I do, I would not dare to throw stones.
I know this is tangential, but I take the opposite extreme with cover letters.  If a candidate is applying for a job at my university and their letter mentions another university, I take it as a big strike against them.  It may not single-handedly sink the application, but mistakes like this often correlate with poorly written applications in general.

I cannot estimate how much, but I think this could harm the student's case: such mistakes make one think that the letter writer made them in a hurry, not caring too much. This can in principle mitigate the positive effect of the letter.


text:
Creating a community around my research book
I have written a research book on the topic of abstract pure mathematics. Now the book is in review with a scientific publisher.
In the book there are some conjectures formulated by myself. There are also some conjectures and problems at my site, which are not in the book.
I want to create a community of mathematicians around my book to solve questions I formulated and related issues.
Any advice to help build the community? Maybe should I ask the publisher to place a prominent URL of my site on the topic of the book on the book cover. (The URL is already present in the text of my book, but it may probably be more prominent if placed on the cover.)
I also think that it may be worth to redesign my Web page on the topic of the book to make it "problem oriented" (to place unsolved problems at the top of my page instead of the bottom as it is now). Well, on the other side serious researchers should anyway read my entire page and all links on it. What do you think?
Any other advice?
And a note: I am not a math professional, I am an amateur. (This means that I earn money in some other way than from my knowledge of mathematics.)

Instead of getting the community to approach you, I suggest that you be the one to approach the community.  As an amateur (one who is outside the academic mathematical community), you are at a big disadvantage.
I recommend that you attend conferences and interact with others who are doing work similar to yours.  In my opinion, the best way to get attention is to present papers in good conferences and to publish papers in respectable journals.  By doing this, your reputation will improve and your work will be better known.

I very much doubt that this idea will work. Research mathematics already has its communities: conferences and workshops. New conferences and workshops pop up all the time but they do it because a group of mathematicians say, "Hey, we keep meeting and talking about Topic X and there are lots of other people who'd be interested. Why don't we run a workshop on that?"  The communities form because a group of mathematicians has a common interest, not because somebody stands up and says, "Hey! I have this really interesting problem!  Everybody come work on it with me!"
The venue for announcing "Hey! I have this really interesting problem!" is a pre-existing conference, as Joel explains in his answer. If people find it interesting, they'll start to work on it. If enough people start to work on it, they might start to organize workshops.

This really depends on what your ultimate goals are. If, as the tag of 'self-promotion' would suggest, you are after increased publicity of your book and self promotion of your website, I think you are likely to have a tough job creating your own community of interested parties from scratch. Certainly, making your website links highly prominent in your book would be a key start. Making links throughout the book relating to problems you have posed in the book would also be useful (but perhaps not so practical now if the book is in review). If you intend your community to be focused around your website, then yes, you should redesign it and separate it from your other web interests (minor links are ok).
If you would like to be involved with a mathematical community in order to help solve worthwhile, interesting and stimulating mathematical problems posed by you, you might want to consider presenting your questions at Mathematics Stack Exchange, just as you have already done.

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text:
Leave out the last chapter as it anyway should be addressed in second edition?
I am an amateur (not affiliated with an academy) mathematician.
I have written a research monograph (see my site).
The current status of the book is that it is well written and is reasonably checked for errors. However there are serious errors in the last chapter. I may remove the last chapter and try to publish the rest of the book without it.
I sent my book (not yet including the last chapter) to several publishers. They all say either that my book is too original and rough for book form and should be published as articles first, or that my research is unmotivated. (I disagree and consider my work fully motivated.)
And now my book is in consideration of a publisher. After I sent my book to the aforementioned (last) publisher, I realized that before writing second volume of my book I need first create second edition of the first volume (which is in consideration now). I had two ideas how to rewrite it when it was already in publisher's review.
I doubt what to do with the last chapter (which as I've said above is currently erroneous). The simplest thing is just to remove it now, because it anyway should be rewritten in the second edition (and the rewrite is rather massive).
Should I for now remove the last chapter and leave this work to the stage when I will write the second edition of the first volume?
Or maybe should I stop any publishing attempts until I finish writing the second edition? (I'm afraid that if I happen to die, my work may be lost unpublished.)

I'm sure this depends entirely on the specifics of the manuscript and chapter in question. I don't see how anyone here can answer this.

I disagree and consider my work fully motivated.

This is a key point.  The issue isn't whether there exists compelling motivation, and you may be right that there is.  Rather, the issue is whether you have successfully communicated this motivation to readers who have spent far less time thinking about the topic than you have and who lack the perspective that comes from developing a subject from scratch.  You'll have to work extra hard to articulate the motivation and communicate it successfully.  If the readers still don't understand why are you doing something, then that itself amounts to a communication failure (regardless of whether you feel they ought to have understood).  You don't need to communicate successfully with everyone, but you need to do so with a large enough audience.
I'd strongly recommend trying harder to address this before publishing the book.  You can consider the editors who have looked over your submissions as a random sample of readers.  Many of them fail to understand the motivation behind your work, which suggests that many readers would find it unmotivated even if someone agreed to publish it.  Ultimately, the goal should be not just to get the book published, but to get it read and understood.  The feedback from publishers is helping you identify what you need to work on to attract readers.

Or maybe should I stop any publishing attempts until I finish writing the second edition?

Are you proposing to publish the first edition while you are already working on a second edition, or to submit the first edition as a draft while telling the publisher that you are working on serious revisions?  The latter could make sense, while publishers are unlikely to agree to the former.  (Publishing a book takes time, effort and money, and nobody wants to commit these resources to a mathematics book that will quickly be out of date.)
But the fact that you already have large-scale changes in mind suggests that the book might not be ready to submit for publication.  You don't need to have completed all possible revisions before approaching publishers, but your chances of acceptance go down if you aren't presenting approximately your best work.

Should I for now remove the last chapter and leave this work to the stage when I will write the second edition of the first volume?

What's the alternative to removing it?  If you have in mind fixing the mistakes now, then I can't advise you on which approach is better (since I haven't read the book).  If you mean keeping the incorrect chapter in the manuscript and not dealing with the mistakes until later, then that sounds like a bad idea.

I'm afraid that if I happen to die, my work may be lost unpublished.

I can understand that this is a depressing possibility, but I wouldn't worry about it now (assuming you are no likelier to die soon than other people your age).  If it makes you feel safer, you could always ask a friend or family member to try to get your work archived somewhere if you died unexpectedly.  I can't say they would necessarily succeed, but it couldn't hurt to try.
By the way, the publishers who suggest publishing research papers first have an important point.  The mathematics publishing system is set up to work that way, and it is not particularly well adapted to publishing large chunks of unfamiliar research in book form.  It's certainly possible to publish research monographs, but you may be making things unnecessarily hard for yourself.  Unless you have a very strong reason to prefer a book, I'd recommend trying articles instead.

"Are you proposing to publish the first edition while you are already working on a second edition". When I sent the manuscript to the publisher there was yet no idea to create second edition. This idea came later

Yes, you should absolutely stop trying to get the book published until it is ready. Talk to the publisher who is considering your book, explain the situation to them and ask for their advice about what to do. In my opinion, a second edition is unlikely ever to be published because, as I understand it, mathematics research monographs don't sell well enough to justify a second edition.
Even if a second edition were to be published, what is the purpose of the first edition if it is rapidly superseded by the second? From the way you write your question, it seems that that the purpose, for you, is publication. Publication is not a goal: it is a means to an end. The goal is to make other mathematicians aware of your work and that is most likely to happen if you present the work in the best way you can.
Listen to what publishers say. You know more about your field than they do; but they know more about their field than you do and their field is books. It is unusual for advances in mathematics to be published as a book, rather than in papers. That doesn't mean it's impossible to publish as a book but it does mean that you should have a good reason for rejecting the conventional method of publication.
If the book you're talking about is the preprint "Algebraic General Topology" on your website, then I'm sorry but it is rough and unmotivated. You have a five-page introduction, of which less than two pages (the sections "Our topic and rationale" and "Earlier works") could be considered as motivation. That is followed by what is, literally, a 250-page list of definitions, lemmas, theorems and proofs. To write that much mathematics is without doubt impressive but, to get there, you must have read at least one or two maths books: this is not what a maths book looks like. If the technical content is good (I know nothing about topology) then you have a sound basis for a book but not yet a book.
Finally, make sure your family knows about your work so that, in the unfortunate event of something happening to you, they can try to get it published so it isn't lost forever. (And take your vitamins and look both ways before crossing the street! :-) )

I would say you must keep trying and get it published, even if you end up paying for that because this is your hard work and should not be wasted or lost.
the best way is to go and talk to publishers and ask them what can be added or subtracted to meet their requirements and standards.
You can also convert the book into an e-book and upload it on paid libraries

Do you have any evidence that paying to have a mathematics research monograph published and/or uploading an ebook version to paid libraries would achieve anything? Specifically, that any mathematicians would be likely to find and pay attention to a book published in that way.

