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Expiration of accreditation of the program
In the university Master degree transcript, if it is written that accreditation of program is valid until Jan 10, 2016, then what does that imply?

For you, who hold the degree: nothing. Your degree does not have an expiration date. It will remain valid for all uses after Jan 10, 2016.
For the department: if they want to continue enrolling students in this program and handing out this degree, they will have to renew their accreditation. This means justifying to a local or national regulating body (depending on the country and local law) the value of the degree, the seriousness of the degree-granting process, and many other such assurances.


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Is it possible for the international graduate student to take the exam of professional courses?
I would like to know whether the international graduate student can also take the exam of professional courses such as CPA,or CFA?Are there any legal restrictions?

if you are in Japan, there are many people that go to Guam to take the CPA. Essentially anybody can do it, but if you graduate from an American University, there are some modules that you do not need to take, pretty much like the Japanese CPA.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Can international graduate student take the free online courses offered in Coursera?
Is it necessary to notify to the graduate school when taking the free online courses?

Grad school is not slavery :). I don't see many things the school might impede you to do,  nor many they should know about if it is not directly related to them.

Don't ever tell your professor unless he seems like the type who cares for your education. If you are on a RA, then forget even discussing about it with anyone.

This question has nothing to do with online courses.  The answer won't change if you substitute "training for a marathon" or "breeding racing dogs" or "answering questions on acacemia.SE".

I do not think you have to tell your advisor, as long as it does not interfere with your work, you should be free to do whatever you like. Of course you cannot stop doing your mandatory work in sake of the courses, but I do not see a good reason to notify anyone.
You can always tell your labmates, so you can take the course together and get more out of it.

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I have an "integrated masters" degree. How can I eventually gain a PhD?
I graduated in the UK last year with an M Ost, an integrated masters of osteopathy. This is currently the standard qualification offered by colleges teaching osteopathy in the UK, although it's changed several times in the past and seems likely to change again.
My course consisted of 480 credits. 360 credits were at undergraduate level (including 120 at honours level) and a further 120 credits were at master's level.
I am intrigued by research, and wonder if it would be possible to eventually apply for a PhD, but I have no idea whether applicants with integrated masters courses are considered. I suspect not, and assume I would need to do some extra work.
However I don't understand what that extra work would be.
As you can tell.... I am a little lost! This seems the most basic of questions, but I am struggling to find any clear advice. I have contacted members of the faculty in my old college, but they haven't not been very helpful. Suggestions have included doing a further qualification in osteopathic studies -- something I'm not keen on. I would prefer something that is science-based, and would be accepted as qualification to go on to apply for a PhD.
I appreciate this is quite an open-ended question. Ideally I'm probably looking for pointers as to where and how to continue my search. Should I contact PhD-providing universities and colleges directly, and ask what I would need to do in order to be considered?
I also understand that PhDs are hard, hard work. I am not looking for questions around why I want to do one, or alternative options. Many thanks for understanding this.

Should I contact PhD-providing universities and colleges directly, and ask what I would need to do in order to be considered? — Yes!

Also, what field are you looking to do a PhD in? Osteopathy, or something else? That makes a difference!

In the UK, you will be expected to have some research experience before applying to a PhD programme in science: not necessarily publications (although that always helps!), but certainly having done an extended project and written a dissertation about it. In my field (physics) you can definitely apply straight out of an integrated masters degree, provided that your last year had a substantial research component.
If you don't have any research background at all (or just short summer projects or the equivalent), then this is the "extra work" you are looking for. Find a MSc by research in a field as close as possible to the one you want to do a PhD in. This also has the advantage that you get to decide whether a PhD is really for you while only taking a year, and to leave with a qualification at the end if it's not.
Of course, this is just general advice: as JeffE says, individual universities will be able to provide specific information on their admissions and funding criteria.


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When conducting a follow-up review for a paper you already made comments on, how detailed should the review be?
I think the title stands on its own, but I am not sure how detailed to make follow-up reviewer comments for a paper.  My sense is that I don't need to re-review the paper, but just comment on whether or not I am satisfied with the changes the authors made.  This leaves a rather skimpy review the second time around.

The extent of a re-review depends on what has been done with the manuscript (MS). If the first review round yielded questions and comments that can be fixed but may require checking to make sure the implementation of the comments are correct, then, as you say, you will not have to do a full-blown re-review. If, on the other hand, the revisions are such that the MS has been substantially modified, perhaps with new parts added, new data included, etc. the situation is different. Then the paper is so modified it is in some way more of a new MS than just revised and, hence in need of a new throrough review.
So in my opinion, the need of re-review depends on the severity of the required changes. How you decide depends on your opinion of the new paper. If an editor feels a MS is in need of so substantial revisions it becomes a new MS, then it is often rejected with a note about re-submission after work has been done. So in the end it is your view of the severity or magnitude of necessary changes that largely determines how much should be done. In some cases authors may disagree with a comment you feel strongly about and in such cases it may be necessary to enforce the view through more careful and convincing scrutiny.
EDIT: I should perhaps add that a second or more reviewers may have given other comments that influence your review. This means parts of the MS can be changed in ways you have not suggested so although a new detalied re-review may not be necessary a careful read through and comparison with the old may be in order. Sometimes authors (we) can use conflicting reviews to argue against one or the other.


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Tools for remotely updating the advisor?
I am a research student. Though me and my advisor used to meet regularly, nowadays due to workload, I usually remain outstation and not able to meet him personally.
I do work continuously and meet him at least once a month but am not able to take as much input from my advisor as I would like. (limitations of my physical availability).He doesn't prefer video chatting and pretty hesitant in replying to emails in depth.
Putting in crux, how to track research progress myself and update my advisor simultaneously. I would have preferred a wiki like page, whose URL(private) I can share with my advisor, where he could look at my progress and comment. It could also assist organizing my own research.
What tools would be recommended in such scenario ?

How about Trac?

You could use something as simple as etherpad.

Is it a problem with software or with his time (management) or engagement? If mails and Skype do not work I doubt any other technological solution would work - except for telephone.

I am in this exact situation right now since I'm on sabbatical and (some of) my students are back in my home institution. Unlike your advisor though, I'm quite comfortable with skype/G+ and use them regularly.
But to keep track of progress, I use a flavor of github that people in my department run (I also use github and bitbucket directly). As long as your advisor is comfortable using version control systems, and can set up their account for automatic emails when you commit something, it's easy for you to keep them updated and for them to see updates you've made.
I also make sure to have an agenda file in reverse chronological order to keep track of what we've been working on and what progress has been made since our last meeting.
One of the advantage of version control systems like git/svn/hg is that it's relatively easy to see what has changed since the last commit, or since 5 commits ago, which will help your advisor. Although if they don't like video chatting or replying to email, I do wonder if they're technically savvy enough to use git :)

For wiki documentation, documents, RSS feeds and source code I would recommend a tool like redmine, which also has version control integration. This can be a local installation in some university server, in case you do not what project publicly available. But for progress, bugs I would recommend something like trello (https://trello.com/) for several reasons: a) it is a web based tool b) it is free c) you can add private projects and add additional users per project d) has automatic user notifications (e-mail) in case someone adds something to its dedicated trello blog.
So, a combination of redmine (for wiki, src code, documents and version control) and trello (for user notifications, blog bugs etc..) I think it is pretty much what you need.

Please note that this was my dissertation project, and I co-founded the organization that currently maintains and develops it, but take a look at the Open Science Framework:
http://osf.io
It's a completely free service for documenting, sharing, collaborating, archiving, and registering materials across the scientific process. You can use the site privately or choose to make pieces of your workflow public.
It should support the scenario you mentioned, and, if not, we'd be glad to use any feedback you'd be willing to provide to make adjustments. It can also connect and integrate services like Amazon S3, Fighshare, and Github, and we have a variety of other add-ons in the works (10 or so) including Dropbox, Trello, and Evernote. Some of those might be helpful extensions in managing the collaboration with your advisor.
Please do follow-up if you try it--you can email me personally at my first name at cos.io if you'd like.


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Is it feasible to take an unsure PhD topic?
I was working towards converting to a PhD but was unsure of what research I would do. Suddenly an idea striked my mind and I discussed it with my advisor. He doesn't have much experience in that exact field but has been in the area for around 6 months.
He said that he thinks that idea is feasible but doesn't know what would be the approach, and not sure whether the results would be positive in terms of PhD because there several parallel domains. Moreover, literature doesn't have much details on that exact topic. And my literature survey (pretty limited though) has only enhanced my confusion. Probably because my idea deals with application of a recent class of techniques to optimize a problem.
Is it worth to convert to a PhD with such an idea ?

As opposed to what?  (Ha ha only serious)

@JeffE I don't know if my idea would necessarily improvise the solution to the problem, when there are already good, widely tested techniques are available.

Right. But if you knew that your idea worked, it wouldn't be research, would it?

absolutely, it wouldn't be called research then. May be I probably still have an option to get away that's why I am concerned :). But what concerns is that what if it failed :-/

@JeffE In principle, yes. In practice, well... (I've never seen a grant application where people weren't sure to get some publications.)

