text:
Boxplot whiskers for a journal publication using APA style guide
I want to submit a manuscript with a journal recommending the APA style guide for formatting.
When looking at my boxplots, a colleague of mine wondered why the whiskers do not represent the 95% confidence interval. So I learned that the default setting for matplotlib is 1.5 IQR, which I did not questioned until that point.
According to the very good Wikipedia article on boxplots there are different possibilities for whiskers representation:

the minimum and maximum of all of the data
the lowest datum still within 1.5 IQR of the lower quartile, and the highest datum still within 1.5 IQR of the upper quartile (often called the Tukey boxplot)
one standard deviation above and below the mean of the data
the 9th percentile and the 91st percentile
the 2nd percentile and the 98th percentile

Does anybody know what is the most common whisker boundary and if there is a recommendation in the APA style?

P.S.: I am surprised to see there is no APA-style tag on Academia yet. I do not have enough reputation to create it.

This might be a better question for [stats.se].

@BillBarth Yeah, I was hesitant. But then I was thinking it might be more about the APA style and scientific writing. If the community thinks it should be over there, this would be fine for me.

Technicality: the confidence interval is referring to parameter estimates. What you have is the percentiles of the distribution, I suppose.

Re your PS: creating an APA-style tag was proposed and declined.

Major statistical software such as Stata, SPSS, SAS, and R all use John Tukey's definition (hyperlinks are to the related technical documents), with various degrees of customizability. Some of them also cite William Cleveland's scheme, which is the same as Tukey's.

one standard deviation above and below the mean of the data

This does not make sense as box plot is largely a device to display the central tendency of data using the more robust percentile statistics and I have a hard time pairing it with standard deviations (and its related statistics standard error and 95% CI), which based on the actual value of the data rather than their rank. If showing mean and SD (or SE) is the motive, there are error bar plots for this purpose.

the minimum and maximum of all of the data

While min and max also indicate spread, they are also sensitive to extreme values, and hence a less robust indicator of dispersion. So also not making much sense.

the 9th percentile and the 91st percentile & the 2nd percentile and
  the 98th percentile

I have less opposition against these schemes, the only reason I'd opt for not using them is just we don't need any more schemes.
So, my bet is on Tukey's. And if you're uncertain if readers may be confused, by all means in the footnote state that the scheme is based on Tukey's box plot.

Thanks. Seems like the Wikipedia article could need an edit.

I don't think this has anything in particular to do with APA style.  Rather, it has to do with what you want to communicate about your data: the reason that there are different uses of box-plots is that there are different structures of data distributions, for which different representations are valuable.
The main thing that you are communicating with a box-plot is that your data has a structure that may not be well-represented by a simple parametric distribution, such as a normal distribution or a Poisson distribution.  A box plot allows you to show five points on the (likely highly variable and asymmetric) cumulative distribution curve, and those points just need to be chosen in some reasonably principled manner, such as the in examples listed.
You then just need to explain in your text what it is that the box-and-whiskers represents in your particular usage.

Sounds reasonable - thanks. In your opinion, is there a "most common" version? I guess the 1.5 IQR was chosen for a reason.

It depends on your data set size and structure, but I think I have most commonly seen min/max and Tukey.  Min/max is most common for very small sample sizes (e.g., in cognitive science or animal experiments), Tukey for larger.

@jakebeal already gave a good answer, but let me impress this in different but more direct words:
You create figures because you want to illustrate something. What the figure shows and how it displays data must be driven by what it is you want to illustrate, not based on a style guide. In other words, the correct answer to your question is: Chose that format that best illustrates the facts you want to demonstrate with the figure.
It is obvious that if a figure allows for multiple interpretations (such as what the whiskers represent), then you need to disambiguate this in the caption or the text. This is appropriate even if the style guide were to specify, say, 95% intervals, as this fact may not be obvious to the casual reader unaware of the style guide.


text:
Article "communicated by"
What does it mean when it says under a journal article that it has been communicated by "XYZ" where XYZ is not the author but some other scholar with a very strong reputation? What is the relationship to the actual author and/or the content? Is this some sort of seal of approval to get results out and known quickly? (I am specifically wondering in the context of mathematics and mathematical physics.)

Related question: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/15893/editors-in-peer-review-systems

Another one: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/41871/what-does-communicated-by-mean-in-math-papers

Generally, XYZ refers to the editor that handled the paper at the journal.

Is it in most cases only one editor is responsible for reviewing/editing the paper?

@scaaahu The editor in general does not review the paper himself (apart from a quick initial scan), but contacts referees etc. The editor does make the final decision on whether it should be published or not. They don't edit the paper themselves, in the sense of correcting grammar or layout, at least I have never heard of that.

Is it not a secondary corresponding author? I've been corresponding author on articles where I was not the first author, because the first author was on vacation.

I would like to rephrase my question: is it in general only one editor who handled the paper?

It is not the second corresponding author. Sometimes there may be more than one editor, especially for speciall issues.

That communicated by is added by the author or the journal?

By the journal.

See this question on Mathematics.SE and its very good answers for full details, which I will summarize below. It should be noted that this information is part of the journal format, and added by the publisher itself (along with the publication timeline).

Some journals published by learned societies or national academies require that “communications” be presented (or sponsored) by a member of the society. This was the case, for example, of the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) until July 2010; the top of an article looked like this:

Some journals use this formulation to denote the handling editor: the one who makes the editorial decision (or recommendation to the full editorial board), after having selected referees and received the referees' reports.

This is not common practice: most journals do not indicate who the handling editor was for a given article.

It is important to note that "Communicated by" can mean a direct submission of a paper by a scientist who is not (in most cases) directly involved in the paper itself. It was designed as a way for  established scientists to give a "leg up" to their younger colleagues by allowing them to circumvent the normal review process. This means you may have to give these types of papers a bit more scrutiny as a reader.
PNAS is the publication where I have most commonly seen "Communicated by" publications, but this feature was phased out in 2010:

Until July 1, 2010, members were allowed to communicate up to 2 papers
  from non-members to PNAS every year. The review process for these
  papers was anonymous in that the identities of the referees were not
  revealed to the authors. Referees were selected by the NAS member.
  PNAS eliminated communicated submissions through NAS members as of
  July 1, 2010, while continuing to make the final decision on all PNAS
  papers. (wikipedia)

“by allowing them to circumvent the normal review process” — this is not entirely true… your quote from PNAS clearly establishes that the papers were reviewed by anonymous referees.

I downvoted because "communicated by" does not always mean this.  Perhaps for PNAS it does, but for other journals I know that Dave Clarke's answer is correct; "communicated by" names the handling editor.

@F'x - even if the papers are still reviewed by referees, it is still not the "normal" review process

@NateEldredge - I edited my answer to reflect this. But I think it is an important distinction to point out - when you read a paper, you take into account the prestige/focus of the journal, the history of the research group (are the experiments within the realm of their expertise), etc. This is another factor to consider, and one I didn't learn about until grad school.

source: Stack Exchange

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

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
How to suggest reviewers for a journal?
I recently tried submitting a paper to a journal. It was mandatory to suggest three reviewers. Is this a norm in journal submissions? If yes, how should one choose reviewers if I do not personally know any experts in the field? I have been submitting papers to conferences and never found such conditions there.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2695/having-preferred-and-non-preferred-reviewers-in-journal-submissions

You would need to find the word of mouth evidence of how the editors of this particular journal use this information. Some editors, being lazybones/busy people, just grab these names and send the paper out to them. Others assume that you provide the list of the easy-going people who will likely endorse your paper for non-existent merits, and never send requests to these people. There may be a continuum between these two positions, but that's what I often hear regarding how these suggestions are being utilized.

I know coming across at least one journal that used suggested reviewers as a benchmark of you knowing your field. They explicitly stated that, if they think your suggested reviewers are not the best possible experts to review your paper, it will be rejected without review.

@ThomasH Oh god. Please say you're making this up.

[humor] If the journal is good, suggest your best friends. If it is bad, your worst enemies. [/humor] If you don't know any experts in the field, you might probably wish to read more related work, which is mandatory anyway for serious research.

Being editor of a journal where authors can provide preferred and non-preferred reviewers, I can provide some "inside" thoughts on the subject based on what has happened in "my" journal. Note that it is possible to suggest names for review but also provide names which are not preferred. The latter can be because of a scientific disagreement, personal issues or whatever. Such suggestions appear but not often and we usually follow the suggestions (not that we have to!).
When it comes to the preferred or suggested reviewers, I have been tempted to use such reviewers on occasion when it has been hard to identify reviewers directly. Sometimes because the topic is local and where it would make sense to have local input. In these cases, I cannot remember a single reasonable review that has come out of such reviewers. This can be for several reasons but most often the review is a close colleague who might have an incentive to help the author. In some cases the preferred names have been very senior scientists who, I am afraid, has lost touch with the subject and provide poor and in some cases almost non-existent reviews. Out of all immediate "Accept" review recommendations I get, the vast majority have come from these reviewers. So, I not longer trust these names and avoid them at all costs unless I personally know or know of the reviewer and his or her good reputation.
In addition to what I just describe, I also must state that it is often the weakest manuscripts that have listed several suggestions. This can be identified by the disparate review results, sometimes one accept (by the suggested reviewer) and one reject.
Now, in principle, there is nothing wrong with suggesting reviewers, I have done so myself when being requested. I have then as a principle gone for established and well renowned names in the community. The problem lies in suggesting names for a purpose other than to get a fair and objective review.
It is clear that the system can and is abused and since I became Editor-in-Chief, I have come to rely less and less on these suggestions and now mostly look upon them with suspicion and make selections from my own understanding of the field and investigations into the subject literature. The best suggestion, I can provide is to not avoid mentioning names but pick names that in your opinion can provide good constructive critique on your work (and not just favorable).  A note on why you have selected names as preferred or non-preferred would greatly help as well since it puts your choice in a perspective.

