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What is the recommended option for a faculty applicant after accepting an offer and getting another better offer?
As universities provide short deadlines for faculty position offers, applicants can accept an offer-1 (verbally or by signing a contract) and which is not the best. What is the recommended option if a late and a better offer-2 arrives after accepting offer-1?

Reject offer-2 and stay with offer-1.
Reject offer-1 and accept offer-2.
Accept and delay offer-2 for a year or two if possible, and work for a year or two with University-1.
other options?

Sometimes the procedure is a bit different than what you describe: the department makes an informal offer that is in writing, but still conditional on the approval of the Provost.  Then the candidate may informally accept (in writing, but without a signature.)  Later the candidate receives a formal offer letter from the Provost, which, when signed, creates the contract.

I'd go against option 3, it's immoral and it also wastes time of all the three parties. School 1 will waste a year incorporating the candidate, school 2 will waste a year missing a faculty member in their planning and grant competition, the candidate will waste a year yearning to get out, doing no long-term plan with the colleagues in school 1. It's a lose-lose-lose situation.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/62298/how-do-i-deal-with-postdoc-acceptances-that-come-in-before-my-preferred-institut/62323?noredirect=1#comment149063_62323
Beware of the advises that are based on 'ethics'! 'Ethics' in this particular situation of academia may very well be 'convenience to the employers'. Employers can afford being in the convenient position due to the usually bad job market for employees. If there is not something specific in your signed offer-1 that binds you for a certain period with uni-1, then there is nothing that could stop you accepting offer-2.

Except that you may find the losers from uni-1 bad-mouthing about you!

I am happy to work in centralized France, were almost all application are synchronized so that you get all answers before you decide which offer to take.

This situation should not actually arise if you are handling your faculty job search properly.  If you accept an offer, you should withdraw all your remaining job applications.  Otherwise either you are wasting their time in considering you for a position you won't accept, or you were insincere in accepting the previous offer.  If you aren't comfortable withdrawing your other applications, then you aren't comfortable accepting the job.  You can negotiate on this point, for example by telling them that another job would solve your two-body problem and you hope they can wait on a final decision until you hear about that job, but there's no guarantee that they will agree.
The basic ethical principle here is honesty: you shouldn't give someone a decision they understand to be final without actually meaning it.  By default, job acceptances are considered binding decisions in the parts of academia I'm familiar with (certainly in mathematics in the U.S.), so you can't just assume that of course they knew you might change your mind.  If you have any reservations or conditions, you should make them explicit before accepting the position.  This can't hurt you if nobody really considered the decision to be final in the first place, and it will avoid unethical behavior if they did.
Even though this shouldn't happen, people do occasionally get themselves into this situation.  If you unilaterally rescind your initial acceptance and take the other position instead, you face almost no legal risk, since nobody's going to try suing over this.  However, you can hurt your reputation, which is a serious danger.
Instead, the way you should handle it is by careful discussions.  Typically, University 2 will let you defer their offer for at least a year, since otherwise they look like jerks for trying to steal you away from University 1 after you already accepted an offer.  (Another possibility is that University 2 had no idea you had already accepted and will rescind their offer upon learning this.)  Then you approach University 1 and apologize profusely for inadvertently creating a terribly awkward situation.  You explain that you are willing to come to University 1 and fulfill your obligations, but you have an offer from University 2 and you would very likely leave after a year to go there, so you wonder whether there is any chance they would release you from your acceptance.  If they agree, then you are ethically free to accept University 2's offer immediately.  (University 1 still won't be happy with you, so you shouldn't do this unless it really matters to you, but asking them for permission is much better than just announcing you aren't coming.)  If University 1 insists that they need you next year, then you defer University 2's offer and show up at University 1.
But you really shouldn't let yourself get further faculty offers after you've already accepted a job.  You might be able to get away with it once by explaining that you accidentally forgot to withdraw your other applications, but you really don't want to develop a reputation over time as someone who deliberately manipulates the system in unethical ways.

It's worth noting that this is quite different to what you would expect in industry, where very few people would consider it unethical to continue applying in the hope of a better offer.  I think a lot of mix-ups are caused by expecting academia to play by the same rules.

There are good reasons for this difference between academia and industry, which is that academia is built around semester and year calendars.  Leaving an academic job mid-semester would be a disaster, so even non-tenured faculty are typically on year-long contracts rather than at-will like in industry.  This is also in the interest of faculty, since there aren't jobs offered all year round.  These differences run both directions, which is why it was such a scandal when Microsoft Research laid off a bunch of academics without advanced notice and while paying no regard to timing.

I feel this answer is taking the point of view of recruiter strongly. Now that I am in this side, I try to be quite understanding that we are competing for bright colleagues, not only them are competing for nice places such as ours. My guess is if there where less of a shortage of positions, the convention would be inversed. I agree that it seems to be as you say in the US, but it a convention rather than an ethic ruling.

@BenoîtKloeckner: I agree halfway: it's both a convention and an ethical requirement.  There's no reason why the job market couldn't follow different conventions, but there's a powerful assumption that everyone is agreeing to whatever the standard conventions are.  You are free to ask for an exception if you'd like, and maybe you can negotiate one if the department really wants you, but you have to say this explicitly.  If you say nothing, then the department will reasonably assume you are following standard practices, and it's dishonest to let them believe this if you don't intend to do so.

There's a missing aspect in both of the other answers here: how long did the first university give you to make your decision?
First, you should immediately acknowledge the receipt of their offer, and then if U1 gave you a week (or a day, it happens!), the you should tell them immediately that you like their offer, but that you have other applications pending and that you need more time to decide. This starts a negotiation and recognizes to them your continued interest in the position. Then you should get in touch with all of the other universities which you would still contemplate accepting an offer from and let them know (without, necessarily, naming U1) that you have received an offer with a short deadline to accept. This gives the other universities where you have applied an opportunity to communicate their ongoing interest in you (or not) and help you make your decision about whether to accept or reject U1's offer before hearing from the others.
You should keep this communication up as things progress. There are so many things going on behind the scenes that you don't know about. The more open your communications are, the more likely you are to find the best position for yourself and allow the places you don't go to find their next best option.
When a university makes you an offer, that means they have decided that you are the best candidate that applied that they think they can actually get. They have made a strategic decision to offer you a job over other applicants. They have given you some sort of time limit to decide, because they have other options still waiting, and they don't want to lose their chance at them if you are going to decline. This is true of the places which you haven't heard from yet as well. Letting them know you have an offer will push them to figure out what they want to do.
As others have said, once you have accepted an offer, you really should bow out of the other positions you have applied for, but you don't have to let it get to that point if you communicate with everyone well.

This is great advice, but doesn't strictly apply to the question since in the OP's case it is too late to do this.

Although some would argue about the ethics of the situation, I'd say accept the better offer... unless acceptance of offer-1 was in the form of signing a contract.  My reasoning is this:  If you were already employed at Uni-1 and Uni-2 made you a better offer, you'd work out the duration of your contract and move.
If you have signed a contract, you are ethically and legally bound to honor it.  (Whether anything bad happens if you break it is another question.)
What you must not do is accept Uni-2's offer until you are clear of Uni-1.  There's a certain amount of peril in that because Uni-2 might do the same thing you are contemplating, namely withdraw their offer for a better prospect.

It seems like you are saying that it is unethical to break a signed contract, but it isn't unethical to break a less formal (but no less serious) agreement.  Isn't the difference purely legal, rather than ethical?

@TrevorWilson: The difference between a contract and a less formal acceptance is more than legal.  The contract binds both parties for a time certain.  The informal acceptance is acknowledgment of the intention to be bound.  To put it another way, it's not a deal until it's a deal.

And also... my experience of offer letters is very limited, but the ones I know about contain weasel-words like, "... contingent upon available funding and the needs of the department..."  In other words, the institution explicitly reserves the right to back out for very nebulous reasons.  A firmer offer, sans weasel words, is deserving of a more considered response.  Finally, a verbal offer is not worth the paper it's written on.

@BobBrown It's worth being aware that in some juristictions a verbal contract is binding and may be all you get. I think this is unlikely to occur for a faculty position, but it is a possibility more widely.

