text:
Status of "Reviews Completed" in a springer journal
We had submitted to a springer journal (field: Bioinformatics). Two reviewers reviewed the paper and both strongly and unequivocally recommended publication after a few minor changes, e.g., grammatical, a few small clarifications and change of background colors (from black to white for printing purposes). The editor seemed to be very happy about the reviews as well. However, in the tracking site it displayed 'Major Revision' probably as a norm - though frankly there was nothing major in the suggested revisions and both reviewers actually used the term 'minor' in their reports ! It took us no more than two days to do all suggested changes and resubmit. The second round of review has now taken little more than a month, out of which the status was 'under review' for last two weeks and 'Reviews Completed' from last two days. I have never encountered this status before elsewhere so wonder what it means ! Is it similar to 'Pending decision' or indicative of something more than that ? This is my first communication as a corresponding author, so, not to mention, am a bit tensed.

If people start sending e-mails to someone@springer.com instead of posting questions here, there are chances that they eventually figure out that their user interface is lacking and poorly documented, and that they decide that it costs them less money to change it rather than to answer a constant stream of support questions.

@FedericoPoloni I want to be able to give more upvote for this.

This means that in the next couple of days or so you will hear from the editor for the decision on your manuscript. Basically it means what it says: the journal has received the reviews, the editor is reading them and preparing the letter with her/his decision to send you.


text:
Difference of difficulties between fields of research
Is it true that research (Ph.D...) in some fields requires more work and are harder than others ?
For example to publish an article in computer science is it more difficult than to do in telecommunications ?
Thanks.

I think this is a very subjective topic. What someone might consider hard, others might find easy. It all depends on your skills and education.

something is hard if the work requires much effort and precision, and this agreed on by a community, it is not related to a person's education

The differences are huge, not only within CS, but even within the same field of CS depending on the type of venue you address (top conference vs. good conference).

@lighthousekeeper That should be the right answer (if you make it an answer)

Deleting questions with thoughtful answers iby defacing them s not good practice. I  have rolled back the  edit. You can choose to close your own question if you wish.

The problem is that everybody is very well aware of the challenges and difficulties in their own discipline, but only have an outsiders view on the others. There are those who switched disciplines, who have a somewhat better view on both. However, remember that there was reason why they switched. So they are unlikely to be representative for their old discipline. Moreover, people differ; tasks that are difficult for some are easy for others and vice versa.

It is undoubtedly subjective.
But take the same researcher or PhD student. Being in an interdisciplinary field and having a rather interdisciplinary formation I am hundred percent sure some research lines potentially lead to more papers than others. No doubt about it.
However your question asks two different things, or better seems to assume the number of publications as an indicator for the easiness/hardness of a field...
This is an unfair take, perhaps. I am not sure that publications number is, alone, a good indicator of the amount of dedicated work required. In simple terms, spending week ends in the lab working in topic A is more likely to lead to a paper then doing the same on topic B. Yet, weekends were spent in lab, both ways.

Downvote could have add a comment. It is simple as this : I worked really hard and publish really a lot. Another topic / technique and the same me would have publish much less.

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How to judge the reputability of a journal that seems to be of poor quality, but has a distinguished editorial board?
I happened to visit the website of the IJDEA (International Journal of Differential Equations and Applications) and was wondering – how good is this journal? There was a question here on Academia. SE regarding IJPAM (International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, by the same publisher: Academic Publications Ltd.) and it seems this journal is not up to the mark.
However, IJDEA's Editorial Board has some prominent members from reputed institutions that I just couldn't overlook. For instance:

E.W. Cheney and R.E. Showalter from UT Austin, USA
S.N Chow from the National University of Singapore, Singapore
E DiBenedeto from Northwestern University, USA
A. Fokas from the University of Cambridge, UK
J. Marsden from CalTech, USA
(Late) P.A. Samuelson from MIT, USA
C.W. Shu from Brown University, USA

My question is: Given the presence of such top-class scientists on its editorial board, why are IJPAM/IJDEA and Academic Publications Ltd. considered predatory by Beall's list?
P.S.: I'm assuming that the Editorial Board and quality of articles should be good enough to check the quality of the journal. Please correct me in case I'm wrong.

Considering that DiBenedetto is spelled incorrectly and he's been at Vanderbilt since 2000...OTOH, he does list this journal. Showalter has been at Oregon State since 2003. Marsden is deceased (2010).

possible duplicate of How do you judge the quality of a journal?

@mkennedy Showalter also lists the journal name in his CV. The case is getting even more curious now!

@EnergyNumbers while I think that question is related, this question seems to be asking specifically about how to interpret editorial boards of journals so I don't think it is a duplicate.

I am no expert in DE. Out of my own curiosity, I checked. In the E.W. Cheney's BIOGRAPHICAL DATA FILE updated on December 31, 2012, IJDEA is not in the list of EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES ON JOURNALS.

Marsden is dead.

Serrin is also dead.

You've already identified part of the problem:

Deceased individuals like Paul Samuelson and Ilya Prigogine should not be listed as "editors" of a normal journal.
The editor-in-chief of the journal should be clearly identified.
They're claiming to have an Impact Factor when they're not indexed by the services that publish Impact Factors

You can see Beall's full list of criteria on his blog Scholarly Open Access.

So, if somebody's alive but not part of the editorial board of the journal and yet mentioned as part of the editorial board, can that somebody sue the publisher?

In principle it should be possible to sue. However, they should have at least attempted a "cease and desist" letter before filing a lawsuit!

Yes, maybe! But some people mentioned are actually members of the editorial board as mentioned.

That doesn't matter. Just because some are legitimate members doesn't mean that all of the list is legitimate.

@user10532 In practical terms, suing a person or company in a different country is prohibitively difficult and expensive.

The editorial board is one way that many journals (both predatory and not) try two establish themselves. I cannot find an in depth analysis by Beall of editorial boards but, in a comment to this blog post on editorial board makeup Beall says

Sometimes publishers add names to editorial boards without asking for permission. As part of my analysis, I sometimes email and ask ed board members if they really agreed to serve.

He also has a blog post which looks at the editorial responsibilities (100+ journals) of a Dean in the Univ. of Texas system.
In summary some people get put on editorial boards without their knowledge and others will agree to be on large numbers of editorial boards so you cannot use the editorial board membership as a good judge of makeup.

It seems indeed impossible to actually distinguish between genuine and 'fake' journals these days. Darn!

Look at who publishes the journal—the more recognizable the publisher, the less likely it's a scam. For instance, journals published by well-known professional societies (SIAM, APS, ACS, etc.) are almost certainly on the level—they'd be risking their reputations otherwise. However, beyond that, things can get dicey, even at well-known publishers like Elsevier.

This answer focuses on the question asked in the headline not the text, which is more specific to predatory publishers.
The best judge of the quality of the journal are the papers published in it. A good journal publishes good papers. The next best judge is to see whether you're communicating with a journal employee or a member of the editorial board. If you receive invitations which are clearly written by an editorial board member, if you meet them at conferences and they talk enthusiastically about their journal, if your submission receives decisions that indicate the handling editor knows something about your field, you're dealing with a good journal.
Composition of the editorial board isn't a good indication because some unethical publishers will add people to editorial boards without their permission, or refuse to let them resign. Even for genuine journals, board member can join, and then do nothing (as in, literally nothing - not even when assigned a paper to handle). The result is an ugly symbiosis where both the academic and the publisher derive benefits from the academic being on the editorial board, but the academic doesn't actually influence the journal in any way. This setup is unfortunately quite common, and there's no easy way to tell from the outside how involved the editorial board is with the journal.

The title is not the question..

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Does research experience in a different but related field help in PhD application? (Pure Math->TCS)
I think the title itself is a good summary of my question.
But to make the situation more specific: I am a double major in math and computer science, and would like to apply to PhD program with theoretical CS as primary research interest. I am well aware that research experience helps a lot to show the committee that one has research potential.
All other academical records of mine are in decent shape so I want to shoot for the top programs. Now I am writing my SoP and here comes the problem: I have only non-TCS research experiences.
What I have in hand are:
1) serious pure math REU (not just expository) with a recently submitted paper
2) technical work (implementing and benchmarking) new numerical algorithm (scientific computing) with tech report
I was planning on doing a senior thesis, but my potential advisor is on a leave so it didn't work out. I went through the old questions and only found one related question. But I guess in my situation, it is worse because I have only research experience in entirely different subject. Although I am very proud of what I did, it is hard to sell them in SoP.
I always thought I don't need to do research in the exactly same area to what I want to do in grad school. Plus trying out interesting areas are fun. But it seems to me now that it was a very bad idea.
Doesn't "I wish to study a_0,a_1 and a_2 in A. I have done research in B and have been a trustworthy cheap labor in C. B and C are somewhat related to A, so I think I will do a decent job in A as well." just sound miserable?
[Thanks for reading - I know it is a bit long. Also I do apologize in advance if this question violates the rules - it is my first question ever. :)]

Serious question: What makes "pure math" research "non-TCS"?