Yes @YuichiroFujiwara, if it was only up to me to decide but it is not. That said, all such problems is subject to review by the editors to possibly improve on Instructions for Authors so hopefully improvements can still be made. I am not, however, sure that it is a disservice to not go along with suggestions, they are, after all, just suggestions. That doesn't meaa the names cannot be useful in other cases down the line.

@Dikran I'll delete my comments too. Sorry for my wording. It was surely inappropriate...

I deeply appreaciate the discussion on my answer. I see the ethics in this as an important issue. The system with reviewers could be fine but abuse, to whatever extent it exists has negative repercussions.

"This can be seen identified very the disparate review results". Should this be "identified by"?

Knowing from an editor where suggesting reviewers is required, (s)he said that half of the reviewers are taken from the list*, half are not from the list of suggested reviewers. However, with that editor, we usually suggest well-established people in the field, more to the senior level, never anyone from the own institute. I think that, at some level, reviewers will be able to look critically at a submission, even if the reviewers knows the (senior) author of a paper. To some extend, it is unavoidable that they have met, in case both author and reviewer are well established in the field.

I was asked to do that several times by an editor after being told (s)he couldn't find referees for my submission (to the point that I now spontaneously tell the editor upon submission that I can suggest referees if need be), but I don't know of any journal (or conference) for which this is required.
Anyway, you don't need to know experts personally: you are suggesting referees, not forcing them on the editor (or your work on them), and whether or not you actually know them should be irrelevant (it's even better if you don't). Read your bibliography, see which authors come up most often, or whose work form the most important basis for your submission, or who would be the most interested in reading it based on their own work, and I'm sure you'll have plenty of names to suggest.

The reference list would be the first place an editor unfamiliar with the research topic would look into, anyway. So the referee suggestions should probably be more specific. There could be other people not on the list who have not published recently, or just have not published much, yet are deeply familiar with the topics of your paper -- e.g., in industry or government (this is quite typical for some areas in which I work: statistics; these people don't have the [academic luxury] time to publish their work).

@StasK: common sense would indeed suggest so, but I've seen caseS where the editor was perfectly happy with a list of referees built in that way.

Here is a journal that wants at least 6 (!!) http://pubs.acs.org/page/enfuem/submission/suggesting_reviewers.html

Elsevier journals require atleast one suggested reviewer. I saw this in this link: https://youtu.be/jNBSfj9iTUU?si=0ExwGt8KA8rVXZuX

Some journals explicitly ask about suggestions for reviewers with a submission, some will consider any suggestions that you make in the cover letter, and others (probably) will just ignore any such suggestion.
There are in fact scientific studies about the comparison between reviewers suggested by the authors, and those selected by the editor, for example this article in BMC Medicine. The overall conclusion seems to be that reviewers suggested by authors provide reviews of equal quality than those selected by the editor. While they are more likely to suggest acceptance in the initial review, at later stages these suggestions seem to equalize.
As an author, you should have a high interest in getting over that initial review, and if you do it well, suggesting reviewers is a very good opportunity for that. I'd always suggest to make use of such an opportunity, since you probably can judge best which potential reviewers will look favorably at your paper. And that's of course what you want.
If you know an expert personally, that's usually a good option. It has to be handled with care though. When you're too close to a suggested reviewer, the editor will give significantly less weight to the recommendation of that reviewer if he knows about personal ties. But if you go to conferences and talk to people about your research, you could suggest them as reviewers afterwards if they have similar interests. Or look at your reference list, as suggested in the answer by Anthony Labarre.

Reviewers that will look favourably on your paper is not what you should want.  The purpose of review is to weed out papers that are too flawed to be publishable and to improve the quality of papers published.  Ultimately it is in the best long-term interests of the authors for the reviewers to give them a hard time in order to maximise the quality of your papers that actually appear in print.  If you can't convince those who don't already agree with you, the paper is probably not ready yet.

@DikranMarsupial As mentioned in the study I cited, the quality of the reviews is unaffected by whether they are suggested by the authors or selected by the editors. It's clear that the quality of the reviews is the most important point, but as an author I hope for high quality and favorable reviews.

I want favourable reviews from a reviewer that was not predisposed to be favourable, that is a much better test of the quality of the paper, flaws are less likely to go unnoticed, and my arguments will end up sharper.  As I said, if your paper can only convince your friends, it needs strengthening, one that can convince your opponents is undoubtedly ready for publication.

@DikranMarsupial: I guess it depends on what meaning you and silvado put into the "favorable". If "favorable" means the reviewer reads the manuscript thoroughly because of deep interest in your work that's clearly wanted. If "favorable" makes the reviewer just write a sloppy "accept" that is obviously not what we want.

@DikranMarsupial In an ideal world, reviewers would be neutral and objective. Unfortunately, it's often not the case in the real world. Assume there exists approach A and approach B to tackle the problem addressed in your paper, both scientifically sound, and you use approach A. I would recommend not suggesting someone who is known to oppose approach A in favor of approach B, unless you know the person to be particularly objective, or you want to get an unconstructive review along the lines "Reject because does not use approach B".

@silvado, they don't need to be neutral as long as they are objective.  Editors should choose proponents of both approach A and approach B, but be able to mediate the views of both reviewers in coming to a judgement about the value of the paper.  The problem you get with only getting reviews from proponents of approach A is that you get bland anodyne reviews that don't raise the problems with approach A. There are problems either way.  Seeking reviewers likely to be critical could have prevented the tragedy that befell "Pattern Recognition if Physics" recently (v. good topic for a journal).

I work in machine learning/statistics where there is a very good example of approach A (frequentism) and approach B (Bayesianism).  I am a Bayesian, but I would never reject a statistics paper for not being Bayesian, and for all the banter that goes on I very much doubt there is any other statistician that would.  As long as it is a sound solution to the problem, that is what matters (I use frequentist methods all the time myself - even though they are clearly wrong ;o).

@DikranMarsupial, I agree that editors should choose proponents of both approaches. Accordingly, an editor should try to get at least half of the reviews from reviewers not suggested by the authors.

In the mathematical based sciences, objectivity seems to be a bit easier to achieve than in natural sciences. There, I have the feeling that opinions can be very strong and do affect reviews.

In my opinion, this is a practice that should be strongly discouraged.  While on average reviewers selected by the author give fair, high quality reviews, that doesn't mean that the unscrupulous can't exploit this opportunity to select reviewers that share opinions that are far from the scientific mainstream in order to get dubious arguments into the peer-reviewed literature.  This is especially the case where the paper is on a contentious topic that is only tangentially relevant to the journal, so the action editor may not be able to easily find adequate reviewers from within their own field.
As an example, there are numerous papers published on climate related issues in energy, astronomy or general physics journals, which can easily be shown to be fundamentally flawed.  Where the journal asks for the author to recommend reviewers, it does raise the question of how much this contributed to the evident failure of the review process.  It seems to me to be better to avoid the problem ever arising.
Ultimately if the action editors cannot identify satisfactory reviewers by themselves, the work probably doesn't belong in the journal in the first place.
Being able to specify people who shouldn't be used as reviewers is, of course, another matter entirely.
To answer the question directly, suggests the names of reviewers that you consider to have the required expertise in your field and who can give you a rigorous, but constructive review.  Don't choose people you know personally if there is someone equally well qualified that you don't know.  I recall reading that when you receive reviews you are getting advice for free from experts who's time you couldn't afford to buy, so why not attempt to get the most value from it as you possibly can?

It's just a suggestion. If the editor thinks that suggested reviewers are not experts, she will not consult them. Plus she should always select additional reviewers. For example, the policy of BioMed Central is to solicit 6 reviews per paper, but the authors are asked to suggest only 4. And those suggested must not be from the same institution nor coauthors.

I know it is just a suggestion, but it is a suggestion that should not be necessary if the journal is appropriate and the action editors sufficiently familiar with the field.  As it can lead to failures of the review process, the costs outweigh the benefits in my opinion (having wasted/spent time writing a few comments papers, one of which was for a journal that required the author to specify candidate reviewers).

The journals that require a list of suggested and/or undesirable reviewers are usually smart enough to put a disclaimer to disclose the conflicts of interests, if any, concerning these reviewers.