@JessicaB: A "verbal offer" is not the same as a "verbal contract," although Samuel Goldwyn said "not worth the paper it's written on" with respect to verbal contracts.  We are kind of far afield here, but the problem with verbal contracts is proof.

For my understanding it is totally okay to turn down an offer even after verbal acceptance, as long as you didn't sign the contract. So I assume we are talking about an offer which you accepted in writing (signed). Ethically speaking, the point when you sign the contract should be the point when you inform other universities that you withdraw from their searches.
If you already have signed the contract with University 1, but you really want to accept offer from University 2 for X,Y,Z reasons, then there is nothing wrong in doing so. But you should be aware that you are most likely will burn bridges with University 1, since you crossed an ethical line which most of the Universities at least want to see being honored by their future employees. University 1 also told other candidates that the position is taken, but in reality, that doesn't make a big difference, if not a lot of time passed between signing the contract and you declining the offer.
I would be as honest as possible, apologize, tell them about your reasons. If you have good personal reasons, most of the people would be understanding. Professional reasons might raise some temporary or permanent anger on their side. However, eventually they will let you do this, because they don't want a faculty working in their department who only is there because he legally has to be there.
You can do decline in writing or via phone. I would use the way they were communicating with you most of the time.
And remember, by the end of the day, it's your gut feeling which decides. Don't let the other people scare you. Some folks are better listening to their gut, others aren't that good at it. It is good that you are competitive enough to get more than one job offer, and also Universities trying to get good people on the hook.
And for the future you might consider a better negotiation ethics. For example it would be totally okay to inform University 2 that you have a written offer in hand from University 1 and you would like to know what your chances are. As long as you don't sign, it's not a massively big deal for any of the participating parties. You might get some good vibrations from University 2 and then it would be up to you whether or not you want to gamble or be on the safe site. But that's life, sometimes you just have to make decisions which don't always cover all you necessities.

Although your answer is good, it's hard to read because it's a wall of texts. Would you take some time to improve it? Thanks.

I must disagree with "anonymous Mathematician".  That advice might leave you without any offers.  His/her advice does not account for the fact that campus interviews, and therefore offers, often occur weeks and even months apart.  If the first offer is close enough (2-3 weeks) from an anticipated second offer, you should try to ask for an extension.  Inevitably, a school will eventually need an an answer and it is perfectly acceptable for you to accept the offer from School #1 while waiting for a campus interview from School #2.  You may have to call School #1 back and let them know the bad news, but don't let people on here scare you into thinking you HAVE to stay with School #1.  In my experience, School #1 is perfectly understanding.  They would rather let you go than have a bitter faculty member who is disheartened that they didn't have the foresight to reject School #1's offer.

This seems to be the similar to the deleted answer you gave last month and it is not clear to me how it answers the question.

I phrased it more in the form an answer as opposed to a response.  The candidate asked what is the recommended option and I recommend that candidate take the second offer.  That is answering the question.  Please do not delete my post simply because you don't like/agree with my answer.

In any case, this situation happened to me and School #1 was perfectly understanding.  I had even signed a contract.  Candidates out there reading these posts are looking to hear our experiences and opinions, so they can better decide how to proceed in their own dilemmas.


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Review paper authored by a current collaborator
I have a simple question about a math paper, since I don't have a lot of experience in reviewing papers. I have currently received a request for reviewing a paper for publication. I would normally have no problem in doing so.
The thing is that I am currently about to start a collaboration with one of the authors of this paper. This collaboration even appears mentioned at some point in the paper that I was asked to review (in the lines of "the author ... and ... are planning to ...", where one of the ... is me).
I wonder whether there is an ethical dilemma. Perhaps it's completely normal and standard and I'm just making a big deal out of it. I'm sure it depends on the discipline, so I wanted to hear about this from people in the math world. Thanks!

I'm not in mathematics, but in other fields, it's pretty standard that you decline to review papers written by your collaborators.

If one author is too close to you, you should decline. I do not review for recent co-authors and current collaborators of mine but I start collaborations with people I reviewed.

Well I am not extremely close. In fact we haven't really started yet but we are planning to do so within the next couple of months. Also, we don't have any previous collaboration. Perhaps it's a good idea to raise this issue with the editor and see what he thinks?

If you've started discussions for potential collaboration, then declining mitigates any potential conflict of interest that might arise during the review process. There are other reviewers in the world, after all.  However, if you feel that you can in good faith be impartial in review, discuss issue with editor. He can decide to still ask for your review but then can 'weight' it as he decides.

And since you say that your future collaboration is  already mentioned in the paper, you should call the editors attention and really should decline to review the paper. If the editor had noticed that line buried in the paper, I'm sure he would not have contacted you for a review.

Thanks. I will contact the editor and see what he suggest. Perhaps I should also mention here that in the request I received, the editor actually acknowledged that I am acquainted with the author and the work.

Recent (5 years) co-authorship would constitute an official conflict of interest for reviewing their NSF proposal. I'd decline.

-1 want to speak up?

That was my downvote. I think that the NSF issue is a separate one from the one in the question, and if you feel that there is a link then your answer would be improved by elaborating on that link. (For extra context: I upvoted Andreas Blass's answer.)

@YemonChoi, it's clearly separate, but I think it's a good standard to apply to oneself in absence of a standard from the journal or venue itself. If the editor can point OP to the venue's standards for conflicts of interest, that'd be preferable.

Bill Barth is absolutely right concerning the rules for reviewing NSF proposals, but I don't see that the same rules need to apply to reviewing papers, especially if the editor is already aware of your acquaintance with the author and work.  I'd suggest that you make sure the editor is aware of your planned collaboration with the author; if the editor still wants you to review the paper, then go ahead and review it.

So, if the editor's misconduct is deliberate, they should be encouraged? :-) Note that such situations can only arise when editors are too lazy to look for other reviewers than the one or two they first thought about (or in the extreme case of a subject with only two experts in the world, a feature to meditate upon, if you ask me).

I want to add to this answer that you should feel free to decline if you don't think you could be objective or you don't think you could maintain anonymity.  While you should normally feel a slight sense of obligation to referee papers, you should not in this case.

@Did - While I don't think an editor should rely on the OP being the sole referee, in many ways (especially if the collaboration has not yet started and so OP hasn't learned to think the same way as the author(s)), the OP is perfectly suited for the role of the referee who actually goes into the paper carefully and spends two weeks of work checking every detail is correct. The OP actually has a reason to want to spend the 30 hours it takes to do the job properly.  (Yes - refereeing an average math paper properly takes 30 hours; important long papers can take hundreds of person-hours.)

@AlexanderWoo Sorry but I fail to see how your comment addresses my point (but thanks for lecturing me about the refereeing process of math papers, suddenly I felt younger...).

I am not that strict as other answerers; some fields are too narrow to provide reviewer without any relation to the authors. Inform the editor of the possible conflict of interest as soon as possible and suggest looking for another reviewer. Then they are aware that there is a chance of your opinion being biased and they are responsible to take into account.
On the other hand, the purpose of review is to rate, verify and improve the paper. The conflict of interest take place only in the first case; the other cases shall ignore author - reviewer relatioship at all. If the editor insists on you reviewing the paper I'd refuse to rate the paper, but verify and comment the paper to the authors.
In that case you can turn it to your advantage; you will se how your possible collaborators handle critics and you can decide whether "the collaboration is about to start" will turn to "will start" or "will be refused".

Rhetorical question:
Who would review new Pál Erdős' articles if he was alive?

Decline the review request: the fact that you will shortly be working with one of the authors of the paper is a clear conflict of interest. In particular, you say in a  comment you're planning to start working with the author in a couple of months; my experience of mathematics papers is that they typically take more than a couple of months to review so this will put you in the situation of reviewing a paper written by an active collaborator. Even ignoring the conflict of interest, that would not be a comfortable situation.
Unless the editor explicitly mentioned it, don't assume that they're OK with you reviewing a paper that talks about you as a planned future collaborator. There's a good chance that the editor didn't notice that, since they don't have time to read in full every paper that's submitted. To underscore this point, I know two different people who have been asked to review one of their own papers: editors make mistakes, too.
By the way, when you decline, don't mention that the paper says that the author plans on working with you. That looks too much like you're saying, "Duuuuh!" Just say that you're about to start collaborating with the author so you have a conflict of interest. If you can, suggest somebody else who might be able to review the paper.