This is exactly how most of the really great PhD students I've seen have all started.  Working on a problem with unknowns is a process called "research."
Clearly, you are going to have to find some collaborators with more experience in the field than your advisor, but that's part of the process as well.  Hopefully, your advisor can assist with networking / introductions / etc.  The support of your advisor will be critical (as it is for all PhD students).
The trick is to make sure you have a backup plan and a way to convert to it if necessary.  Don't spend three years mucking around if you're not making progress.  But, spending 6 months investigating if there is something there -- that's well worth it.

Not sure there's a correct answer here, but I would recommend against it. The goal of your PhD research is twofold:

Introduce you to the world of Academia
Earn you a PhD

By choosing your topic to be something completely exploratory, you put (2) at risk; the research may not pan out, or may be much more difficult than you think, or may be infeasible for technical reasons, or whatever, and your PhD would be at risk.
However, to reiterate, this is a function of the specific topic at hand, your risk appetite, your advisor's skillset and risk appetite, and your willingness to restart your research partway through your program. Take all that into account when making your decision.

Your goal could also be to create valuable knowledge through research.

@Christian - Sure, but that's the goal of any research, no matter where or when it's being done. Your PhD research is unique in that it has other purposes as well, as I stated.

I like eykanal's answer, and I would add this: I know many people who changed the topic after one year of their thesis, and if they put enough effort into it, they still finished in time (being <4 years here).
What I mean, if you start working on one problem and you finish solving another one, you still can graduate and get your PhD. However, depending on your subject, this might be more difficult: for us "theoreticians" who work in an office it's simple, for people who do complicated experiments it's of course much more difficult or even impossible.

While research is inherently risky, there are two red flags:

He said that he thinks that idea is feasible but doesn't know what would be the approach, and not sure whether the results would be positive in terms of PhD because there several parallel domains.

What this tells me is that your advisor does not have the specialization to attack this particular idea that you are proposing; moreover, there are other areas of research that may be examining the problem that you are discussing.
There are a number of potential issues that come across from this:

You don't have an advisor who's familiar with the area, so you have to spend more time (either doing your own related work, or finding other faculty/collaborators) to discover the appropriate methods. Instead of having your advisor go, "Use this equipment and this research method", now you have to possibly discover what the method is and then acquire equipment for it. You will make mistakes numerous times because no one is there to help you avoid common mistakes. This makes your results take longer and uses more money.
If there are parallel domains, then there is a risk that the results that you and your advisor find from the work (that most likely took a long time because people are unfamiliar with the method) are possibly not as significant or as important as they first seem because this other area's already identified them first. Others familiar with the area might ask, "Why didn't you look at XYZ and ABC first?" and reject the paper. As a result, it will take additionally more time to familiarize yourself with these parallel domains in order to identify that what you're doing is important, relevant, and novel.

I think personally that (1) is a much greater risk than (2). Most people never come into an area with knowledge of what's there, so surveying related work, talking to people, and learning about the research area is usually work that has to be done anyway, but (1) can be very deadly. (1) and (2) in combination can be very dangerous, since it might indicate that your advisor simply doesn't have a lot of interest in Method (1) and in Result (2) - which means that your project might end up with less priority, less input, and less money. And all of that results in less papers and less impact.
Less papers, less impact means less opportunity to do important, meaningful work (and fewer job opportunities).
Thus, it does depend partly on what your personal goals are. If you do want to pursue this path for the sake of expanding your knowledge and the knowledge of the world at large, then one possibility would be to switch advisors or to find out who's doing this work in parallel domains and collaborate closely with one of these other researchers so you can get technical knowledge from those people.

Converting to PhD should not be dependent on an idea, I think.

If you want to do PhD then go for it. If one idea does not work other will. That's what research is all about.
Apart from taking up that idea further:

Your supervisor does not have enough experience in that field that
means you are entering at your own risk.
Do a good 2-3 months detailed literature survey to understand it better and then take a call.


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Submitting course work report as research paper?
In one of the coursework at my university, I submitted a very detailed project report done for the course. It later turned out that the work contributed some value to the field as well. Is it right to submit the report reformatted as a research paper ? Do we need to provide any special mentions to the coursework or any other related disclosure ?

Do you mean "submit for publication in a journal", or do you mean "submit as evidence of research productivity in a hiring/promotion case"?

@JeffE submit for publication in a journal/conference

In one of the coursework at my university, I submitted a very detailed project report done for the course. It later turned out that the work contributed some value to the field as well. Is it right to submit the report reformatted as a research paper ?

So long as the results are novel and you meet the other necessary prerequisites for publication (acknowledge main contributors as authors, acknowledge secondary contributors in acknowledgements, reference and discuss related work, meet level of technicality/significance required, etc.), I don't see any problem of submitting course-work for publication, and if as you say the work has had some impact in the field, I think it should be encouraged!

Do we need to provide any special mentions to the coursework or any other related disclosure ?

You should ask your professor or other senior staff member for advice, but I don't believe any special mentions would be required other than what's mentioned above. You could mention it as a footnote or as an acknowledgement if so desired. Also, if your work was (even indirectly) funded through a specific research grant, they may require acknowledgement as a condition of the grant. Again, talk to a staff member involved.


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Not being a first author diminishes the contribution of co-authors?
If a group of students (say, 3 students), produces a work which has been accepted to a reputable conference. All of them contributed equally to the project,from implementation to writing and proof reading of the paper.
How should one decide who should be the first author. Even if the names are listed in alphabetical order, so by not being the first author, does it affect the prospects for the other two in any means ?
My field of research is computer science.
(This question has been partly inspired by the  flurry of questions on ASE, regarding the importance of being the first author)

You'd have to marry somebody with the last name Aaronson or Abrams as quickly as possible.

@StasK then we desperately need a more open way to analyse such situation :-)

The question is highly dependent on the field of science (see http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/535/order-of-authors-on-publications).

It depends on the subfield of computer science. For example, if the paper is in theoretical computer science, then author order is alphabetical, and the equal work put in by the authors is not negated by the author ordering. If in a discipline where author order is meaningful, then it's standard practice to (say) order the authors alphabetically and add a footnote saying that all authors contributed equally to the work.

+1: if the ordering is important, the common way to deal with it is a couple (or triple in this case) of asterix and a footnote.

With alphabetically ordered, it seems that it still matter a bit - see my answer.

@PiotrMigdal They could always use reverse alphabetical order to counter this effect, though the footnote explaining the reasoning behind this ordering would start to get a bit unwieldy :)

@ThomasH Better: ensure random order.

It may be advantageous to be the first author even in disciplines where author names are ordered alphabetically. In a study by Einav and Yariv (emphasis added):

proxies for success in the U.S. economics labor  market (tenure at highly ranked schools, fellowship in the Econometric Society, and to a lesser extent, Nobel Prize and Clark Medal winnings) are correlated with surname initials, favoring economists with surname initials earlier in the alphabet. These patterns persist even when controlling for country of origin, ethnicity, and religion. We suspect that these effects are related to the existing norm in economics prescribing alphabetical ordering of authors’ credits. Indeed, there is no significant correlation between surname initials and tenure at departments of psychology, where authors are credited roughly according to their intellectual contribution. The economics market participants seem to react to this phenomenon. Analyzing publications in the top economics journals since 1980, we note two consistent patterns: authors with higher surname initials are significantly less likely to participate in projects with more than three authors and significantly more likely to write papers in which the order of credits is non-alphabetical.

Liran Einav and Leeat Yariv (2006), What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on  Academic Success (or free pdf here)

Yes, since the order of authors is often used to convey meaning, it can. As an example, in Neuroscience (my background), the conventional order of authorship is:

The first author is the one who did most of the work, and who is responsible for writing the paper;
Second authors are listed in order of contribution to the work. Usually the people who contributed work come first, and the ones who contributed with ideas come last.
Last comes the mentor. This could be the head of the lab, the supervisor, or a senior researcher who might have assigned the first author to this study. This person is usually a reference in this field, and the one who would provide general guidance to the project or line of research.

However, often it is difficult or impossible to order authorship with fairness. Some journals (not all) accept footnotes telling the reader all authors (or which) contributed equally to the work. But the footnote will not be visible in bibliographies, and the second authors will be forced to indicate their equal contribution in their resumes and applications. So coming second, even in these circumstances, is a handicap.

That's more organised than I often see for 2nd authors - the order apart from 1st and last doesn't really matter.

@ChrisH, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... I'm sure it depends on the field, but in my experience I saw a lot of deeply serious discussion on who would get 3rd and 4th authorship (5th was last). Authorship order can lead to intensely heated arguments and even life enmities.

...which is one of the reasons theoretical computer scientists stick to alphabetical order.