And if the author does not disclose or recognise the conflicts of interest?  For example, there are several scientists that have tried to establish that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is a natural phenomenon and nothing to do with fossil fuel emissions (which is easily shown to be incorrect).  Would it be a conflict of interest for this small group of scientists to write each others names down on lists of suggested reviewers, they may not have even actually met each other.  It is not clear to me that there is any breach of ethics there.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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


text:
Attending a conference with self funding and no publication
I am a PhD student and got a workshop poster (only poster based on abstract, no paper, at one of the workshops co-located with the major CS conference) accepted at the top-most conference in my field (NIPS, Computer Science).
Since I am not a full-time student, I am supposed to fund my own travel, accommodation and other expenses. The conference venue is in Canada while I am located in Asia, so the expenses are quite large. The deadline for student travel grants for the main conference has already passed and the funding for workshop student travel grant has not been yet announced.
I have the following questions with regard to this:

Is it worth it to attend such tier-1 conferences only to present a poster which won’t be published/indexed/not included in proceedings?
I would need to attempt to publish in such conferences at least once during PhD and since I am self sponsored, expense for that too would be upon me.
My advisor says: “Go and have some exposure, meet and network with new people.” But he is aware that I am self-sponsored so he is not too pushy but has asked me to go. Does such networking really happens when I would be only an attendee for first five days of the conference and having a poster demo during the last day of the conference.

If my questions seems too vague, please let me know. I would try to be more clear and concise.

I don't understand question 3. Yes, networking happens at conferences, but why don't you stay for the whole thing? You don't have to leave because the poster session is done. You should, if you can afford it, stay and see as much of the rest of the content of the conference as you can. Go to talks, attend workshops and tutorials, etc.

I am not sure I understand. You got a workshop paper (a paper accepted at one of the workshops co-located with the major CS conference)  or a poster (short) paper accepted at the main conference? Workshop and poster papers are not the same.

Nitpick: "at the top most conference in my field (Computer Science)" - typically, each conference-based subfield in computer science has its own top conference. Case in point: You write "only an attendee for first 5 days of the conference", whereas in my CS subfield, 5 days is already an extraordinarily long conference - most last only for two or three days, including some of the top ones.

Some conferences have the opportunity to apply for sponsorship of students to attend: you may wish to check whether this is the case for this conference.

In my experience, many attendees leave before the end of a conference.  So it is undesirable to present at the end.

@Alexandros It is a workshop poster co-located with main conference. The acceptance was based on abstract submission.

@O.R.Mapper Updated the question with the link to the conference

@jakebeal deadline for main conference had passed when the results for workshop were announced.

It looks like only full-time students are eligible for travel grants for this conference, based on the link you provided. That's unfortunate.

Firstly, congratulations on getting your poster accepted. If you don't go, I hope you are able to find someone to present the poster on your behalf (this is actually quite common).
In terms of deciding whether or not to go: it depends on your situation.
Some things you should consider:

Your financial situation and how much the cost will be. On top of the flights, you need to pay for registration, accommodation, meals, a travel visa (if applicable), and local transportation (e.g. to and from the airport).
Your career stage and future goals. Are you planning to stay in the field? Will you have future opportunities to attend similar conferences? This affects how valuable going would be to you.
How much networking you will be able to do. Do you know other people attending the conference? If you don't know anyone, it can be difficult to network. But if you know someone there (e.g. your advisor) who can introduce you to people, that can make things much easier. You should also have some idea of who you want to network with. I will sometimes decide whether to go to a conference based on knowing who will be attending and who I want to network with.

Your advisor will know your situation better than I do and can give more specific advice. So, if you are uncertain, you should talk to him more about it.

If you decide to go, since the airfare will probably be a major expense, please set up an itinerary to visit one to three departments you are interested in getting to know better, somewhere in the vicinity of the conference.  Once you've chosen the departments you'd like to visit, here's how you broach a visit:

Dear Prof. So-and-So,
I will be in your area during the month of March, to attend such-and-so conference.  I am currently a fourth-year PhD student at y University, studying under Prof. Z.  I would be interested in visiting your department/institute during my visit to North America.  If you like, I could give a talk about xxx (give a one to three sentence description).
Sincerely,

Of course, if your advisor has a connection and can arrange an invitation for you, so much the better; but if he does not, please don't let that stand in your way.
If they take your bait and ask you to come and give a talk, plan to spend two days in that town, meeting with people and hearing about what they are doing.
Read up on current research going on in that department before arriving.

Yes, this would be a good idea.

I think that Sam has given you some very good points to consider. I have attended three conferences and spoken to many others about their views on conferences. Based on my experiences and what you have outlined, I would advise you not to attend the conference for the following reasons:

It will be very expensive. That is ok if you are getting your moneys worth, but I am not sure you will.
In my experience most conferences involve superficial networking and do not provide sufficient contact to create long term relationships. People meet, make small talk, and then go their separate ways. Sometimes if they have common ground they make plans to work on things but usually distance will prove too much of a barrier for the plans to work out.
No-one important will likely want to talk to you about research opportunities if you are just a PhD with a poster. There will be many people competing for the attention of the successful researchers and you will be at the bottom of the pile. In some ways you are probably better not to approach those people until you have something to excite them with - as I was told before, you don't want to "go out half baked," as you may only get one chance to make a good impression.
Many people who attend conferences actually treat it as something of a holiday and don't attend much of the conference proceedings.This means that fewer people that expected are actually available to talk to.

I am happy to expand on these points as needed if you want to know more about why I feel the way I do.
Also, despite what I have said, Canada is a cool place so that is one argument for why you might choose to visit and fit in the conference on the side :)

A bit cynical but mostly on point.


text:
How can I efficiently update a literature review (that got outdated due to being rejected three times)?
Two years ago a colleague and I conducted a full-text analysis-based systematic literature review regarding a specific topic in information systems. We’ve done it in the time span of three months. After that, we wrote a paper and submitted it to an information systems conference. Unfortunately, it was rejected. The blind review was comprehensive and we get really good advice for improving the paper. However, sequentially, at two other conferences, the blind reviews were positive, but due to the high competitiveness (<30% acceptance rate) the paper has also been rejected. We’ve included the responses from the reviewers into a new version of the paper.
Now, two years later, the literature review is out of date. A large set of relevant papers (>50) have been published since we conducted the review. However, we do not have enough time resources to update our full-text analysis. We have collected the new papers in our own literature review database. But to read each paper and to do a full-text coding is impossible, due to other projects that take place at our chair.
Now, I’m thinking about putting the review results into the wastebin, because I do not see any opportunity to get my results published. Needless to say, that this is very unsatisfying to me. I think, a justification that the literature review has been done in 2015 in the paper, will not be accepted by future reviewers.
So my question is:
Are there strategies to update the results of a full-text analysis without conducting a completely new analysis? For example, is there some kind of methodology which combines full-text analysis of older sources with a delta analysis or something else? Are there methods the reduce the time efforts?

I took the liberty to reduce your question to the first one as multiple questions per question are not a good fit for this format. You can ask your second question separately. Your third question is nothing we can answer here and you have to decide this for yourselves.

It strikes me that your negative assessment might, unfortunately, be correct. If the literature review wasn't published while current, and you can't devote the time/resources to do a thorough update, it's hard to imagine that whatever time-saving techniques you find that let you produce a less-than-thorough update will result in a publishable paper. (Unless the rejections were due to inappropriate choice of venue, which it doesn't sound like they were, or you're willing to lower the standard of publishing venue you submit to.)

I was taught very early in my doctoral studies that "every article has a home". Not necessarily the home you initially target, but any genuine scholarly article can eventually get published somewhere. Most of the time, when you have trouble publishing something, it is because you are shooting for a publication target with relatively high standards, but the high-standard targets don't accept what you are trying to publish. So, the simple solution is to lower your standards. The not-so-simple question, then, is how low you are willing to lower your expected publication standard. Here are some various thoughts:

First and foremost, I recommend to just publish your old article as soon as possible before it gets older rather than hoping to get it updated. Yes, ideally, that would be the best thing to do scholastically, but practically, when I've been in the situation you've described, I've ended up with work 10 years old and never published.
No matter what you decide to do, I recommend that you immediately publish what you have on SSRN as a working paper. (It takes about one hour if it's your first time.) I try to publish all my work-in-progress in semi-complete state on SSRN. That way, people can easily find it on the Web and benefit from the knowledge while I decide or finalize whatever happens to the article. If eventually nothing happens to the article, at the very least it counts as a non-peer-reviewed publication. However, some of my SSRN working papers have been very well cited, which encouraged me to eventually put in the work to finalize and get them published in regular journals.
I'm not sure why you are only targeting conferences. In information sytems, journals are terminal publications and conferences don't usually count very highly in most hiring, promotion and tenure review committees. (Incidentally, I am an information systems professor.) I know that it is recommended to first publish in a conference before publishing in a journal, but actually, I think what is really useful is to submit to a conference (whether accepted or rejected). The reviewer comments you've already received in your rejection are probably far better than the comments you would get if you presented live, so you have the necessary feedback to improve the article for journal publication. For several reasons, I would target a journal immediately rather than a conference, which leads to my next point.
In information systems (and I suspect the same for many other disciplines), conferences are often not ideal targets for literature reviews. One primary reason is that conferences have low page limits, whereas literature reviews usually need longer-than-average page limits. It is harder to do a thorough review in the space allotted. So, literature reviews often get rejected quickly. (I speak from personal experience, both as a review author and as a rejecting reviewer.) What is more, conferences don't offer "revise and resubmit". Their tight deadlines mean that if the initial submission could be improved on, they would normally be rejected, not for lack of potential, but for lack of time in the conference schedule. All of this to say: just because you got rejected from multiple conferences doesn't necessarily mean that your review article is that bad. You might do better at a good quality journal.
Unfortunately, a high-quality journal would probably not accept an outdated review. However, some lower-quality journals might do so. So, depending on what your institution accepts, submit to lower-quality journals until the article gets accepted. I don't know if they would appreciate the "endorsement", but I've found Inderscience to be a good publisher of this kind of journal: legitimate peer-reviewed journals with respectable integrity and just one or two rounds of feasible revisions, but not too demanding and so high acceptance rates for legitimate scholarly work. You can find a journal from that publisher on almost any field in STEM, business or economics. Most of their journals are not highly ranked, though. (One caveat, though: stay away from new journals: only publish this kind of work in established journals, or else you risk publishing in a journal that won't survive.)
One of the other answers suggested finding a co-author like a doctoral student or post-doc to help you update the review, but this isn't always practical, and they don't always do the work you want. I've tried such things in the past myself, and it never quite worked out as I had hoped. So I've learnt that I need to take full responsibility for the publication of my own articles. Unless you yourself are paying someone just to do that kind of work, delegation of research rarely works. So, I recommend not wasting your time with that hope, unless you have the budget to hire an assistant just to do that, which I suspect from your original post that you don't.

Thank you for this great answer, I think your answer fits pretty well to my context. This kind of thought I haven't had about a possible journal publication before.

I disagree with the premise that every article has a home.  Sometimes, things are rejected for a good reason, and by the time you find something willing to take it, you should think of the Groucho Marx line "I wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have me a as a member."   Most things I've submitted have been published, but sometimes I've pulled the plug.  A literature review that's been rejected that often probably should die -- because most likely the reason to reject it is that other literature reviews already cover the space!

@FredDouglis: From my answer: "any genuine scholarly article can eventually get published somewhere" and "how low you are willing to lower your expected publication standard". Your "pull the plug example" doesn't contradict this principle; it rather says that you would rather let your work die than publish at a low-standard (albeit legitimate) peer-reviewed journal. That is a personal choice. On the contrary, there is a strong argument for publishing all legitimate research, even of lower quality: this combats "publication bias", an important topic in systematic lit reviews.

Of course I agree with you that pseudo-scholarly garbage shouldn't be published. Although the quote that I heard is "every article has a home", my answer (and replies to your comments) explicitly say "every genuine scholarly article"; that's the context.

I recommend that you find another co-author who is willing and able to spend the time that you cannot. An good candidate may be a supervisee (PhD student, postdoc) who needs to get more familiar with the topic anyway. A fresh view may also help to address possible problems with the paper.

Good idea, I hadn't considered this in my pessimism. This seems like a great project for a grad student looking for a publication, assuming one with relevant expertise is known to OP.

Good idea in theory, but in practice, it is very hard to delegate research to someone else, except if you hire them as a research assistant. I have more comments on this in my answer.

@Tripartio: I know that this differs from country to country, but where I am from, most PhD students and postdocs are hired as research assistants. Of course you would still need to supervise them, but that’s usually considerably less work and something you need to do anyway.

@Wrzlprmft, sorry I wasn't fully detailed in my comment here, but I did reference my answer for more details. There I explain that what matters is if you are the one who hired the PhD students or postdocs. That might not be the case with the OP (but I might be mistaken). If OP doesn't have a budget to pay the research assistants, then this might not work.

@Tripartio: what matters is if you are the one who hired the PhD students or postdocs – Sure, that’s why I wrote supervisee and not just PhD student or postdoc.

@Wrzlprmft, your answer is good (I upvoted it), but my comment qualifies it by pointing out that it does not work well in the context that many people find themselves where they might not be in a position to hire someone to do the work for them.


text:
Is it appropriate to bring some kind of gift for a host professor?
I'll be doing an Internship in USA the following week, in UCLA.
I'm studying in Japan, where you should bring some kind of gift to your host professor, if nothing, for his/her kindness for accepting you as a PhD/visitor/etc.
I've seen this practice along Asian Universities (Japan, China, Singapore, India). But only in Japan professors may get offended if you do not bring anything.
A friend's professor is actually from the US (in a Japanese Univ), and when she have her a gift, the professor flipped and asked her whether this was some kind of joke or bribe, given that both of them were foreigners. Their relationship did not go so well after that.
Now, with this background, I'm a bit wary of bringing some kind of gift or souvenir to my host professor, since I'm pointing towards a postdoc in the same lab and I do not want to cause the wrong impression, but I do want to show some form of gratitude, since the Professor payed for all my expenses (lodging and airplane).

I received some local food several times from visitors, for which I was very happy
I received a big watch from a visitor, for which I was very embarassed

This professor lacks a certain grace.

Booze is the obvious choice. Most professors like it, and if yours doesn't, you can just drink it and forget about the gift rejection!

Bring it and ask one of their group members if it's appropriate.

It always depend on the gift: things that are consumable (food, snacks, booze), cheap and relevant (some small charms, etc from Japan) is good, things that look expensive, luxurious really taste like bribe.

I'll tackle the easiest side of the question first: bringing nothing should not create trouble. If you are clearly expressing your thanks for the invitation, both in written before you arrive, and in person when you meet the guy, noöne should take offense.
On the other hand, bringing a gift is fine too, but:

It should be tasteful and suitable for any taste: no sake, no unusual (by US standards) food… unless you know him well enough.
It should not be terribly expensive: people like the attention, but they don't actually care so much about the gift itself. Keep it simple, that way it cannot be understood as a bribe.
Not academia-related, but still useful to remember: make sure it passes customs (I had my French gift confiscated from me once).

I usually bring stuff to colleagues who host me when I travel to other places, if only because it gives a starting topic for smalltalk (something which I'm not very good at) in a future occasion.

Also not expensive, because if it is, the professor is likely to not be allowed to accept it as it ties into bribery rules.

@MikaelVejdemo-Johansson: Another valid point. Small "tokens of appreciation" are OK, as they have little or no nominal value. If you feel you could give the same item to somebody else in the group without a problem, then it's probably OK to give it to the boss, too.

The bribery issue isn't just a matter of rules, but also how it feels.  I'd describe it more as worrying about exploiting students.  If a student gives me a $10 gift, that's a nice gesture, although completely optional.  It it looks like it might be a $100 gift, it becomes an uncomfortably large amount, which I would not want anyone to feel they should spend (especially on a student budget).  It's best to avoid gifts that look expensive, even if they're actually cheap, so the recipient doesn't have to worry about this, and it's safest to stay far away from the "too expensive" borderline.

I agree that «how it feels» is a relevant component. But I have also had to — both in Germany and in the US — sign papers that state that I understand where the limits for bribery go and that I won't cross them.

To give a concrete example, I am legally forbidden by my employer (the State of Illinois) from accepting any gift over $100 from anyone who does business with the university (including students and interns): http://www.ethics.uillinois.edu/policies_and_legislation/gifts_to_employees/

@JeffE I cringe at the thought of students and interns as doing "business" with the university.

We have such rules, too (Germany). The allowable amount also differs by your "standing": professors may accept more than doctorands which may accept more than TAs.

It is all right to give a small gift as a token of your appreciation, but in my experience, it's customary to give it at the end of your internship. If I understand your question correctly, you are asking about giving something at the beginning. I think that might be a bit unusual. Normally, these gifts show that you appreciate the time that someone spent working with you.

Excellent point—although I've seen it done both ways with visitors, particularly if they're staying for an extended period of time (six months or a year). Short visits should wait until the end, or until a "major event" (seminar or short course or similar event).

I am in a similar situation right now - I've been accepted to a PhD program, and before the term starts I will go to the university to meet my professor and his other lab members. My professor has offered to host me throughout my visit (several days). As I wanted to give him a small gift, I bought two tiny decorative knickknacks made of glass. They cost me about 9-10 dollars in total, as I took care not to buy something expensive - which could be misconstrued as a bribe. But I am still worried. Do you think a small gift like the one I have described is appropriate in the US?

I have seen people bring local sweets, everyone likes sweets, they are cheap, so you stay away from the "bribe" thing and they can easily be shared if there are more people around. They also provide some kind of smalltalk topic.

Sweets may not always make it through customs. Especially if they are rhino horn sweets, for example.

I also remember some sweets which were sugary on the outside but had a (weird) salt core… those were eagerly passed around the lab :)

A gift to show your gratitude will always be appreciated. People like to know that their efforts in hosting you are not taken for granted, and the token will strengthen the relationship.