It might be a limiting case, but I'm currently working on a relatively narrow topic where almost everyone collaborates with all the other people around the world in one way or another, whether papers, projects or committees. Declining to review because of an ongoing collaboration would probably leave the editors without reviewers...

@MassimoOrtolano That's a special case and, even there, I'd at least advise the editor that you're collaborating with the author so they're explicitly aware of it. It also sounds like a rather dangerous situation. I hope editors try to get reviews from people outside the clique as well: even though they won't have as much expertise, an outside perspective is valuable.

The editors typically already know this, but it's definitely not a dangerous situation, and people from the outside would have zero expertise rather not much.

I once received a paper to review where I was a coauthor. No kidding. I obviously declined, and maybe you should do the same. In my opinion this is largely your choice: if you feel that there is a conflict of interest or that you are unable to provide an impartial assessment you should decline.
Having said this, the scientific community in a specific domain is not always very large, there are not too many experts able to provide a solid review, and it therefore becomes inevitable after a few years to be confronted with the evaluation of a project or a manuscript of a former or present coworker. It may also be a disservice to the community if the manuscripts are evaluated exclusively by the competition, who might not be very impartial either but could be less inclined to admit it.
If you feel that you can evaluate the manuscript in an impartial way, you might add a confidential communication to the editor, some kind of "full disclosure", stating that you provide this review in spite of a planned collaboration with the authors, and that you are convinced that this situation does not affect your judgment of the work.

Declining the request is the easy way out. However, once you have some experience, you will have personal relations with most active people in your field, so this attitude would leave the reviewing to incompetent outsiders, which would be really bad.
As Crowley mentioned, the job of a reviewer is to rate, verify and improve the paper, and verification and improvement are no problems. Unless you are not asked by a pretty good journal (say, Journal of the LMS and better), rating essentially means "Dou you think this article should be published at all?". So you have to check whether the authors do something genuinely new, or use standard methods to solve a standard problem. To judge this you have to have a good understanding of what is going on in your field, which is why outsiders make poor reviewers. In the end one has to rely on ones gut feelings. Do you think that within a few months you could have come up with the same result, or are you envious of their ideas? Or, in your concrete situation, makes reading this paper you looking forward to work together with such great people?

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Applying from a different country: can the application be dismissed because of interview expenses?
I am applying for jobs currently, mostly tenure-track jobs, in mathematics. I am currently living in Europe, but I will apply to many jobs in the US and Canada. If I recall correctly, when a candidate is shortlisted for an interview, the expenses are paid by the university.
My question is: would a hiring committee dismiss an application because it comes from "far away"? The budget needed for flying in someone from another state in the US is not the same as the budget needed for flying in someone from Europe. So I'm thinking they might say "Ok, this candidate seems interesting, but we also have an equally interesting candidate which lives closer to us, so let's call the latter". But people in search committees will know better than me!
Note: I would not completely dismiss the idea of paying expenses for myself (in the case of a very interesting interview), but I don't think that's the usual process, and it would sound weird to say so in the application. So this is not really a question about money.
Also, please keep in mind that this is with regards to a somewhat normal application of a regular candidate. I'm not a Fields medallist, in which case those considerations would hardly apply.

I think "dismiss" is too strong a word. "Less chance" is probably close to the truth.

There is another problem you might face.  You might be invited to expenses paid interviews for which you have no real chance.  Since neither the money for travel expenses nor does your travel time belong to the hiring committee, they may feel freely waste both.

See  http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34464/should-i-offer-to-pay-some-of-the-travel-cost-from-the-uk-to-the-us-for-an-int

The short answer is "YES". I have a colleague in the University of Hawaii, who tells me that they do not invite an applicant for an interview, unless they show a real commitment (backed by some solid evidence) of actually strongly desiring the job in Hawaii. It turns out that way too many people apply to Hawaii just to get an interview (and a free vacation).

Well, but I would think Hawaii is very special in that sense.

In short, the answer is that yes, a search committee (or the administrators who would have to pay for the travel) could decide not to invite someone to an interview or invite them without agreeing to pay their travel expenses.  I don't believe that there's any legal requirement under US law to reimburse applicants for travelling to an interview, and I've seen some institutions (mostly community colleges) refuse to pay any travel expenses.  A more common thing is to reimburse only for travel expenses within the US (so you'd be responsible for paying your own way to New York or LA.)    What will happen in any particular case depends on the practices of an individual institution.
If you are planning a trip to the US for some other reason, you might mention in your cover letter that you'll be in the US and could do an interview as part of that trip.

Decades ago, after a post-doc in Europe (and without the internet for a job search back then), I did the 'tack interviews on to a trip to the US for a conference' thing - it worked out well. My institution paid for the conference, potential employers paid the additional to get to them.

Would it be considered OK to say that in the cover letter? I don't want to sound pedantic (as in "you will like me, but don't worry, I can pay for myself"). I guess the ideal thing would be the committee not caring about this until the moment of the interview comes, in where they tell me they cannot pay the expenses; in that case I would pay (or not, depending on other choices). But saying it upfront seems weird somehow..

If you don't make the point up front, you might never be invited to interview.

+1 especially for the second paragraph.  If you are a foreign mathematician applying for US jobs, then contriving to already be in the US during peak interview season (January) is really a win-win.

What would be a nice way to phrase it? Would it be acceptable to say something in the lines of "I would consider traveling to the US around January for the interview process"? I don't want to give too precise dates: I probably won't travel at all if I don't get any interviews :)

How about if you follow up with a short, somewhat more informal email, after sending your stuff?  Something like this: "Looks like I'll be in your area early in the new year, could stop over at University of X for an interview."  In other words, as vague as possible.

@aparente001 sounds good, but I doubt the search committee will read an e-mail. I've been told they barely look at the cover letter..

@dbluesk - when in doubt as to whether a recipient is actually going to read an email message, it can be helpful to embed a question into the message.  Then if there is no response after a suitable time frame, one can phone.

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How should I react to emails from unknown (to me) book publishers?
Since my Ph.D., I have occasionally received emails from publishers (that I've never heard of before) about writing a book. They all seem like mass emails that have my name and some title of a paper I wrote or the name of a course I've taught pasted in. The majority seem fishy and I just ignore them, but the most recent one may be a legitimate invitation. I'm not interested in writing the book they're asking for at this time, but I have to question whether I should continue to ignore all of these types of emails outright.
Are there smaller/up-and-coming academic publishers out there that are actively recruiting authors in order to expand their catalog? If so, should I engage with them at least for networking purposes?
I am specifically asking about books, and in particular textbooks, not journals. In searching through questions with publisher-related tags, I only saw similar questions about journals.

It is academic spam, just ignore.

It is almost always academic spam, but i also have received inquiries from very well known publishers.

Get used to this: you will receive one or more spam emails for every single piece of work that you will publish, whether thesis, journal paper or conference paper.
The senders are predatory publishers: press the del key as fast as you can!

This kind of e-mail from predatory publisher is very common. Just ignore them. If you have a doubt about whether a publisher is predatory or not, you can search on Google the name of the publisher. But if you never heard about a publisher, it is likely not a good publisher and it is probably not good to publish your work with them, since they probably sent that e-mail to thousands of researchers.

Google them and check them here: http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

@virmaior No. Googling them is a lost time. Unless you have heard their name before, they are uninteresting to you.

@yo' strongly disagree. At least in my discipline, there are quite a few legitimate publishing houses. I would never have heard of anything in the Czech republic, should I dismiss them out of hand?

@virmaior Very likely yes. If you've never heard of them, then most likely either you haven't gained enough experience (and no good published would be interested in seperately publishing your work) or they aren't well-known in your community (and it doesn't make sense to publish with them). Stick to the legitimate PHs you know.

The email
Most likely, the email is a spam email from a predatory publisher. If you have doubts, check their name through a Google search, or see if they are present on this list.
How they work
Predatory publishers send emails sometimes without you having finished your degree, as they crawl university websites for student email addresses and project names. They want to make money from your thesis, obtain full copyright to it and maybe even its intellectual property. This allows them to publish and sell wherever they see they can make money. This is often even against the rules of your university.
Actual publishers
If you want to publish a book, most publishers do not allow a thesis to be published as-is. To publish, you contact a publisher yourself, provide them with a proposal, and see if that gets accepted. Then the writing starts. More detail on this can be found here, with Springer as the example publisher.