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At loss about CS specialization/sub-field
Unfortunately, I did not know where to post this sort of question as it is very ambiguous. So I figured the Academia forum was the best place to ask, but feel free to point me to another direction. That said, this question is more about getting inspiration, rather than getting answers.
Here's my story: I'm currently studying computer science at college, and finally being top of my class in a particular course has given me the confidence to strive for greater things than I originally thought possible for myself. I want to pursue a job in research, because I would rather help mankind with technological/innovative progress than financial/social progress... So my dream is to acquire myself a well-earned Ph.D.
But here's the thing: I've studied computer security most of my life (leisure-study), and always imagined that this would be my main field of research because I'm very good at this specific area of expertise.
However, recently i've started to rethink this career path. My realization was that this field, albeit obviously not wasteful, was not going to prove beneficial for mankind in general/long-term. Unless we could use these defensive information technologies against a synthetic alien invasion, who's plan A was to destroy our Internet, hindering communications. But somehow I still think they would succeed.
So I have started to look into other areas of computer science. I kinda always had a dream of working with quantum computers (probably more a physics/engineering field at the moment), but i'm not really one of those extremely hardcore nerd types (God bless you guys.), so I suppose that's out of reach for me.
I'm leaning towards artificial intelligence, because I imagine that the two most prominent areas of research that will cause significiant improvements on our way of life will be either quantum computers, for their theoretical astonomical computational powers, and self-aware "strong AIs" that can help our race with all our physical, philosophical and economical problems (to name a few).
But I would still like to know if you guys think I should try to pursue something different. I'm not all that great at mathematics, but i'm extremely committed to my work once I begin, so I wouldn't mind becoming one of those "hardcore nerd types". I looked abit on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science , and skimmed the theoretical computer science section, but nothing really sticks.
P.S. Please do not provide an answer such as "just learn what you love to learn", but it's not that simple in this case. I love just about everything that has to do with computers, both theory and applied, and computer science isn't a small genre to pick from.
Thank you most sincerely.

Don't forget about bioinformatics.  Some of what comes out of that field can lead to benefits to humanity.

@Nunoxic So what do you propose I do? Should I rewrite the question, so it becomes more general (encompassing all fields of science)? It might make it too general, so that my own question remains unanswered because everyone will pick fields that I have no experience/interest in.

Christopher: I think you can rewrite the question to ask "how do I find an appropriate field of specialization in CS (that interests me)?" That might get you answers that will help you while still promoting the knowledge base for the community at large. (The generalization to other fields would be relatively obvious, in my opinion.)

Just a note, quantum computing isn't just physics/engineering. I also agree that the question is pretty localized and also too long to read for the content. Please try to capture your general and non-specific-to-you question in TL;DR at the start (or clearly marked at the end) of your question.

Honestly, you sound like someone who is looking for a Magic Bullet to Save The World, not someone who is really informed about or interested in computer science.  You sound like someone in love with the idea of computer science research, but with no real idea what computer science research is.  Computer security against aliens?  Quantum computing?  Artificial intelligence?  These are all dangerously close to science fiction.  There's tons of good research in all those areas, but nothing — in any of those areas — is close to "saving the world", and everything interesting — in all of those areas — requires a fair bit of mathematical maturity.  Sorry, but if you don't like math, you won't like real AI research, or real security research, or real quantum computing research.
If you want to do research, and really do it well, you have to love your tools.  You have to love the math; you have to love the code; you have to love the nights in the lab; you have to love the balky experimental equipment.  You have to love feeling stupid, because researchers spend 99% of their time feeling stupid; they're at the bleeding edge of what mankind understands about Reality, so of course they don't really know what they're doing.  You have to love to work in the face of almost certain failure.  You have to take the world's ignorance, especially your own personal ignorance, as motivation, not frustration.  You have to get over the idea that you are going to Save to World, because you aren't, but you do the work anyway, because you can't not do the work; it's in your blood; it's who you are.
If that's not you, don't bother.  There are much better ways to make money.  There are much better ways to help people.  There are much better ways to be happy than to do something you don't really love because you think it's Cool and Important.
But if you really can't live without doing it, then you really have no choice—do it, and do it well.  And who knows; you may save the world after all!  (But probably not.)

+1, and I am a bit of a cynic: nobody and nothing in science will save the world. If the goal of someone is to save the world, he should consider becoming a psychiatrist.

However, to change the world instead of saving it, CS is fine ;)

Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately for me, it looks like your answer was not directed at me, since you missed most of the major points in my question. For example, I never said I wanted to save mankind, but rather wanted to pick a field that was beneficial for it. Secondly, you assume I don't want to learn mathematics... If you had read the question you would've seen I said I was not good at it, not that I didn't want to learn it. Thirdly, computer security against aliens was a joke good sir... Thank you for your great input.

I was trying to respond to the tone of your question as much as the actual content; if it helps, substitute "help mankind" for "Save the World" everywhere.  Shorter and soberer answer: Just learn what you love to learn and you're good at learning.

I don't really have an answer for you as it is ultimately your decision, but I think that choosing a subject based on its perceived potential being beneficial to mankind is not a good starting point. I would argue that you cannot judge the benefits society will have from your research until after it has happened. You can have all the best intentions and fail, or do something just for the fun of it and happen to invent something hugely useful. Many of the elements of modern computer interfaces for example were pioneered at Xerox PARC decades ago when nobody was really thinking about the impact their research would ultimately have.
Furthermore it will depend more on your individual contribution than on the field as a whole. Finally, even the most promising research might be not suitable for you because you don't enjoy it/find it too hard/don't like the people you're working with.

You make a really good point, but as far as the last paragraph goes; I'm not going to blindly pick a field because someone over the Internet told me to. I'm going to do my own research beforehand to see if it even suits me, so don't worry about that. :)


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Hypothesis for an Engineering Oriented Research Thesis
Question: What to write in a hypothesis that can't claim statistical results of any kind -- only those of engineering nature.
Explanation:
In thesis writing, hypothesis is claimed to be one of the most important aspects. I'm not arguing with that but in some cases, it seems a little over-priced. I am currently writing a thesis that deals with enhancing an existing security model. I can't give out the exact idea obviously but please let me explain with the help of an example.
Let's say, I have a security problem that the existing "role-based access control" of MS-Windows does not solve some problems -- so, I come up with time-based constraints for the model used and incorporate them in a new "enhanced" model. In the thesis explaining this contribution, what do I write in the thesis? I can't claim an "N%" increase in security or any other statistic that I can think of.
So, what's the hypothesis in this case?

+1 for a bit over-priced. I sometimes see people dealing with the cases of this kind by saying "de facto"

The hypothesis-model is good for research where you want to understand how something works, but I think it is ill-suited for capturing the full scope of engineering research. After all, in engineering, you're primary goal is not to learn something about how the world works, but rather to change how the world works! So, instead of a hypothesis on how something works, I'd put up existing gaps in the ability to do something as a working basis. That will then put a focus on your research result as an extension of technical capabilities. In order to evaluate your research results, you would then have to show that your results actually close the existing gap.
Of course, also engineering research needs to understand something about how existing things work in order to be able to create something new. Hypotheses are suitable in engineering to clarify these preliminary things. In your case, you state that "the existing 'role-based access control' of MS-Windows does not solve some problems" - that sounds like a perfect hypothesis to test for. But verifying this hypothesis is certainly not the key step in your research, and maybe it has already been done previously. That's why I'd recommend not to focus on a hypothesis as the basis for engineering research (though one might use them to clarify preliminaries), but focus on identified gaps in current technical abilities.

Effectively, what you are doing is development of existing research, rather than designing something de novo. The notion of a research hypothesis is therefore somewhat inappropriate to such work, and you wouldn't write a paper describing this work specifying a definitive "hypothesis."
Instead, you'd write the paper emphasizing that your model does something "better," "faster," "more securely," or specifying whatever other accomplishments advance your work from the previous state of affairs. Your thesis should then show how that is accomplished, and give some evidence thereof.

"better," "faster," "more securely," sounds like a testable hypothesis to me...

It's a testable hypothesis if the method came before the hypothesis. I think this is more of an "implicit" hypothesis: we can do something better, and we went out and found something better that did it.

@aeismail exactly we hypothesised that we could do something better and we went out and tested that hypothesis. Even if the "better" method doesn't exist yet, you can still hypothesise that there is a better solution.

@DanielE.Shub: Perhaps that is a hypothesis. However, it's still a weak structure to hang a thesis on.

Actually the hypothesis is quite straight forward: if you want to do something "better", "faster", "more securely", you will have to start by proposing a new method, design or something, implement that and test to see whether it truly improved the aspect you were interested in: that is the hypothesis! It has the form: "Characteristic X of problem Y can be improved by using Z".  The implementation is the experimental part and the tests can prove or disprove your hypothesis.  If it is disproven you may have to go and try another solution... another hypothesis.

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Publishing again acknowledging the original publication of oneself
I have come across the International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA).  The copyright section says that "Authors retain the right to publish their material elsewhere, providing the original publication is acknowledged."
Can the same paper be sent to somewhere else as well. Given that I have seen that mostly conferences/journals require unpublished material, what does this clause exactly mean ? Is it normal clause in Open Access Journals ?