@JeffE If I get your question right: They do have close connections in general. But mine does not have a computational nature in it. And as far as I know, that branch has relatively less research/application in CS. (comparing to algebraic geometry/(algebraic) topology/representation theory/harmonic analysis/graph theory/geometry/combinatorics/probability/stats)

I'm not an expert, but, from what I know, your experience is quite valuable.  Even if you had computer science research experience, there's a good chance that what you would actually end up doing in a PhD program is far from the domain of your undergraduate research.
If you're still worried, note that theoretical computer science is all mathematics.  I was an applied mathematics and statistics major and am currently taking a graduate course in approximation algorithms--it's literally a graduate course in theoretical side of applied mathematics.  Other theory courses in automata, computation, machine learning, etc are also all math courses, but in the computer science domain.  I actually think that your math/research background, if anything, is a huge plus.
What PhD programs are really interested in is whether or not you have done research in any discipline (preferably math/engineering for CS) and if you enjoyed it and showed an aptitude for it.  You're ahead of the game, don't worry.  On that note, if you know that you want to do TCS research, you could start now.

Thanks for the answer. I never really worried about course work. I was just worried about my seemingly 'irrelevant' research history being a potential down factor...Now I feel better about my application.

@Chi No problem.  Glad you feel better.  It's easy to compare yourself to your view of what an ideal candidate is and come up short.

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What is the purpose of chairmen at conferences?
I often struggle when explaining people not familiar with academics or new to academics the concept of a chairmen at conferences or talks. At some point I have to say that this is somehow an academic tradition or a way to give small honour to people with reputation in some field.
Beside this and some obvious things (Someone has to make sure that the speaker is not running out of time, etc. -- Why not the organizer for example?): What is the purpose/what are the arguments of having a chairman?

Depending on how the conference is organized, the duties of a chair before the session can include:

Selecting the abstracts that will be presented within a given session.
Organizing the abstracts in the order of presentation.
Transferring unused abstracts to other sessions (where possible).
Advertising to solicit contributions.

During the session, the goals of the chair can include:

To introduce the speaker
To ensure time constraints are being adhered to
To moderate a question-and-answer session following the talk
If other questions have not been asked, to offer questions of her own.

The organizer of a session may or may not be the chair of the session. In larger conferences, in which you have many parallel sessions (some have 50 to 60 or more run simultaneously), it is entirely impractical to have a meeting organizer chair every session. For smaller conferences, however, this is done. In such cases, though, the organizer of the session is still called the "chair" of the session.
It is also possible, at some conferences, that the organizer is unable to attend the session, as a result of illness or conflicts, for instance. In such cases, an "emergency" chair is appointed to run the session. (I had to serve in such a capacity at the most recent conference I attended.)

I think the first three of your second four point are also part of the duties of a session chair. However, I never got why people presume that the session chair should ask a question if nobody else does. As a chair I never had an awkward feeling when where no questions. Moreover, I think that asking questions as a session chair has to be done with care as it heavily interferes with the role of a moderator. But probably this would be worth another question…

I said "can" include—this is very much a function of the standards of a particular conference. For instance, there is no requirement to have a Q-and-A session if the speaker has used up all of her allotted time. Similarly, someone asked to step in at the last minute might not be expected to ask any questions. However, in general, I would expect the chair to step in only if there was time available and no one else wants to ask any questions. (Effectively filling time until the next talk starts.)


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Do educational programmes need to be in italics within the Harvard system of referencing?
I am mentioning  educational programmes within my essay and wonder if I need to have the name of the programme in italics? (For example, the Wellmother programme.)
Also I have mentioned a Government document, Midwifery 20/20 in the essay and wonder if this needs to be in italics?

In general, italics would not necessarily be used just to represent the name of something. You wouldn't write "the Marshall Plan", so you wouldn't write "Wellmother programme", either.
As for the government publication, that's a different matter altogether. If the document is a "stand-alone" publication, as most such works are, then it should be italicized as if it were a book. So, this could also extend to a program if it were announced as a formal document, rather than just a policy position.


text:
Will a graduate student publishing in different disciplines confuse potential employers?
I'm a third-year computer engineering PhD student. My dissertation topic is re-configurable caches (computer architecture) and my supervisor is a very nice person. I have four publications with him in well-known conferences in my area. But currently I'm in a weird situation. In my 2nd year I fell in love with computational neuroscience and started working on it with another professor in my university simultaneously with my PhD research. Obviously my PhD supervisor encouraged me. Recently I got two high-impact journal publications as a first author on cognitive neuroscience. I am very happy with my dissertation topic but also want to include my neuroscience papers in my résumé. I would like to try for faculty positions after the PhD. Do you think my résumé can create confusion among potential recruiters or will it show multidisciplinary research interests?

I refuse to believe that having papers in multiple disciplines is a negative thing in any thinkable way, and I haven't heard of anyone running into trouble.

The only real danger you will have with prospective employers (presuming that you look for a postdoc before your faculty search) is that a potential advisor might be concerned that if you aren't engrossed in their research, you will seek out opportunities in other areas. If it's their money that's supporting your time, then you'd be expected to devote your effort to the line of research you've been hired to do, not what you'd like to do.
This is something that you'd have to explain in your cover letter in any case. But you'll need to explain—as you have—that your lateral move was encouraged and done with the support of your current advisor. Otherwise, it could be a concern.

I strongly agree with the latter. I am in a similar situation right now (change of plans regarding my Ph.D topic, even field if you like),I was strongly encouraged by my supervisors to publish a journal paper in my previous field (which I did eventually). I can understand your fear of having an impression of jack of all trades-master of none, but if you've managed to publish good papers in both fields, it actually shows you've mastered (or in the process of mastering) both, which in turn means you can conduct your research in an independent manner and contribute to existing knowledge. I reckon academics as well as industrial parties would acknowledge this fact if you include that in your CV.

"I strongly agree with the latter." What do you refer to?

@PiotrMigdal Refer to last sentence of the OP. I am trying to say it shows multidisciplinary research interests rather than creating a confusion among interested parties.

I would disagree with one premise that underlies your question and state flatly and unequivocally that it doesn't matter one bit what most employers may think.  Whether you choose to go deep in one research area or publish widely is something you can resolve by looking at what you want to do in life and weighing your current opportunities to make the most of them.

Why would you care about any employer that is so confused about your studies that they don't take the time to understand deeply your unique talents as someone who delayed entering the workforce to complete a PhD?

Now, you might have some soul searching to do to figure out why you are choosing to frame this current research time allocation dilemma in terms of nebulous "future employer" impressions, but try to look closer to now as opposed to what you think might look superficially good to others but ultimately not reinforce who you wish to become. If you have identified a small set of high likelihood employers and they generally prefer breadth or depth, then now you have an interesting question if you want to maximize your chances with this narrow set of employers.
In the end, only you can decide if ruling out some employers due to their views is a feature or a bug in your plans for your degree.

+1 for "Why do you care what other people think?"  -1 for "Because I need to eat."

@JeffE Getting a PhD is about the last activity I would recommend for satisfying the need to eat. Just saying ;-)

Well, yeah, of course.  But some people can't live without doing research.


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How do you cite articles from a "database?"
Cochrane reviews are great to cite in academic publications due to their systematic nature but I have no idea how to cite them in APA style because there's no obvious volume or issue to use in the citation. Here's a reference I've already tried, albeit awaiting on the volume and issuing numbers I'm meant to give.
Linde K., Berner M. M., Kriston L. (2008). St John's wort for major depression.
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD000448.pub3.
PMID 18843608.

Hello, Brenton. I've edited the title a bit because as originally stated, the question was too narrow in scope for the board. (The text is still somewhat too narrow, but I think the basics are still on-topic.)

The first two sources of information about such questions are

The publisher of the database may have specified how they want to be cited.
In fact, The Cochrane Collaboration has such guidelines:

Cochrane Policy Manual: How to cite our products
Cochrane Reviews: How to cite Cochrane Collaboration products

The APA style guide may have said something already about this data base.
This is also the case:

How to Cite Cochrane Reviews in APA Style
They explain how a journal article style should be used with year as volume and monthly issue:

Singh, J., Kour, K., & Jayaram Mahesh, B. (2012). Acetylcholinesterase
  inhibitors for schizophrenia. Cochrane Database of Systematic
  Reviews, 2012(1), 1–101. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD007967.pub2

If these would not have lead to the required information, a more general idea is:
Following the DOI of your example, I end up at a page of the Cochrane library that also has a tab "Cited by". You could have a look there how other people actually cite the report.
If all this had failed, I'd propably have gone for a technical report style citation.


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Standard method for showing changes made to a LaTeX manuscript
I am about to resubmit a manuscript to a journal, having now addressed the reviewers' feedback.
The instructions say to submit my final manuscript along with a "marked-up manuscript", which is "the final version showing all changes from the former version".
Since my manuscript is in LaTeX, what is the standard way of highlighting the changes I made?  Had it been a Microsoft Word document, I would have used the "track changes" feature.  More so than technical methods, I am wondering what format the reviewers typically expect. Are they asking for a marked-up, compiled PDF? Or a marked-up TeX source code? Or a side-by-side comparison of the source code?

There is a duplicate of your question on TeX.SX; “Track changes” in LaTeX

When submitting to IEEE journals which require to highlight the changes, I simply colour them in red (no one complained so far...).
\usepackage{xcolor}
\newcommand{\rev}[1]{{\color{red} #1}}
%
%...
%
\rev{Hey, I'm a change}

For purpose of reviewing, they just need a compiled PDF. For the final submission, you can simply redefine the \rev command to do nothing.