Background of Publishing Spam
I can confirm that most if not all of these emails are plain spam.  Many of these publishers, such as for instance the one mentioned on Wikipedia, have dedicated personell or use automated Web crawlers, which browse academic institutions such as universities for publications.
Their only goal is to have as many publications as possible, therefore they approach every author for every paper, journal article or other publications.
Obviously there is spam which is immediately identifiable, and there is better spam. But it is spam after all.
Vanity as a Driver
As Massimo already put it, these companies are predators and aim at the vanity, which drives a lot of people.
Many of these publishers use a Print on Demand, which entails that unless someone orders your book, they don't have to print it. Therefore, there is little risk for the companies.
Now imageine you are a young student, you just finnished your degree and now comes this publisher, who offers you to print your work as a book, which can be bought on Amazon. And there is no cost for you, isn't that great?!
Maybe someone will buy it and then you have a published book and some money.
But it's free, where is the harm?
You can be sure that many people are proud of their work, proud to be a published author. Of course they buy a copy for grandma and one for the parants and one to put on the shelf in the living room.
This is just the business model of these publishers.
How to react?
Unless you feel urge to publish a book (which is a lot of work, as the content needs to be original!), just delete these emails.


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I have been sanctioned by my country's Higher Education Commission after being accused of plagiarism. What can I do?
I am a professor in a public university and have been accused of plagiarism by an anonymous letter to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan.
The anonymous letter framed two charges:

It accused four scientists of submitting a plagiarized manuscript in Laser Surgery and Medicine, a prestigious US journal. As a proof the accuser attached an email of rejection on the basis of high similarity index from the editor of the journal addressed to the corresponding author. I have been listed as a co-author, whereas the email of rejection is addressed to seven email addresses.
In second allegation a reference of 2005 of the editor of a Pakistani journal is mentioned. The editor accused the corresponding author of submitting an article which was already published in a journal, i.e. attempted self-plagiarism. The manuscript was not published but the editor declared that the corresponding author and his co-authors were blacklisted from the journal without mentioning the names of co-authors. Unfortunately the corresponding author in both cases is the same person and the co-authors in both cases are unclear.

My name is listed as a co-author by the anonymous letter and I was completely unaware of both the incidents. But HEC has black-listed all four people accused, including me, for two-years.
What can I do?

I do not understand. Are you a coauthor or not? If so, did you and/or your coauthors plagarize?

Some aspects of your question do not match information available on news outlets. Namely a newspaper states that "The journal editor [...] found the work to be plagiarised and contacted Pakistani authorities" No mention of an anonymous letter. Furthermore, your defense in the article is "They blacklisted me [...] on the basis of a research paper which was never published anywhere" not that there is uncertainty about your co-authorship.

Besides, obviously, the fact that the plagiarism was detected prior to publication does not mean it did not happen.

An article of reference on the matter.

Did someone fraudulently put your name on their paper or papers without your knowledge?

To the OP, what @BillBarth is asking in the above comment is the key to your question. If your name was put on the paper(s) with your knowledge and if they can prove it, I don't think you have a case.

The article I cite is indeed the one linked by @jakebeal.

Your question is weirdly vague on one important question, namely whether you actually are/were a co-author of the two questionable submissions. I am not sure how one can be "alleged" as a co-author - isn't that entirely clear and a completely black-white, yes-no question? Is your name on these papers?
Even if the HEC does not publish the name of the co-authors, you should still know whether you actually were a co-author of this publications or not.
The question "what can I do?" very much depends on your answer to this.
If yes:
You have presumably been sanctioned correctly. Trying to weasel out of your penalties based on formalities will likely only reflect worse on you. Accept the 2-year blacklisting and move on.
If no:
This then should be a clear-cut case of misjudgement, and following the formal appeal procedure whatever it is should definitely work out in favour of you. Your university should support you in this if the case is actually "I was blacklisted for a paper submission that has nothing to do with me".

Agree, especially with the "if yes" part.  Also it's not clear what exactly "blacklisting" means here.   If it's just that you can't publish, then the two years will pass quickly while you do (original!!) research and build a backlog of good papers to submit.  Not such a big deal if you have a permanent job?!

If someone fraudulent added OP's name to these papers, they may have no knowledge of what happened. It sounds like they were rejected before publication, so this could have happened entirely in private. If there was no hearing by the HEC, then OP's first knowledge of it may have been when the blacklisting was handed down.

@BillBarth That's a possibility, even though it seems to me very unlikely that the HEC would not first investigate (i.e., question) the respective individuals, and during this investigation something like "hey, I have never seen this paper - why am I a co-author of this??" would have come up.

The circumstances don't look good. Especially if the linked article is correct, but it has to be asked.

It's possible that, because of different dialects of English, "alleged as co-author" doesn't mean "alleged to be a co-author" but rather "alleged to have plagiarized because I am a co-author".

@AndreasBlass Normally all authors must approve a paper for it to be published and as such there's no difference. It's your responsibility to check for plagarism in papers which you have authored or co-authored.

@Murphy I would assume that Andreas means that it is "alleged" that the paper has been plagiarised, and not that the OP was a co-author.

A point that may not be clear to everyone because things differ from field to field is that sometimes, every co-author is contacted by the publisher and must agree explicitly to the publication or submission, and sometimes only the corresponding authors are asked to pledge that other authors consent to the submission and publication. In the second case, it may be the case that the OP was unduly listed as a co-author while he did not know about the paper. He should then turn against the corresponding author for fraudulently including him.


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How to speed up publishing papers?
In my field, good journals often seem to take around 12-20 weeks to review papers. As was suggested in a previous post, "How is it in my best interest not to submit a paper to two journals simultaneously?," one should not submit same paper to two journals. But none is omniscient to do multiple papers on various topics. Can any one kindly suggest how to speed up the publication process? Can journals reduce time? Or is this suggestion acceptable only after acceptance?

Good journals take around 12-20 weeks to review papers. This is very field dependent. In some fields, the norm is as short as a month (or less!). Some fields primarily rely on conferences instead of journals, which generally have very short turnaround times (and limits the concurrency issue).

Could you please say what field you are in?

There is one easy solution: lower your journal standards. There are plenty of journals that will publish your work in a few days for a fee. Now this is assuming you are solely interested in publishing as fast as possible, not things like advancing Human knowledge in your field or preparing a strong faculty application for a reputable institution.

@RogerFan The (theoretical) computer science conference review cycle takes 2.5–3 months (≈10-13 weeks) from submission to acceptance/rejection.  Add another 1.5 months (≈6 weeks) to submit the camera-ready version, and yet another 2–3 months (≈10-13 weeks) for the proceedings to be published (when the conference starts).  The conference I submit to most often meets in mid-June; its submission deadline is at the end of November.

In pure mathematics, you can wait a year (or two, or more!) for some good journals to review your paper.

@JeffE And I expose my lack of knowledge. I'm guessing it still does help the concurrency problem though, right? Though maybe not that much considering how long that is.

If I'm understanding correctly, the problem you're concerned about is what to do when you've just submitted a paper, and now you have a long wait before you can submit the follow-up paper.  Your question then presumes that a good solution to this problem is to try to accelerate the publication process.
I think that is a bad assumption.  There is no reason that you need to be stalled on your forward progress just because a paper is under review.  Here are two good alternatives that work within the system.

You can continue directly building on the same direction.  If you get to a major milestone and are ready to submit a new paper before the previous one is finished reviewing, you can submit a paper citing the one under review as "submitted," and include the draft paper as supplementary review-only information.
Research typically has a lot of "branching path" options getting catalogued in your "future work" sections.  Why not take a secondary path that you've wanted to investigate but isn't in the same exactly line of progression as the paper currently under review?  That will likely lead to its own interesting results that can be published without dependency on the paper currently under review.

It also seems possible to me that this concern may have arisen due to trying to publish too incrementally.  If you cluster your work into larger "publication units" the time lag will likely be less problematic and a smaller number of significant papers is generally better for your career than a bunch of little incremental papers that nobody cares about.