That means that IJACSA will not try to stop you from publishing your work elsewhere.  (They'd have little reason to do so, as they are not profiting from it.)  It is common for open-access journals to let the author retain the publication rights.
However, no reputable journal will publish an article that has already appeared somewhere else.
You could "publish" it on your web page, or on arXiv, or as part of a book (though again, a reputable book publisher will probably balk if the content is just recopied).
Note: IJACSA is published by The Science and Information Organization, which is on Beall's List of Predatory Open-Access Publishers.  Its website makes the journal look very dubious, especially the ridiculously broad scope and the promise to complete peer review within 15 days.  I wouldn't publish there (or would I?).

thanks. I had added another question on reliability of journals. Thanks for taking time to add content on its reliability. http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12100/reliability-of-google-scholar-search-for-authenticity-of-a-journal

I think the more specific meaning of this statement should be that you have the right to:

publish your work in alternate formats (on-line repositories, your website, internal technical reports, etc.)
re-use excerpts from your work in alternate venues

The latter would be, for instance, to reprint a figure that you used in one publication in a second publication you've written, but simply citing that it came from the original figure.

Not to forget to "republish" it as part of a (sandwich) thesis.

It's very important to understand the difference between copyright law and academic ethics. They give you permission, waiving the normal copyright assignment process, to retain the copyright of the work you produced. You can thus republish it, in full or in part. While doing so in another journal, even with appropriate citation, would be unethical (journals require original content), there actually are some ethical ways in which this could happen:

republishing as a chapter in a book, with a clear notice;
republishing parts of it in course material;
republishing “as is” in a more prestigious journal 20 years from now, if it so happens that your paper spawned an entire new field of research and is now revered as such
reformatting it and putting it on your blog (which is a publication).


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Is it unethical to not able to complete a journal review within provided time ?
I was invited to review a paper from a decent journal in my field. I was provided a month to review the article.
However, due to some work related commitments, I was not able to provide reviews within the stipulated time (and somehow forgot about the deadline). After 2 weeks of the deadline, I received an email from the editor for providing reviews on the article. I emailed him back that I will provide the reviews and mentioned the date and he acknowledged the same. However, on the date I had provided, I received an automated email that if I don't provide the reviews they will be forced to go ahead with the reviews from other reviewers.
I emailed them again that I have read the paper and ready with my reviews and will be uploading them within a few hours. But while filling the review form, I received another automated email stating that they have decided to move ahead without my reviews. Since it was my first opportunity to officially review a paper from a journal, the situation left me with the following questions

Was it unethical at my part to not able to provide the reviews within the provided time ?
Will it have any impact on my reputation as a reviewer in future?

It is not unethical to be unable -- this is almost a type error. Ethics is about what you choose among the options that are available to you. As for reputational impact, all I hear suggests that breaking referee deadlines is more common than meeting them, and generally, promises in academia are generally considered as educated guesses.

@user2357 I think the category that might be ethically relevant is accepting to review while knowing (or reasonably believing) you will be unable to ...

@virmaior, your comment should probably be developed into a full answer.

Will it have any impact on my reputation as a reviewer in future?

As @darijgrinberg said in a comment, referees are quite often late with reviewing assignments. As an example, on one occasion (the only one I can remember) when I was unable to get a paper reviewed by the deadline I committed to, I sent an apologetic email to the editor a couple of days before the deadline explaining that I will be sending my report a week or two late. His sarcastic reply suggested that he found my apology very amusing and unusual, and he was in fact very pleased that I would be only a week or two late...
So, I think it’s not so much that your reputation will suffer because of this incident; rather, it’s more accurate to say that you have missed an opportunity to set yourself apart from all the other late reviewers - that is, it’s not a negative efffect but the absence of a positive one. But in any case I assume you will have many more opportunities of this type in the future, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
As for the ethics, again as Darij said, ethics has to do with willful acts. To forget things or be negligent or put yourself in situations where you are unable to deliver on a promise may be characterized as unprofessional (only a little bit in this particular case) and is certainly undesirable, but this has nothing to do with ethics.

I wouldn't say it's unethical. Reviewers are providing volunteer service, so they really aren't obliged to provide a review. When a reviewer accepts a review invitation, they're also making a decision in the face of uncertainty: they could turn out to be busier than expected, or perhaps the paper more complicated than expected, etc. Reviewers accepting the invitation and then failing to provide a review happens so often that editors often prepare for it by inviting more reviewers than is necessary.
However, it is disappointing, especially if you do it often, and even more so if you explicitly promised in an email to the editor that you'll be able to provide a review in time. Therefore, don't do it if you can. If it happens often enough the editor might decide your word cannot be trusted, in which case you won't get reviewer invitations anymore.

On the other hand, if you ask for a reasonable amount of extra time, it will usually be granted without problems.

Reviewers are providing volunteer service, so they really aren’t obliged to provide a review. I think this is an unfortunate phrasing that probably doesn’t mean exactly what you intended to say. Once you have accepted to do a review, you have taken it on as a professional obligation so you are “obliged” to provide it in the same sense that you are obliged to do anything else you promised someone else you would do.

I think the ethics question is often the other way (but journals seem untroubled by it!).  Some journals send a copy of the submitted paper when inviting you to review it, but many ask you to accept on the basis of a title (perhaps an abstract), and you have little idea of how long or how complex the paper is.  In such cases, the only possibly unethical issue is the journal expecting you to commit to an unknown amount of work in a predetermined period.

..due to some work related commitments, I was not able to provide reviews within the stipulated time (and somehow forgot about the deadline).

Yes, that is unethical.  You made a commitment to do a piece of work, with a deadline attached.  The time for review exists to allow authors to have their work reviewed in a timely manner, and it is extremely inconvenient for authors and journal reviewers to have delays caused by referees who do not take their role seriously.  Not only did you not meet the commitment you made, but you evidently did not even care about it enough to diarise the deadline.  This was your first opportunity to review a paper, and you screwed it up, causing delay and inconvenience for the author and editor.

Will it have any impact on my reputation as a reviewer in future?

Unfortunately not. In a rational academia composed of professionals, failure to complete a review within the agreed deadline would impact your credibility and reputation in the future.  However, we live in an academia where agreements to perform reviews within a timeline mean little to nothing, and so your actions are unlikely to be seen as fundamentally different from what happens in a large number of cases.

So basically you’re saying it’s unethical to ever make a mistake due to inexperience? Your criticism of OP would apply to anyone who ever does anything wrong in a professional environment. Your “rational academia” sounds like a very unforgiving place.

No, I'm not.  That is a straw man (which is also common in academia).

@Ben thanks. By that analogy, isn't editor's decision to send paper without my review while clearly agreeing to the new deadline, is also unprofessional ?

@krammer: Your question is a little ambiguous on that point, since the various events are all described as occurring on the same day.  From your description, I can only assume that when you gave him a new date for the review, he entered into a system that sends automated emails of that kind on that date, and presumably you did not get it in by the expected time of day.  If that is incorrect, maybe you can make further inquiries with the editor.  In any case, my point remains - when you don't do a review on time, it is an inconvenience to the article writer and the journal editor.

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Why do conferences have such short page limits?
These days, most of the conferences I attend provide their proceedings on a USB stick, or online only. Yet at the same time they have a strict page limit, which is usually set to something between 4 and 8 pages. I'm curious about the rationale for such a small limit. This is probably something that varies between fields, although I've experienced it in more than one field myself (subfields of artificial intelligence and physics). It doesn't seem particularly limited to big conferences.
I realise that super-long papers would hard on the reviewers, who have to do a lot of work for a large conference. But on the other hand, a very short paper will have to leave out a lot of background and important information, which at best will make it difficult to read, and at worst will make it impossible to judge on its merits. It's also a lot more effort to write a four-page paper than a 10-page one, unless you happen to be presenting a single experimental result using an established methodology (which is rarely if ever the case in artificial intelligence and related fields).
Looking at conference proceedings from the 1950s through to the early 1980s, it seems that proceedings papers were generally much longer. As an extreme example, I know of one that's over 100 pages (it's quite a famous paper and the length seems worth it), but up to 20 pages doesn't seem uncommon. In the '90s the standard seems to have been 10 pages, at least in subfields of computer science. Although there's obviously selection bias involved, these old papers don't seem particularly longer than they need to be, and their length allows them to make rather deeper points than could be made in a modern 4-page paper.
I'd like to know the reasoning behind short page limits at conferences. Is there a school of thought that says these extreme limits lead to better-quality papers, and/or less work for the reviewers? Or is it just a holdover from the recent past, when big conferences were expected to provide a paper proceedings to every participant, who would then have to carry the whole thing home?

possible duplicate of Why are all these papers exactly 10 pages long?

Not really a duplicate. The other question's answer is: "because there are page limits" and this question is: "why are there page limits"

Yes, I've seen the other question (and even commented on it when it was asked), but it really isn't asking the same thing I'm asking here.

There are a number of inter-related reasons for short (and shorter) conference paper lengths:

The 10-12 page limit is typically so that reviewers don't have to review an inordinately long document.
Final versions are also limited in length because the fact that proceedings are now mostly electronic doesn't mean that the cost of publication is independent of paper length. Editing costs are per-page (one can of course argue that professional editing does little for a conference paper, but nevertheless that's how it's priced).
in order to make sure "what you review is what you get", one generally enforces the page limit at submission time as well
finally, the 4-page limit I suspect is so that a fleshed out version of the work can be published in a journal without questions about the level of original content over and above what was presented at the conference. In this sense, the 4 (or 2 page) conference version is merely a short advertisement.