Depending on state law the professor can accept it.  I think that usually the threshold is somewhere around the $100 mark.  I know that in Illinois if we accept a gift that is worth more than 100 dollars we have the following 3 options:

Respectfully refuse the gift
Accept the gift and donate it to a charitable organization
Accept the gift and then make a charitable donation equal to the value of the gift

I do agree with the other responses that it should be given at the end of the visit.  The gift is a "thank you for your time and help gesture" and is a more appropriate form of saying goodbye.

Wow. $100. Do you want to visit me?

@DaveClarke you should invite him for 15 back-to-back one-day visits

Like others said, a small gift to show your appreciation would be completely acceptable. If you have trouble deciding on what to get, try giving something that your area of Japan is known for (as long as it is in good taste). It would add a nice personal touch.


text:
Positioning of elements in research paper
I'm currently writing a research paper in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and me and my professor have slightly different views on how to present and order the different elements that are necessary in a paper.
I have two parties that are interested in my research, my professor (and school) and the company I do the research for. The company has no experience with scientific reports.
My professor comes from an psychology background and wants me to write in an hour glass structure. I however believe that I should be writing it for the public that is going to profit from the research, which is in this case the company.
After a search I came across this: Is it a good academic practice to tell the reader in the introduction what the essay is about directly? In which I found the answer by Jeromy Anglim that I completely agree with.
This however only goes in to the introduction and says nothing about the discussion/conclusion section of the paper.
At the moment I have a conclusion section right after my results where I answer my research questions. After this I have a discussion section on what these results mean with the theory and all that belongs there. This was very appreciated by the company.
However, not so much by my professor. He says the conclusion always comes after the discussion, or is part of the discussion.
Long story short:

What is a good way to present the introduction and discussion/conclusion in a paper which has to be easily read and understood by non-academics.
If I do not use the hour-glass structure, what section of my paper would be the best place to justify this decision?

What venue are you targeting for this paper ? is it a research paper to be published in CHI or some such venue, or a white paper for distribution within the company, or a "popular press" article for a blog or web page ? The answers to your questions depend on these things. And don't also rule out the possibility of writing two articles.

@Suresh The paper will be distributed within the company and graded by the university. It might reach the 'outside' world after it gets graded. (I will then re-write the paper in more of an article form).

@CharlesMorisset Now you say that, it does make sense to have conclusion at the very end of the report. However, evaluation doesn't seem like a good replacement for the section I have now, where I want to make clear what the results mean for the company.

If it's to be graded by the university, then that might  be the primary metric by which you decide how to write it. You can always modify it for distribution later: this is not uncommon.

@Suresh I actually have no idea why I didn't think of doing that in the first place. Thank you!

@CharlesMorisset I might do this in the paper towards the company, "Impact of results" actually sounds very good in the language I'm writing in!

You could also write an executive summary for the company. This would not be part of the paper that the university grades, but would give the main points for the company.

@Mangara I'm not sure if I'm allowed to reply to you in this manner, but thanks! What I did now was to write a research paper for the university and a recommendation paper for the company. It's basically just a (large) summary with what the results mean for their business.

Your problem is that a term paper for university is not the same as a company white paper. You cannot expect to write a nice white paper ("What is a good way to present the introduction and discussion/conclusion in a paper which has to be easily read and understood by non-academics.") and expect your professor to grade it as such. The conventions for white papers and academic reports are significantly different (and I would honestly be surprised of the positioning of the conclusions are really the only required change).
I like Suresh's suggestion - produce two versions of the report, one for the company, which focuses on the results and implications for the company, and one for the university, which is written for an academic reader outside the company. The style may well differ, even if the vast majority of the content will be the same.


text:
How can I tell whether a mathematics journal seems reputable?
There are some general questions on this site about judging the reputability of journals in general:

How do you judge the quality of a journal? and
How to identify predatory publishers/journals

I am interested in answers specific to mathematics, that may not have been raised in the other questions.
I received the following email from the "American Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics" ten days after submitting a paper online. How can I tell whether this is a reputable journal? In general, how can I tell whether a mathematics journal is reputable?

Dear Authors,
On behalf of the Chief Editor of the “American Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics” we are happy to inform you that your article entitled ‘A possible approach proof to proof the Riemann Hypothesis” is accepted for publication in (Jan-June 2015).
Please send DD/Cheque for US $ 250.00 payable to ‘ Vijay Kumar Jha ‘ to our address.
Our address:
  Vijay Kumar Jha
  Managing Editor
  c\o. ACADEMIC RESEARCH JOURNALS (INDIA)
4383/4A, Ansari Road, Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110002
(M) 08826561892
We thank you very much for your contribution and encourage you to continue submitting your future.
Yours sincerely,

If I can ask, what led you to submit a paper to this journal?

i seeked in web for " journal of pure and applied mathematics " then i find a list of journal then it's appeared to me submission online instruction in large table has , name and .. and abstracact and .., then i'm doing all those insructions of submitting paper

The title of your paper is not too convincing.

the title of my paper is identical that in my paper

this is the title of my paper" A possible approach proof to proof The Riemann Hypothesis"

@user51189: I don't think the journal is likely to be of any quality. You can pay them for publication, but the result is not likely to help make the paper any more accepted in the community.

then , why they informed me that my paper is accepted for publication , in which sides ?

@user51189: if the journal has low standards, they may accept every paper that is submitted. In fact, a 10-day wait for review of a math paper is almost humorously short, and suggests that the paper was not sent out to an independent reviewer. We should not keep using these comments for back and forth conversations, though.

In case the question does not get reopened soon, here is one easy tip: There are very few, if any, reputable math journals which require the author to pay for publication.  Thus -- in mathematics -- if a journal asks you to pay, it is very likely that they are predatory.

@ff524: I think that perhaps "what makes a math journal reputable" is slightly different than "what makes a general journal reputable". For example, an answer here can talk about specific databases (MathSciNet and ZentrallBlatt MATH), and specific practices in mathematics which may not be applicable to other fields. In fact, I was writing such an answer when the question was closed...

I agree with Oswald Veblen: the OP asked about math journals, and this has not been asked before.  I gave in my comment above what I think is a good tip for math journals.  In many of the sciences, this tip would be ridiculously off.  More fundamentally: I see many amateur mathematicians being taken advantage of by predatory journals.  Evidently the issue of telling whether a journal is predatory is a complicated one, worth more than two questions on the site.

I'll leave it to Pete and Oswald to answer the revised question, but, in view of the danger that user51189 might send in $250, let me just say that I did some basic googling, and it did not inspire confidence in this journal.

For reference, this was previously asked at http://math.stackexchange.com/q/1041688/18398, and I asked the OP to ask it here, instead.

An immediate cause of suspicion is that something calling itself the American Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics has a postal address in India.

Another immediate cause of suspicion that the article processing charge is payable by a cheque made out in an individual's name. Does "Academic Research Journals" not have a company bank account?

@Artie Prendergast-Smith : I think yes, now am ready to withdraw my paper from this journal

For academic mathematicians, it's not so hard to avoid predatory journals. We have a sense of the journals that we "typically" publish in, and the journals we "aspire" to publish in, and we stick mostly to these journals. For journals we don't know yet, we can ask colleagues to get their opinion. One (possibly unfortunate) goal of publishing in academia is to build a vita and maintain/advance your career, and it doesn't help as much to publish in a journal that none of your colleagues or supervisors has heard about.
For people who don't have that kind of professional experience, there are several easier questions you can ask. The better answer to each of these is "Yes".  On their own, none of these questions indicates that a journal is necessarily reputable or nonreputable. But, if the journal gets a "No" answer to many of them, then I would be very hesitant to submit a paper.

Does the journal publish with no cost to the author? Reputable mathematics journals almost never charge fees for publication. Some very good journals offer an open-access model as an option, but it is almost never the default at the moment.
Is the journal indexed by MathSciNet and/or Zentralblatt MATH? These sites aim to be very comprehensive for mathematics journals. Being indexed is not really a sign of quality, but not being indexed is a red flag.
Is the journal ranked on the Australian Mathematical Society Ranking? Even C-rated journals can be OK, but if a journal is completely omitted I would take that as a reason to be cautious.
Is the journal either published by a well-known publisher, or affiliated with a university or mathematical society?  Most reputable math journals fall into these categories, but not all. Some journals run by professional publishers are still not very reputable, of course.
Does the journal have a professional looking website?  Grammatical errors or parts of the website that seem to be entirely missing are a cause for concern.
Does the journal have a long history of publication (say, at least 20 years)?  Most predatory journals are very young; most math journals are relatively old.

The "American Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics" has a "No" answer to all of these questions. If they really did have a 10-day turn around between receiving a paper and accepting it, as described in comments, I am even more skeptical of the quality of the journal - that is an almost absurdly fast turn around time for a mathematics journal.  I would not pay them anything to publish a paper of mine, nor would I recommend it to anyone else.
Of course, you can publish in a predatory journal, just as you can publish in a for-hire press. But if you are an amateur or "outsider" looking to publish in a math journal, you are likely doing it to get a sort of "seal of approval" on your paper. Journals that mathematicians view as unreputable will not give your paper that kind of recognition among mathematicians, just as degrees from unreputable colleges are unlikely to impress others.
If your goal is just to disseminate your mathematical work, and you don't require peer review, you can often use arXiv.org instead. Depending on the area, you may need to have a professional "sponsor", but the arXiv will keep your paper available for free for the indefinite future in a way that is widely accessible to the public.