I often use this solution when sending new versions of a manuscript to collaborators. I have used it at least once that I remember for a revised submission to JAP and that seemed to be fine too.

At least on one occasion, I used Latexdiff’s output with the default settings for this purpose and nobody complained. In some cases, you might want to manually tweak this, e.g., if you moved larger pieces of text. If I recall correctly, I reviewed some manuscript, for which the editorial system automatically applied Latexdiff (or something that generates a very similar output) to the manuscript.
Speaking more generally, the point of this requirement is quite obviously that the reviewers and the editor can easily see, which aspects of the manuscript were changed and how. More precisely, it should be easily visible where you added something to the manuscript, and (what is sometimes done badly) where you removed something. Latexdiff’s output fulfils these criteria in most circumstances, but there are other ways to do this.
I would not know why anybody would want to see your source code at this point, as it is more difficult to read and it also contains changes that do not affect the compiled manuscript. Also, depending on your field, some reviewers may not know LaTeX.
Finally, I think that whoever wrote marked-up manuscript actually wanted to say marked manuscript (or mark up is actually also used in this meaning and I managed to be ignorant of this).

+1 for latexdiff -- fantastic tool for exactly this purpose.


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How do I tell my advisor that I lost interest in the subject?
I got my MSc in physics working on a certain subject with my advisor. I'm now starting my PhD studies under the same advisor.
The problem is, there's a tacit assumption that I'll do my PhD on the same subject as before, but I really lost all interest for it, I don't feel the same about it anymore. I really don't know what to do instead and how to find my new path, but I don't want to stay on this subject simply out of inertia.
What's the best way to tell this to my advisor without giving the (wildly inaccurate!!) impression that I lost all interest for physics? He's a great guy, btw, and he listens.
... If my advisor is reading this, I guess that's a way too xD
EDIT: It's theoretical physics and my advisor's knowledge is fairly wide and aligned well with my general interests, so doing the PhD under him is definitely something that I still want.

there is a piece missing: have you talked to advisor before starting PhD? did you have some kind of interview, where plans were discussed? have you even interviewed, or got accepted into other PhD programs? We are talking about next 3-5 years of your lives. I wonder why this issue didn't come up earlier

Yeah, I talked to him and I definitely want to work with him, he's not the real issue here.

what does it mean "you talked"? Did you agree to continue working on the project, did you say you want to switch? AFAIK, advisor and project are usually connected

I was answering the question in your words, mate.

I am trying to reconstruct the whole picture. If you had pre-agreement that you'll join advisor on the same project, it would change discussion

By project, do you mean in the formal academic sense, with grants and all?

I support the answer from Bryan but I'd give more emphasis to what he said in the paragraph starting with "preferably."  Please do bring some ideas about one or more possible new directions to the meeting where you make your announcement.  Give your advisor something positive to latch onto and get excited about.  Yes, you can be careful to show that you're open to suggestions; nevertheless, bring some examples of ideas that get your mind sizzling to the table. // One more thing.  If you could make a convincing case that your previous direction got pretty well wrapped up in your previous...

... degree work, that would be helpful.  It's not good to leave things hanging and flit from topic to topic.  So, show that this is not the case. // You would do well to change your username (unless it has nothing to do with your real name).

Thanks! Nah, I won't change my username, too many academics think they have to hide these days anyway, not playing that game :)

Assuming your advisor is a great person and someone who listens, could you simply say:

I'd like to work in a new direction for my PhD.

Alternatively, if you feel it necessary to give some reason:

I'd like to work in a new direction to differentiate my masters work from my PhD thesis.

Preferably in either case you have at least some idea of where you want to proceed so you can continue the discussion in that direction. A desire for some breadth is a fairly normal and healthy part of the academic experience.
If your advisor questions the change of direction, you can simply say that after working on topic ______ for ____ years you are more interested in pursuing another direction.
It's certainly possible your advisor will be somewhat upset if he expected you to work in your previous subject (and especially if he took you on as a student because of that expectation), but it won't serve either of you to be coy about it or to plod through, not enjoying what you are doing, until you decide to quit. Ideally, however, this should have been a discussion you had before you agreed to work on a PhD with this advisor.
Keep in mind that your new direction should still be a fit with your advisor's work; if your previous project was in ideal spheres and your new work is going to be in falling apples, your advisor may not be qualified to advise you. It sounds like in your case that is not an issue, but if you are receiving any grant funding through your advisor, those funds may be particular to the project you are undertaking - hopefully you have some awareness of whether this applies to your situation.
Note that in my suggestions I was careful to phrase things positively and prospectively: you don't need to say you are sick of your previous topic, only that you want to move into something else. By approaching it this way, you come across as forward-thinking and not at all negative about physics in general, and not negative of your past experience as a masters student.


text:
How does a graduate student judge if one is slacking off?
As a third year graduate student (theoretical physics) I need to find out methods to understand if I am doing well or not, am I making progress or not, am I putting in enough effort or not?
How do I judge/measure my performance?

Of course a primary skew in my situation is that I found an advisor only towards the end of my second year of PhD. (..before that I was working in other groups on topics which I didn't like at all..)

Is your advisor shouting at you?

@FedericoPoloni Doesn't seem so! Our last meeting seemed fairly pleasant - we were basically throwing around various possible research ideas and seeing which ones can or cannot work. [..though I could be a terribly bad reader of human emotions/behaviour!...]

You will need to compare your amount of work done and publication with other PhD in the same area and of the same year.

It's a good question, and one that's rather difficult to answer. I'll say a few things though.

being able to judge your own level of progress and evaluate yourself honestly but fairly is a crucial part of your development. After all, you won't have an advisor for very long, but you'll be a researcher for a long time. So it's good that you're asking this question
Research has many phases, and to evaluate your progress it's important to recognize which phase you're in.

in an exploratory phase where you're looking at different topics to see what might be worth pursuing, you should be reading a lot. A plausible metric here could be whether you're reading something every day, and if you're getting a sense of familiarity with the literature (you know citations without having to look up the bibliography, you keep encountering papers you've read before, and so on)
when you are working on a particular problem, do you have an idea that you're trying ? If not, what are you doing to search for the next idea ? do you have concrete tests of whether the idea is going to fail or not ? If you're thinking concretely and constructively, then you'll automatically make progress (notice that I'm not talking about how long it takes, but rather whether you see paths to progress)
when you're writing up work, are you methodically identifying things that need to be edited/cleaned/removed, and are you spending enough time each day working on these. When there's a lot of grunt work to do, time spent is a good measure of productivity.

Conversely, students (and researchers!) often become unproductive when:

they don't know what to do next, and don't know to ask, or how to find something to do next
they have things to do next, but are overwhelmed/fearful, and avoid doing them, or fritter away time in busy work (getting the exact right font for the title, for example)

The trick is not to get caught up in doing things at a certain rate, or worry about the large-scale,  but rather ensure that you always have something to do next. If you don't, that's when you go talk to your advisor.

Perfect answer :)

Minor disagreement: The right time to go talk to your advisor is long before you run out of things to do next.  Put another way: The right time to talk to your advisor is never more than a few days from now.

@Suresh Aren't you setting a very low bar when you put so much emphasis on knowing what to do next? Or I guess I am misunderstanding you! Because personally I ALWAYS see a long to-do list in front of me in terms of research questions and papers to red. BUT this is quite irrelevant because almost always I might be wasting time along directions which aren't going to help. I might just be "slacking off" reading papers which I find exciting but are actually probably useless for what my advisor has in his mind. Its very hard to judge what is "concrete" and "constructive" - to use your words.

"I might just be 'slacking off' reading papers which I find exciting but are actually probably useless for what my advisor has in his mind". My view is that even your advisor has only a slightly better idea than you about what's useful and what's useless, and your job really is to train yourself to acquire that sensibility. Relying on your advisor is ok initially, but is something you have to do less and less.

I think that one factor should be "ask your advisor". Depending on the relationship that you have, they might be best placed to give you an honest opinion.

But like @Suresh has said, he/she won't have an advisor for a very long time. He/she will have to learn to self-evaluate. Indeed, now asking the advisor might help though :)

Corollary: Never don't have an advisor.

Unwanted corollary: Never graduate.


text:
Where to submit an article exposing widespread fraud in academia?
Where would be the best place to submit an article for publication arguing that the conventional mathematics curriculum including calculus and the courses leading up to it (i.e. most of secondary-school mathematics) is fraudulent?
Note inspired by comments posted below: My question was where to submit such a publication.  My question was not whether the thesis of the publication is true.  This is something I have been thinking about since 1978, and I have been teaching calculus and its prerequisite subjects since that time, and published on calculus teaching.  Comments below suggesting I am rashly commenting on a subject I haven't thought about are mistaken.
Could those who have down-voted the question explain what their objections are?  The comments make me suspect that some of them result from disagreement with the thesis of the proposed paper.  But the question was only about the appropriate forum for publication and I made no attempt to support the thesis, since that would be off topic.  Is this getting down-voted for off-topic reasons?