+1 for some plausible reasons. In my field(s) I've never heard of conference papers receiving editing assistance, though - usually you're given a LaTeX template (or occasionally some kind of infernal MS Word template) and you have to provide "camera ready" proofs yourself. (These are actually just pdf files that will be published without any modification, aside from possibly the addition of page numbers.)

In my field(s) I've never heard of conference papers receiving editing assistance — Me neither, and I publish in many of the same venues as @Suresh. Perhaps he's referring to the addition of page numbers (which does indeed scale with the number of pages)?

@JeffE you might (like me) think that Sheridan is a joke, but they are the official copy editors for many ACM venues, and I have gone back and forth with them about problems in a final version of a paper. As for edit costs, this was stated very clearly in a business meeting at FOCS a few years ago when deciding on USB vs CDs for proceedings (FOCS is a CS theory conference)

Ah, right. My mistake was equating "copy editing costs" with "editing assistance" instead of "editing insistence".  (To be fair to Sheridan, they are only enforcing the rules that ACM insists that they enforce.)

Wait, so you're saying that one reason for the limits is that a third party has set itself up to extract money per-page from the conference organisers, for no particularly good reason? If so then this is extremely bad for science, and more people need to be made aware of it so that the situation can be changed.

Um yes, all the key players are aware of this. The problem is bundling. The entity that controls the editing process (and the charges) also runs the conference. Slowly, (thank you internet), all of these things are changing.

I meant people other than the "key players", obviously. If it becomes a political issue then it's much more likely to change.

I have always felt there is also an element of "fairness" in there, in that only papers of roughly the same length can be reasonably compared in terms of significance. Of course, it seems to work for journal papers without such a tight limit, as well (but then, sometimes without any reasonably short submission-to-publication delays). Furthermore, I think the first point applies to all readers - I'd rather have three separate papers about three somewhat distinct aspects of one project when only one is relevant to me, than having to dig through a long paper covering all aspects.


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What are the boundaries between draft, manuscript, preprint, paper, and article?
In the terminology for a peer-reviewed publication to be submitted to a reputable scientific journal, what are the differences and characteristic properties of the following?

draft
manuscript
preprint
paper
article

My own take on it would be that my text is a draft until I submit it to a journal, at which point it becomes a manuscript.  When the manuscript is accepted it becomes a preprint, and when it gets published it becomes a paper, which is synonymous to article.
Would that be an accurate summary?  Would anyone have corrections or additions?

See also this related question on the difference between preprints and accepted manuscripts, and on its copyright implications.

paper = article: In the academic meaning of the words, papers and articles refer to the same thing: a published piece of writing. The term is used for journal papers or journal articles, which means they have been published by a journal, but also for less traditional publications, including self-publication (“Dr. Who just published a great paper on the intricacies of time travel on his webpage”) and e-print repositories such as arXiv (“check out the latest paper by Galileo on arXiv, that guy has mad ideas!”).
Some journals have different categories of “articles”, and differentiate between letters, communications, reports, reviews, and full papers (sometimes abbreviated as just “papers”). In usage I have seen, paper (or article) used as a generic term covers all of those: you would say, for example, that “letters and full papers are two types of articles”.
A preprint (more commonly used without the hyphen) refers to the distribution, in advance of formal publication, of something that will be published in print. The preprint may differ from the final publication.
Preprint status does not always indicate that the work has been formally accepted for publication. It just means the authors intend to publish it in a more formal venue (journal, book, etc.) but wanted to distribute by other means beforehand (preprints used to be distributed to colleagues as photocopies, but are now mostly circulated by email or repositories).
A manuscript is, in the New Oxford American Dictionary's words, “an author's text that has not yet been published”. Any piece of writing that you have not published in any way (but intend to) is a manuscript.
A draft is the same as a manuscript, except that it insists on the unfinished state of the manuscript.

Summarizing, I could say:

Here's the draft I've been working on, please amend it with your corrections. Once we have done this final round of revision, I will upload the manuscript to the editor's website, and we can start circulating it as a preprint to colleagues whom you think may be interested. Once it is accepted and published, we'll just send them the published version of the paper for their records.

These rules sound really weird to me.  I describe any written result as a paper regardless of its publication or submission status.  ("Are you planning to submit your TSP paper to FOCS?" "No, it still needs some more work.") Similarly, a preprint is a paper that is available but not in final published form, again regardless of submission or publication status.  For example, all papers on arXiv are preprints, but not all arXiv preprints have been  submitted for publication.  In my opinion, the only word in this category with a restricted definition is publication.

@JeffE I believe there is some confusion on what a “preprint” is, so I listed the term as it is used by notable sources (Nature policy, SHERPA RoMEO, etc.). Of particular note: while arXiv is sometimes called a “preprint server”, it calls itself an “e-print server”

While I am not a mother-tongue English speaker, I've occasionally had the impression that paper and article, while being synonyms, have slightly different connotations. One tends to say "paper" for an own result, or one that they feels closer/related to, and "article" for "something you read in a journal, but you have no personal interest in". Is it the case? Or is it only a wrong impression created by talking too much with other non-native speakers?

-1 This might vary between fields, but the word "paper" is certainly used for unpublished writeups, including the editors of the top journals in my field (economics). Working papers are papers too.

I guess this is field-dependent, since other commenters report different usages, but my understanding of paper (from pure maths/logic) definitely agrees with this answer: to me, paper implies published status just as strongly as article does.

This answer doesn't work in my field (political science). We use "research paper" as umbrella term that includes all written forms of research dissemination (except perhaps short blog-posts and very long reports), whether published or not.
A research article, in our usage, is a research paper that is published in a journal.

In French, paper is definitely informal, while article is the term to be used in a written document.
However, in English I feel that we tend to use

"journal article" more often that "journal paper",
"conference article" less than "conference paper",
"workshop article" far less often than "workshop paper".

So paper might tend to designate a piece of work of lesser importance than article, or as jakebeal said have a more general use. It still sounds slightly more informal to me, probably because I am a French native speaker, but I'm pretty sure many French colleagues of mine have the same feeling even if they work in some English-speaking country.
My field computer science > machine learning, in case the terminology changes from field to field, and my location is the US.

Some statistics (obviously biased by the corpus):
Journal paper vs. journal article:

Conference paper vs. conference article:

Workshop paper vs. workshop article:

@FranckDernoncourt In the last plot, what's the difference between three lines? They are all workshop papers.

@EnthusiasticStudent Different cases: in the Ngram Viewer when you only plot 1 ngram with case-insensitive mode on, it will plot different cases separately. Since not enough occurrences of "workshop article" were found, the query "workshop paper, workshop article" was regarded as plotting only 1 ngram, not 2.

What about "newspaper article", or "student newspaper article" are these of less value then a conference paper?

Since you mention French, a quick note about Italian: the formal word is articolo; there is no Italian word with the same root as "paper", but people in academia often use informally the humorous Italianization papero, which literally means "duck". So it has a more informal connotation, too. And one often gets weird looks from non-academics when using it in their presence.

Is it OK with you if I merge this answer into the duplicate (i.e., it will appear as an answer to this post with a note indicating that it was merged to explain why it only partially addresses that question.)  Since the other post is the 'canonical' one that we point people to when they ask similar questions, I think it would be a shame not to have this answer there.

I think that a piece of writing during the pre-submission stage is a draft and during the post-acceptance, but pre-publication, stage is a preprint. I think that this agrees with your terminology.
Many journals publish original research findings under a number of categories including articles, letters, and reports and in some fields books are the predominant mode of publishing research. Therefore, I would say that a preprint does not necessarily become a paper/article when published and instead becomes whatever it is.
Defining a manuscript is the hardest for me. I have often seen acknowledgements which thank someone for reading a previous version of the manuscript. This happens frequently enough in my field that I believe that a piece of writing becomes a manuscript prior to submission to a publisher. I am not sure when a piece of writing becomes a manuscript. I think a piece of writing becomes a manuscript when the first complete draft is completed.

An "article" typically specifically means a paper in a journal, while "paper" is a more general term that also includes conferences, technical memos, etc.

I would add that other accompanying words often clarify the meaning.  For instance a "published paper" nearly always means a journal article, while a "conference paper" may mean something that was just a presentation with no actual written article.  In some cases, an "article" can also mean a publication in a non-academic venue (e.g., Scientific American, The New Yorker), in which case it may also be qualified (as "article in the popular press" or the like).

@BrenBarn This is very field dependent.  In computer science, for example, conference papers are often stiffly peer reviewed and quite clearly count as a "published paper."

I would consider a preprint is the read-proof document that some Journals allow the author to distribute under some rules. So it is in post-acceptance but pre-publication stage. I don´t think the draft-manuscript-paper distinctions are relevant.

No, this is definite not what the term preprint usually refers to.