Another way that academics (not just mathematicians) figure out which journals are reputable is by noticing which journals publish the papers that they cite, and which journals publish the papers that those papers cite, and so on.

@Oswald Veblen , I would be interest to make my paper in arxiv.org, but already request for me "endorser" , as i don't have any publication before

Thank you for your answer : pleas this is the journal that i submitted my work in it :http://www.academicresearchjournals.com/journal-detail.php?journals_id=37, you will find online submission

@user51189.....Journal seems like online shopping site to me.

The publisher of this particular journal, "Academic Research Journals", appears on a widely cited list of "predatory publishers" who publish open access journals with very low standards and charge authors to publish.  You probably don't want a publication in this journal.
See Beall's list at:
http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
Also follow the link from the list to the criteria that Beall used to compile the list.  New predatory publishers pop up every week, so you really need to consider these issues in evaluating a new journal.
As ff524 has pointed out in the comments, there are actually two web sites using the name "Academic Research Journals"  The web site of academicresearchjournals.com could easily be confused with the other academicresearchjournals.org.  Whoever put together the .com web site used "Academic Research Journals (India)" rather than "Academic Research Journals" in some places but not others.  This certainly looks like a copycat operation.
In any case, the journal mentioned by the original poster has the appearance of one of these predatory journals and should be avoided for that reason.

The one linked on Beall's list is actually a different "Academic Research Journals" (based in Nigeria). This one is "Academic Research Journals (INDIA)" which is a different publisher (different websites and everything).

The web page of the journal still reads "Published by Academic Research Journals"  I guess it was too much work to change the name everywhere :-)

So it does, but this is still an inaccurate answer. I suggest you edit it.


text:
When applying for more positions at one institution, should I apply at once or consecutively?
There were two open positions at one research institution. I already applied for one because of the deadline. The second position has deadline in January. They are in different departments, the number of employees is above 100. I think I would prefer the second position because it is more senior and it is for three years while the first one is more like a postdoc and for one year. But both state they can be extended thereafter.
How should proceed now? Should I submit the second applications as soon as possible? Or should I wait if they contact me from the first one? I am not in touch with anybody from that institution, nor is my supervisor. I'v met some of them on a conference.

Same division within the institution or spread all over it?

What sort of position?

Are the positions in the same group? Do you know the PIs? Can you (or your advisor) contact the PIs even if you don't know them?

@Buffy I updated the question.

Just make the deadline for the January position unless something happens to change your mind. Nothing will happen to early applicants other than clerical sorting and such.

@Buffy OK, if they won't contact me from the first position I will submit the second application. But if they will contact me? Should I try to say that I am interested in the second position and I want to wait?

Do not wait until you are contacted, because there is as substantial chance that will never happen.
So long as you apply before the deadline, the timing does not matter.  It is very likely that the two applications are evaluated completely separately, and even if they were not, timing is unlikely to be important.
Most universities have very little hiring activity in December.  Applications submitted in December or January are unlikely to result in job offers before February.

I'd suggest that you apply now for the first one and wait a bit. You will probably have some feedback by the deadline for the second one.
There is probably no real value in applying long before a deadline, provided that you can actually meet it with all requirements.
It is also unlikely that you would get a decision/offer before the second deadline, but more information can't hurt and might help..


text:
A paper is published in a book, conference and its proceedings, should I cite it as book, conference or conference proceeding paper?
I use Mendeley reference manager and sometimes import articles from browser to my Mendeley Library using browser extension. Import is totally fine but I am having two confusions after importing:

Some conference papers are published in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) and many other related Lecture Notes series of Springer. When I add it to Mendeley, it categorizes that paper as "Book" although it was originally published in a conference. So should I cite this paper as

an article in a book titled LNCS or
Conference in which it was published or
Conference proceedings in which it was published?

Please refer to following image as an example of this. First screenshot is from Springer site and second is from Mendeley Desktop paper details section.

If I have to cite it as a Conference proceeding, then what should be name of the Conference Proceeding,

the name written as "Proceedings of International Conference on XYZ" or
the actual title of proceeding as "XYZ"?

Taking the above picture as an example: Here, the title of conference is "International Conference on Human Centered Computing" and Proceeding name is "Human Center Computing". Should I refer title as "Proceedings of International Conference on Human Centered Computing" or just "Human Centered Computing"?

If that paper is Workshop paper of that conference, in this case, what would be citation style, workshop title, Conference title or proceedings title?

Please help me understand this. Thanks in anticipation.
PS Pardon me if all three of the above should be posted as separate questions but I think these all all related to one another like an IF/ELSE condition and may help in reaching a conclusion.

In the specific case of Springer, you can find the recommended way to cite near the bottom of the page of each paper on Springer's website. In your image, see the "Cite as" link.

In addition to what @GoodDeeds said, you could simply google the titles of some of the other papers published in the same conference proceedings and see how they are cited in publications, looking to see if there is a reasonably consistent way they are cited.

People in the field will recognize the article for what it is, so there is no real danger of confusion. Depending on the discipline, there is a hierarchy, where, for example, book chapters are considered to be less prestigious than a conference. In this case, you would use the citation style appropriate for the highest element in the hierarchy. In your case, this would be the HCC17 conference, e.g. Proceedings of International Conference on Human Centered Computing, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 10757, Springer, 2018. Here, Proceedings and LCNS vol 10757 are at the same level.

If you are writing a journal article, follow the journal's instructions.  If there are no instructions, imitate papers they have recently published.
If you are doing homework or writing a thesis, ask your professor.  Do not be surprised if they do not care.
So long as the paper is easy to find from the citation, any of these approaches is reasonable.


text:
Continue applications after accepting a position
There are various questions (and excellent answers) here about what to do when one accepts a job regarding existing applications. The general consensus is "withdraw existing applications".
I write with a variation on this that I have not seen addressed here.
If someone accepts a soft-money research position at one institution, and that position will start in 1.5 or 2 years, must they still withdraw and cease applying to other institutions?
Some context: The current role is post-doc. The goal is TT. The soft-money research position is a good step and starts when the post-doc ends.
It seems strange the candidate is effectively removed from the job market for ~2 years (1.5 until position starts, and one assumes it is bad form to apply for other jobs immediately in a new position), even though the next position is not committing to salary. It seems like other TT applications that are pending, or new ones that might be submitted in the next 1.5 years, could lead to the desired TT job, in which case the soft-money position would not be taken.
Is this approach unethical?
Edit
Soft money is a common term in my field. It means the institution provides no fixed long-term salary support. You are responsible for your salary by grant-writing.
Edit 2
Several questions about why the 1.5 year delay. This is part of dual career hire. One got TT, one got soft-money after post-doc ends.

The term "soft money" in an academic context was unfamiliar to me.  I looked it up, and I guess this means that it is funded by an external grant.  (http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2012/04/02/essay-building-career-soft-money-position)  Maybe you could be a little more precise in addition to or instead of using this "euphemism"?

Perhaps you could explain why the position has been set up so far in advance.

A soft money position is a position where your salary (and health care, and other benefits) are paid entirely out of the grant. No grant, no salary, no health care. In this circumstance, the hosting institution has almost no reason to be loyal to you since you're better than free - you're paying them the indirect cost out of your grant! I'd also be surprised if you're bound by contract. In this circumstance, if you get a research position supported by soft money and then later get a TT position, you'd leave the soft money position right away and go to TT.

@Irwin: I would think that, all other things being equal, being a source of income for the university rather than a sink of income for the university would be a great reason to make them loyal to you!  But I agree with the rest of what you say: the government will not be "disappointed" and will surely manage to use the money somewhere else.

Explanation added. Delay due to dual career hire starting after 18-month post-doc ends.