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text:
Should numeration of a list of axioms be continued?
I have a definition like the following:
Definition System of sides is ... conforming to axioms:

...
...
...

Definition Monotone system of sides is a system of sides conforming to additional axiom:

...

Definition Distributive system of sides is a system of sides conforming to additional axiom:

...

My question: Should I continue numbering of axioms as above, or should the additional axioms be numbered from one (not from four or five as above)?
Also note, that every distributive system of sides is a monotone system of sides.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's about mathematical notation, not about academia. While questions about the process of research are on-topic here, questions about the specific research areas are not.

@EnergyNumbers See this meta discussion.

@EnergyNumbers I strongly disagree with this assessment, per the meta question, and have voted to reopen.

I would recommend thinking about this presentation problem in the following way: if you were inclined to be verbose, it would be perfectly correct to say:

Definition Monotone system of sides is a system of sides conforming to the axioms:

...
...
...
...

As such, it is not so much that you wish to continue a list of axioms, as it is that you wish to take advantage of the similarity of the two lists of axioms to present this information in a way that is more streamlined and easier to understand.
As such, I would recommend making the elision explicit, as in:

Definition A monotone system of sides conforms to the same axioms 1-3 for a system of sides, plus an additional axiom:

...

Definition A distributive system of sides conforms to the same axioms 1-4 for a monotone system of sides, plus an additional axiom:

...

Notice also that I have extended the italics to the whole statement "X system of sides," rather than just the adjective, since you are not defining e.g., "monotone" but rather "monotone system of sides."

Side question about English usage: "Plus an additional axiom" or "Plus the additional axiom"? Given that the sentence introduces the axiom, I have the impression that the latter would be better. Am I wrong?

@MassimoOrtolano I have no strong opinion between the two; they are slightly different, but I personally would be comfortable with either presentation.

@Massimo Ortolano: I think "Plus the additional axiom" would be better, because there is only one additional axiom being talked about in the sentence. Yes, I realize there could be other axioms that would be suitable in the presence of the previous axioms, but the sentence is not referring to all (or some) such possible axioms that one could include with the previous axioms, but rather to a certain specific such axiom.

If you can give the axioms reasonable names, then you could use those instead of numbers.  The LaTeX environment for doing this is called "description".  You already have good names for the last two axioms, namely "monotone" and "distributive", so it remains to check whether your axioms 1, 2, and 3 can be given good names.

I think this if fine. But you could also label them differently:
A *system of sides* complies with the axioms:
SS1: ...
SS2: ...
SS3: ...
A *distributive system of sides* is a system of sides with:
DSS1: ...
DSS2: ...
A *monotone system of sides* is a distributive system of sides that:
MSS1: ...


text:
How did conferences "work" before the e-mail era?
Some friends and I were discussing a certain conference that has a "rebuttal" phase, in which the authors can see the reviews and reply to them. We realized that this rebuttal phase probably couldn't happen before e-mail was common, which lead us to think on the question

How did conferences "work" before everybody had e-mails?

I don't know about other fields, but in computer-science, some of the conferences are dated to early 60's. Back then there was no email and internet (were fax machines common enough?).
I have plenty of questions about how the process worked back then:

How did one submit a paper? (I assume one had to print the paper and mail it? Was the "deadline" determined by the post-date, or maybe there was no deadline?)
How did one get the reviews back, if at all?
Where did one send his paper? To the program chair? How did the reviewers get a copy of the paper (I assume the chair would first need to look at the abstracts and then assign to other PC members/reviewers? or maybe the entire committee would get copies of all the papers, and there was no sub-reviewing?)
How much time did the entire process take (seems like the overhead of mail adds quite a lot to the already-long process)

(maybe I'm taking it all wrong, and conferences back then were not peer-reviewed, and anyone that came could give a talk??)

Some things that I (think that I) know, and might help to complete the atmosphere of 'making science without the supporting technology':

How would the program committee make the decision? - they'd meet in some place together, and decide.. Which means that one had to travel quite a lot to be on a committee.
Proceedings were sent to print months after the conference, so they actually described what had happened during the conference.
Presentations were done using a projector and transparent slides (it's funny to think about it..)

How would the program committee make the decision? - they'd meet in some place together and decide.  This is the way it is still done for conferences in CS.  Chicago seems to be a frequent location, near the airport and easy to get to from both coasts.

Some people still give talks with transparent slides.  I did so as recently as 2007.

@ChrisGregg This is the way it is still done for some conferences in CS.  The vast majority of my PC meetings are purely electronic.

"Back to 1960"? - the Royal Society in London was effectively running scientific conferences and publishing the proceedings starting in 1660, not 1960! (You might also consider that when a nationwide UK postal service was started, in the early days they were as many as 10 mail deliveries per day in London - so exchanging letters was not much slower than today's emails, in real life!

Conferences were organized pretty much as they are now, only slower and with lots more paper.

Conferences would advertise by physically mailing paper fliers to potential authors (primarily past attendees) and perhaps some department chairs.  Postage was a significant portion of the conference budget.  Professional society publications (like Communications of the ACM and SIGACT News) would include several pages of calls for papers with upcoming deadlines.  These calls for papers were typically prepared and sent to publishers/printers about a year in advance of the conference.
Authors would send multiple physical paper copies of each submission by post (or FedEx, or whatever) to the physical address of the program committee chair.  Typically, the author would send one copy for each member of the program committee.  Papers usually had to be received, not merely postmarked, by the submission deadline.  (Hence the probably-not-apocryphal stories of grad students flying to the PC chair's city with a box of last-minute submissions from their home department.)
Submission deadlines were typically about six months before the actual conference date, just as they are now.
The PC chair (or more likely, their secretary and/or students) would collate the received submissions into boxes/binders, which would be physically mailed to each program committee member.  Thus, each PC member would receive a copy of each submitted paper.  Shipping costs were a non-trivial portion of the conference budget.  (Having never been on a committee organized this way, I don't know how review assignments were done.  I assume the now ubiquitous practice of sub-reviewing was very rare.)
A couple of months later, the entire program committee would fly to a central physical location with their submission boxes/binders, to decide which submissions to accept.  Conference budgets sometimes included travel costs for the program committee, but not always.
The PC chair (or more likely, their secretary and/or students) would send a physical letter to each submitting author informing them of the committee's decision about their paper.  Often this was the only feedback from the program committee.  Authors who wanted more information about why a paper was rejected often had to contact one of the committee members directly.
About three months before the conference, authors of accepted papers would physically mail camera-ready copies of their papers to the publisher, after following formatting instructions received by physical mail.  The publisher would duplicate (using an actual camera!) and bind these papers into books, along with front and back matter prepared by the PC chair and also physically mailed to the publisher.
The publisher would ship physical books containing all the camera-ready papers, which would be distributed to the conference attendees.  (Again, shipping costs were a non-trivial portion of the conference budget.)  Faculty attending the conferences would often buy extra books to distribute to their students who could not attend.  Other copies of the same book would be physically mailed to hundreds of university libraries and other subscribers.

I have heard many stories of people rushing to the FedEx station at the airport to ship off papers at the last possible minute. I've also heard stories of grad students driving from Boston to New York with all the submissions from MIT to submit them.

As a PhD student in the mid 90s, I heard a rumor that MIT would buy a plane ticket for a grad student to fly to the FOCS/STOC PC chair's home city on the submission deadline day, with a checked box of last minute submissions.  Given the regular volume of submissions (each paper submitted in multiple paper copies, one for each PC member), it would have been cheaper than FedEx.

There are some vestiges of the pre-electronic era still out there. For instance, the American Physical Society continues to this day to have an annual "Sorting Meeting" for their conference, where anyone interested in helping to organize the meeting comes together. At that meeting, all of the abstracts, which have been printed out, are available, and need to be "sorted" and collected into groups that would become different sessions.
You will also sometimes see references to manuscripts needing to be "camera-ready"; this is also a reference to how production of conference proceedings worked. The manuscripts were photographed and then turned into material that the publisher used to make the final printed copies.
Of course, even after the advent of the fax, many things would still have to be done by mail. However, I think that ultimately things had to be done "on site," as it was simply too impractical to mail everything around to all of the reviewers. However, I also think it would have been much more difficult to ask for full papers, just because of the logistics of having to deal with so much material in one sitting. You would need to rely on abstracts (regular or "extended"), and then ask for full papers from the accepted papers.
(And, because of the poor quality of faxes, anything that would be submitted to a publisher would have to be done by mail. Note that this was true even after the advent of the email era!)

Typically, each program committee member would receive ALL the submissions (100-200 back in the 1970s and 80s), when STOC and FOCS did not have parallel
sessions and were only accepting 30-36 papers.
Authors with accepted papers would receive a mailing tube
containing large size sheets into which their papers were to
be typed (or pasted), with blue guidelines indicating the margins for the
2-column format.  These were then sent to the publisher, who would photograph
the pages - the proceedings pages were reduced-size versions of the
"camera-ready" versions.  Figures were often hand-drawn, as you can see if
you look at some of those old proceedings, scans of which are available in
the relevant digital libraries.