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Do academic seasons matter post-PhD?
Master studies start per semester, and in some places PhD studies do, too.
What about post-docs or other positions that do not heavily rely on teaching?
Does the time of year make any difference for openings?

This is based on my experience in mathematics in the United States (other cases may differ):
In principle, a postdoctoral position could start at any time if grant funding is available.  In practice, it is generally tied to the academic calendar the same way other positions are, and any deviations from that schedule would be unusual.  If you are doing an advertised search for a candidate, then there are enormous advantages to timing it with the usual job market cycle (at other times of year very few applicants will be available), so off-season hiring typically takes place only when a perfect match is made through personal connections.  The other issue is that most Ph.D. students get their degrees at the end of the spring semester, and most faculty positions start in the fall semester, so academic-year-based postdocs are convenient for most applicants.

At our institute, post-docs can be funded almost any time of the year, but it depends generally on when funding agencies hand out their funding. There are three or four periods in the year where that occurs (January, March, September, come to mind), but generally positions remain open until they are filled by a good candidate. In any case, the timing of these hiring periods are independent of the academic semesters.

Yes. They will operate on whatever system (quarter, semester) the university operates on. So pre-docs and post-docs (at least in my field) are awarded and start at the beginning of a semester.

Because many labs have limited space and/or funding for people, postdoctoral hiring is influenced by Ph.D. program cycles at most institutions.  Thus you tend to see the most openings in the summer/fall (in the northern hemisphere), but the trend is not as strong as for Ph.D. programs.


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Formulating research interests — context/motivation or not?
How do I formulate research interests in my CV?  When talking about my field, I like to include some context, such as:

The climate of planet Earth is a complex system. Detailed observations are needed for improving our understanding of individual components and their interaction. Additionally, long-term, large-scale monitoring is required to study the climate system in its entirety. Observations from space are important for both kinds of observations. I am particularly interested in applying space-based observations the atmosphere, for example, for the hydrological cycle. Additionally, I think foo is important because of bar, and would like to research foo deeper.

But on a CV, space and attention are scarce.  An alternative would be:

Space-based observations of the atmosphere
Foo

But this appears a bit bald to me.  I think the context, the motivation, should be relevant: why are my research interests as they are?
What is a better alternative for describing research interests on a CV?

Don't even use bullets; just provide a list of keywords/phrases identifying your subfield.  At least in the US, departments ask for a separate research statement in addition to your CV.  That's the place to explain your research interests in detail and give them context; there's no need to do that in your CV, too.
For example, when I applied for faculty positions, my CV included the following lines between my contact information and my education history.

Research Interests
Algorithms, data structures, and lower bounds; computational and discrete geometry; computer graphics

I've served on the faculty recruiting committee in my (top-10 US computer science) department for several years; this approach seems both standard and effective.  Personally, when I read a CV, I only spend a second or two on the self-declared research interests and jump straight to the publication list.
(Posdef's answer suggests giving more context in your cover letter, but I think this is pointless.  I don't know anyone who has ever read a cover letter.)

:O All that time spent on writing cover letters is wasted?

@gerrit: Yep.  Completely.  (At least in my completely academic circles.)

I spend a lot of time on the research statement, and less on the cover letter. But I do read it just to get an initial sense of what the candidate is about.

Now... who will dare checking that fact about cover letters experimentally (by sending a lipsum for example)?

@JeffE Not to be nitpicking but that "research statement" is then essentially a cover letter; in the sense that it allows you to develop ideas and present who you are and what you stand for. Am I mistaken?

@posdef: I think of a cover letter as a few short paragraphs saying "Hi, I'm applying, this is who I am", but a research statement is a formal document about your research that everyone requests as part of the application process.  You wouldn't describe your teaching experience/interests or your personal connections to the university in a research statement, although people often suggest putting information like that in a cover letter.

What is a better alternative for describing research interests on a CV?

include a brief (1-3 sentences) free form blob, basically a research statement. Something like this:

I work to remedy the effects of human air pollution of natural environment. I focus on monitoring quality of air and water quality in urban areas, especially XYZ. My main achievements include A, B and C.

include a list of keywords of your research interests underneath the blob.

The blob and keywords should fit to the first page of the CV package.

One problem with this approach is that A,B,C and XYZ might be pretty long in some fields. That example paragraph would easily be twice as long if I had to write it, as what I do is pretty cross-disciplinary and the only available keywords are not self-explanatory.

@posdef: well, it is indeed difficult to draft the blob in any field. But after few days of cutting down, I am sure you will be able to deliver :-). A rule of thumb: try to explain what you do to your grandma in a 30 seconds pitch. If you manage that one, you have your blob. If you can't do it, mildly put: "I would strongly suspect something not precisely ripe and right in your line of research".

An advice I got when I started worrying about how to form my CV was to include a short paragraph under the title "Profile" which would practically be the only freetext bit of the CV, where I describe myself in short and to-the-point sentences. The rest of the CV was supposed to be sort of an enumeration of what I have done, what I can do etc etc.
So I think if you want to have your research interests in your CV, it would make sense to purify the core of what you want to say and plug that into such a "profile". Alternative, or rather a complement, to that would be to mention your research interests in a cover letter which you would most likely need to write for any position you'll be applying to.
I guess it all depends on what kind of a CV you are going for.

Presently it's for my academic homepage, and if I use it for applying for academic positions I will tweak it depending on where I apply.


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Why do academic journals usually have continuous page numbering?
In a normal magazines, page numbers restart counting from 1 at every issue.
Most academic journals, however, count continuously, perhaps per year or per quarter, leading to articles covering pages 13199–13255 or similar folly.
Why is this so?  When citing year and issue, there is no ambiguity when starting to count at 1 at every issue.  So why not paginate by issue like everybody else?

If a journal restarts with page 1 in every issue, it is said to be "paginated by issue". Some citation styles, e.g., APA style and (formerly) MLA require including the issue number only if the journal is paginated by issue - if it is paginated continuously, you are supposed not to include the issue number. Welcome to the wonderful worlds of citation styles.

One of the reasons, if not the only one, is that each year journal issues are typically collected by libraries in bound volumes, which, in this way, have a continuous numbering. At the end of the year, journals would also publish indexes for relatively quick reference.
Or, at least, that is what is used to be.
Below, there is an example of bound volumes (picture source).

I used to be involved with at a student-run science fiction library and can confirm this approach to binding of periodicals.  It's also worth noting that the choices of which issues are bound to make volumes may vary significantly from library to library, e.g., based on which of several binding methods is used.

@jakebeal Yep, next time I'll pass at my university library I'll try to take a better picture of a few volumes (if they haven't been moved in the basement for space reasons...).

Nowadays, in the epoch of why go to the library when you can get the paper on your phone, some journals (such as Physical Review and friends) have switched to per-article page numbering, with e.g. this paper denoted as p. 011001 but internally being paginated 011001-1, 011001-2, etc.

Amazing.  Only in the future can someone under 40 still feel really old when they realize that kids today have no idea about things like books and paper.  The thought that an academic could be at a stage in their career where they know what a journal article is and yet never have needed to review, let alone even have seen, a bound volume journal is just amazing to me.  At last check, and this is less than a decade ago, plenty of articles were simply not available in pdf format - especially older articles.  A trip to the library was the natural thing to do.

@J... Not to mention that papers to be peer-reviewed would arrive by snail-mail in double-space format, or that conference papers would have been sent "camera-ready": who uses cameras anymore to produce proceedings?

On the other hand, there exist textbooks that do the exact opposite, and have page numbers [chapter]-[number], restarting page numbering at every chapter…

Many reasons.  It makes the page and volume together a unique identifier for a paper, without having to track the issue.  This is very convenient.  For example, many journals (used to) publish a master table of contents at the end of the volume, and the unique page numbering made these efforts less confusing.
Sometimes, the issue can just be left out of the reference in a paper.  It's less likely to happen these days, but before readily accessible databases and DOI numbers, such things were not uncommon.  Unique page numbering made the papers easy to find when you were down in the deep, dark, stacks, making a pile of journals for your trip to the photocopier.
Also, what with similar journal names, special issues, supplements, etc., there was something to be said for the ability to notice that the book you were holding, the one that you were willing to put money on that it held the paper you were interested in, did not include the page number that the paper was supposed to be in.  Can't tell you why, but this was a problem that came up with some regularity.  I think this saved me plenty of time.


text:
Undergraduate, graduate or post-graduate student — is that Bachelor/Master/PhD or Bachelor/Master+PhD/postdoc?
I received an invitation to nominate students for an award that could be for an undergraduate, a graduate or a post-graduate student. I've seen those terms used before, but never been sure what they mean. I know Bachelor student, Master student, PhD student and post-doc.
The timeline:
Being a Bachelor student → Getting the Bachelor degree → Being a Master student → Getting the Master degree → Being a PhD student → Getting the PhD degree → Being a post-doc → ...
Then what do undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate students refer to? Are undergraduate students exclusively students studying to get a Bachelor degree, or can it also refer to students studying to get a Master degree? After all, that's a graduation that they don't have yet. Literally speaking, it could also be "under" the PhD degree, but that's surely never used as such.
And a graduate student, is that then someone studying for the Master degree, er is it used only for people studying for the PhD degree?
But then what is a post-graduate student? Is this a post-doc? But post-docs aren't students anymore, so then it could only refer to PhD students. Or are post-docs considered students, too?