In my experience, setting up academic jobs more than one academic year in advance is uncommon precisely for this reason: each party gets nervous that the other will back out.  Thus for instance it is relatively common that one wants to accept one position and "finish out" a current position, and in my experience it is quite often acceptable to stay for one additional academic year and very rarely acceptable to stay longer than that.
I would be interested to hear more about the circumstances in which a position gets offered and accepted 1.5 to 2 years in advance.  As for the ethics: formally accepting an academic position involves (i) announcing your intention to do so and (ii) signing something saying that you accept the job, with a certain start date.  I do know that some positions which are funded by external grants need to be accepted conditionally on final funding of those grants (I was quite recently involved in such a situation).  This is potentially awkward, as the risks involved in a conditional offer not coming to fruition are highly asymmetrical: for the employer it means that some people's time has been wasted and that certain proposed projects will not get carried out; for the employee it means that a highly trained, valued worker is out of a job for a year through no fault of their own.  It may be that one has the ethical right to turn down a conditional offer for an unconditional offer under certain circumstances; I don't think you should use this an excuse, but if you honestly have doubts that the offer will become actual, then I think at some point you are entitled to take a real job rather than a virtual one.  (I would be interested to hear more about this point from others.)
If you are really signing on a dotted line a commitment to a position far in the future, conditional on funding, and with an uncertain salary...well, it is not clear to me why one would sign such a contract.  Barring exceptional circumstances you probably shouldn't.
I feel like the standard unit of "going through with the position you accepted" is one academic year.  In other words, if you agree in writing to take a position, then ethically speaking you should keep it for at least one year (I think).  Most formal contracts I am familiar with are academic year to academic year anyway: I am a tenured faculty member and I still sign a contract every August.  In my department we have the understanding that a postdoc, for instance, should feel to vacate the position at the end of any given academic year if they get a better job: in fact, these usually count as success stories, including on our part.  In general vacating a postdoc for a tenure-track job seems especially understandable.
All of the above makes me unsure of what the etiquette might be on a position that starts so far in the future.  As you can see, I am skeptical that such an arrangement should be as ethically binding as a standard offer, but it depends on the understanding both parties had when entering the arrangement.
Added: The additional information seems helpful.  Is the current postdoc at the same institution as the partner's tenure-track job and the future "soft-money" gig?  I gather not.  Anyway, in this case the "soft-money" job sounds more like a courtesy to the tenure track partner than anything else.  Have you signed any paperwork saying that you intend to take the job?  If not, I think you're totally fine not to end up taking it (however if your partner plans to stay this should be done carefully so as not to cause trouble for him/her) and they probably will not even be that broken up about it.  Probably you haven't signed a contract for something so far in the future, right?  If you did sign a form signifying your intent to work at a certain job, it seems to me that you need to ask if you can not take the job rather than tell.  But it's hard to imagine the circumstances in which they would hold you to a future job that you no longer want.

Details added. Long lead time due to dual career hire. Partner got TT now. Other could start sooner but makes sense to finish post-doc.


text:
"Thank you" notes after giving a seminar talk
I am just finishing my PhD and I have now been on the job market and started to speak at many universities. I have realized it is a time commitment for a person to host a seminar speaker and am really grateful for the experiences that many of my hosts have given me at these universities. For this reason, I have made a policy of sending thank you notes to those that host me when I visit another university's seminar.  These notes that I write typically just say thank you for taking time to host me and funding my visit (if they funded it). It also thanks them for their input and questions about my work if they gave me a useful idea. One of my colleagues has told me this is odd, so I wanted to ask:
Is writing thank you notes to someone for inviting me to speak and hosting me at their university overkill? Is there any negative outcome that can happen from doing this?

Check out Randy Pausch's lectures. He specifically mentions the importance of thank you notes.

Even if it is unusual, I can't see how it could possibly be bad unusual :)

I agree that sending a paper thank-you note is a little unusual.  There's nothing wrong with it, of course.  You may come across as slightly eccentric, but academia has plenty of people like that!
A thank-you email, on the other hand, is perfectly usual.

A paper note does have some old times flavour that some people will appreciate. It will certainly help them remember you in the future...

I have had the pleasure of taking a few courses with the most thanked man in computer science. I think part of the reason so many people have thanked him in their papers is that he consistently teaches his students to show appreciation for people's help and to be helpful themselves. The students he advices also tend to do well in their careers. I think there is a causal relationship (although he also picks good students).
By all means, keep showing appreciation for people's help. Even if paper thank-you notes are unusual in your field, just send them anyway.

If I share my knowledge to people in my seminar, why should I be thanking them? They should thank me.
Is this  correct or should I stick with the formality of putting a "Thank You" slide in the end of my ppt presentation.

Hmmm. Maybe because they boost your career by giving you visibility and an opportunity to work with other people. This seems to be very poor-spirited and a bit arrogant.

They do. It's standard for the moderator to ask at the end of a talk for thanks to the speaker - usually followed by mild applause. But maybe your talk isn't so good, so you should thank the audience for putting up with it. If you've been invited to give your talk you should thank the sponsor for their hospitality. In any case some perhaps unnecessary good manners never hurts.


text:
Welcoming certain groups to apply
I am applying for jobs and certain job postings specifically "welcome applications from" certain groups that "contribute to diversification."
I am in one of these groups that they state, but you have to get to page 4 of my CV or page 2 of my teaching statement to find out.
Why are they especially welcoming these groups? Is there part of their evaluation criteria that considers this diversification? Should I make the committee more aware of my belonging to such a group? If so, how?
[Nota bene: This is a North American job.]

In all likelihood, they will not actually care whether you belong to that group (and they might well not be allowed to care). The statement is there to make sure people from underrepresented groups do not avoid applying.

@TobiasKildetoft It is probably the opposite: they are supposed to care ("positive discrimination" is allowed), but in reality they don't. A similar statement seen often is: "In case of equal suitability for the position, people belonging to group X are preferred". Employers put such lines there to indicate how much they "care" about equal opportunities for all. But in reality there is no such thing as "equal suitability" because everybody is different.

@louic That seems highly unlikely, as they would have actually written that in the description, instead of just welcoming applicants from minority groups. Also, I have never heard of positive discrimination being considered proper for job applications (unlike college applications).

@TobiasKildetoft Maybe it depends on the field and country. I am talking about STEM fields in Europe. I have often seen the quote I used in job ads; the intention of this quote leaves little room for doubt.

My understanding for typical STEM fields in Europe is that positive action / discrimination is not allowed, but this job is in North America where I think the culture may be different. I added an edit in the question.

Not this again. Vote to close as duplicate. (https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/95011/is-it-considered-normal-to-publish-job-offers-inviting-candidates-to-apply-based)[https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/95011/is-it-considered-normal-to-publish-job-offers-inviting-candidates-to-apply-based]


text:
Is asking an author I'm reviewing to cite me a conflict of interest?
I'm reviewing a paper whose work is quite related to some of my early PhD work, that was about 2 years ago. I have a paper published in a Journal that proved that method A had good solutions for the problem X.
Now I'm asked to review a paper that does a variation on method A, although they never cite my paper at all, is not exactly the same, but I think there should be a reference, if not because it is my paper, but because by the time I did the survey no one else had used that method.
Now, that said, is it a breach of interest to ask the authors to cite my work, or at least read it?

Is it a conflict of interest? Conceivably. Is it common? Hell yeah.

You can always say "you need to talk a bit more about previous work on X Y and Z, and how your work fits into the bigger picture of past contributions. Here is a list of references. You should probably cite some of them in your paper." Include your work, but don't tell them directly to cite it. If your work is truly relevant enough they will cite it, if not they will cite some of the other papers you included.

As an editor, I can only say that reviewers suggesting to add references to their own work is very common. There are two reasons, I think: first, the reviewers know their own work best. Second, some reviewers use that to boost their citations. The latter is clearly academic misconduct, but the authors may decide not to follow such recommendations if they feel that the respective reference is not necessary (when they should argue that in their reply or their letter to the editor).

Similar if not duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/153883/which-could-be-considered-an-appropriate-number-of-self-citations/

If I were you, I would ask myself the following question:

is it better for the paper to be aware of my work?

I believe this is the main question you need to ask. If you see your work is relevant to the problem and can enhance the paper content, then you have to point to it. If you see your work as a complement of the paper just reference it in the review.

And if you are worried about appearing to have a conflict of interest, point to papers other than your own also.

... which you should do in any case.

I don't agree that this is a conflict of interest. The reviewer can point out related work, and recommend that the author cite it. if the work is in fact irrelevant, the author can point this out, and the editor can adjudicate. Referees are supposed to be experts on the material.
This scenario has happened to me a few  times. I've recommended that the author cite the relevant papers (including my own as needed).

Strictly speaking, I think this situation is a conflict of interest (following the "Washington Post rule"), but one that is appropriately addressed as Suresh describes.  However, standards for addressing this situation may differ in different fields.

I agree with Suresh. It may subvert the scholarly record not to cite the relevant literature--whether you are among the authors of that relevant literature is irrelevant. Those who insist a priori there is a conflict of interest may themselves have an interest in not citing the prior work of others. I am very familiar with such cases, having corresponded with authors who had published an axiomatization that had appeared in another form in the Journal of Symbolic Logic the year before.  They acknowledged this--it was of interest--but did not correct the papers that came out subsequently.

To be clear, a conflict of interest does not automatically require you to recuse yourself from reviewing the paper; it only requires that the conflict be exposed to the editor.  (Reviewing a paper that already cites your work also presents a conflict of interest.)

This is just an aside, but if reviewing a paper that already cites your work constitutes a conflict of interest (and I agree that it technically does), then it must be an incredibly common conflict of interest for reviewers that are really prominent in their area. Personally, I would like the best researchers in my area to review my papers but I would also, on the whole, trust them to deal with this conflict of interest without it needing to be raised as such.

Yes, of course there is a conflict of interest in this situation.  Reasonable people may differ in their opinions on how the conflict of interest should be addressed in this circumstance, but I think it's obvious that a conflict exists.  You are in a position of power over the authors of the paper in your role as a reviewer.  If the authors were to cite your paper, that would be of some benefit to you.  Therefore, asking them to do it inherently involves some element of conflict of interest.

Yes, the situation is literally a conflict-of-interest scenario. The questioner has positive motivation to require/suggest the author(s) cite, which is (at least potentially) corrupting. One must avoid not only impropriety, but the appearance of impropriety. Probably should send the paper back to the editor, explaining, not as a referee report, but as explaining the conflict-of-interest.