I doubt you will get anywhere arguing "fraudulence." You could argue that it's not optimal (and I know people such as Benoît Mandelbrot who would agree with you), but to argue that the courses are fraudulent would be to say that they're teaching false or misleading information, which just isn't the case.

@aeismail: they're teaching false or misleading information – It’s even worse; it would mean that they are intentionally doing this. If this actually were the case, it would be impossible to publish this article in any peer-reviewed journal, as the potential editors and reviewers are involved in the fraud.

Reminder: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

@aeismail : They are indeed teaching falsehoods.  They are teaching that mathematics consists of algorithms. They give you an algorithm for solving assigned problems #1 through 10 and in effect teach, without explicitly saying so, that doing that sort of thing is what mathematics is.  Poll 100 non-mathematicians and I won't be surprised if you find that all of them say that they were taught in school that that is what mathematics consists of.  Add to that the fact that students who aren't remotenly.....

...prepared to understand calculus are encouraged to take calculus, and have been give grades of "A+" in prerequisite courses, and the faculty generally knows that such students don't even begin to have any awareness of the prerequisite material, and then the course is adapted so that such students can get good grades in it, the adaptation consisting of just giving them procedures to be mechanically followed to get answers to assign problems, and students graduate from college in effect having been taught that that is what mathematics is. Falsehoods about the subject of the course are taught.

@PeteL.Clark : This is something I have thought about for decades.  Please see my two foregoing comments.

Ok, I think i see the angle you're approaching it from. Could be an interesting discussion of pedagogical principles and approaches, if you didn't drive away the readers you should be trying to reach. Peter's absolutely right about that; you need to squelch the indignation or it's too easy to write you off as a crank. Focus on what could be done better and why it would be better,  rather than accusing folks.

Still, what you are referring to is not fraud; it’s at worst bad didactics. (Besides, what you describe is not globally applicable. I was not taught mathematics like this.)

@PeteL.Clark : Have I been disrespectful?  You start from the presumption that I haven't thought about things I am saying.  There is nothing in codified standards that says one should teach that mathematics consists of algorithms.  No one says it explicitly.  It's silly to expect to find it in codified standards.  You will find lots of people who admit that it is true and say they wish they could do something about it.  Professors of mathematics are not entitled to say they wish they could do something: they are the ones who can.

@Wrzlprmft : I am aware that mathematics is not always taught that way, and indeed it was not taught that way to me, nor is it taught that way in courses in which the students are there because they want to learn mathematics.  It is taught that way in classes where the students work hard and pride themselves on good grades and whose motive for being there is to polish their resumes and impress schools and employers they will apply to.

These comments have seem to be about the merits of my claim about fraud, and don't seem to contemplate the actual question I asked.

@PeteL.Clark : I would also prefer to avoid this particular discussion here, since it doesn't address the question I asked.  The question was: which forums are appropriate for such a publication, if it is to be published?

A couple of decades ago you could have circulated it as a pre-print among the academe and eventually expanded it into a book. Now you'll just be seen as (a) riding on Lockhart's coat tails and (b) hyperbolic.

@dmckee : Fortunately I will not duplicate Lockhart's thesis, although I agree with it.  Pete L. Clark says he would pay attention to something that begins by saying "Here is a serious, widespread and insidious problem with the conventional mathematics curriculum".  One thing on which I agree with Lockhart is that a big problem with the mathematics curriculum is that it is a curriculum.  Curricula should be abolished.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is seeking specific advice on how to proceed in a specific field of academia, not asking about academia as a whole.

A partial answer to your actual question: Not here.

I think is question is not a very good fit for us. I think where to publish something is both opinion based and too specific.

In one of Feynman's books he mentions showing a flexible curve to his math class and pointing out its "surprising" property that the tangent is always horizontal at its lowest point. His point is to illustrate that the class were differentiating functions and finding minima without any genuine understanding. If passing such students is the sort of "fraudulent" behaviour that the OP refers to then I agree with him, but it's not the best choice of adjective.

@TheMathemagician : That students without ability show up is not fraud.  That they are encouraged to show up, and tacitly but effectively and emphatically taught over the course of years that mathematics consists only of algorithms, and that is done only to fill up classrooms in order to get tuition money, is fraud.  And it's far worse than just that.

@ToddWilcox : duh.  Obviously I would not attempt to put such a thing here.  I've never hinted at making the case for that proposition here.  What is the occasion for posting your comment above?

@keshlam : You wrote "Focus on what could be done better and why it would be better, rather than accusing folks." Can that work of doing it better is something they don't want? When the substance of the accusation would be that they don't want it? And some of you comments here cause me to wonder what qualifications you claim. You seem to consider yourself competent to take a position on some of the matters I've raised. Of what does your competence in this area consist?

The appropriate places to put an angry contrarian rant where you assert that a large percentage of scientists are doing it wrong are (in order of preference):

arXiv.org, which will take pre-print papers from pretty much anybody with a well-established affiliation within their scope.
viXra.org, which will take independent paper from pretty much anybody.
A personal website extolling your particular theory at length (e.g., Gene Ray's famous site)

These are all good places to submit an article such as you describe.
Publishing such an article, however, may not cause much of the mathematical community to listen to you.  For that, you will have to dig deeper and try to understand how to speak the language of the people that you want to listen to you, such that you can establish credibility with them.  A good starting point might be to take one particular significant point, rather than the whole broad spectrum, and construct a study that produces quantifiable evidence for your position.  That then, written up in a manner that conforms to the standards of the community and will not score highly on the crackpot index.
Please understand that I am being serious in my response to you: it is possible that you have identified something significant (I have no idea, not being familiar with your assertions).  If so, however, you will need to be very strategic in your approach to presenting it effectively.

I don't intend it to be angry or contrarian, but I've observed in recent hours that it makes some people angry.  And I think their reaction is unreasonable, and in fact it surprised me.  What I would have expected is that people would feel their attention was called to something they hadn't noticed.  Except that I know that some have noticed and will agree.

@MichaelHardy, the word "fraud" has not only very negative connotations, it has negative denotations as well! It is used by the legal system as a term for a felony. If you don't want to seem contrarian, step one would be to avoid that word entirely. A great step two would be to write something that does very little in the way of criticizing what currently exists and instead is largely about how things could be made better. "I've got an idea that I think will help" is so much more positive than "what you're doing is criminal".

@ToddWilcox : Indeed, fraud is bad.  I don't think of what I'm doing as "contrarian" because I don't really expect anyone to disagree with it, although I do expect it to be news to some.

Since we haven't seen your definition of "the calculus curriculum", we can't answer that question. I suspect from what little has been said that the actual answer is going to be a science-vs-engineering or applied-vs-pure divide, with basic pedagogical philosophy disagreements about what mix should be the default. But I'm guessing, and discussion here wouldn't do justice to the topic, so outside of cautioning against absolutes in the real world and against the "if you disagree I must have explained it badly" trap, I'll shaddup again.

@MichaelHardy You keep using words like "obvious," but the matter is apparently not so clear to your listeners.  If you want to have an impact on the mathematics community, you need to think about how to present your case so that it is clear to those listeners.  A good start would be to post a draft paper on arXiv and ask mathematicians you know to critique it.

@MichaelHardy Regardless of whether you expect anyone do disagree with you, clearly many do, including me. I tutor mathematics from third grade through undergraduate courses and I really have no idea what you're talking about. The public and private schools and universities in my area don't seem to follow this fraudulent curriculum you are concerned about at all, and neither do any of the home school materials I've seen (and I've seen many). This is the first I'm hearing about teaching that "math is only about algorithms". I worked with a ninth grader on a proof yesterday.

@ToddWilcox : You see quite a lot of the math-consists-of-algorithms ideology among those who ask questions on math.stackexchange.com.  In freshman calculus courses lots of students are people who treat learning math only as a price paid to get a grade to impress prospective employers.  They demand to be told in advance an algorithm to find the solution to every homework problem (although they don't know the word "algorithm"). They don't know what theorems or proofs are and they don't want to. Knowing how to prove something doesn't give them any confidence that it's true, rather....

...they demand and feel entitled to dogmatic assertions from authorities that they can rely on for that.  That's what goes on in flagship state universities.  Of course there are students of a different sort there as well, but lower-level courses are conducted in such a way as not to put any strain on those of the sort I described here.

Remember, students who come here to ask us to do their homework are by definition atypical, inferior students. Of course that subset just wants an answer. Null datum.

@keshlam : On average those who ask questions on math.stackexchange.com are far better than typical students.  Those who simply post homework problems do so not simply because they just want others to do their homework, but because they don't actually have questions about the subject.  They see something in heiroglyphis and have no idea what it says, and copy it.  But nobody likes doing that so that's why we see better-than-average students.

Uhm... I think you've just agreed with me that the subset you are complaining about are atypical.

@keshlam : They are atypical of those who post to stackexchange, but they are not atypical of those who show up in courses.  The system encourages unqualified students to sign up for courses.

@michaelhardy: We agree that we disagree. Strongly.

@keshlam : Are you saying typical students in calculus courses are not learning as a price of a grade, but learning because they want to understand regardless of whether it gets them a grade, and know that mathematics isn't just algorithms for finding answers to assigned problems, etc., and are working toward understanding things independently of what authorities tell them?