In many places, it takes a medical school student 6 or 7 years to be a medical doctor. Where do they fit?

I am almost certain that post doc is not what is meant.
In English speaking systems outside of North America, and especially referring to Europe under the Bologna accords, an undergraduate refers to someone who is studying for, but has yet to receive, his first post-secondary education degree. Typically this degree is some equivalent of Bachelors, but in some cases students maybe enrolled in accelerated programs with a longer term of study that leads directly to (the equivalent of) a Masters degree.
A graduate student can, but not necessarily, refer to someone who is studying for a graduate diploma. In many countries having a Bachelors (or equivalent) is not sufficient in itself to qualify one for starting a postgraduate degree. One often requires a "good enough" Bachelors degree (such as one with honors). The graduate diploma is an intermediate step in which a student who has already received his first post-secondary degree studies further in order to qualify to enroll in a masters (or sometimes doctorate? I am not sure about this) degree program.
A postgraduate student refers to someone who has already obtained a first degree, and is now pursuing a second, third, or Nth degree beyond it. See, e.g. this Wikipedia entry.
A postdoctoral researcher is generally not considered as a student.

In English speaking North America, an undergraduate typically refers to someone studying for a bachelors, since almost all (if not all) degree programs go through that stage in North America. And a graduate student refers to any student studying for any degree beyond that of the bachelors (so that would be typically the masters or the doctorate).

@Pacerier: the one example I had in mind is the Cambridge Math Tripos, where some students can get, after one extra year of course work, both a BA and MMath degree at the same time now. (The offered degree(s) used to be slightly different some years ago, IIRC.) // These sorts of programs were more prevalent before Bologna. For example the pre-Bologna un-tiered Diplom degree in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland is largely the first degree held by the individuals and is currently recognized as largely equivalent to a modern Master's degree.

Further comment, hopefully clarifying a bit more: according to https://educationusa.state.gov/your-5-steps-us-study/research-your-options/graduate/what-graduate-student , in the US you can pursue a master's or a PhD after a bachelor's. In Germany (and most other European countries), you have to obtain a bachelor's degree first, then a master's, then you can pursue a PhD.

In many American Universities, the concept of a Master student is that which is enrolled purely in a Master course, and is expected to leave the school after graduation.
A Graduate student is usually enrolled with the objective of doing a PhD, many Graduate students, provided they have the coursework and thesis, might get a Masters degree in the middle of the program along with the PhD.
Usually for postgraduate students I also think is for post docs, but I'm not sure. In Mexico (and maybe France, because we share some characteristics of the language) a postgraduate student is one doing either a PhD or a Master, and a Graduate student is one doing his Bachelor degree.

This view isn't really correct. A master's student may also be done as a prelude to a PhD, particularly when the admissions to the doctoral program is not automatic (even when made contingent upon passing a qualifying exam).

In the USA  An undergraduate student is one who's working towards a bachelors degree; typically a graduate student is one who has a bachelors degree and is either working on a Masters are higher level degree; a postgraduate degree level refers to someone who has earned a masters degree and is in route to a higher level degree; a postdoctoral Student is when they have completed coursework for the doctor degree but still has other requirements to finish like a thesis or disertation.

In the USA ...  a postdoctoral Student is when they have completed coursework for the doctor degree but still has other requirements to finish like a thesis or disertation. [citation needed]


text:
How early should a graduate student begin their job search?
Generally speaking, are there good "milestones" to suggest that a graduate student should initiate their job search? Roughly a year from completion? More? Less? Is there a particular time of year a job search should be kicked off?
Basically: The job search, how do I time it?

The following is condensed from advice for academic job hunts that I've read here and here - I imagine it should be somewhat applicable for jobs in industry as well:

If you would be applying for a position at Fall, begin applying from summer the previous year - applications tend to be sorted during committee meets, and the earlier you apply, the fewer applications are there, so there are higher chances of getting your application noticed. Hence, you'll want to draft your research statement, teaching statement and curriculum vitæ (CV) the summer before your search. If you are applying for industrial as well as academic positions, you probably want more than one resume, since achievement, skills, and goal-oriented resumes can be more effective in the industrial setting.
The middle of January is when most schools stop accepting applications. Even then, keep submitting to any position you find through February, particularly if someone there recommends you apply. You will probably hear back with invitations for interviews in January and February, but sometimes even March and April.
Get your letter writers primed as early as possible. You'll need at most six letter writers, but no less than three, and you'll want to ask them at least a month in advance with all your documents.

Is the timetable (second point) specific to a country or a discipline? The third point about recommendation letters definetely is, since not all postdoc positions ask for them.

If you're talking about job searches in general, it's never too early to start making contacts with potential future employers. Getting on their "radar screen" early can only help you when it comes time to apply formally for jobs; in addition, if you are their "preferred" candidate, you may find a job posting "stressing" your particular research direction.
When it comes time for the actual submission of applications, academic positions typically operate on an annual cycle that depends on the field, and you should plan accordingly, as given in the response by shan23. The timing for other jobs varies, in particular depending upon the state of the economy. However, at the absolute minimum, you should start applying six months before your anticipated graduation; in the current circumstances, I think twelve months ' advance lead is also acceptable. Further out, the crystal ball is probably too cloudy for both employer and applicant.


text:
The paper I reviewed got worse in parts, due to poor advice from another reviewer
I reviewing a paper and now getting the revised paper for the next round.  Although it has improved overall, in some parts, the paper has become worse when the authors followed (in my opinion) poor advice from another reviewer (I can see the other peer review).  Is it appropriate to advice the authors to ignore the advice from the other reviewer and revert this particular change?  It concerns a minor point.

Can you check with the editor, if she can suggest something on this conflict?

Dueling referees. One of the author's bigger fears.

Seems there should be something like a “director’s cut” for academic papers. Which would be the original paper plus what the author thinks are improvements due to reviewer comments.

@gnasher729 In some Copernicus EGU journals that is exactly what happens, and the reviewer comments are public too.

Ask yourself whether it is worth it for a "minor point". But you can ask the editor for advice. And, as you suggest, you can also just give your best advice for the fix. You don't need to speak badly of the other reviewer to do so. Just say what you think the authors should do to make the paper better.
Conflicting reviews are common enough.


text:
Erratum to correct a reference — will this technically work?
Hours after I approved the proofs, I noticed a key reference in my article was wrong.  Authors and title are correct, journal is wrong, and it's wrongly listed as in press.  The paper is now published (it's a fast journal, the status is now registering DOI), so the reference probably can't be changed anymore.  I could submit an erratum, but would this be "picked up" by services such as Scopus or Google Scholar?
Related from a different perspective: Miswritten reference in (in press) paper

How bad is it? If it's a minor typo then I wouldn't worry about it too much. Most bibliographies I read through have at least one typo. If it's still possible to find the article using the reference, then it's doing what it's meant to.

Put a technical report online that corrects the mistake (e.g., on a personal website, departmental page, arXiv, ...)

@Spark Wrong journal and incorrectly noted as "in press" when it's actually published, but someone googling title will find it.

In press vs actually published is forgivable, after all you could’ve seen the article when it was in press. How wrong a journal name?

@Spark I used 'RS' in my bibtex source and I have a list of journal abbreviations, I didn't pay attention that 'RS' was referring to 'Radio Science' rather than 'Remote Sensing'...


text:
Should I review differently when the review itself will be public?
Some journals, such as many of the EGU Copernicus publications, publish the initial manuscript and the (anonymous) peer reviews and author replies along with the full manuscript.  When reviewing for such a journal, should I review any differently than when I write a review for a classical journal where only the editor and authors should be expected to ever see the review?

In theory we should be as thoughtful and careful regardless. In practice I found that I paid more attention to correct spelling and formatting for reviews I knew were going to be available online. I think the real benefit of publishing the reviews is avoiding the senselessly mean reviews and promote a more mature academic style.

One possible factor: the audience for your referee reports will be wider, which means people with less background may read them. When I write referee reports, it is often from one expert to another -- so it would be easy to say, for instance, "As you know, Fact X is true..." without a citation. This might be a bad habit in regular refereeing, but if the reports are public, it's worth being a bit more careful on that.

I'm sure I've written comments in referee reports with the specific author or editor in mind.  Even when I don't know them personally, I frequently know what they know and how they think based on the other papers they've written.  Sometimes the specific advice doesn't have to do with the author personally but their situation; I might recommend that the author consult a particular expert X on an issue partly because X is at an institution geographically close to the author.


text:
Pros and cons of publishing in a mega journal?
The open access journal Scientific Reports publishes original research in all areas of the natural and clinical sciences.  That's broad; it's a mega journal.  With such a broad scope, I initially thought it a predatory journal, but it's published by Nature, so it isn't.  What are the (dis)advantages of publishing original research in such a "mega journal"?