Thank you all for caring about my concern. My field is Linguistics and Natural Language Processing. @capecode : If I pay fees and get published in some lower level journals, if work is genuine and article is nice should be fine, but how do the fraternity takes it?  And an additional question : can any reference be cited if I publish my works in blog?

@Searcher my comment was sarcastic. I think you shouldn't worry about how fast you publish.


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Why law and business faculty are paid the highest salaries?
According this site
https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?SurveyID=28
"Legal Professions and Studies" and "Business, Management, Marketing, and Related Support Services" are paid higher than faculty in more research oriented fields such as engineering.
It is because of:

More demands for law and business faculty and graduates
Higher tuition in such fields
They bring more grants to universities
other points?

Because they have to teach law students and business students, respectively.

@Corvus These 2 fields doesn't appear to be the hardest fields

@ThomasLee That's a knock on the students, not the difficulty of the field.

@ThomasLee -- In general, pay is not related to how difficult a field is, either in academia or in industry.

At least in Europe, Law and Business generally do not bring in a lot of grant money. STEM fields win in this category easily, every year.

I believe that there are (at least) two main reasons for this:

Law and business faculty generally have alternative job prospects that pay extremely well. That means that universities have to pay enough to compete with those alternatives in order to attract and keep their faculty.
They both generally teach in professional schools that are not part of the main university (at least in the US). Professional schools (especially top ones) usually have high tuition, high enrollment, and healthy donor bases (due to the aforementioned high potential income), and therefore they have very strong revenue streams. They also don't incur many of the costs that the rest of the university does (e.g. sports facilities, dorms, financial aid). Together, this means that they have significantly more resources to pay their faculty with.

To this fine answer I'll add this: There are greater financial benefits to professional schools who can hire "star" professors -- increased ranking, increased applications, increased donations -- all allowing higher tuition.  Also: outside consulting relationships have positive spillover effects.  The cost structure is different -- no labs, no large research staffs, no undergrad teaching load, etc.  Likewise, revenue structure is different.  There are many high profit ancillary programs offered by professional schools, e.g. executive MBA, "summer schools" for professionals, etc.


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How to make a connection with academics on Linkedin that they would accept?
I read that some academics would avoid accepting students (undergraduate or graduate) or other researchers requests on Linkedin. So what are the cases that could be acceptable for academics to add people on Linkedin and avoid any embarrassments?

After completing their course?
After working on a joint research?
After attending a workshop, seminar, talk?
After meeting them at a conference?
After sending them an email about mutual work, papers, etc.?

Can you indicate any downsides to connecting with everyone?

There are downsides also with not connecting with everyone.

Possible duplicate of http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1539/is-it-okay-if-a-professor-friends-a-student-on-social-media-sites

@ThomasLee that is fine, but giving us concrete benefits/negatives will allow us to discuss them and make this question easier to answer.

@StrongBad I think they are different. The old question is talking about students only while this question is more general. In the old question, the question was "Is it ok to" while this is "How to"?

@Compass the question is more of "how to establish connections" and not what are the benefits/drawbacks

@Corvus I meant other researchers not well known in the field

I consider LinkedIn to be pretty low-stakes interaction, so I merely want to avoid being linked to spammers and frauds.  My own policy, then, is that I will accept LinkedIn invitations from anybody who I actually know who they are, either by a) having had a non-trivial interaction with them (including by phone or electronically) or b) indirect interactions such as reading their papers.
Other people may have more stringent policies, but in my opinion, it's reasonable to request a connection with anybody you have a relationship with: the worst that will happen is that they will ignore it.

This comports with what I do, though I also never initiate a social networking connection request to a subordinate (LinkedIn Google+, Facebook, etc.).

Ignoring it is not quite the worst that could happen.  If the recipient isn't interested in a connection, or doesn't use LinkedIn, they might find it slightly annoying.

Each person has their own policy for who they accept as LinkedIn connections. If your priority is to avoid embarrassment, the safest practice is for you to establish a personal, mutual relationship before you issue a LinkedIn request. The best way to establish a personal relationship is to do so in person, through meaningful conversation about mutual interests.  If you can't do it in person, then you might start the relationship on-line through email, but you should be conscientious to be sure that the communication is mutual.  If you are in doubt about what this means, read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People.


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Should academic CVs include reviewing, non-academic service, hobbies and languages?
Do you suggest adding these to an academic CV?

Review journals/conferences. Can adding such information creates negative issues or it would only have positive impression?
Non-academic service: example, Unesco volunteer
Hobbies. Many sites suggest to remove them http://www.academiccareer.manchester.ac.uk/applications/cvs/content/ , but isn't it important to show that the applicant is not a robot? Some suggest to include them wisely http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/03/30/how-to-get-tenure-at-a-major-research-university
Languages. Can knowing a certain language be used as a discriminate against an applicant?!

Sean Carroll's comments about hobbies in his blog post aren't about what to list on the CV, but rather about what hobbies to have in the first place.  (His position is that there are certain hobbies that will make your colleagues think you could be working harder if they discover you have them, and that it is safest to avoid these hobbies completely.)  In particular, he doesn't discuss the issue of listing hobbies in your CV.

Yes, but what I liked is that he mentioned that this is a "subjective" and there are "permissible hobbies". Others just say avoid. Do the departments want a human or robot?

Related (possible duplicate): Is listing non-academic interests on academic CVs important?

I saw it, however, it didn't mention all my questions, so I opened a new question.

@ThomasLee: in the case of Manchester I'd bet they want a human, but prefer one who can follow simple instructions and leave their hobbies out of their academic CV ;-)

isn't it important to show that the applicant is not a robot? — No. Sane department already know that you're not a robot, and insane deparments don't care.

An academic CV is not intended to describe you as a whole person, but rather to describe your qualifications and accomplishments as an academic.  The assumption is that of course you lead an ordinary human life (with hobbies, friends, family, religious beliefs or the lack thereof, etc.), but the people reading your CV are not trying to evaluate you as a human being and aren't interested in reading about the rest of your life.
Anything academic is fair game for an academic CV, including reviewing.  How much to emphasize it depends on how many more important things you have to list.
Language skills are relevant to academia because they can assist with research, teaching, and public communication.  You are right that this information could be used to discriminate, but I doubt this particular form of discrimination occurs often enough to be worth much worry.
Hobbies and non-academic service are generally not relevant (although there could be exceptions).  It's not necessary to discuss them at all, and nobody will assume you have no hobbies or service activities if you don't mention any.  It's OK to mention them in a very short section at the end of the CV if you feel it's important, but you should definitely not emphasize them.  There are at least two reasons for this:

It could come across as cluelessness, like you think they are an important factor in hiring/tenure decisions.  This certainly won't ruin your chances, but it could look silly.
It could be viewed as a defiant statement, along the lines of "I'm letting you know that my hobbies are particularly important to me and I intend to spend more time on them than you would like."  If your CV is great otherwise you might be able to get away with this, but it will work against you.  (I've seen this happen with graduate admissions, where someone devoted part of their personal statement to a favorite hobby and the committee worried that this hobby could be a distraction from research.)

Hiring committees do care about hiring reasonable colleagues who aren't going to be jerks, so human qualities are relevant (and not just academic accomplishments).  Interviews shed light on this issue, as do letters of recommendation, and the CV is not so relevant.
Note that academic evaluation criteria are entirely different from undergraduate admissions in the United States.  In that case, colleges are trying to assemble a self-contained community, and they really care about breadth, well-roundedness, leadership, personality, etc.  Showing something about yourself as a human being is absolutely crucial.  However, this is an anomaly of U.S. undergraduate admissions, and graduate admissions, faculty hiring, etc. are done completely differently.  [I know your question never mentioned this comparison, but I decided to mention it for completeness since it's a common cause of confusion.]

Do you have an idea of approximately how common it is for people to list language skills? For me it would seem weird to list for example that I am fluent in English, simply because I would expect practically all other applicants to also be fluent (or at least close enough that it does not really matter).

Listing language skills is certainly not universal, so you should feel free to omit it (especially if you have a track record of papers and talks that would make it clear that you have adequate language skills).  I think it's most common for junior people (who may not have a clear track record in this respect), those who have unusual skills, or others for whom it's not obvious.