Some of that, yes. Some no. Some of the nos are regrettable, some aren't, depending upon the needs of the students. "There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, / And every single one of them is right!" And this is getting long enough that it should be taken to Chat again.

keshlam And this is getting long enough that it should be taken to Chat again.  Seconded.  @MichaelHardy, you're experienced enough on Math.SE that you should understand how things work on SE sites.

@PeteLClark wrote "If you cannot prove to my satisfaction that (i) this statement is a codified part of the mathematics education curriculum and (ii) that those who are responsible for designing the curriculum believe it to be false and put it in with the intention to deceive, then by no means have you demonstrated fraudulent behavior, and I would stop reading there."  If someone demonstates that grades are always based only on bribes, would it fail to demonstrate dishonesty if I cannot find a NCTM regulation saying that's what they should do?

@ToddWilcox : Just to be clear: The current conventional math curriculum is not just subotimal; it is evil.


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Combining 2 sections according to the reviewer’s comment
I get review comments for my manuscript. Reviewer suggested combine G section with B section as one section. So I combined as he/she suggested. Now I am preparing REPLY to reviewer’s comments. My question is that should I put my whole combined section to REPLY file and highlight the combined G section’s texts? Or Is this okay if I reply like this “According to your suggestion, we combined G section with B section as one section”?

"The material from sections B and G of the previous version have been incorporated into the new Section H of this version".
That should be plenty. Just point to the place where the material now sits as suggested above.

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


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Citing low quality papers (solutions) in surveys?
I sometimes find papers that aim to solve the same problem that I am working on, but these papers are of terrible quality. Some of these papers:

introduce wrong solutions,
re-introduce a solution that is already published, or
are just very hard to understand because of the low quality of writing.

Should I cite these papers in my "related work" section when writing a paper?
Would it be offensive to tackle these papers and prove that they are wrong (especially as the most of these papers are published in not very good conferences)?
Or is it perhaps a waste of time to pay any attention to these papers?

you might be a tad careful before claiming that a paper has introduced wrong solutions. how would you know this?

@Shion because you are an expert in the area (otherwise you wouldn't publish, right?)! I always advise for caution, but you sometimes you have to call a cat a cat.

@Shion .. by formal proofs usually.

Speaking from the perspective of a no-longer-quite-so-young mathematician, this is a serious question. I think one should acknowledge "prior art", even if one disagrees with many aspects of it. That is, to pretend that something doesn't exist when one is aware of it is dishonest. (I do not think that one's bibliography must only include things one has used... that can be subverted to argue, as I have heard a distinguished mathematician say, that one need not cite anyone else's work _if_one_is_careful_not_to_look_at_it_.)
Yes, there is the awkward issue of giving an opinion on "prior art" that one finds deficient. As @Shion comments to the question, one probably should hesitate before being too sure. The universal non-commital (therefore slightly dismissive, which is the right amount) comment is something like (at the end of introduction) "Compare [A], [B], [C]." Not saying that they're crap, or failures, or anything else. Just admitting one is aware of them, and pointedly not endorsing them... if that's one's intent.
That is, I think that published papers should not just be update-reports, but have sufficient scholarly context-setting to orient a genuinely interested reader not already completely expert, for example. I realize that the literal function of many "published papers" is merely "making a living", but it is not profoundly difficult to do somewhat better.

In general I cite a paper in two cases:
1) I use something introduced there (from the problem statement to some theorem) in my work.
2) I think it would be a good idea if the reader takes a look at that paper when reading mine for some reason (historical, mathematical, whatever).
I don't think I am either able or obliged to put even everything good related to my current work into the literature list: I don't know the whole history myself and nobody will be able to navigate through the whole history anyway. Beyond certain length, the
"additional literature" part of the list becomes equivalent to the empty one: if I am suggested to read 3 papers, I'll look at all 3; if 10, I'll look at 1-2, and if 50, I'll look at none, and I suspect that most other people have similar attitudes.
The only case in which I would put any reference to a terrible (in your sense) paper into my work is if I choose to write the sentence "There is a lot of junk written on this subject as well, see, e.g., [][][]" in the main body, but I usually prefer to make enemies in more sophisticated ways :-).

I would:

Not cite them in your related works section as you clearly do not build on top of that work because of the bad quality.
If these papers do not have a lot of citations or attention, I would not waste my energy on writing responses to these as they will remain obscure. I would recommend putting your energy into writing papers yourself and reading quality material.


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Plagiarizing problem sets and homework
I am a young student checking pupils homeworks.
I've got a case - 2 pupils definetely cooperated when doing homework.
Do you have tips to determine who actually solved it and who copied? Got some ideas myself (like maybe one who copied had a better handwriting) but it is better to ask.

This isn't directly related to academia, but it is related to "life as a graduate student", as we've all been there. I personally vote to leave this open.

This is homework, so I believe there was enough time for copying.

I've changed the title of the question, since it is not at all physics-specific.

This isn't directly related to academia — Say what?? Of course this is directly related to academia!

What does the syllabus say about collaboration on homework? This is enormously relevant. In my courses I encourage collaboration on homework, knowing that the student who merely copies will fail the exams.

Well, up to date it says nothing. I have always been thinking that copying = cheating, because ranks depend on marks, and couldn't imagine that this must be additionally mentioned.

@JeffE - I guess I meant it's not specifically academia-related; this question applies to any teaching institution. Still, it does work here.

And teaching institutions (or as they are sometimes called, academies) aren't academia?  What dictionary are you using?

Before you take any action, make sure you know the rules of academic integrity at your school. Many institutions have very strict rules to follow regarding the handling of suspected plagiarism, because of the legal implications.

What Fuhrmanator says. Many institutions only require the course leader to flag cases of suspected academic offences and produce evidence. Then the actual investigation of if and what AO happened will be carried out by a separate committee. This ensures that the university's AO policy is enforced in a fair and consistent manner.

Here is my anecdotal experience for dealing with copiers and plagiarizers. At the end of the day, everyone should be penalized. It's just a matter of sorting out who did what, and making sure they're aware that further offending can carry severe consequences.
If discussing problems in groups is okay and encouraged (it should be!), don't forget to reinforce this. Just stress that the solutions themselves must be individual work.

The weaker piece of homework (i.e. less complete explanations and working, or missing parts) is likely to be written by the student who had no contribution (or a lesser contribution) to the solution.
It's usually rather obvious that some copying has gone on, especially if they all make the same mistakes and lay out their working the same. Consider rounding up all the students and talking to them together to find out the full story. They've already been caught red-handed, so it's in their best interests to be honest with you!
It's important to find out exactly what happened, because there are cases where someone has copied work without the other's knowledge. In this case, it's not fair to punish both parties.
If the student doing the copying has accidentally written their friend's name or student number on the sheet rather than their own, that tends to be a dead give-away that it's a downright facsimile of other work (that has actually happened).

Not always true - I've seen copiers who expand on the work they copied

@PranavHosangadi I'd say that if they expanded on the copying, that's better than straight-up copying, so I wouldn't worry too much about penalizing them less.

@AlexBecker, consider a scenario where I do all my work by myself, and you copy my work but expand on it. Mine is the weaker solution, and following this advice I am more of a suspect.

@PranavHosangadi Fair point. I suppose I also hadn't thought of the possibility that the work was copied without permission.

@PranavHosangadi May I suggest you read my answer more carefully? I do say that the weaker piece is likely written by the copier, not always. But unless (this possibility I also mention) the work is copied without the knowledge of the "victim", each student should be disciplined equally and so the point of who did more actual work is unimportant.

@Moriarty, most definitely both should be given a hearing before handing out punishment, but to be honest, one will tend to think the weaker solution belongs to the copier, and hence the "he stole my work" consideration will be applied incorrectly.

@PranavHosangadi Indeed a private discussion is necessary. earthling's answer describes the two choices well. A student is innocent until they admit their guilt (or it is proven beyond reasonable doubt). If an amicable discussion doesn't result in an admitted consensus as to who did what, or both students deny any wrongdoing yet copying almost certainly occurred (sometimes there's only so many ways to skin a cat), then I think that the case is outside the jurisdiction of a TA.

Although I do not teach physics I do have a solution that generally works quite well.
The main answer is: It does not matter who copied from whom - fail both.
If one student allows another to copy, then both fail. I enforce this quite strictly and there are some students (who do not pay attention to the warnings I give at the start of the semester) who do it, but they never make the same mistake twice.
As Moriarty said, it is possible that Student B copied from Student A without Student A knowing about it. I solve this problem but calling them both in front of me (private from everyone else) and tell them they have a choice:
Choice A: Both admit that the copying took place with consent of both, and both fail that homework/assignment/test/whatever is being assessed.
Choice B: Student A says that Student B stole Student A's work, and Student A gets off with a warning to be more careful (but no punishment) and Student B fails the module immediately without the opportunity to recover (Student B must re-take the module from the beginning).
I have dealt with many cases this way and only three cases where the students ended up in Choice B. In this case, the offending students admitted that they stole work.
You should never support the student who allows another student to copy from them. That behavior is simply unacceptable and that needs to be made quite clear to everyone.

If you don't have an official plagiarism policy in your syllabus, failing a student for a course because of a plagiarized assignment is excessively harsh. It is perfectly fair, however, to give them zero credit for the assignment.