The main factor here is the broad scope. It can really go both ways and could be either a pro or a con. The pro is that potentially a very large audience could be exposed to your work. The flip side to this is that because of the broad scope, people in any one field - and specifically those the field of your paper - will usually not regularly go through the papers in this journal (in contrast to a specialized journal). So you may have a case where you are trading off exposure to people in your field for broader exposure to other fields - but of course this can vary for any specific paper.
Another pro of a broad journal is that it may fit interdisciplinary papers that do not otherwise fit in specialized journals. A potential con would be that there is less chance of getting an editor that is an expert in the topic of your paper.

I do not believe the first paragraph is correct because I do not believe people decide what to read based on which journal it is published in.  People pick papers to read primarily based on the results of search engines.

@AnonymousPhysicist I disagree, many people regularly go through issues of specific journals (both broad and specialized).


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What fraction of STEM PhD graduates end up in jobs that require a PhD?
Only a small fraction of PhD graduates in STEM end up as (tenured) professors.  For example, see this question and plenty of other material on the internet.
Many PhD graduates end up wokring in government or industry.  Some of those are research positions where a PhD is valued if not required (perhaps the specialisation is less important), but I also know STEM PhD graduates who work as programmers (quite common), as a miner, in the military, or as a reindeer herder (yes).
Within STEM, what fraction of PhD graduates end up in jobs for which a PhD is a requirement?  And what fraction in jobs for which it is considered valuable, even if not required?
In order not to muddy the waters with graduates doing postdocs still hoping for an academic career before giving up, let's consider the first long-term (5 years+) position or whatever they're doing 10 years after completing the PhD.

absolutely incorrect graph, and only specific for USA.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited employs 1983 PhDs, 4.4% of their employees.

What fraction of degree holders end up in jobs that require a degree?

@SSimon Are you referring to the graph in the linked question?

@gerrit almost all of them. However, there is personaly preference, and since tenured are not so well paid sometime, they end up by their choice in industry.7

STEM is a big place.
For  physics, APS reports that 47% of new PhDs go into a Post-doc, 38% take a potentially-permanent position (usually in industry), and only 4% are unemployed. This suggests that at least 86% of physics PhDs are using their PhD. Some of these post-docs won't convert to academic positions, but they are unlikely to end up unemployed.
It's true that some of these industry jobs don't require a PhD, but they are generally preferred, plus they usually count as being worth 5-10 years of experience. So I think it's fair to count the industry jobs as "using" the PhD.
In other sciences, things are different. In chemistry, ACS reports that 14% of new PhDs are unemployed. On the other hand, 94% report that their job is related to their PhD (so, something does not add up).
In psychology, only 63% are "working full time" (it does not specify on what), but that does not count the 24% who are "working on post-doctorates" (?). Further, 54.4% of the employed PhDs claim that "doctorate in psychology [was] important" to finding their job, with another 24% saying it was helpful.
See also this  article.
My personal experience as a PhD in industry who is involved in hiring is that there is a huge shortage for US citizens with a STEM PhD and useful skills. By the way, "useful" skills might not mean what you think it means -- even abstract math, statistics, thermodynamics, game theory, etc. can be highly useful if you're willing to apply it to real-world technology.


text:
Why write papers anonymously?
The author Anonymous has 74,305 publications in the Scopus publication database.  Those include 32,476 peer-reviewed articles, most from the 1980s and 1990s.
Why would anyone write a peer-reviewed paper anonymously?

Wow; that guy is productive!

I searched for the author Anonymous in PubMed (the life sciences publication database), and found 26 results, which shed some light on your question.
Some paper titles:

"I was sexually harassed as a junior by senior doctors: it still goes
on, and it needs to stop"
"My own story: dealing with depression"
"A mind surrounded by a moat: a first-person account of cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis"
"Trying to overcome racism in the NHS"

So in many cases the authors are describing a sensitive experience or medical condition they have and they do not want others to know about. Alternatively the author could be a whistle-blower. It may also be used in some cases where the editor wrote the piece but does not take credit, but I am guessing this is usually not the case.

In one case that I know of (Anonymous, 1969; J. Glaciol) the article summarizes a then new report on terminology. The paper is published in a high impact journal in the field but is not a research article and not a review article, just a summary. The purpose was to inform the community and after that people reference this paper rather than the report, which before internet was hard to get.
The reason why the authors were anonymous in this case was that they felt no-one in particular should be personally associated with this summary (get credit as if it was a scientific paper when it really was not). The report was made through a large international effort with international peer review.  So from this perspective, the Anonymous author has a function to fulfil. The material becomes possible to reference and it is not tied to a person but a community. It would, of course be possible to call the group working on the report something and then use this communal name instead of "Anonymous" as is also sometimes the case in larger projects.

You could call the group "Collective Mind", or simply "Collective Effort" which would be immediately informative about how the paper was written. To differentiate it from the ordinary use of the terms, one could use the Latin version, which probably would be something like "Mens Collectivum" or "Labore Collectivum".

In one famous case, a statistician had to use a pseudonym (he used A. Student instead of Anonymous, but basically the same idea).  William Gosset was employed by Guinness as a researcher and I'll just quote Wikipedia here:

Another researcher at Guinness had previously published a paper
  containing trade secrets of the Guinness brewery. To prevent further
  disclosure of confidential information, Guinness prohibited its
  employees from publishing any papers regardless of the contained
  information. However, after pleading with the brewery and explaining
  that his mathematical and philosophical conclusions were of no
  possible practical use to competing brewers, he was allowed to publish
  them, but under a pseudonym ("Student"), to avoid difficulties with
  the rest of the staff.[2] Thus his most noteworthy achievement is now
  called Student's, rather than Gosset's, t-distribution.[1]

This paper was published anonymously as a critique for lack of mathematical foundation on optimization literature. The paper shows a ridiculous algorithm that meets all accepted criteria for having a sound theory supporting it.

Editor's note: This manuscript was transmitted, torn and tattered, to Mathematical Programming by Philip Wolfe with a letter, stating, in part: “I have refereed many papers which proposed optimization algorithms without studying their effectiveness; it will save me much time to have here a single reference I can cite, saying ‘This algorithm solves all the problems yours does and, on the available evidence, equally well.’ I therefore recommend publication ⋯ and hope that the author will come forward to receive ⋯ what he richly deserves.”

My university has no access to the linked paper :(

That's not a critique.  It's a joke.

Publishing anonymously made (makes) sense in a society where internet comunications is not part of a citizen's daily life of living (and work). For all the reasons already presented here. Mainly due to safety concerns.
(...)
That reality changes to the oposite (of of being unsafe) when is meet the above internet requirement. Europe, in 2005 (ish) meet that minimum requirement. In today's european digital reality (2021), publishing anonymously is no longer safe, nor advantageous.  Even when considering top secret "military" projects.
(...)
To better understand what i just said, i invite the reader to study how prototyping and business creation is made (online) with all available to read, listen and see, from idea conception to a running business. And I'm refereing to well known businesses such as was the case of google 20 years ago and more recently any open source businesses demostrate.
(...)
One must also consider, patenting and patents are now available to download and study for free. With all the business frenesim well known nowadays, best protagonized by Elsevier.
This leaves academia (some in panic , others static) behind, when forcing their scientific method while forgeting to include the latest technological adavances into their research activities.
(...)
In summary,
research laboratories are required to open to the world outside, and when doing it, gain access to:

real live data for their resarch project studies and activities. This results in bigger datasets on presented findings when publishing
in turn, live data, aquired from any IoT data acquisiton device, leads to the creation of biggest dataset available in history (a dream come true for any true scientific researcher). And to cope with all that data ocean is needed automation tools such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.

If the reader missed, all above is already happening in a publicly acessible enviroment, not anonymously. Think for instance geo located data.
(...)
Finally,
I consider to be more urgent , the chalenge of overcomming vertical rankings in science, for instance incresase the number of index used in sci. metrics, at the same time a researcher gains access to above metioned digital tools and devices. While doing it, research activities will enable faster scientifc prodution, with increased collaboration*, cooperation*, partnership* all happeing #live, in real-time and more importantly asynchronously (with minimal disturbance of a research daily work schedule).
In the end, the researcher can expect great improvements in quality of published research. Publicly knowing is a safer practice to deliver science in the world. (and more)

Scopus has 82,000,000 documents.  You have found that less than one in a thousand is attributed to anonymous.  The consensus view is that papers should not be published anonymously.

True.  Anonymously published papers are rare.  However, rare events still have a cause are rare choices still have reasons, so I think your answer is a bit too simple.

Why not?
Actually, why would anyone write not anonymously?
What's the real point behind a list of names, especially in a scientific article?
Papers are written for the purpose of the advancement of science.
Not for personal advertisement.
Names can still be registered with the journal editor and/or with a regulatory organisation.

If all science papers (even just those in physics) were written anonymously, then I suppose things like Maxwell's equations, Einstein's theory of relativity, Dirac equation, Newton's law of gravitation, Heisenberg uncertainty principle, Van Allen radiation belts, Fermi-Dirac statistics, Schrödinger equation, etc. would be called something else.

A lot of papers seem to be written more for advancement of careers than for advancement of science.