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text:
Reviewing a paper that's badly written such that reading it takes a long time
I'm reviewing a paper for a journal, with a mathematical nature. Its content, from what I can gather from an initial pass, is probably ok. However, it has a tendency to reinvent things with its own idiosyncratic terminology and notation and expresses things in a generally awkward way, such that understanding it in full detail is taking me a long time.
I already asked for an extension from the journal and don't really want to drag it out any longer, for my own sake as well as theirs, as I have other things I need to do. But at the same time it doesn't seem fair to recommend rejection purely on the basis that I personally struggled to read it. I think it is objectively awkwardly written and I don't think my difficulty reading it has to do with a lack of expertise on my part, but that doesn't mean someone else wouldn't find it much easier to follow than I do.
So it seems like my only option is to submit a review admitting that I didn't understand it all and explaining the reason why, without being able to comment on all of its main contributions. Of course I can give suggestions for how to reformulate the parts I did understand, and general pointers to the literature that might help with the rest.
My question is whether this is considered a reasonable thing to do in this situation, or whether there might be another option that I haven't considered. I generally feel that a review should check the correctness of a paper's mathematical content, and I feel like I'm letting the authors down by not being able to do that.

Related ;) https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/214102/are-there-any-special-actions-that-i-should-execute-as-a-reviewer-of-a-sloppy-ma

Part of being a good researcher is communicating thoughts well. If the paper isn't well written at all, I would recommend rejection citing the poor writing and lack of clarity, possibly leaving the door open for a resubmit.

"I generally feel that a review should check the correctness of a paper's mathematical content, and I feel like I'm letting the authors down by not being able to do that." No, it's the other way around: it's the authors who are letting the referees down by not putting enough effort into making their writing clear.

My most unpleasant refereeing experience would have been made much easier by saying "I can't read this paper because of this terrible notation and messed up definition. I'll take another look once they've been fixed." rather than slogging through

Reinventing notation means that I have to do 1+3+5+1 times the job. 1 time for the review, 3 times to learn a new notation, 5 to connect it to the rest I know and 1 to read it again and understand it now.

There's a lot of negativity about poorly written papers on this page, but the thing is these things are quite subjective. What I meant to say in the question was that the awkwardness made it very difficult for me to read, but that I felt someone else might find it a lot easier. The review would have been easier if I'd felt that nobody else would be able to read it either.

@N.Virgo I am pretty sure that "a tendency to reinvent things with its own idiosyncratic terminology" is universally considered an obstacle to easy comprehension, rather than being some personal idiosyncrasy of yours.

@AdamPřenosil It really matters if the idiosyncratic notation is essential or a quirk.

Yes, what you suggest seems reasonable (and proper). You aren't expected to expend extreme or superhuman efforts on the paper. Suggest major revisions are necessary before the paper would be readable by the typical reader of the journal.
Don't neglect to mention non-standard terminology and/or notation.
I'm wondering if the paper was written by someone relatively unschooled who needs to re-do what is already known. Not a crank, but someone who needs more background.
What you suggest seems useful to both editor and author.

This. The journal probably should not publish something that is correct but unreadable. So pointing out that it is unreadable is a worthwhile review.

Adam already came close to my point, but I believe this is worth an answer by itself.

I generally feel that a review should check the correctness of a paper's mathematical content

This is wrong, as in "not enough". Reviewers should comment on whether a paper contributes to advancing the discipline. The correctness of a paper's mathematical content is one dimension in which a paper can advance the discipline, or fail to contribute. But there are other dimensions, which are absolutely equally important:

An adequate engagement with prior art and the current state of the literature. No matter how much you contribute, if you do not engage with what other people are doing right now, then your contribution falls short. People reading the paper should be able to understand the context. Major revision.
Missing information. In math, there is a fine line between giving proofs in detail and leaving details to readers (who are presumably knowledgeable in the field), but "I have a wonderful proof for this proposition; unfortunately page constraints mean that I cannot give it" was fine for Fermat but not for us lesser mortals. In other disciplines, failure to give important information about experimental setup or study participants can sink the best (alleged) contributions. Major revision or reject.
Inappropriate methods. Less of an issue in math, more so in other fields. I am a statistician working in forecasting, and I will recommend rejection if a submission clearly shows data leakage. Reject.
And yes: clarity of exposition. No matter what you did, if your intended audience cannot understand it, then you did not contribute to the scientific conversation. And it is incumbent on the author to make sure they are understandable. Sure, a reviewer can help, and should do so if they think the underlying scientific contribution is worth investing the time and effort. But the work and the responsibility falls on the authors. Reject and resubmit, or reject outright.

Of course. I didn't mean a review should only check the mathematical correctness, and I don't think my text really implied that. But I do feel it's a particularly important aspect of a review, because it's one of the most helpful things a reviewer can do for the authors rather than the journal.

I would say it's kind of hard to say whether any given review comment benefits "the journal" more than "the authors" or "the readers". My motivation as an author is to further the scientific conversation, and the entire review process is designed to help me achieve that goal. So an improvement in any of the dimensions I discuss above (or, conversely, gatekeeping to keep bad manuscripts out) arguably benefits everyone involved.

I don't disagree, but speaking for myself as an author, the main benefit I look for when submitting a mathematical paper to a journal rather than just arXiv is that an experienced person will go through the maths carefully and give their comments. Sure, there's also the stuff about publishing being good for your career etc., but that's just politics and I only care about it to the extent that I'm forced to.

Note that I did not say anything about your citation count or your career. "Furthering the scientific conversation" is quite a different thing. (I work in industry; few people around me - including my manager - have any idea about how publishing works or about citation indices. I publish because I believe it makes the world a better place.)

Perhaps you're lucky in that respect. I write because it makes the world a better place, but I publish because I have to.

It sounds to me as if you already spend much more time on the article than you should have. Basically, once it becomes clear the article would need significant improvements in presentation, it is fair to ask that this is done before you keep reading it.
Something like the following makes for a useful referee report:

There is probably some merit in the mathematical content of this
submission. However its presentation makes it so inaccessible that a major
rewrite seems necessary to even adequately judge the relevance and
correctness of the mathematical claims.
A (highly non-exhaustive) list of examples follows:

The authors invented their own terminology for skrimpy widgets, instead of following the standard..

It is then up to the editor to decide whether they want to give the authors the chance to revise or not, and subsequently, up to the authors to decide whether to try that rewrite or not.

Yes. If they're that bad, these are typically my fastest reviews. I'm definitely not going to spend more time reading the paper than it seems like they did writing it. (Although my fastest review might have been one where what I wrote was something along the lines of, "This paper seems like a fine paper, but its topic has nothing to do with the topics of this conference." It really was a fine paper -- for some other conference. NB: I didn't check to see if the paper was plagiarized or anything, though.)

One way to phrase this is that the purpose of a referee is to give advice to the author that helps them to improve the paper, and then, when there is no advice left to give, evaluate the paper. It's not necessary to evaluate the paper until the final publication decision is made which is after the advice has been given.

However, it has a tendency to reinvent things with its own idiosyncratic terminology and notation and expresses things in a generally awkward way, such that understanding it in full detail is taking me a long time.

I'd mark it for major review and clearly state that the terminology is "misleading" - highligt [colour one] the 'own idiosyncratic terminology' - and nontation as well - higlight [colour two] where it 'expresses things in a generally awkward way'.
You can clearly state, that you stopped reviewing the manuscript before reaching the end because of the language. It is understandable and this feedback can open discussion how to improve the paper.

You got a very good advice in the three other answers. And yet, it might happen (although, the probability that it will happen to you or to any particular mathematician, is pretty low) that you should ignore all this advice and accept the paper even though it is barely readable. Recognizing that you are dealing with such a paper is not easy and there is no rule of thumb for doing this. Instead of trying to achieve the impossible, I will give just two examples (I could  give more, but I will not). There is a mathematician, Mikhail Gromov, one of the best mathematicians alive (if the name is unfamiliar, just google him). In 1985 and 1987 Gromov published two papers:
Mikhail Gromov, "Pseudo holomorphic curves in symplectic manifolds." Inventiones Mathematicae vol. 82, 1985, pp. 307-347.
Mikhail Gromov, "Hyperbolic Groups". In: Gersten, Steve M. (ed.). Essays in Group Theory. Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Publications. Vol. 8. New York: Springer. pp. 75–263. (1987)
To say that these papers are very hard to read would be an understatement. If one were to apply the criteria mentioned in the three other answers, both papers should have been rejected. And yet, mathematics is better off that these papers were published, pretty much "as is." These papers changed two fields of mathematics (arguably, created two fields of mathematics): symplectic topology and geometric group theory. Here is how Donaldson characterizes (correctly) the first paper:

The terminology pseudoholomorphic curve (or J-holomorphic curve) was introduced by Gromov in 1986 [sic]. The notion has transformed the field of symplectic topology and has a bearing on many other
areas such as algebraic geometry, string theory, and
4-manifold theory...

