text:
Using home address when submitting an article with no affiliation?
If you're submitting information for an article, and you have no institution affiliation, what should you use? I was asked for an address and all I have is an home address. That seems a bit weird to use, however.

In what way did they ask for this address, and in what way will it be used? For example, did they ask for it explicitly in an email, is it just part of their article template, or was it in a web form? Will it appear in the PDF of your publication? (Look at other papers published in this journal to find out.)

It's nature communications, so it looks like it will be. I'm not actually the corresponding author, so I'm not sure on the exact details. I was just asked to provide an address, including a home address if necessary. To add to the weirdness, I've moved since submitting, and I'm about to move again.

I'm about to move again Do you already know your future location? I am not asking the actual future address.

It's actually in the same city.

Perhaps an email address would be the most useful thing to give, especially given your transience.

I did a quick search to see what other independent researchers do for Nature journals, which include an author address.Specifically, I searched Google for

site:nature.com "author details" "independent researcher"

I found that authors who are independent researchers sometimes list just their city for their address, or

Independent researcher, City, Country

See for example here and here. Some do appear to give their home address, e.g. here and here.

Awesome, it maybe too late to change this one. It's been submitted, and I didn't realise the corresponding author had my entire address, or that it would be displayed.

@user41824 submitted at what stage? I'm not familiar with the specific journal, but usually you can make changes up until the proofs stage - see typical workflow of a journal

I'll ask, it's just an odd place to be when you're not the corresponding author, and you're not affiliated with him

I am the co-corresponding independent researcher on the first linked paper in this answer. Here my case: I help my wife with her lab without formal affiliation. Full home address felt weird to me. Lab address felt wrong.

Based on some previous answers, it seems that you may pay a price for not having a university affiliation. But what are you going to do? Invent an address? Maybe you could create a consulting company (which should be registered if you ever plan to derive any income from it). That line of "ClearBlue Solutions" thrown into your home address may just do the trick.

How do you mean 'pay a price'? I'll use it, but it seems odd, esp since I'm moving.


text:
Is it possible to participate as a research assistant as a nondegree student?
Does anyone have any information, either formal or anecdotal, about being a research assistant as a nondegree student, specifically with the aim of getting published?
In particular, I am referring to a situation where someone with a bachelor's degree takes coursework as a nondegree student and tries to participate in research in preparation for graduate study.

Highly related: How can I get into computer science research. (Non-degree students are only slightly better than non-students for purposes of this question.)

Ask the school. Some have programs which give undergrads the chance to work in research labs, with the actual jobs being determined by the researcher's evaluation of their skill level. It may just be cleaning cages and washing bottles or the equivalent, it may be more seriously assisting the research protocol, or it may start with the former and grow as you demonstrate that you have or can acquire the needed skills. It all depends on what that particular researcher is looking for and what you can offer them.
If this program exists, they'll be able to give you a list of who's currently looking for what. It's then up to you to contact them and interview for the position.
Some versions of this offer an academic credit or two; some pay at on-campus-undergraduate-job rates.
Again: only your school knows what's available at your school. First step is to ask whether it exists. If you're not sure which office might be in charge of this, I've found that the administrative assistants in the department office usually know just about everything about the school, or know who to ask.

This wouldn't work for me as an employer of research assistants. Undergraduates and random people off the street rarely have technical sophistication to be able to participate in my research projects. I'm pretty sure that in most cases I'm beholden to my NSF grant terms to pay a PhD, a postdoc, or a student to do the work, since this is what we said we'd do in the grant application budget. The people may be more or less interchangeable to the granting agencies as long as the work gets done, but I believe there's more to it than that.
I don't think a non-degree-seeking person can be a/an (graduate or undergraduate) research assistant under my university's HR rules either since they must be currently enrolled as an undergrad or graduate student to have either of those titles. Also, I'm basically not allowed to have an unpaid research assistant nor am I interested in such a person. First, it's probably illegal in the US, and second, it's a bit off-puting to me that you would come, do some research, and then leave once you've gotten the publication that you think will get you into grad school. I prefer to have a deeper, longer relationship with my research collaborators than what it takes to get one good publication out the door.

Those are some good, practical concerns. However, I think the legality issue, and perhaps the HR consideration, too, could be avoided if one were to be classified as a "Research Assistant Volunteer", or something like that.

@d0rmLife, that title doesn't exist at my university to my knowledge. Also, I don't think the Dept. of Labor cares what figleaf you put on it via a bogus title. Uncompensated work is still illegal.

I'm not sure why you are so hostile about this. If I want to volunteer my time and skills to help someone else, while trying to further my career, I see that as entirely acceptable, both ethically and legally.

It's ethical, though generally not welcome in my experience. Volunteers have a reputation for flaking out and not completing their assignments (generally speaking), so having something like a salary or other incentive (like a degree or course credit) to keep them motivated seems to be the norm. A non-degree seeking student may have trouble finding a prof. to work with even if a research course is available for them to take.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
As a graduate, is creating a log-in in the university online campus considered an acceptance of their offer?
Is creating a log-in in the university online campus considered an acceptance of their offer?