It would be strange for a native English speaker to list English as a language. But, for an example from mathematics, if a number theorist or algebraic geometer indicated French, it would not be so odd - there are important works in that language that are not available in translation. At the same time, I don't think it would make more than a tiny change in the strength of the CV.

If a person gets to an interview with me personally, I will always ask about their hobbies and interests! Whether they've mentioned them or not in their CV.  But for some positions, in misguided attempts at equity, the committee determines a common set of questions for all short-listed candidates and if it is not in the CV, the opportunity to see these other aspects to their fit for the position may be lost.  The point is not whether they have hobbies or interests, but which they are and what that tells us about the person.

@TobiasKildetoft My (basic) knowledge of Swedish would help me learning German, which would be useful if I was hired in a German-speaking university. Also, showing that I speak three languages, I could more easily pick up a fourth one than someone that only speaks English.

It probably varies with countries and institutions, but according to the standard CV recommended/requested by the Harvard Medical School:

Reviews: Yes. Reviewing grants, list of journals for which you are ad hoc reviewer, editorial board memberships, etc.
Non-academic service: Yes (to some extent). List services that have a tie to your area of expertise (if your field is medicine, list pro bono work for a medical NGO, etc.)
Hobbies: No.
Languages: No (with some exceptions). However, if your mother language is neither English nor the local language, indicate your proficiency in both, possibly with standard test scores. Excellent written English proficiency is obviously a major asset in academia, and a good knowledge of the local language can make you stand out.

In a world of internationalization where all universities are keen to have foreign students and international ties, foreign languages are useful and a positive, and might make a difference where the university has MOUs with foreign universities (I've certainly used several of my foreign languages in this context, and wished some were in better shape).

Information about hobbies and interests is important to form a picture of the full person.  The number of papers they've written or grants they've won is only part of the story, so all these other things are important as they reflect on other aspects of an academic's duties and responsibilities.

I'm adding here an answer for the "languages" part of the question.

Languages: Mandatory in some fields

First, you have fields where knowing some languages is mandatory per se, this is mostly the case for ancient languages (akkadian, egyptian, ancient greek, etc.) and for history (you have to be able to read at least English, German and French if you want to do a great job at studying WW2 history).
Second, in some fields, such as Egyptology for instance (I know that first hand, my wife being one them ;)), research papers can be written indifferently in English, French, German or Italian. If you know all four languages you can read the complete bibliography, otherwise you cannot, and not all scholars in the field can read or speak all four languages so this can be a huge advantage to have that in your CV if this is the case.

Yes, I want to see more than your publications and academic record. In particular hobbies, languages, clubs, sports and community involvement are important to mention. Were you on the chess team, the debating team, the school paper? Have you worked commercially, managed people, run a business?
These days everything is interconnected - technology has applications, sport and art make use of technology, science studies both the inner world of mind/brain and society (social/life sciences) as well as the external world of physical entities and devices (physical/biological sciences) and the way everything relates to everything else (information/cognitive sciences).
From your community/commercial involvement I might get insight into your aims in life, you leadership ability, your willingness to work alongside other people and health. Applications of mathematics, the sciences and the arts are now strongly driven to be commercially viable. World-wide universities are driven to non-traditional research and non-traditional funding, and to hire people with appropriate experience.
I'm not interested in a statement of purpose or some other hype that sounds more like something out of a fortune cookie than the kind of evidential data that belongs in formal curriculum vitae.
From your interest in languages or writing, your experience in debating or the school paper, I will gain ideas about how you'll go writing/reviewing/marking/examining a thesis or a paper or a grant, how you will approach/understand the literature, whether you can work on particular interdisciplinary or application-oriented parts of the research.
From your interest in music or dance, sports or photography, I might find connections that relate to (say) projects in computer science or engineering, in signal processing, image processing, speech processing - or extend them in new directions to song recognition or music transcription.
When people are indistinguishable on paper in terms of formal criteria, it is often these extras that will tip the balance and tell me who is best for the job.
The people who say to remove these things are the kind of people who want to fit other people neatly into boxes.  I wouldn't employ any of them!
I'm not exactly sure what OP means by "review conferences/journals", but published reviews and indeed all papers you have written should be included, and reviewing for conferences, journals and funding bodies is something that is worth mentioning for someone who is applying for a job early in their academic career.  Later in your career, I'd be looking for membership of program committees and editorial boards, and there should be so many venues you've reviewed for it wouldn't be worth the dozen extra pages to list them all.  I review dozens of papers a year for countless conferences and journals...

I think this answer is talking about CVs for non-academic positions, rather than academic CVs as the question asks.

I'm an academic (Full Prof.) and am talking from the perspective of someone that reviews applications and interviews and supervised people in relation to academic positions and has never interviewed anyone for a non-academic position. For a non-academic position I may well not be interested in these other things - who knows? It's a rather academic question:-)

I believe you, but I have to say your approach to CVs is significantly at odds with my experience (my field is mathematics).

As a mathematician you might be interested in the mathematics of music, or dance, or sport, or poker or ... I don't know what projects you might have on the backburner.  Mentioning my interests might gel with something of yours. One academic I hired 20 years ago is now an international leader in the analysis of music because I quizzed him about his hobbies and interests and helped him find an appropriate direction for his research. A couple of others academics I've worked with applied their analytic skills to dance. Others to photography, film, illusion...

P.S. There's a nice prize up there relating to the ancient game of Go!  If anyone has an interest in Go and is 1st Dan or better, and is interested in becoming an instant millionaire, I'd be happy to receive your CV... (nice PhD topic actually)

Your approach to CVs is also completely inconsistent with my experience (in computer science).  If someone has done research into the algorithmics of music or dance (for example: http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466512023) then of course they should list that research in their CV.  But if it's just a hobby, then it's out of place.

The people who say to remove these things are the kind of people who want to fit other people neatly into boxes. Where does this nonsense come from?

There's no "just" in it! Hobbies show where people's passion lie. Passion drives the best teaching and research.

About boxes, paradigms, ivory towers, and other such "nonsense": read Kuhn, Popper and the very extensive literature on the philosophy, theory and practice of science. Such compartmentalism is the very antithesis of good research and teaching practice.

@DavidMWPowers I don't want to see passion.  I want to see results.

@JeffE I don't often see results in CVs, but yes it is good to highlight your key innovations and advances. But "other things being equal" I want see evidence of flexibility and diversity and inventiveness, not sheer quantity of results and I don't care about so-called quality of publication venues since this doesn't correlate with quality of research (or correlates slightly negatively in my interdisciplinary areas). Mathematics is handmaiden of the sciences, and Information is our currency - apart from their own pure aesthetics they are only useful in application to other art and science.


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How to deal with extra points in exams?
If a midterm exam was from 100 points with 5 points bonus(extra points). Then should the total grade be out of 100 or 105? How to deal with cases of students getting above 100? Should their points be used as bonus for the next exams or just throw them out since they don't need them? I feel that since some students would benefit of the 5 points, those who were above 100 should also do, but I am not sure how?

Can you clarify what you mean by "final grade"? Is the final grade you are referring to really the exact measure of achieved / available points? In that case, achieved / 105 points seems to me like the 5 points are not bonus points at all. If it is not the exact quotient, but the quotient is mapped to some discrete scale of grades, there will always be a few points above the last grade that have no effect, and having 105 points, but getting the same grade as with 100 (or maybe even 95 or 90) points doesn't seem unfair. As for using the points for the next exam, this may or may not be ...

... allowed by your university, or in general by your jurisdiction. You will have to find out about the rules concerning this and clarify your question (or answer that part for yourself).

@O.R.Mapper the total points for midterm. So a student get 100 and another get 105, then both will be converted to 100 as the cut off. This is why it seems little not fair.

And these 100 directly enter a further calculation of a final grade? Sorry to ask so much, but I'm not familiar with that system and instead used to systems where every achieved score is rounded and mapped several times to discrete grade steps before a final grade is reached. Still, if you think it's not fair to cut off the extra 5 points, you'll have to explain in your question how you define "bonus points". In my understanding, those are usually points that are not required to reach the best grade. If 105 points eventually yields a better result than 100 points, these 5 points ...

... are indeed necessary and my definition of bonus points above fails. Maybe you are using a different definition? It would be helpful if you could add that to the question.