Both papers introduce a variety of definitions and state a number of theorems (typically, with barely any proofs). It took mathematical community about 15 years to get a clean and complete treatment of these. I do not know who and how refereed the first paper, but I have some knowledge of how the refereeing process of the second paper took place. The first referee wrote several pages of comments of the form "prove or give a reference." The second referee ignored all of these and accepted the paper. It takes mathematical maturity and vision on the part of the referee to do so. As I said, we are all better off as the result.

One shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good, of course, but are you sure Gromov being asked to revise these papers would have been such a terrible outcome? Would he have refused to publish altogether in that case? If not, is it that you consider a few months of work by him to be worth more than many years of work by the community?

@Anyon: Gromov's reaction in the case I know was along the lines of "please, find another referee." And he probably would have published elsewhere.

I’m not sure "if you are famous enough you can just force people into publishing your work anyway" is the state science should strive for.

@MisterMiyagi: The misunderstanding expressed in your comment is exactly why I wrote my answer. Maybe one day you will understand the difference...

@MoisheKohan I am well aware what you are trying to say. I just disagree with it. Maybe one day you will understand the difference…

"Hard to read" and "reinvent things with idiosyratic terminology" are two different features of a paper. "Hard to read" paper may still be a high-quality work on difficult topic and making it easier may bloat the text significantly. On the other hand "idiosyncratic terminology" just messes things up and cleaning up may shorten the paper without losing any (novel) ideas.

@Crowley: That's quite true.

@MoisheKohan The mathematical community may collectively be better off. On the other hand, I have a vivid memory that almost 20 years ago, as someone doing a PhD in a completely different area, I was very frustrated that a result I needed was always cited as being in the hyperbolic paper, yet I was unable to find an explanation that I could follow. In the end my office-mate referred me to the notes of Alonso et al which did stoop to giving an actual proof

@YemonChoi: Of course. You just had to ask right people for better references (they also would have directed you to the books by Ghys et al, by Delzant et al, Bridson and Haefliger, etc). If you think about history of science in general, this is actually a rule: a breakthrough, followed by an extensive (and sometimes very long) clean-up stage. As the result, nobody reads original papers of Newton, Leibnitz, Poincare, Einstein, etc, except for science historians. But without those original papers, science would be nowhere close to where we are.

@YemonChoi: Of course, Gromov in principle could have provided detailed proofs. He did not for a good reason (which is not because he regarded this beneath him): It would have required a text about 5 times linger than his and significantly delayed publication and, hence, development of the field.

@MoisheKohan: I agree that it is better for mathematics that Gromov's papers were published, and given that he was unwilling to write out complete proofs (and in many cases, even complete definitions!) accepting them as-is seems like the right thing to do. However, I strongly disagree with you that he had a "good reason". Gromov is a great mathematician, but plenty of equally great mathematicians (Borel, Deligne, Serre, etc) could have used their stature to avoid the hard work of writing their papers but did not. We should not celebrate the fact that Gromov is less responsible than them.

(sorry for commenting on a 2-month old thread, but if I had self-control I'd be doing something other than playing on the internet...)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
I received an F32, how do I ask for more money?
The F32 pays for my salary, and my benefits.  This is going to be more than 58,500 dollars that my boss saves per year, for the next 3 years.  That is a lot of money.
I think it is only right that I ask my boss for more money on top.  She has 1 large non federal grant.  And since she is relatively new, she still has start-up funds.  NIH stipulates that the F32 can be supplemented with more money, given the money is not from a federal grant.
To start, i want to ask for an additional $15,000 per year.
Have any tips for me?
Thank you!
Update: I talked to my boss a 2nd time.   She said supplemental funds were really rare and that she could not justify it.  But she said she would give me retirement benefits starting July 1, 2019 (start of fiscal year).   At this university, that amounts to 14%.  I am relatively happy.   My salary is going from 47.5k to 50.3k thanks to the NIH, and I do not have to pay FICA.  This is an increase of almost 6,000 dollars from 2018 to 2019, not including retirement benefits.   With retirement benefits,  that is another 7,000 per year, approx.
I won't be able to get another car,  but I'll be able to repair my clunker when it breaks down!
Thank you.

I think it is only right that I ask my boss for more money on top. I think it is appropriate, but whatever you do, be careful to not sound greedy/entitled.

But expect that she may also want to spread the money around to other unfunded students.

I have worked as a research administrator in the Boston area for 8 years, and thus have seen all postdoc salaries in the areas I work (natural sciences, engineering, and computer science).  This is not how salary works for postdocs.

It is set by location.  Boston pays higher than other areas due to cost of living.  They have to set a rate that is sustainable to meet future commitments as well.
It is set by funding source.  NIH has minimums that must be adhered to.  If you don't receive NIH funding, you can pay less unless your institution says no.
It is set by field.  I work in a top research university, known for having high salaries in research positions, including graduate students.  Within the same building, there is a $30k disparity in pay between postdocs.  Econ CS folks pay $80k because the faculty have to compete with both finance and Silicon Valley stealing their postdocs.  Bio-engineering postdocs get the NIH minimum.  It's not personal--it has to do with the fields they are in and the competition for postdocs.

Of the hundreds of postdoc salaries I have personally managed, I have only seen PIs supplement if the fellowship pays below the department standard or NIH minimum.  If that's not the case here, I would not approach the PI.
The point of you getting an F32 is three-fold:

You learn how to write a grant on your own.
You can spend time on your own project, promoting independence in research.
You relieve the stress of procuring funding for the PI.

[Clarification on the compliance involved with this funding source:  F32s are highly regulated; the grants policy statement defines supplementation and additional compensation differently, and it's important to make sure we are explicit about which words we are using.
A supplement, is additional stipend funding that provides no benefit to the PI.  Because additional stipend funding must be consistent across the institution, frequently the policy is to use a department standard or NIH minimum as the policy to which a trainee is supplemented.  This is paid out as a stipend and is not certifiable effort.
Additional compensation, is essentially a part-time job which allows the postdoc to work on other projects up to a total of 10 hrs/week.  This is paid out as salary, and if on a federal grant is certifiable effort.
Unless they provide a part-time job for you (see policy statement), this leads to the conundrum of the PI spending more money on a postdoc who will not work on their grant.  Furthermore, you can't work on a grant that overlaps with your own.  This is probably why this method is less common than expected; if you request the raise of $15k, these additional funds (stipend, not salary) by definition must be of no benefit to the PI, because F32 Postdocs fall under the "trainee" definition of the Department of Labor.  If your salary is $58,500 and you received $15k in salary instead of stipend at the same hourly rate; NIH could cite your institution for non-compliance, because it's technically above the 25% figure that they allow for additional compensation.  The funding source is irrelevant.  Your institution should have guidance on how they handle F32s.  Here's one for UCSF.]
You are currently considered a bonus to the PI and a great relief. Startups don't last forever.  They are great for bridging funding when data and results are difficult to procure; funding new research that sponsors won't fund; paying for expenses that cannot be allocated to a grant (e.g., general lab supplies or travel).  She's not rich--there is plenty in her future to spend this money on, some of which could be on you (e.g., professional dues or travel).
Research funding is a rough game, so be supportive of her too.  There is some risk for her as well, as her future funding is not guaranteed.  Funding cliffs can be seriously painful for a PI, as they don't have personnel to procure data, do initial analysis, etc.  Everything comes to a crawl, and it's hard to get published or funded when you can't pay students or postdocs. Should this happen, she may become a ward of the department, which will cause her reputation to take a hit with her peers.
If you are still going to approach her, definitely consider how tough her situation is, even if she wants to give you everything you ask for.  In the end, you are both at the mercy of limited funds, and her responsibility is to make sure she has the funds to support everyone in her lab that she is committed to.

thanks for your feedback.  So you have not seen any bio sciences postdocs get more funding after receiving a fellowship from NIH or another private institute?   I find that hard to believe.  Have you heard of anyone asking, and being rejected?

I disagree.  Your PI is not your family member.  They may not even be your friend.  You owe them no help they do not pay you for.  It does not matter one bit how tough it is for the PI to get funding.  You can always ask for more pay.  Your PI can always say no.
The answer says they have never seen a postdoc paid more than the standard amount, but how many postdocs have been promoted to research assistant professor so they can get paid more?  I know that happens.  And how many times have requests for pay raises lead to a change in the standard pay?

A promotion is not related to receiving an F32, as an F32 is for postdocs.  And my point is not that you can't ask, it's just that postdoc salaries are not as individually determined as people think.  The question as phrased implied that the PI has the money therefore can afford it.  If you want to negotiate for more money though, my advice is to use a strategy that doesn't assume they are rich.  Focus more on why you are worth the extra money and they should want to afford it, knowing that the ask costs them more than just cash.  I find compassion and thoughtfulness go a long way.