There's also a privacy/FERPA problem with this approach.  If student A is honestly unaware that any copying took place, I cannot identify student B as the plagiarist to student A. (I faced exactly this situation two months ago.)

@aeismail I do mention it in the syllabus. Of course students must know the rules at the start. I have yet to see any student call me unfair...even behind my back. Strict, yes. But never unfair.

@JeffE You cannot highlight a block of text and say it also exists in Student B's paper? What privacy rule are you violating?

No, I cannot.  The fact that a student has been found guilty of cheating, or is being investigated for cheating, is itself a FERPA-protected educational record.  Formally, even the fact that a student is registered for my course is a FERPA-protected educational record. The most I can say is "This block of text appears verbatim in another student's submission".

@earthling In physics, it's fairly common (at least more common than in your field, or so I'd guess from the way you wrote this answer) to allow collaborative work, which tends to result in multiple students submitting near-identical solutions. Depending on the nature of the class, the policy of automatically failing anyone who submits work that appears to have been copied may not be realistic. (Whereas it certainly seems appropriate for e.g. an English class.)

I am surprised that no one mentioned this solution yet, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find out by interrogating them: question them both on how they solved the exercises. "So, tell me, which formula are you applying in this line? Why are the hypotheses satisfied? Show me the missing steps."

I have also got in that situation with a couple of students that I was lecturing. I decided to fail both and sent an email, to both of them, saying that they were going to be penalized even with the disciplinary committee of the University to expelled them both. In a couple of hours the person that was guilty confesses his participation in this situation. I only decided to fail that person from the exam and leave the other only with a disciplinary warning.
Long story short: Here you have only two ways, either you fail both of them which is simpler; or just look for the guilty person (which I usually do and I always discover the sinner")
Good luck!

I would argue a student has committed an offence by allowing / supporting the copying. Punishing only the copier tells other students it is ok to share as long as you are the original author. Seems a bad policy to me.

What if both students profess ignorance?  (Yes, I've seen this happen.)  Are you happy with the possibility that one of the students may be expelled even though the plagiarism happened without their cooperation or consent?


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Are there any resumé revision services available for PhD applicants?
I am preparing a resumé for a PhD application. I'd like to know if there any good, and not necessarily free, services that evaluate and comment on a resumé.

If you are currently a student , your university career services can help.

Ask the faculty who are writing your recommendation letters. They'll have the clearest idea what you should include, because they're the ones actually reading PhD applications.

By the way, I can't imagine it would be worth paying for CV advice for a PhD application.  For ordinary job searches, people sometimes pay for resume advice because they want to do whatever they can to minimize the chances that their resume will be tossed aside after a quick glance.  That's not really how PhD admissions works, the CV plays a less central role, and in any case it's easier to write an academic CV than a resume (it's more comprehensive and thus involves less choice, and you don't have to sell things as hard).

Yes, literally hundreds. Have you googled something like "professional resume for phd application" or "professional resume writing services"? You are bound to find something near where you live, including quite possibly your undergrad university.
The big question, I think, is whether for a PhD application you should be supplying a resume or a curriculum vitae? CV's are usually more common for academic and research positions. If you are unsure about the differences, here are a couple of useful links.
Good luck with the application.


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What can I do to recover from a short term burnout?
Over the past few days, my advisor and I had been going really hard. We got a really good idea and the preliminary results looked good, so I started spending long days in the lab, going home only to sleep. My advisor saw this and he started spending a lot more time with me and we had long meetings whenever I requested. This has been going on for about 4 weeks and although I loved it while I was in it, I feel burnt out now. There are still really exciting things I need to try but I don't know why I can't get myself to do any of them.
What is a good strategy to escape this burnout phase?
I have already tried:

Playing an instrument I was good at
Just taking some time off
Limiting my work hours

But none of these and others seem to work.

If it is days or weeks (not years), I don't know if "burnout" is the right term. It's just a temporal loss of motivation or energy, or tiredness. (Anyway, the quicker you fight with it, the better for you.)

Not specifically academia-burnout-related. As my Zen teacher says: "if you're so burnt out you feel you can't accomplish anything, start with clapping hands". Do anything you can succeed in, starting from the absolute basics, until gradually you recover your momentum and get back to serious things. Another advise, to prevent burnout, next time keep the excitement / expectations in check. High expectations mess with your success thresholds and rob you of the sense of accomplishment. Excitement wastes your serotonin unnecessarily, while you need it for creative work.

Bipolar disorder? You never know ...

Actually, there's a lot of research that suggests that extended workweeks are only sustainable for a short period of time—a few weeks at most. Beyond that, burnout sets in, and can require a few weeks of rest to "make up" for the intense work done during the "rush" period.

Don't "fight with it" as suggested above. This only delays the effect. Let it go instead. Set aside two days where you're not allowed to think even one tiresome thought. Do something completely different. See if you can manage to do "nothing", for a short while.

For a true burnout you will need to stop working, rest, and seek counseling/medical help. You need to lower your expectations of yourself and virtually eliminate what others expect from you. Ultimately, because work is about expectations (either self-imposed or set by others), I doubt that you can continue working and recover from a burnout.
Given that you state that the burnout occurred over a short period, rather than a sustained year-upon-year effort, my advice is to take a vacation. Three weeks should do the trick.
Just remember, life is about enjoying it, not earning money, because in the end you will take nothing with you.

I agree: get yourself out of your current environment (no work, change in daily life, change in place). If you work at a small campus in a rural area, take a trip to New York/LA/whatever. If you work at a University in the center of London, go to the Lake District for a week or two, go hiking in Corsica, just go bury your toes in the water of Ardèche, etc. Doesn't have to be very far, or very expensive, but it should take your mind to other things. Also: find good books, don't bring your computer, don't look for internet access.

@F'x: Sounds like good advice for me (and I'm not even burnt out).

I gave Dave Clarke's feedback a "yes" to was this helpful, but I have to add my own experience. If you're truly feeling burnt out, you need to do one of two things, step back and think about it, or jump in and just submit to it. I've felt burnt out with my job and been pushed to the edge where I lost all productivity, but then I realized, it's my life, and if I want to do it, I should "claim" the work as my own even if I am not the boss, And that really makes all the difference. Claim what you're doing, own it, and take pride in it, it will stave off burning out.

I find burnout a reoccurring effect, and to some extent it comes with academic research as you are continually trying solve problems and come up with new ideas. In this respect I find doing science like doing art - if I am not in the mood for doing it then the results won't be good and productivity is low, so the only solution is to stop completely. If you have got the research 'bug' (you normally love research and it preoccupies pretty much every waking hour of your day) then when you are ready you will come back to thinking about it and want to get back in the lab.
My advice is to do nothing until you are ready - don't think about the lab at all or worry that you are not doing anything, just rest completely - go for walks, watch moves, kill zombies, whatever.
As a post doc I have learnt to organise better, and back off if things get too hectic, taking an afternoon off for example. I still suffer a little at the end of the year, where I take a fortnight off but usually I am itching to get back after a week.

Burnout is a word of many meanings. But basically, it is characterized by a very strong physical exhaustion, a general anxiety and the feeling that you are a failure at work, that you will never meet the expectations of the persons you work with/for. This last feeling is strengthened by the fact that a person in burnout thinks she owes something to the others. A last symptom is depersonalisation : you have the feeling of living outside you and the world, you are a spectator of your life, not an actor of it anymore. If you have this last symptom, you should go to the doctor right now, not asap, now !
Most of the time, a burnout becomes a real medical problem (as a strong anxiety syndrom) and needs that a medical doctor takes action.
Besides giving a medication, a MD will give life advice such as :

Stop completely working for a while, do a sleep cure
Avoid any activity that relates to work (you're in academy, don't read complicated stuff, you're a plumber, don't do any home improvement)
Change your environment : go visit your old uncle who is a farmer in Ohio (or a fisherman in France, or ...)
Modify the way you live, be more involved in your own life. Sometimes, we (=people in academy) don't take the time to cook, to do sports, to rest without activity. Even if one can live happily with a 100% focus on work, it increases the odds of being burned out.
And my last advice : at first try to avoid seeing people from work. It is necessary, so that you can realize that they don't really need you and you don't really need them.

This is really me! About your last point, but how can I graduate without seeing them and being at my work? Right now the only way out that I can see out of this mess is suicide. I can no longer read, I only see me failing. Thanks for the advise to consult a doctor,  though I am not sure if I will do it.

I don't think it's intended as never see your coworkers. It is, however, important to shy away from meeting coworkers while you are trying to take a few weeks of distance from your work. If you keep meeting with them it is much harder to mentally let go of your work, even if only for a few days. You'll still graduate, you'll go back to work, but first you need to give yourself some well earned rest. Don't try to fight your own mind because you will likely lose that battle. Don't try to rationalize pushing yourself harder by imposing deadlines, because it won't help you "beat" your situation.