To address your issue of fairness, one way of thinking about it could be that there is a "maximum" score of 100, but multiple ways of achieving it. A student that struggles on deriving equations has a "bonus" chance to make up the points by describing applications of it (and/or vice versa). Of course, if the student is good at both, you could argue they're doing extra work for nothing - or you could argue they're doubly sure of getting full marks

Yes, 100 points will be converted to 30% of the final score.

@ThomasLee: And the final score is exact to the decimal? i.e. if I score 99 out of 100 points in that midterm, 29.7% will be added to my final score?

Yes, to the final score

I'm really not sure why this question was closed: it seems pretty straight-forward to me.

@jakebeal I agree, I will guess someone saw "what should I do" and didn't think further.

What is your goal in having the bonus points? Is it so that a student can still get the maximum score even if they get a question wrong?

@ThomasLee: So, your final score can have any number of decimal places? It is never rounded at some point?

When I have dealt with extra credit in the past, it was simply retained in the records until the very final accounting of scores at the end of the course.  Thus, if the exam was out of 100 points, it was still considered to be out of 100 points, and some people simply had more than the maximum possible.
When grades were combined together in the final accounting at the end of the course, having a score above the maximum effectively ended up helping compensate for lower scores on other tests (though perhaps not one-to-one, depending on relative weighting).  If a particularly amazing student turned out to get more than the maximum in the class overall, then it wouldn't affect anybody at all: the curve wasn't shifted and they simply got top marks, as they would have if they'd gotten the maximum.

So if a student scores 105, would you mention 105/100 or just 105 on their exam paper?

@ThomasLee Probably 105/100.  I might not bother with the denominator if it's spelled out clearly on the exam already, though.

I would write "96/100 + 9 extra credit", or just "96 + 9" if the denominator is already clear.

@JeffE: Wouldn't that require that it is clear which points are the bonus points?

@O.R.Mapper Sure, I guess.  OP wrote "from 100 points with 5 points bonus".  I assume that means the 5-point bonus questions were clearly marked as such, since otherwise he would have written "from 105 points".  On the other hand, I sometimes give individual exam problems grades like 9+2 to indicate 9/10 points of regular credit plus 2 points of extra credit.

@JeffE: Possible. All exams with bonus points I've encountered so far did it differently, though; they'd just say something on their title page such as "total points: 100 (+ 5 bonus points)", and the individual maximum scores of the questions (none of which was highlighted as a bonus question) would just add up to 105. After all, what is the meaning of a "bonus question"? When given the choice, is it better to answer a bonus question or a non-bonus question (assuming they yield the same maximum score each)? Is there any difference at all?

@O.R.Mapper My extra credit points are not the same currency as regular points, but everyone does things differently.

@JeffE: Sure, if there is a difference, distinguishing them in the sum is completely reasonable.


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Can an extended journal version of a conference paper include different list of co-authors?
If a conference accepted a paper with 3 authors, and the 2 co-authors were mainly reviewers. When submitting an extended version to a journal, should the co-authors be included or they can be removed? Can the paper include new authors?

If the work is extending the original, then all of the original authors should be retained.  New authors can certainly be added, however, if they have contributed to the extension.

I would find it kind of fishy if the authors change between conference paper and journal paper. It would be no problem if they differ substantially, but if this is not the case then one might try to contact the missing authors.


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Are there PhD programs that do not require letters of recommendation?
I am applying for PhD in Mathematics. I am wondering if there are any schools or programs that do not require letters of recommendation. Do all graduate programs require these?

You're gonna have to tell us why you don't want to get letters of rec. They are very commonly required.

It seems to me that "Are there any PhD programs in mathematics that require no letters of recommendation?" would be a reasonable enough question.  (The answer is no, so far as I'm aware.  You might as well ask for PhD programs that don't require you to know calculus...)

@Pete: I agree with you as far as the US (assuming we exclude diploma mills and the like), but I am not so sure about other countries. I have a sense that other places have a very different culture with respect to letters.

I suppose this is a reasonable question as it stands, but it strikes me that the OP's real question is probably something more like "Due to circumstances X, I am unable / reluctant to get letters of recommendation. How can I get into a PhD program?" If so, I suggest asking that question. The best answer to that question will probably not be "look for programs that don't require letters".

I've never seen a program not require a letter or recommendation when it comes to the US and I cannot speak for all other countries which can be found out by looked at other countries application process.
If there are legitimate reasons in which you would be unable to obtain a letter of recommendation or would receive one that would not help or even hurt your chances of acceptance I would talk to an adviser who is very familiar with the application processes because sometimes they don't always spell out alternatives to certain areas of the application process when it comes to rare circumstances.


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Why aren't there submission fees for submitting papers to conferences?
Current scenario (A):

Submit a paper for free. No matter the quality of the paper, submit anyway. What have you to lose?
If your work is accepted, pay to actually confirm the acceptance of your work, and present it to the world.

Proposed scenario (B):

Submission fees: Anyone who wants to submit to a conference pays a certain amount. $200, say. Hefty enough to discourage 'spam' submissions.
If your work is accepted, you present without having to pay any extra registration fees.

I don't understand why (B) isn't obvious, from a quality control point of view, as well as a more obvious way of funding conferences. Only work that an author knows (thinks, really) is worthy of acceptance need submit, please.

The fact that conferences are using scenario A is a sign that they aren't flooded with spam submissions. What I see is a lot of academics getting spam mail asking to submit to conferences.

This would be heavily discriminating for people/groups that do good work but would not have the additional funding to actually even try and submit. Some PhD students have to ask for travel grants to be able to present, how would they be able to present anything if they had to pay additional fees?

@skymningen: As the OP describes, there would not be any conference participation fees, so there are no real "additional" fees - that is, as long as you assume that any worthwhile submission will get accepted on its first try. It is true, though, that funding for a possible publication may be harder to obtain than funding for a definitive, accepted publication.

@O.R.Mapper Travel grants are not to cover conference fees, they are to cover travel and accommodation. I still hope for everyone that they have some funding for the conference fees.But often you only get that if you actually prove you went there. So unaccepted submission fees would be a big, big problem and risk for young people trying to get into the big picture.  If you are not accepted, you still want to be there to listen and then would have to pay a normal fee. Or the submission fee itself has to be much much higher to actually cover all participants costs.

@skymningen: Evidently, travel grants would only be asked for once the possibility to travel to the conference is confirmed (i.e. once the submission has been accepted). As such, travel grants seem unrelated to submission fees (?)

@O.R.Mapper Yes, of course. But if you have to ask for a travel grant you definitely do not have the money to spend it on a presentation that might or might not happen. A lot of people cannot put 200 $ in the limbo, just hoping they might get something for it. And if they do and aren't accepted, they probably will decide against spending more money to at least attend.  It is just really promoting science aristocracy. If you are up in the top there is no problem to be accepted or to find funding, but if you are trying to climb up money is key, as is getting into presenting.

This question would improve significantly if it specifies the type of field it is talking about. In some fields (e.g. computer science, engineering) conferences are a primary publication medium, with strong peer review of the associated proceedings manuscripts; in other fields (e.g. physics, mathematics) conferences are secondary and the publications are mainly in journals - with a much lighter peer review process of the conference submissions. The attitudes to the mechanism in the question will obviously vary across those two cases.

@E.P.: Do the mechanisms actually used vary across those two cases?

There is already a strong incentive not to submit a paper that you know has very little chance of acceptance. While a paper is under review for one conference, it may not be submitted to another (according to the standard policies in fields where conference papers are "real" publications). If you submit a paper that is nowhere near ready, you hurt yourself: you block yourself from submitting a more complete version of it, that has a good chance of getting accepted somewhere else, for the entire review period.
Furthermore, many conferences end up rejecting lots of very good papers, due to limited space. What is the rationale for collecting fees from those authors? Authors would absolutely take their papers elsewhere, rather than risk paying hundreds of dollars to get a reasonably good paper rejected.
Finally: authors from less wealthy countries are already "priced out" of conferences to some degree (and have to publish mainly in journals), because of the cost of conference attendance (travel, registration fees). This would certainly make the disparity worse.