For what it's worth, I upvoted both current answers to this question. I agree with StrongBad that OP definitely should ask for a raise, but sometimes it may just not be in the cards (and OP should be aware that simply getting a grant does not necessitate a raise, just like completing a successful project in industry does not automatically mean that one is entitled to a higher salary).

@jrod212 Salaries for positions like these may not be set by your PI but by university or department policy. I don't think it's wrong to ask, but know that the person you are asking may not even have the authority to act on your request.

The point of an F32 is that the postdoc is devoted to their own project. It creates a protected space for the postdoc with no additional expectations.  This is why it's uncommon for PIs to supplement postdocs working on their own project--they aren't necessarily contributing to the PI's projects.  If a postdoc felt that their own work was particularly beneficial to the PI, that might be an argument for a raise.
However, as presented, once you factor in fringe, I don't know how I would recommend the PI spend $58k in their discretionary funds for someone who is not working on the PI's grants.

In contrast to this answer I can tell you that supervisors can and do supplement the salaries of postdocs funded by an F32. My F32 was years ago and I don't remember the exact amount of additional funding I was provided, by my guess was it was close to 15k a year. I was earning more than the other two postdocs in the lab who were R01 funded and other F32 funded postdocs in the department. I believe I was the highest paid "postdoc" in the department, although determining who is/isn't a post doc is non-trivial.
For me, it was a relatively easy subject to broach. I had been working in the lab for 6 months prior to getting the F32 award letter and was being paid more the the NIH scale. Sometime soon after the letter, but before I even knew what was up, the department grants person sent an email to my supervisor and me saying that we had to make a decision about my salary. My supervisor suggested that if I was willing to devote some of my time to other lab projects, she could pay me more.
I think the NIH limited my outside commitment to 20% of my time. She had a pot of about 15k a year of non-federal funds (essentially the only money she has to supplement my salary). This meant my outside commitment of 20% was paid at about 75k a year which was close to the max we could justify with the department grant administrator. So I got all of the available money and was more than happy and didn't really have to say anything. She also agreed to cover all my consumables and travel from her federal funds since the work of the two projects was related closely enough.

I think it is only right that I ask my boss for more money on top.

Sure you can ask, but the non-federal grant probably has work that needs to be done and paying someone from that pot of money not to do that work is illegal. Even if there is overlap between the research, you cannot double dip. You would have to agree to do extra work for that grant specifically.
Startup funds are another story and do not generally have any/many restrictions. As for the likelihood of the PI supplementing your pay, all you can do is ask. You might be better off asking for an increased travel budget or money for consumables (the F32 does not provide much in terms of non-salary support).

This is a good answer because it touches on the restrictions that are placed on many funds. The money may "belong" to the professor, but there are generally serious constraints on what they can do with them. It can happen that with the best will in the world the professor could not legally use money that would otherwise not be spent to supplement a post-doc's salary.

Your answer is confusing from a research administration perspective.  Stipend fellowships and salaries are not the same thing.  This is why you were limited to low effort on other projects (it's actually 25% in ADDITION to your F32, i.e. 10 hrs).  What you received was not a supplement.  A supplement is when you get additional funds for no extra work. Additional compensation is subject to regulations and should be tracked--if it ends up on a federal grant, it would be subject to effort reporting, because it is salary and not stipend.  You can read the policy in the grants policy statement.

Hello everyone,
Thanks for the comments.  I asked my boss for a pay increase, and she definitely is willing to give me more.  She did smile when I asked.  She laughed when I asked for $15,000, and then said when she got her fellowship she did not get a dime.  (Did she ask? I am guessing not.)  She said she thinks she can definitely get me retirement benefits, which is better than nothing, but I am going to insist she gives me $10,000 more per year, because that is only about $3000 above how much retirement benefits would cost her.
She said she would talk to other faculty.


text:
Can I report the same study twice but with different authors?
I successfully defended my dissertation in November. Through the process, my chair (member A) was a terrific cheerleader. My second committee member (member B) was encouraging in a more specific,academic manner. At times, only because of Member B's feedback, I advanced in the dissertation process. Committee Member B broached the notion about co-authoring my study. Two days later, Member A called to discuss possible authorship opportunities. I have not given a firm answer. Is it possible to write two articles in separate journals with two different authors using the same study(not the same article)? How does one handle this issue?

Could you please edit your title into something more descriptive?

This sounds like you don't want to talk with A + B, together, in advance, but keep them in the dark? Bad, bad, bad idea, and totally unprofessional.

Thanks for the response.I am actually trying to be professional. I am simply new to this process and did not know if there was protocol.  A&B did not seem to be friendly to one another, and I was stunned that both approached me about publishing opportunities.

There is a general prohibition on publishing the same work twice, whether with different co-authors or not.
One option is just to add both of them on same paper.  Put yourself as first author.  After that, it's other people riding the sled.  Most people understand the main contribution is first author.
Potentially there is some way to carve the study into different pieces and do different papers with each person without violating (1).  Or maybe give one of them some later co-authorship (say on a review or followup study).  I wouldn't go through too many contortions though just for the purpose of doing separate co-authorships.  Divide your overall work as you think it makes most sense to the reader and most benefit to you.  Then figure out what coauthors are deserved where.
Also consider to use the "acknowledgements section" if a contribution was made but you do not think it rises to coauthorship.
Finally, I would make sure that A knows about what B is asking for.  They may be buddies/colluders or rivals or whatever. But he can advise you. I bet he says go with (2).

Thank you for your comments and advice. I appreciate your thoughts.

Some studies are rich and complex enough that it is perfectly reasonable to publish more than one paper, each detailing some particular novel aspect of the study. Not all are like that, of course, but if yours is you can certainly proceed as you suggest. You aren't limited to just two.
For example, if a math paper has many lemmas to reach a specific result, some of the lemmas may, themselves, be worth a publication. This is especially true if the dissertation is longer than most journals would accept.
On the other hand, in my day (changed fields and am retired now), it was perfectly ok for a student to publish his/her own work without any co-authorship by advisors or others. I don't know if that is still true, but it seems a better practice to me. I would never consider being a co-author with one of my doctoral students on their dissertation. The work was theirs, even when I contributed some things.

It may depend on the field, but in biophysics in Europe the PI is always the co-author of a paper (in my experience from 4 different labs at least), even if they did not contribute anything except funding and laboratory equipment.


text:
How do I make sure I get strong recommendation letters for faculty positions?
I would like to ask Prof. X, a distinguished scholar at a top school, for a recommendation for a tenure-track academic position. However, I only want him to write me a recommendation if he is going to write a good one. If he will write me a mediocre or just insufficiently positive recommendation, I would prefer to have someone less famous than X but more positive about me write the letter.
If I simply ask Prof. X for a letter, there is the possibility that he will agree and  then  write something that is not as positive as I would like. I want to avoid this.
One way to solve this problem would be for me to ask Prof. X if he is sufficiently familiar with my work to write me a strong letter. If he does not wish to write me a strong letter, he can simply reply that he is not that familiar with the whole body of my work. By giving him an easy way to decline, this makes it more likely that he will write a strong letter if he accepts.
Unfortunately, in this case this little strategem will not work, as Prof. X and I have been working on the same questions for years, so there is little question of him being unfamiliar with my results.
Another possible solution would be to have someone else approach him to ask whether he can write me a strong letter. Sadly I have no one who could do this for me.
What would be a good strategy to use in this situation? More broadly, what are some general tips for asking people for recommendation letters which ensure you only get strong letters, besides the two I mentioned above?
Edited: Maybe I should mention a couple of other strategies that crossed my mind:
A. Mention to Prof. X that I'm going on the job market in unrelated conversation and see if he volunteers to write me a letter.
B. Ask him for a letter in an email and see how he responds. If he responds enthusiastically, e.g., "It would be my pleasure to write you a letter..." or "I'd be extremely happy to..." this is good. If he only responds neutrally, e.g., "Sure, I can write you a letter" then simply neglect to follow up with him and ask someone else for the letter.
Both of these strategies are decent, but they are not perfect. They might work, but they also might cause me to miss out on a good letter from a well-known scholar. Anyway, I'd welcome thoughts, corrections, additional strategies to use that I haven't thought of, etc.

Don't just neglect to follow up if he agrees but not enthusiastically enough.  I occasionally deal with flaky students, who are going to miss deadlines if I don't remind them, and you don't want him to think you are in that category (he may end up reminding you and feeling annoyed about it).  It's also hard to gauge enthusiasm from a brief reply.

One way to solve this problem would be for me to ask Prof. X if he is sufficiently familiar with my work to write me a strong letter.