I believe the benefit of the additional citations is so negligible that there is no conflict. By your logic there is a conflict if you review a paper that cites you ahead of time.

Indeed, literally, there is conflict of interest in reviewing a paper citing oneself, etc. Then the issue devolves to what to do in this case. The realities of academe seem to "forgive" the situation that the ms. cites the referee, since otherwise things would be too difficult. The issue of recommending citation is arguably more problemmatical, although, still, the editor may request continuing regardless.

Don't many editors assign reviewers based on the citations?

@paulgarrett: What's the point of sending it back to the editor?  The editor will see in your report that you asked to be cited, and if the editor has a problem with that, she can always ignore your report and assign a different referee.

@NateEldredge, Yes, "in principle" that would be true, but in reality, that is, in practice, editors do not want to spend time checking such things... Therefore, to the extent that one wants to attend to such things, it's in one's own ball-court. Yes, it is easy to argue that this is "over-compensating", but in the realities of these times I myself am happier to have pre-emptively avoided certain troubles than to have hoped they'd not be unreasonably visited on me. "Pre-emptively" is a useful notion, both in self-defense and as a guide to honorable behavior, by my tastes. Others differ. :)

@paulgarrett: I don't think that refusing the review is a good solution. The conflict arises because the authors do not provide appropriate references (the root of the conflict is not on the reviewer's side). The consequence of refusing all such reviews would be that only people who either a)  aren't expert in the field (risk of lower quality review and/or increased workload for reviewing outside proper field) or b) do not perceive the conflict of interest or c) even actively abuse their power as reviewers do the reviews. Neither a) nor an increased risk of c) are desirable.

Asking whether something is or is not a conflict of interest is generally a misleading question, since it suggests a sharp cut-off rather than a continuum.  It's very rare to be so completely detached as to have no problematic incentives (for example, many other authors are friends or rivals).  Instead, the question is how troublesome the incentives are and how to handle them.
Recommending that the author cite your own papers certainly has the potential for abuse.  However, people generally don't worry about it very much, since the worst-case scenario of a few borderline unnecessary citations is not so terrible (if the referee asks for many citations or they are really not relevant, then the editor should notice and intervene).
What's tricky about it is that some papers must be cited to give appropriate credit.  If you discovered X, but the author mistakenly credits it to a later paper based on your work, then you have an obligation to tell the author about your earlier paper.  The difficulty is in distinguishing what must be cited from what you wish would be cited.  I don't think there is any standard rule for how to make this distinction.
What I do in practice is to make explicit recommendations to cite my work only when I can give a clear factual reason.  I.e., if the author says something historically incorrect or gives the wrong attribution, then I correct it.  However, I'm reluctant to ask the author to include a citation if everything in the paper would be correct without it.  For example, sentences like "Previous applications of Smith theory include X, Y, and Z" are still correct even if I wish W were also included.
On the other hand, the next best thing is to say something like "The author may find the following related papers interesting: ..."  There's an implicit suggestion that citations could be appropriate, but it's less pushy than saying it explicitly, and the author can decide whether to include citations.
This doesn't really solve the conflict of interest issue.  After all, the implicit suggestion is pretty transparent, and the author may still feel some pressure.  However, it seems to me like a reasonable compromise.

The tl;dr version:

Of course it's a conflict of interest--you stand to benefit.
You should do it anyway if the work is highly relevant since good citations are important.

I don't believe so.
Conflict of Interest usually deal with people that you are at the same institution with, or have collaborated with in the past, or have some kind of financial investment in, and if there's a conflict of interest, you generally decline to review that article. The journal or conference you're reviewing for likely has reviewer guidelines for what constitutes conflict of interest.
There is a risk that you can "out" yourself as an anonymous reviewer, but if you're able to suggest a few papers from various authors, that risk decreases. :)

-1 for an overly restrictive definition of "conflict of interest", limiting it only to financial settings; the ethical issues are more complex than that. +1 for the "suggest multiple papers" comment as a practical approach, which definitely seems to be the norm in practice.

If the work is in your area of interest/expertise, there is always a potential for conflict of interest.  If the work is a competing approach that you don't agree with, there is conflict; if the work is a similar approach to your own, there is conflict; if this is a journal or conference you submit to with limited spots available, there is conflict; if it is an application for funds you also are eligible for, rather than a paper, there is conflict; if it is a paper that might be used as evidence in such a grant application, there is conflict.
If you or an editor suppress relevant references from your report (whether your own, others you know, or the work of people you have never met) you are compromising the value of the paper if accepted, and impacting the citation chain, and committing a form of indirect plagiarism - people who find this paper will find it more difficult to find the others, and will tend to give attribution to the authors of this paper rather than the original inventors of the ideas (yourself or others). If you are an expert in the area, as your selection as a referee suggests you should be, then you should have a familiarity with the literature and part of your job is to assess the comprehensiveness of the literature review.  It may be ideas have been reinvented, it may be an early paper was read or referenced and the idea planted but the citation forgotten or lost, it may be overt plagiarism that the author knows of the work and the similarity, but wants the glory alone.
If you include requests to cite irrelevant references (whether your own or others or others previously published in the same journal), that is again a nepotism-like form of misconduct.  Conversely, I have seen reviewers/editors reports that discount relevant work because it wasn't published in a venue of sufficiently high reputation, this is a form of plagiarism and chauvinism.
Work should stand alone on its merits irrespective of who wrote it or where it was published. You as a reviewer have a responsibility to judge the work, and whether it has dealt properly with the literature, to add missed citations, and potentially to remove miscitations (often self-citations by the authors that are of no relevance).

+1 for comments on indirect and overt plagiarism. I am aware of such cases.

I do not think this is a yes and no question. Furthermore I note that it seems the journal editor is not seen as part of the loop. So from my editor point of view I would make the following points:

Asking authors to cite one's paper is generally risking to be considered distasteful (by the editor and by the authors). Most of the cases I have encountered is not about improving the paper, but to promote ones own research. Hence, a perspective on the reasons is important.
If your research is not referenced it could be a sign that more relevant literature is missing. In such a case you are better off briefly researching if that is the case and point that out to the authors and to the editor. Your paper along with others can serve as one of perhaps several examples.
Do not forget the editor. Point out that your paper is not referenced but please provide a detailed account for why it should be. Appropriate cases could include: it is a first, it is the latest building on earlier work, it contains key information not found elsewhere. If the paper is one of many possible to be cited, your case is probably not strong enough.

So as I see it, "conflict of interest" applies if you ask about adding references for the wrong reason. If you do ask something to be added, make the point very clear why your paper (hopefully along with others) is invaluable and how it would improve the paper. Make your argument primarily with the editor. An editor should evaluate reviewers reports and provide feedback on what should be done to the authors. If you do not have a very strong scientific reason to do it, don't.

Sure it is a conflict of interest. However, this particular type of conflict of interest IMHO cannot be avoided and is quite probable due to how the review process works:

Reviewers are chosen according to their expertise.
Therefore, chances are that they have been publishing relevant papers (how else would the editor know of them?).
Manuscripts are not perfect, otherwise we'd not need the review process. One important point of the peer review process is that someone who's an  expert in the field can actually check that the references are adequate (this is often explicitly asked for). People who have been publishing in the field usually know best whether references are adequate.
In consequence, you want exactly these people for the review, even though it creates a conflict of interest. It is a trade-off between the chance to get a better review from someone who is an honest player in that field compared to a "stranger", and the risk that the reviewer exercises undue power over the authors to advance his citation count.
So you'll face this quite regularly once you have been making meaningful contributions to your field.

However, usually it is possible to ask that references on this-and-that topic should be given instead of asking to cite your paper.
You may want to look at this related discussion: How to avoid identifying myself in a review?
which discusses a similar situation (though the perceived conflict is slightly different).
Side note: the very fact that you ask here is probably a very good indicator that you are not abusing your power as reviewer. Those who do most probably neither ask nor answer here.

Asking the author to cite your previous work is not a conflict of interest, but it may indicate a lack of impartiality on your part. In other words, there is always conflict of interest whenever you act as an expert reviewer and editors implicitly assume some small conflicts exist, they also believe you can be impartial despite the conflict. If you are concerned that by asking the authors to cite your previous work that you are not being impartial, there are 3 things you can do

You can reveal you identity and say "for what is it worth, you may want to cite MY work".
You can write the review in such a way that the recommended citations can be easily deleted. You can then inform the editor that you have recommended some citations to your work and you are concerned about your impartiality and ask the editor to use his/her judgment about removing the recommended citations.
You can leave them in and say nothing. If the editor thinks you are being unfair or too self prompting, they won't ask you to review again.

Only argue for you to be cited if the paper simply cannot continue without you being cited. People don't need to keep up with every paper in the literature, and shouldn't be expected to. So, people will cite some papers more than others. In my experience, whenever I suggest authors to cite work I've written, it is strictly because I think that my method/paper may improve upon the work they're doing. If the paper is otherwise good, without my work being cited, then I really don't care if they cite me or not.