As an addition to the current suggestions, I can highly recommend adding some exercise to your daily life. Lab life, especially when intensive, makes as sedentary life style. You sit in front of the pc, by the wetlabs... etc
What kind of exercise you do is a preference thing, I personally love high-tempo ball sports like football (soccer) or squash. There's nothing like the endorphine high you get after wearing yourself completely and take a shower afterwards. It will help you get troubles off your mind as well. I can highly recommend squash for this purpose; when playing with an even opponent, an hours workout will get you to a point where forming shorter sentences is as complicated of an intellectual task as you can manage, which means no time/place for daily worries.
Another important thing is to get good sleep. Not just the hours in bed but the quality of sleep. If thoughts and worries about work are haunting you in the sub-conscience, it really doesn't matter how long you are in bed. In this aspect you'll have a positive synergy between physical workout and better sleep.
Hope it helps, and you'll start feeling better soon.

As JeffE would put it, Run, don't walk!

This is a great answer. My life became an order of magnitude better after I started practicing sports and sleeping more (and not trying to wake up early to work on saturdays and sundays).

First of all, noone here can know what is really the matter with you. So we all find it rather alarming, because
"Not getting yourself to do exciting things" can be a symptom of serious medical problems.
However, after a "work-sprint" you may just be exhausted in a perfectly normal way. E.g. after I had handed in my Diplom thesis, I needed two weeks of basically doing nothing and sleeping a lot (incidentally and very typically, I got a cold as well). It's just paying back your debts in recreation, in the very literal meaning of the work.
Things to do:

Talk to your advisor. From what you wrote, you have a very good relationship. If you think you are in the normal need-for-holidays, tell him, and get the holidays.
During the holidays,

Sleep much
Spend much time outdoors.  Sun (in case it's winter now where you are) and  excercise is good for everyone and you may need to catch up due to the work sprint. Doesn't need to be real sports, for me personally it would be better to do "excercise" on a non-exhausting level, but longer. 5 - 8 h of walking, biking or slow cross country skiing would sound good to me, but your marks may vary of course. I'd say, a good amount of fresh air is when you fall into your bed at 8 pm and sleep till next morning...
Make sure you eat lots of vitamins

If you are afraid (i.e. you are not 100% sure that it isn't) something more serious may be the matter:

Don't wait until you know it is serious! By then, it will be very serious, and you may not be able any longer to seek the help you need.
Also talk to your advisor. If you think, holidays may help, take them. However, here are two additional "saftety lines":
Schedule a meeting for after your holidays to discuss whether you are again in working condition. Ask him now that he should get you to medical help if you are not in working condition after the holidays.
Ask him to come and get you to medical help if you don't show up after holidays.

In addition (before the holidays),

find out whether your university has some kind of psychological counselling (not sure about the correct English name), examination offices usually know that.
Alternatively, find out a psychological clinic (university hospital?) with emergency counselling hours (again, someone please correct my English)
If you don't get yourself to doing this now (till Monday noon), go to your advisor (or very good friends/relatives), tell them you have a psychological emergency and that they should get you to medical help immediately.

Normal exhaustion after intense work:
Personally, I know and love these exciting periods of intense work. However, they are exhausting, and you need the recreation afterwards as you'd recreation after a mountain tour of several weeks. Also, they don't happen every day (I think one couldn't survive that, even though they are incredibly good). BUt from what I know from fellow researchers, these a serious driving force for quite some of us. Welcome!

Even though you are now exhausted, remember how good it is. I think a healthy balance is if you are exhausted like you are exhausted after a big physical effort. I remember them like physically strenuous tours.
They are not an every-day experience, but odds are that this wasn't the last experience of the sort :-) And, while this one may have been too much of the good, you can learn knowing when it is enough (and/or to plan for recreation afterwards). For me, this got easier once I had the experience that new such spells of incredibly good work do come.

For me, having a structure is usually something that brings a good balance.
One of the reasons PhD students can get very disorganized and end up wasting a lot of time is the lack of a fixed schedule, this is both needed to have a productive life and a balance between your work and personal life.
Just try to keep by an schedule, and you'll see you will get more relaxed.

Sure. That prevents any future burnouts. But what can be done once you get into one?

The only way to get out is to go back to your life, take care

I agree with a lot of the other answers, but I have a few additional ideas that haven't been suggested yet.
Do you find yourself thinking about this project at odd moments, even when you're supposedly resting or doing something else?  You need to reset your mind by clearing out this project and replacing it with something else for a while.  It needs to be sufficiently compelling to get your attention away from the thing that has filled your mind for 4 weeks.  Then, after a bit, your enthusiasm for your old project will regenerate and you can be excited about it again.
When you get sick of working on a particular project, one thing that can sometimes be helpful is to spend some time (perhaps a week or two, maybe more) working on a very different project of some sort.
Another possibility is that you are not actually burned out.  You may instead have conditioned yourself to associate this project with working very long hours.  Now, whenever you think about working on it, you subconsciously feel like if you work on it, it will consume your life again and you don't have the energy for that.  This is a bit harder to deal with.  To continue to work on this, you have to break the conditioning.  If you can force yourself to work on the project, but with more reasonable hours, that may help.


text:
Is it possible to receive private tutoring for graduate-level courses from faculty members?
I am having a lot of trouble understanding the material in one of my courses. I feel like the professor often rushes through the material, leaving me without enough time to catch up in my busy schedule.
This professor is also really esteemed for his/her research contributions and speaking to my adviser about this (who also happens to be close to this professor) would make me feel very uncomfortable. I even spoke to my peers in the course about this and they seem to agree about the speed at which things are delivered.
Anyway, I often think about what I can do in this situation since exams are coming up. One idea that I ponder is the possibility of privately hiring a tutor within the faculty who could better explain the ideas in the course to me; after all they have relevant teaching experience.
I'm not certain if this is a good idea or not and because of this, I would really appreciate feedback relevant to this idea. If there aren't any appropriate solutions, what else can you suggest?

Note: I don't really want to give out any other details that would compromise his/her reputation. So I'll just leave it at that.

Just want to make sure the tutor will not be the same person who teaches the course, right?

Of course, it won't be the same person.

Does this class have a TA ?

@Suresh: no, it does not.

Do other students also have trouble keeping up ? maybe an intervention is in order.

@Suresh: Well, I would say in a class of 16 students, I spoke to 7 of them about this issue (at different times) and most seemed to talk about their issues (with the class) quite a bit. I'm not sure about the other remaining students though.

I protect this question because it is an attractive target for spammers.

Go to office hours.

As a faculty member, I feel that most students who struggle

don't put enough time into the course materials; most courses are designed with the expectation that you put into the course around 10 hours a week.
don't seek out help, or don't speak up to communicate their difficulties; there are office hours by the professor, as well as the TAs, and most of these people would be very open to hearing your opinions of the course. If the course is going too fast, tell them.
don't talk to their peers; sometimes understanding the material requires talking to others about it. You may all have been confused by the material, but by struggling through the assignments together, you will probably all learn (but remember to credit your friends).

If you have done all of the above and you are still struggling, then hiring a private TA may be the next step. One tip for choosing a good TA: I actually think that asking someone just a couple of years ahead of you is the best thing to do. They see from your perspective, and they often understand/remember what was hard about the material better than the faculty members. It's cheaper, and you'll learn better. As a faculty member, I would never agree to privately tutor a student. Teaching is only a small part of my job, and I prefer to be doing research instead of spending more of my time with an undergraduate student.

Just a comment about 10hrs/week. This varies and is not a general law. We expect 40 hrs/week because we do not run parallel courses, which I assume is the case in your school/country.

@PeterJansson: I'm pretty sure that in both the question and this answer, 'course' means what in the UK we usually call a 'module'.  A student would normally be taking roughly four courses per semester, depending on the university.  I would be surprised if at your university the things students study are not broken up into units in a similar way.

@TaraB Our students take one course at a time (could be four in consecutive order in a term) and are expected to work full hours on each course. So as I stated, one cannot necessarily compare workload per week per course (module) between systems.

@PeterJansson:  Oh, I see.  I've never heard of that before!  But of course I would have agreed about not being able to compare between different systems anyway.

Let me give you a few thoughts (which might be slightly off-topic) from a professor's perspective:

I usually design my courses in a way that the average student has a significant work load to keep up with the topic without frustrating them. (with 'average' I mean what I think the average student should be able to do after finishing the class - so this is a bit biased and independent of the actual students in my class)
This leads to the situation that there is about 20% which keep up with (more or less) ease (I try to give them some extre assignments which are usually to hard for the rest of the course), ~50% are doing more or less fine (they have to work hard, but come along), and ~30% are having a very hard time.
The ones which are having hard time are usully not having the required pre-requisites for the course (I talk to each of them and try to find out which problems they are having), this could be they dont have the knowledge and skills needed, but some have problems organizing their daily life etc.

Depending on the group you are in (I know, it's very rough classification and might not be helpful in your case), you can follow different strategies:

If you are usually among the top performers in your class, you just might have some misconceptions which prevent you from putting the topics in the right part of your brain. I'd suggest talking to your adviser or your professor about this. They can help to disentangle your thoughts.
If you are in the "average" group, you are the core audience of the class. Your professor should be interested in getting feedback about speed and perception of the content, but you must decide by yourself whether they are interested or not. If they seem to be open, I would suggest talking to your adviser and ask him about additional material or whether s(he) can recommend a tutor.
If you feel you are missing some pre-requisites, you should clearly identify for your self, what you are missing. Try to get this first, even if it's not part of the course or you already shoul be knowing it. If you skip this opportunity kow, life will only become harder. After you know what you are missing, try to find appropriate ressources to learn thos skills (online courses, personal coaching, taking a class again, whatever). Additional tutoring will not help as long as your brain is not ready for the topic (unless the tutor helps you with getting this knowledge and skills).