One reason is fairness.  Some papers are rejected because they just aren't good enough, but others could plausibly have been accepted if the deliberations had by chance gone a little differently.  When a reasonable submission is rejected due to bad luck, it feels like adding insult to injury if the author then has the subsidize the registration fees for the accepted papers.  (It might be reasonable to expect authors to cover the cost of reviewing the submissions, but that's far less than typical registration fees.)
Another reason is to minimize bureaucratic overhead.  Whenever you collect fees, you have to negotiate with authors over who deserves a fee waiver, and you have to deal with unusual situations (authors who can't or won't pay online, chargebacks from disputed transactions, etc.).  The pain scales with the number of people involved, and it tends to be extra high if you try anything nonstandard, so there's an incentive not to experiment, especially in ways that increase the number of transactions.
Another consideration is keeping authors happy.  In any review process, some authors are going to end up disgruntled.  Maybe they actually received low-quality reviews, or maybe it just feels that way to them, but either way they may complain.  I'd bet that complaints would increase tenfold if the disgruntled authors had been charged $200 and felt entitled to a corresponding level of service.  I certainly wouldn't want to be in charge of dealing with the complaints.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that being willing to "put one's money where one's mouth is" is a measure of the quality of somebody's work. It isn't. There are plenty of rich mediocre people in the world, and plenty of poor smart people.
Also, conferences charging submission fees is an unstable equilibrium. Every conference could attract good papers away from its rivals by charging a lower fee than them, initiating a race back to free submission.  This doesn't work for attendance fees, because those pay for actual costs incurred by the organizers, so can't be reduced arbitrarily. Also, one is more committed to attending by the time that attendance fees have to be paid.

The premise of he question is wrong. There are submission fees for conferences.

Abstracts are only processed and available for the session
  organization by conveners after the payment is completed. Please note
  that this is a processing charge and not a publishing fee. APCs are
  not refundable in case of an abstract withdrawal, rejection or double
  submission. The charges collected cover the cost to process the
  abstracts whether or not one attends the meeting.

http://www.egu2016.eu/abstract_management/how_to_submit_an_abstract.html
Not many abstracts are rejected at this (or other Copernicus organized) conference, but it can happen.
If they are not charged at your conference it means that the organizers don't want to discourage people from submitting an abstract, but if they know they will get enough applications anyways they can charge a fee.

"if they know they will get enough applications anyways they can charge a fee" - there are plenty of conferences that know for sure they will get enough applications. Note that in some CS subfields, "good" conferences have acceptance rates of some 30% - in other words, they do not only get "enough" applications, but actually a sufficient number to fill three equally-sized conferences. (And if they charged a submission fee, that would mean submitters would be more likely to get no publication in return for their fee than to get one.)

With such a small acceptance rate people would hesitate to pay upfront. It wouldn't work well. The conference I linked will have more than 95% acceptance, there is no real publication from it.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
What is considered "completed work" for a conference submission
I was looking at submitting to a conference where the call says:

completed work only

Q1: Now what exactly is considered completed work here?

That I have already submitted that paper to journals and put a pre-print/working paper version of it online?
That it is a complete write-up (i.e. not just an extended abstract) but still rough on the edges and missing some precisions?

or

Is that completely up to the organizers and I should have emailed them yesterday to enquire?

Background: Said conference is in the field of Economics/Finance if it makes any difference. There is also a poster session and job market candidates are encouraged to submit which makes me hope that also a not-so-complete "completed work" of mine might be suitable to be submitted. Submissions will be subject to a double-blind review process.
Q2: If I do decide to submit such an "almost-completed work" is it fine to try anyways and worst case I do not get accepted or is that considered bad style and will irritate the organizers and reviewers?

Completed work consists of work where you've gone through all the steps of formulating your research question, applying a methodology, and generating and analyzing results. Incomplete work is where you're still in the phase of applying your methodology, or you haven't fully analyzed the results to figure out what they mean. A paper or poster on incomplete work might focus on the methodology or preliminary results, but it doesn't fully answer the questions posed when the work began.
There's definitely a judgement call when you can consider work "completed". Oftentimes, the answers to research questions lead to more questions, creating a line of related work that's never really "finished". In this case, you'll need to compartmentalize your results into digestible chunks that can be considered "completed". Describing future work planned on a project doesn't mean that a work is incomplete.
For a work to be "completed", it doesn't necessarily have to have been written up already. That said, you'll probably have to write up the work before submitting anyway. You almost certainly shouldn't be submitting the same work to a journal and a conference. You could try to submit "incomplete" work to the conference, since it's a somewhat fuzzy line, but don't be surprised if you get a rejection if all you've got is the methodology and no results at all.

Though the word 'completed' is ambiguous in literature, in the context of a scientific conference it would generally mean work in which the results are tangible.
This means that the conference organizers are not in for

Expected results
Next phase of enhancements
Reports on work in progress

Though most papers can have a Future Work section, your current establishment -- what you are to explain in your manuscript -- should not largely depend on the future work per se.


text:
How can I get research experience in between degrees?
I'm a recent graduate of a major university in Ohio, but recently moved to the DC area for my job (full-time software engineer).
I plan to go to grad school for computer science in the next few years, but I'd like to get involved in some research to find out what I do and don't like about research (and, more importantly, the research topics) before I apply.
I'd love to volunteer my skills to a professor in the area as an RA. There are obviously major universities in the area with research undertakings that interest me, but without rapport how can I let them know I'm interested in working with them?

Related: How To Volunteer Research Assistant?, and How can I get into computer science research as a high school student?

As someone who hires research assistants in my own department, here are some concerns I would have about such an offer.

There are students in my own university who would appreciate the research assistantship. My department has more qualified students to do research than supervisory capacity to give them all that opportunity.
I have an aversion to taking on a student who has not made any real commitment to the job and has no accountability. (I will only take on students who are either getting paid or getting credit for their work with me, partly for this reason.)
I strongly prefer to work with students who will stick around for a while, e.g. undergrads who still have a couple of years left, or M.S. students who may be interested in doing a PhD in my department. Working with research assistants initially takes a lot more time and effort than they save me, and I'd rather do it with someone who has a chance of sticking around long enough to give me some return on that investment.

So for me to consider taking on a research assistant in your situation, you'd have to assuage some of those concerns.

Tell me what skills you already have that will help me and my students advance our current research efforts in the short term. (This obviously requires that you do your homework and know what my group has been working on recently.)
For example, when you say "I am interested in learning about X, which your students are currently doing," I hear "This is someone who I or my current students will need to spend a lot of time training to do X - which we don't really need, because we already have students capable of doing X - and who may or may not stick around long enough for it to pay off."
On the other hand, when you say, "I already know a fair bit about Y, and I think it could advance your research in Z that your students are currently doing," I hear "This is someone who offers a promising risk - benefit ratio. We won't have to spend a lot of time on training, and he/she will bring something useful to the table immediately."
Are your plans to go to graduate school fairly firm? Do you have a timeline in mind for applying? If I think that you are committed to the work because you really need it to bolster your graduate school applications, I'm a little less concerned about you disappearing as soon as something gets difficult, or your day job interferes, etc.
Are you seriously considering applying to grad school at my institution? If you are, you should definitely say so.

"There are students in my own university who would appreciate the research assistantship. " I was really wondering about all those academic research job posts. Thanks for sharing this information!


text:
How will study as a non-degree student affect my graduate admissions chances later?
I am considering applying to a computer science department at an esteemed US university, university A, as a non-degree seeking student. The reason is three-fold:

Determine if what I'm studying is truly what I want to do.
Do well in the classes to improve my chances of being accepted to their MS program in the near future.
Make connections with profs who might be a good academic/research advisor.

My goal is to eventually apply to a PhD program at university B.
Will the non-degree option help my chances at being accepted to university A's MS program?
Will the non-degree option hurt my chances at being accepted to university B's PhD program? Will they need to know about the non-degree if I'm eventually accepted to the degree option?

Will the non-degree option help my chances at being accepted to university A's MS program?
No.
Will the non-degree option hurt my chances at being accepted to university B's PhD program?
No.
Will they need to know about the non-degree if I'm eventually accepted to the degree option?
Do well in the course and then you'll be proud to share the transcript with them.

I know this is a bit old, but I am not sure this is true. Why do you think it won't help him?

Hmm.  To tell you the truth, I don't remember why I answered no to the first question.  Thanks for the comment -- I can see your point.