No.  Do not play mind games.  The best approach is to be completely straightforward.
If you already know that he is familiar with your work, suggesting otherwise is dishonest and potentially insulting.  What you really want to know is whether he's impressed by your work.  The only way to find out is to ask directly.  If possible, ask in person, preferably over coffee/beer or in some other informal neutral setting; conferences are really good for this.  Be straightforward about your desire for a strong letter, but use the opportunity to develop a stronger collaborative relationship.  Ask for honest feedback on your work.  Ask about future opportunities to work together.  Ask where he thinks you should apply.  Be sincere in asking whether he can write you a strong recommendation letter; he knows what that means.  Be sincerely ready to be turned down.  Listen.
If you're not comfortable asking him directly, or you think that he might not be comfortable answering you, ask your advisor to informally sound out Prof X's opinion of you first.  (Ideally, your advisor already has some idea what Prof X will say.)  But the actual letter request must come directly from you.

If he only responds neutrally, e.g., "Sure, I can write you a letter" then simply neglect to follow up with him and ask someone else for the letter.

No.  Do not play mind games.
First, unless you already know Prof X extremely well, you should not attempt to read his mind through email.  "Sure, I can write you a letter" says nothing about his level of enthusiasm.  If his response to your request makes you hesitant to use his letter, ask him again.  Second, if you decide, for whatever reason, that you don't need his letter after you've asked for it, you must tell him directly, so that he doesn't waste his time.

This is great advice.  It's also worth focusing not just on his opinion of your work in the abstract, but also in the context of other letters he may be writing.  In the most likely problem scenario, he thinks your work is really good, but he's also writing a letter for someone he thinks is amazing, and your letter will suffer by comparison despite his genuine enthusiasm.  So it's worth asking explicitly whether, given who else he expects to be writing for, he'd recommend that you might be better off with another letter writer.

If you don't already know whether your advisor will write you a strong recommendation letter, your relationship has already badly broken down.  And you can still meet "face to face" over Skype/Google chat/Facetime/whatever.

something else that does not definitely mean yes or no? ... how long/or when you should [email] again? — Immediately!  You need (and deserve) a definitive answer.  Their waffling may be an attempt to say no without hurting your feelings, so when you contact them again, give them an out.  "I would appreciate a strong letter from you, but I will certainly understand if you have too many other demands on your time."

@AnonymousMathematician: Excellent point!  A similar issue could also arise Prof X is already writing a letter for his own student, even if he thinks you're stronger.

Thanks for your response. To be honest, I disagree: I think if Prof. X does not think highly of my work and I ask him directly what he thinks of it, he will not offer a negative assessment out of politeness. His negative opinion may instead manifest itself through in insufficient enthusiasm in his reply, or if perhaps if he cuts our conversation short with some excuse. One way or another, I'm reduced to playing mind games.

As for your point that - "Sure, I can write you a letter" says nothing about his level of enthusiasm - I agree. I actually say this in my edit above. This test is one-sided - a very enthusiastic reply means something, an unenthusisic reply means nothing.

Notice I said "If you don't already know whether your advisor will write you a strong recommendation letter..."  Also, beware of Impostor Syndrome; let Prof X decide what he thinks of your work.

@JeffE -  You are right, I misunderstood your point. I've gone ahead and deleted the comment to which your last comment is responding.

I assume here that Prof X knows you (and not only your work). I also assume that you work is strong enough to ensure that you are eligible for a tenure-track position somewhere.
One thing you can do is contacting Prof X, asking him for advice regarding your application. More specifically, you can ask him to read your research project and giving you some hints about what can be done to make it "sexier". That way, you will certainly have a good idea of his opinion on your work. Afterwards, you can decide to ask him for a letter (in the best case scenario, he will volunteer before you ask). If he doesn't even want to read your research project, this is a good clue that he will not write a very good letter.

I disagree with this, although unfortunately I don't have a better solution. You propose to ask for a relatively substantial amount of Prof. X's time, with ulterior motives. It seems at least slightly dishonest, and could potentially cause resentment. Please keep in mind that most bigshots are asked to write a ton of rec letters, and do it cheerfully and conscientiously but would probably rather get back to their own work.

Actually I don't see a problem with this strategy. It actually might be beneficial in general to get this kind of feedback especially since Prof X is distinguished AND works in your area.

Agreed. The best letters come from professors who know you well. You need to take time to cultivate that relationship (perhaps years in advance) and Prof. X needs to be willing to reciprocate on some level. If Prof. X is unwilling to invest the time, find someone else.

@Anonymous "most bigshots are asked to write a ton of rec letters": I disagree. I have a bunch of bigshots in my coauthors, and only a few people dare asking them letter. I think that, after some point, the higher you are in the food chain, the lesser you are asked for letters.

In mathematics, I have heard a couple of bigshots mention that they have something like twenty letters to write in one year, and I got the impression that this is reasonably typical. Perhaps it is different in other fields.

See http://math.stanford.edu/~vakil/recommendations.html for one well-known mathematician's letter writing statistics: "I kept track of letters in a recent year. Sixty people asked for or needed letters: 1 high school, 8 at the undergrad level, 17 at the grad level, 11 at the postdoc level, 8 at the tenure track level, and 15 more senior."  Most well-known faculty write fewer letters, but still a lot. The number of letters for grad school and job applications tends to go up over time, plus you have tenure cases and promotion (full professor, chair), senior hires, prize nominations, etc.

@SylvainPeyronnet: That does not fit my experience at all.  Most of the bigshots I know write ridiculous numbers of letters for graduate school admissions, fellowships, research internships, postdocs, faculty jobs, tenure and promotion cases, awards, etc.

20 requests in a year sounds reasonable. 60 is a lot !

I've heard of more than one person in the 50+/year, and if I remember right at least one over 100.

The fact that some of us have different experiences on that matter make me wonder whether the "letter pressure" is a localized specificity. This is a wild guess, but it seems that the US system is "eating" much more letters than others, true or false?

Here's another variation: email prof X and tell him you are thinking of applying for faculty positions. Ask if he has any suggestions of who might be willing to write you a letter of recommendation to help you achieve your goal.
This is pretty straightforward. If he is willing to write a strong letter, he will offer. If he is not willing to write a strong letter, he will not offer. And he might have some good suggestions for other possible letter writers.

I'm not so sure about this, because the people who can write a strong recommendation letter for you, if such people exist, are the people who personally know you (and your work). And nobody is better placed to know who knows you than you.


text:
Can I use contractions in my thesis?
I am writing my thesis (in Computer Science, if that's relevant) and I am thinking about the style, especially about using contractions.
I realize that thesis is a formal text and contractions like “we're” are quite informal, so they shouldn't be used. But does that apply to all contractions (like “can't” or “don't”)?
English is not my first language, so I'm not sure how much informal the various contractions are.

If you think this question would be better off at english.SE, I could ask there instead.

Just be wary of the difference between "cannot" and "can not".

Many people have different opinions, even among those who are native English speakers and/or think a lot about what makes for good exposition.  That said, here are a few rules of thumb:

Your thesis is possibly the most formal writing you will ever do.  Survey articles and expository articles (especially for undergrads or other non-experts) are often written less formally.  Even many conference proceedings and some journal articles omit some details, and thus can feel less formal than your thesis.
No one will fault you for avoiding contractions altogether.  If in doubt, leave it out (the contraction, that is).  I hate some techniques common in formal writing, such as overuse of the passive voice, or nearly any use of the pronoun one.  But lack of contractions doesn't bother me.

As a more general resource for non-native English speakers, consider Doug West's The Grammar.  West has written two textbooks and over two hundred papers, as well as having served as a problem editor for the Math Monthly for the last 20-something years.  Surely many people will disagree with at least one piece of advice he gives, but what I find helpful is that West explains his motivation for each piece of advice he offers.

I disagree with the first point.  At least in theoretical computer science, I've never noticed a difference in formality between any PhD thesis and any journal paper.  Indeed, most dissertations in my area are essentially "sandwich theses".

Also, passive voice and "one" are (usually) features of bad writing, not of formal writing.

@JeffE I think many of the guidelines that students are taught under the guise of "formal" writing tend to produce bad writing.

Oh yes. Definitely.

@JeffE Why passive voice is considered a feature of bad writing?

The best advice depends upon the style of your thesis. If you are working in a field where you might be expected to publish your thesis, then something aimed at experts should be written in a formal tone (avoiding contractions whenever possible, outside of direct quotations). However, if you're aiming at a wider audience, then a more conversational tone might be completely appropriate. The same logic applies if the chapters of your thesis are planned for publication.
However, you should also check with your advisor about his or her expectations when writing. It would be better to get a sense of what will be allowed before you get too far along; major structural changes are always a pain afterwards.

Replacing you'll by you will is relatively easy to fix using search and replace, or specialized tools like sed and grep.

This depends on the research community you're writing to. Check out some great papers you think highly of in your field. Not necessarily ones that got the most awards, but one's where you went "boy is this paper written well!" Also, it looks like over the decades academics have generally drifted towards more formality, which is a shame, but it also ebbs and flows, recently I see more informal writing again from top researchers.