In general, I assume that my studnets are working in groups. Many assingments are very hard to complete for one person, you often need discussion about the topics. One thought gives the other and having a group of peers working on the seem topics is very helpful. If you are learning alone at the moment, try to find some peers and team up with them. It is optimal if they are a bit better than you, but the most important thing is to talk about the course content and try to find different approaches to understand it. Tackle the problems from different directions and see which one is the best for you. That's the real skill you are learning when you are studying.
I personally regard taking a tutor as a last resort, but that's a bit opinion based. A good tuutor is a coach helping you with the things described above (which is great, go, get one!), a bad tutor tries to think for you and focuses only on the course topic which is at hand. You won't learn much.
And coming to the question whether it is ok to ask a faculty member: It depends! You can not ask someone who is actually involed in the course (directly or indirectly), otherwise one could argue that the course is intentionally to hard and the faculty members are doing side business by helping the studnts to succeed. This would really be unethical (end even if it is not the case, it might look like this to an outsider).
If you can find someone, who is not involved in the course, and (s)he is willing to do it, I see no problem, unless there are no rivalries between your professor and the person. Still, I would prefer someone from a different institution since teaching students should be their main job, anyway. I personally would not take any students for private tutorship.
I hope this helps a bit.

I'm going to provide a completely different perspective, mainly based on your comment
"Well, I would say in a class of 16 students, I spoke to 7 of them about this issue (at different times) and most seemed to talk about their issues (with the class) quite a bit. I'm not sure about the other remaining students though"
if you have confirmed that many people in the class are struggling (note: it's not 100% clear from this quote that you have), this is enough to warrant talking to the professor about the general pace and difficulty level of the class. In this case You may want to schedule an appointment with the professor and speak to him/her about your troubles with the class and how you have talked with other students and that these students are having similar issues. Ask the professor about what he/she imagines the average work load is for the class.
Most professors want the class to learn and are willing to teach to the ability of the class, but many of them are not so good at adapting to subtle cues from their students; they need to be explicitly told to slow down or cover more basic concepts. Find out what your professor thinks about what the course should be like and then adapt what you say based on that.
Sometimes the instructor does not modify their course (or they try to but really don't change as much as they think they are). There isn't too much you can do about this, however, many professors will change the course significantly and you may find yourself happier because of it.
However, whatever you do, do not make any accusations and try your best not to come off as entitled. Stay nice, and spend more time listening than talking. You may not end up needing a tutor
That said: for most research colleges the answer is NO to your question (graduate students would be more appropriate, perhaps someone who TAed the course before - but not currently, and possibly not while this instructor was teaching the course). For teaching colleges, there are often not enough professors in the department to even find one that would be an appropriate match to the subject matter.

The description is vague I agree, modified the response by starting it with "if". The op clearly states in his comment that others talk to him about issues they have with the course. You are right that such a description is vague, but if students are having difficulties the instructor should at least be made aware of it.

From a student perspective, there are actually several things you can do:
First, you can go to the professor and/or the TA's office hours to get help with the material that you're struggling with.  You didn't mension whether or not you've tried this, but often if you aren't understanding things in class then the professor or the TA would be happy to go over it again with you and to try explaining it in alternate ways or more slowly.  If you're having trouble making office hours because of scheduling, the TA or the professor will often be able to schedule alternate office hours to meet with you.
Second, you can ask other students for help.  You could try starting a study group or many students have mailing lists where you can ask for advice from people who have taken the class before.  In addition, in a graduate level class there are likely to be graduate students who are working in/doing research on some of the topics covered in the course---these are definitely people who might be able to help.
Last, as someone mentioned, it's unlikely that other faculty will have the time to provide private tutoring.  It's much more likely that a TA or another graduate student, probably one who is doing research under that professor!, would have the time and the inclination to tutor.  Some ways to try to get in touch with someone like this is through student mailing lists, the professor or lab's website, or by asking other graduate students.
Most graduate students are pretty open and nice because they've been where you are in not getting a course, so don't be too nervous about approaching them.


text:
How do I ask the author of a book in English if I can translate it into my native language?
I want to translate an English book, but before translating it, I want to be sure if the author will permit me to do so.
I am not doing this for financial gain. Since it is a book about a new subject, my professor asked me to translate it, so that students in my country become better familiar with the topic.
Would you please provide me a good text to email it to the author?

I'd be interested to know what happened. Did the translation go ahead?

In most cases books are published through a publisher and certain copyright laws apply that may be shared between the publisher and the author. Exactly where the right to decide on translations lie may vary. You therefore need to contact both the author and the publisher to look into what might apply and to what extent they are interested in such translation.  My suspicion is that it will not be as easy as just getting permission to translate. When a book (or any publication) is translated, there will be a need to get a translation that properly represents the original content. A publisher may not be content with "anybody" translating the work, they may request some form of review etc. So, the bottom line is that you need to contact publisher and author to see what is possible and under what conditions. It is possible they accept translation into a different language for different reasons but they will most likely want to retain some form of copyright.

Tja svenska är ju inget större språk heller. Hopefully the change will satisfy the one reader.

While there may be lots of copyright issues and the publisher will likely need to be contacted. I think starting with the author is the way to go. The email can be rather simple and the content of your question is a good starting point:

Dear X,
I would like to translate your book. I am not doing this for financial gain. I want students in my country become better familiar with the topic.

You may want to include a little about yourself so the author realizes you are familiar enough with the material to translate it and have a use for the translated book.


text:
How do I ask a professor for a summer research project?
I am a student of IT in India.  I'm in my fourth semester and want to work on some project during summer.  How should I write the email to the professor asking for the same?

I get many letters of this kind, and I now summarily delete them without replying. Let me explain why.

Money: it's never clear in these letters what kind of support the student wants/expects. The default assumption is that I would pay for them, and as an academic with limited resources, I have very little incentive to pay for an undergraduate to travel  from India to the US to work with me, especially when it's unlikely they'll be able to do much in three months. Which brings me to
Project timeline: most letters of this kind are of the form "I'm interested in BROAD TOPIC A and want to work with you because you're interested in NARROW TOPIC B". For a three month internship to work, a project has to be very focused, and set from day 1. There's no time to explore.
Self-interest: There's very little gain for me here, or at least none that's mentioned in the letters. If I want to hire an undergraduate, I can do it locally. I can even get financial support (sometimes) for doing that. I can't do that with a student from abroad, and I can't even vet them in advance.

So any successful letter needs to address these three issues very effectively and quickly (because I delete these emails without reading more than a few lines).
Having said that, I know of at least one example where a student came from India to work with a colleague and that summer project turned into an application to grad school. The student is now at my university.

But is there any indication that the student wants to travel to the US? Perhaps they want to apply with a professor at their home university?

What is there for you to gain in such situations? What would you like to gain from an undergraduate project like this one? I am asking because I would like to know what a professor can gain in such situations.

The only potential gain for a professor is if they are able to attract an undergrad from a strong institution, build a relationship, and then have that undergrad come to their university for grad school. There really is no other gain.

What if the student is really strong and has great potential but he is from a fairly unknown institution? I think that there are (some) strong students at many unknown institutions who are self-motivated. Wouldn’t you like to attract any of those to your lab for graduate studies?

I would for graduate studies. But for a summer internship ? that's a long shot gamble.

But with a summer internship you may attract him to your group. Moreover you will find out whether you want to get this student in your lab for the next 5-7 years, or not. Is the cost that high for a few months (2-3)? (Does this include university fees etc.?)

yes. there's a risk-reward calculation here that I estimate to not work out in my favor. if either the cost or the risk estimate changes, then my opinion would change as well :)

How about something like the following.

Dear Professor X,
I enjoyed your course on letter writing and would like to learn more about it. Would it be possible to do a summer project with you?
Sincerely,
Your student of IT in India

If you didn't do a course with him, there must be something that singled him out amongst the other 50 professors at your IT institute (and I don't mean his new glasses).
Alternatives might be:

I enjoy topic X [your professors specialty] and have used it to program a simple program ...
I tried to read your paper "Letter writing for IT students" ...

You asked for a letter, but allow me to suggest to go and talk to him directly. Make sure you know why you want to do a project with him. From a short conversation, you should be able to tell, whether he is willing to invest time into guiding you through a summer project. (He might be away on conferences or other business.) If he seems like he might be very busy, you might consider doing a project with someone else. (If your professor is too busy to meet with you every few days, anyone, even me, can give you a research project: "Research about topic X as much as you can and let me know what you found".)
Say that you have never done a summer project before, and ask him how much time he expects you to put in (per day) and how often he might be able to meet with you.
All of this can be settled in a short conversation of 5 minutes. Via email, this all might take well over a week, or the professor might just not care to reply.

From my home university, I understand that "summer project" means roughly guided pseudo-research for undergraduates in their free time and without pay. If you are asking for free time of your professor plus money, you will probably have to make a more compelling case.