If you are Lieutenant Commander Data: your brother can but you can't (or, as you would say, "cannot"). Otherwise: I see that you can use contractions in your informal writing, so it would be very strange if you were not able to use them when writing your thesis. If you can't, maybe contact Oliver Sacks: he should get at least an article about this, and maybe part of a book.
More seriously: obviously you can. Should you? Speaking as someone who has both written and carefully read theses in a STEM field (mathematics): one generally needs to worry first that the content is complete and correct and second that the writing is good enough so as not to detract (or distract) from the content. The use of contractions would be at least a level below anything I would worry about when reading a thesis...provided they are used correctly.
It's best to stick to language within your comfort zone (especially as a non-native speaker).  But your post above indicates to me that you have more than enough facility with English to pull off contractions if you want to.  You'll be fine.


text:
How to change higher education standards?
I discovered a new field of mathematics.
I have the ambitious wish to include it into college standard programs.
Who makes the standards? How the standards work? Which procedure one needs to follow to change the standards?
How to make my new field of math into college standards?

My question received two downvotes. Why? It may be very hard to do in practice. But my questions is quite valid as a theoretical issue, independently on whether I can implement it in practice.

There was proposed that my question was answered in I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank?.
It is not so: My question is unlike that question not about acceptance by community but about how standards (documents, not just opinions) setting higher education standards are managed (who writes them, who votes for them, etc.) Maybe I have not made it enough clear, but my question is about documents not people (while that other question is about people).

Possible duplicate of I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank?

@shoover It is not a duplicate. Convincing people that one solved a famous problem has nothing to do with education standards. My question, even if I haven't stressed this enough, is about education standards, not about acceptance by community in general

@MorganRodgers I try to explain that the question (at least how I had it in mind) was not about convincing people but about the formal procedures to get my course into the relevant document (not how to convince the document writers, but about the procedure)

This question is based on a false premise. No higher education standard lists tge courses taught in academia.

So you've discovered a new field of mathematics. Congratulations. But results don't usually jump from research level to college level immediately: the new field takes time to be explored, confirmed, and understood. If your mathematician peers think it's worth teaching, they'll eventually start teaching it. Eventually. This can take years or even decades, e.g. see this comic.
As for who makes the standards: they arise by consensus. There's a reasonably well-defined set of ideas that everyone agrees an undergraduate should know (see examples for physics). To insert your new field into college syllabus, you must convince your peers that it's correct, interesting, relevant, etc.

My question is specifically about the standards. Do you mean that there is no international higher education standard set by some nonprofit association, but just informal (not written as a certain document) "consensus" of different countries?

You tried to convince me that it does not happens quickly. No need to convince, I know this. Maybe it will take 40 years without me actively working on this and 39 years if I receive a proper answer to my question and start actively work on promotion of my research into education standards

@porton there is no nonprofit association that sets standards, yes.

add that there is no such organization to your answer, so that I could accept it as the proper answer

That  is  correct  ,  that  there is NO international   committee   or  any  committee  in  the  United   States  that  sets  educational  standards.  for higher  education.  This  is  especially  true  in  the  United  States   since  the    the  united  states  has  public,  private   AND  religiously   affiliated    universities   ,  colleges  and  schools..   i   attended  religiously  affiliated  private   schools   and  went  to  a  college  of   a private university.   and  graduated  twice. There  is NO  international  committee   setting   higher  educations  "standards."


text:
Can a Scopus journal be fake/predatory?
I get "spam" emails advertising journals listed in Scopus.
Can a Scopus journal be fake/predatory?
Or does Scopus has enough strict conditions to list only reputable journals?
Or do spammers lie about being listed there?
My question is not about other criteria of fake/predatory and how to determined if a journal is predatory in general, but namely about whether this one criterion, presence in Scopus, is enough to decide if it is fake.

Yup.  I know a few.  Also, many started as predatory, and they managed to satisfy conditions required to be listed onto Scopus.  Have a read of: https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/how-scopus-works/content/content-policy-and-selection.  Not too hard to satisfy I reckon.

Just voting to re-open as this is a more specific question. I.e., it seems to be about the degree of quality-control that Scopus exercises when deciding to index a journal. And this is an important specific question.

A lot depends on what you mean by fake/predatory (these terms are not well-defined). Still if you demand a yes/no answer then I will say no.
As Prof. Santa Clause gave in a comment, the criteria to be listed in Scopus are given here. You need a lot of things to be listed, such as diversity in geographical distribution of editors, clarity of abstracts, and no delays or interruptions in the publication schedule. These things aren't easy to fake. The "no delays or interruptions" criterion sinks a lot of legitimate attempts at journals as well.
This particular criterion is especially hard to satisfy: Citedness of journal articles in Scopus. You can see what is needed also on that page: a journal's inclusion in Scopus is threatened if "the journal received half the number of citations, or less, when compared to peer journals in its subject field."
Based on this criterion alone, for a fake/predatory journal to still be listed in Scopus, they must somehow conjure citations from other journals that are also listed in Scopus. This isn't probable unless you go to extremes like postulating that there are a lot of fake journals in Scopus that are citing each other, but not only would the journals have to all get into Scopus in the first place, they would probably fail other criteria, such as "The journal's abstracts are used half as much, or less, when compared to peer journals in its subject field."
tl; dr: it depends on what you mean by fake/predatory, but if a journal is listed in Scopus you can assume that it is reputable until proven otherwise.

On the hard to satisfy criterion: get your friends together, and whenever they publish a legit paper, make sure they cite an article in the 'fake' journal.  Also, when reviewing papers for other journals, make sure you recommend a 'fake' article.  After a certain point, what looks fake is now legit, and everyone will start citing papers in the 'fake' journal.

@Prof.SantaClaus Assuming the papers in the fake journal are genuinely worthless, then that'd make all the citations fake citations where the cited article doesn't actually back up the claim being made. It's hard to make people cite worthless articles, so the last two steps would not work, and the first would be hard to justify if spotted during peer review as well.

The peer review Scopus criteria could be easily faked.

I disagree.   I do have counterexamples to your points, where I know of at least one initially fake journal that uses the tactics above to become legit (still poor, but at least it stayed on Scopus)

@Prof.SantaClaus can you name the journal, and give an explanation for why the journal is fake?

http://airccse.org/

@Prof.SantaClaus that's a publisher. Publishers cannot be indexed by Scopus, only journals can. Are you referring to IJCNC, which is the journal that the website advertises as being indexed in Scopus? If so, what makes you say that journal is fake? It looks quite legitimate to me. The EiC is a real person at the affiliation listed, papers published in the journal have been cited by other, more highly-indexed journals, and they do look like they are in the Computer Networks field. I also checked a few random editorial board members and they are real people working in the field.

IJCNC certainly does not look like a very good journal, but I don't see why it's not a real journal.

@Allure I know it is a publisher, and yes, I'm referring to IJCNC.   Few years back (or maybe now?), you only have to pay a small sum of $ to get a paper published, no reviews.  It is now 'legit'.

@Prof.SantaClaus sounds like IJCNC is an answer to another question, but not this one.

@Allure I agree.  I do not know whether it is still predatory.  So it could answer this question as well.   I don't have any rubbish to send to IJCNC :D


text:
Quality of an image for publication reproduced from another source
I have my paper back from a reviewer. The main point is that a quality of the image is not good enough for the publication. I reproduced this image from another paper (with permission) but the only thing I could do, was a print screen of the original and paste into graphical software. I improved the quality by smoothing, but it is still not good enough for the publisher.
The reviewer comment:

The quality of the figures 1 and 2 is still not good. I recommend authors convert the schematics into vector graphics.

I can't find what and how to do it. Did you have a similar problem and solved it?
EDIT to explain what is on the figure:
The figure shows elements of a vehicle with dimensions (numbers), different coordinate systems, force... it is rather complicated and maybe I could redraw the arrows (alhough many of them) but the background is a photo of the element.

Welcome to AC.SE. I think that this question is off topic here as it is really a question about image reproduction.

@Daniel E. Shub - I agree that it is off topic in how to do the reproduction, but I believe the idea that graphics for publication must be high quality (read: vector or 600+DPI) is appropriate.  I've seen enough crappy graphs in review to know that more people in academia need to know how to produce proper publication-ready material.

since the image in creative commons, could you put the link to it here, so that we can have an idea of what we're talking about ?

It is difficult to provide a detailed reply without knowing more about the figure, for example if it is a photograph or a line graph. I will therefore concentrate on the general aspects.
First, the best would be if you could get some form of original from the author (or whoever) has the copyright). Screen dumps are clearly not sufficient since printing requires high resolution (300 dpi in final reproduction size is a commonly quoted resolution in journals)
Second, if it is a line graph, and it sounds as if that is the case, I would argue that the best way is to put the image in the background of a vector-based drawing program such as Inkscape/Illustrator/Corel Draw and manually redraw the figure. This is done by placing the illustration in a background layer and then draw lines in the program to reproduce the background. This requires learning a vector-based software and is a tough solution for the short-term but one I strongly recommend for the long-term. If the plot is based on data, for example a scatter graph, then you could digitize the data and re-plot it as long as you think of the re-plot as a version of the original plot and not use data points for additional analysis.
There are of course numerous kinds of complicated plots where the second approach will not work so trying to get the source would be the first choice. Screen dump quality bitmaps will be rejected by most if not all journals.

+1 for "contacting the original author". You must have already been in touch with that person to get permission to use the image; just send an email asking for the figure they used when they went to publication.

@eykanal: I think some journals may allow figures from their own journal to be reused, and in some cases its the journal, rather than the author, who is asked for reprint permission.

Still, an email to the original author could be the quickest way to get a high-quality image. I suggest you email the author, explaining the situation.

Contacting the author should be done in any case, if not for general courtesy. After all that might strike up a rewarding contact for the future.

I have one of figure from an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
I contacted the authors a few times, but never get back from them.

@tomasz74 I think the question about Creative Commons is a good one and deserves a separate post. What happens if one uses a CC illustration in a paper and the publisher copyrigths it? or is that clearly stated in the CC license?

@aeismail - If you're asking the journal for permission it may be worth asking them for the image. If they retain the rights then they may also retain the image itself. Not sure how that works.

@PeterJansson CC BY license allows relicensing by another license (it's very different e.g. from CC BY SA (share-alike)).

Without going into the how of your question (which @Peter Jansson answered succinctly), I would say that going forward you should always try to have the best quality graphs when you provide a submission.  That means they should either be vector graphics (i.e., graphics that do not rely on bitmapped representation but rather are scalable), or high DPI (dots per inch); I try for 600dpi in all images that aren't vector.
Tips: if your graphic has a .jpg, .gif, .png, or .tiff extension, it is not a vector graphic.  If it has a .eps or .pdf extension, it may be a vector graphic, but you need to zoom in to ensure that the lines are not turning fuzzy.  If it is a .svg, it is (I think) a vector graphic, but I always do the zoom test to make sure.
Finally, always do a zoom test on all your graphics in your PDF submissions.  I've had vector graphics turn into bitmapped graphics during the conversion-to-PDF stage.  If that happens, you need to figure out where the problem is taking place and fix it (e.g., it could be that your conversion from .eps to .pdf for an individual figure changes the image, and another conversion tool might be able to handle it properly).

An SVG image can contain bitmap graphics in the same way that EPS and PDF can.

@Zack - I wondered if that was the case.  A Google search didn't prove fruitful.  Thanks!

Many PDF viewers (including Adobe Acrobat, Skim, and Preview on the Mac) can be used to copy regions out of a PDF file as independent PDF files.  (A typical workflow is to select a rectangle with the marquee tool, Copy, and then New from Clipboard.)  In particular, you can extract pixelmap graphics from PDF files at exactly the same resolution as they appear in the source PDF, and you can extract vector graphics.  If there are undesired elements of the paper that overlap the figure, you can usually remove them in Adobe Illustrator, which reads and writes PDF files natively, so editing will preserve vector graphics and pixelmap resolution.


text:
How can one successfully run a reading group?
This is related to "Skimming through a math paper with a group" and "What do professors gain out of teaching reading courses with individual Ph.D students", but from the other side :)
I've experimented with various ways to run my advanced Ph.D seminar, ranging from almost-lectures to "students present papers" to "students present textbook-level material" to "let's all work on a problem together". I don't think any of them have really worked to my satisfaction in the sense of ending the semester feeling that students have a command (as opposed to knowledge) of the material.
I've been reading about the Oxford tutorial style approach, which can crudely be approximated by:

professor assigns reading material once a week
students form pairs and meet with professor once a week for about 1-1.5 hours.
students run the meeting (maybe one person presents and the other critiques, or they work out shared portions of the material on the board). Professor keeps quiet as far as possible except to unblock.

This format sounds tempting, as something that might work with a small group (at most 10 people). Does anyone have experience with this format and would it be suitable for advanced material at the graduate level ?
While I'm hoping it doesn't matter too much for this discussion, the topics for the seminar would be in theoretical computer science.

As a student I can say that my favorite variant of reading groups (in terms of forcibly maximizing what I learn) is the: students present and discuss papers together guided by pointed questions from the prof; at the end of the semester each student is expect to produce an independent mini-survey on some specific set of papers/topic (often a list of papers/topics is available from the prof, but other related suggestions welcome)

A tutorial with one or two students can work very well. But that's a completely different animal to a tutorial with ten students. The success of the former does not translate directly to the latter; you have to run the latter in a completely different way. So, which do you want to do? If you want tutor ten at a time, then Oxford-style is an  irrelevant distraction, I'm afraid.

Check this out: https://colinraffel.com/blog/role-playing-seminar.html

Although it's quite a while since you posted this question but here's what I've seen been extremely effective (when I was a student for those courses).
Course 1: A theory course with reading and understanding of advanced material

The professor took great effort in actually explaining everything using a chalk and board (better than PowerPoint for theoretical course IHMO). Of course, we were told to read the papers but he explained as if teaching in a chapter/concept in the lecture. Thereafter, he'd assign us some homework problems and we were allowed to do them in groups. Now, these HW problems were really innovative. They weren't part of any book. He would actually "create" them based on the ideas he was teaching. He would cast an existing problem, either from something he was working on or just create one and ask us to solve it. THAT was the master's stroke, IMHO. The entire class would bang their heads against the wall to solve them and learn a lot as a result. We could solve the problems but not always, but the fun part was applying what we learned, consequently requiring  us to understand the material really well.

Course 2: Exact same format as you mentioned as well as that suggested by @lynxoid

Nothing learnt. Honestly. Only the people assigned the papers actually read them. Maybe a few questions here and there but very little interaction other than some from the professor. Overall, the students weren't really happy with it. I barely even remember half the things from that class. But for the former, remember almost everything.

Another variation you could try with style #1 (I read about this somewhere): Tell them that you are going to tell one "lie" (false information) when explaining the material. They have to spot the lie by the end of class. If they don't, they have learned something that is not true. If they spot it, a small reward like a chocolate else, it's a HW due next week. This drives them nuts. You can make the lies progressively complex and sometimes not lie too (You can say that you lied when you told them that every lecture would have a lie :) I haven't tried this variation but will do so soon. I feel this is an excellent way to get them to master the course content.
Hope this helps

I have seen reading seminars done like this: in the beginning of the semester, professor publishes a full list of papers + a little extra that (s)he wants to cover. Each student then picks a paper or two and the date when they will present it. Then the student reads the paper, prepares a presentation on it, and speaks about it to the rest of the group. Presentation can be formal or informal (depending on the size of the class) and encourage other students to ask questions about the material. What I like about this approach is that 1) students get to pick a paper that will engage them 2) they have to read it and understand it so that they could present it to the group and be able to answer questions about it.

that's how I run the seminars right now. the problem is that often only the presenter has read the material, and there's little discussion.

in this reading group, people usually showed up with papers printed out, so that they could follow what the presenter was talking about. that made asking questions easier (can mark in the paper, read in depth and ask if speaker understands the problem better). also - providing criticisms and "what would you do better" attitude usually spurs discussions easily

I have done this (as a student) and I can't say I took anything away from the others' presentations. It was more about showing the faculty you can prepare a presentation given academic material, less about learning in a  group.

@Raphael I wonder if size is the issue? Our group was usually 5-7 people.

@lynxoid Sounds about the same. To be fair, the goal of these seminars I was referring to was to train presentation (verbally and in writing) so the audience did not need to or necessarily care to follow the content. If the shared goal of the group is to understand all the material, things are bound to be different.

@Raphael I see. Yes, the stated goal for our group was to cover the material in depth, presentation manner did not matter.

Best proseminar:
Long list of papers and book chapters, about three per week, carefully chosen to be easy to read at first, then more wiley.
We all had to write a précis on the same one of the papers each week. The other papers were related, usually contradicting each other about the same topic. At least everyone had read one of the papers so we could discuss.
I learned how to read papers that way.
At the end of the semester we all had to assign three papers to the class once and lead that discussion.

I haven't been in a class like this but my husband recommends the following (as a student - he says he learned the most in this format):

Professor assigns reading (1 paper/meeting)
At the beginning of the meeting, more or less randomly select one student to be the advocate of the paper and one to criticize it.
Have the two selected students lead the discussion - the others are encouraged to participate, too, after the selected students have given an overview of the paper together and each made their opening point.
If the group runs out of material, the professor may help.
If there are grades, students are graded on their participation in all the discussions - not just the ones they lead.

The trick is the random selection. The students have to believe that they can be chosen to advocate or criticize the paper in any meeting, so they'll at least read it far enough to find one good point and one point to criticize.
You can roll dice or draw straws at the beginning of the semester - toward the middle, you should pick the students who haven't had a turn yet, then after everybody had a turn, go back to straws/dice.