For any normal and reputable University, no - logging into an online system is not a "got you now, sucker!" moment.
The only way to accept an offer is to formally respond to your offer of admission to the graduate coordinator or graduate school, usually in the form of a signed document - or otherwise unequivocally answering "yes" in a digital form, such as an e-signature.

It is worth noting that in the rules you (usually) have to accept when creating account there may be a note that you are not supposed to create account if you do not accept offer or something like that. If that's the case, creating account is not an acceptance, of course, but it is minor misconduct.

@Mołot in those cases I'd expect the account creation to be done for you on acceptance, the credentials being presented to you on your first day there. Which is how many if not most companies handle handing accounts to new employees.

@jwenting in theory, you are right. In practice? Reading site rules before clicking "I accept" is the only way to be sure, and that's what I wanted to remind. Best practices are more often ignored in academia setting than in a workplace one, from my experience.

@Mołot of course, always read the small print.

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


text:
Advertising open science in job market with a different norm
i am a postdoc at one of the US-based institutions. I have been invited to give a job talk for a faculty position in another country (i will call country A).
Recently, i was browsing the faculty members’ websites in the department in country A. I found that none of their labs practices open science (for example, pre-registering their hypothesis before data collection, uploading their data or materials online), which is kind of becoming a norm in my field in the US.
Originally, before seeing their websites, i was planning to advertise in my job talk that i have pre-registered all my studies and wanted to say that i’d like to design & teach a class about open science.
But now that i have learned that none of the faculty members in the department practices open science, i’m not sure if it’s a good idea to mention these things in my job talk or interview. It’s because it might come across as calling them out like “i’m doing good science, you guys are doing bad science.”
What do you think? Would it be a good idea to tell the faculty members who do not care about open science that i practice open science and want to teach open science class?

I would hope they are seeking to hire a faculty member who brings new things to the department.  Maybe they are, or maybe they prefer to hire someone who is just like themselves.  We wouldn't know.  Present it as a new thing you can bring to the institution.

You said they don't advertise on their websites that they do open science. I'm not sure you can conclude from that that they actually don't do it.

Sorry if that wasn't clear. I looked up their recent pubs, not just their websites.

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


text:
Can I consider this email from potential PI as a rejection?
I'm a PhD student in the US and am looking for a postdoc position for the next year.
I'm reaching out to a few PIs I've been interested in working with.
There's one PI I'm really interested. This PI is in the field A, while I'm in the field B.
But I saw the potential of common interests and thought that this person would help me gain a new perspective and skills during my postdoc training. I also asked if she would be willing to support grant writing or fellowship application which is due in a month. (I know this is a short deadline, but this is the only fellowship I’d be eligible for and I was desperate..)
The PI replied to my email saying that we share a lot of common research interests, and she has always been interested in my field B and think that my PhD training in field B could contribute to her lab.
However, she wrote that she's not available for co-writing a grant or my application for a postdoctoral fellowship this year (listing other tasks that will keep her busy).
And she mentioned that "with earlier preparation, we could apply for the fellowship next year".
In addition, she suggested an alternative option. She recommended co-writing a grant with an assistant professor in the field B who has been recently hired in their department. Her suggestion is that once the new professor and I secure a grant, she can collaborate with me.
However, the thing is that I'm not super interested in working with the new assistant professor whose research interests don't align with me very well.
My question: Do you think that the PI I contacted is not interested in working with me? Based on my impression from the email, I feel that she's not enthusiastic about having me in her lab even though she said some nice things to be polite. Overall, I think that she doesn't want to invest much (either her time or resources) on getting me involved in her lab. Can I consider her response as a polite rejection?

This is one of those situations were a (scheduled) phone call might help clear things up.

It depends on what you mean by rejection. It's pretty clear that they are not willing to take you into the lab at this moment, but it's not a firm no. My read is that it's politely interested without being committal. I read it as follows:

The professor gave you specific feedback about your e-mail, suggesting they took the time to actually read what you wrote to them and consider you seriously as a candidate.

The professor says that they'd be interested in putting together a proposal with a longer deadline - this could be honesty on their part that they simply don't have the bandwidth to co-write a proposal with a short deadline.

They also suggest you contact a young faculty in their department. Depending on the department, this new faculty could be in the "orbit" of the bigger name, meaning that the big professor could see this as a way to keep you on the hook even though they don't have the funds to commit to you at this exact moment.

The professor didn't ask you for an interview or any follow-up. This suggests that they don't see it as even a remote possibility that they could take you on at this moment. They're then putting the ball back in your court. If you respond that you'd be interested to work on finding a fellowship with a more distant deadline, they sound like they'd be willing to move to the next step.

Whether you're in a position to wait a year (and probably two, since it will take time for your fellowship proposal to be reviewed), and whether it would be worth it for a shot to work together with this professor is something only you or those with more specific knowledge of your situation can answer. But, if you're interested in following-up, I agree with @henning that a suggestion of a phone call or video chat would be very instructive. Either you will get a good or bad vibe from them on the call, or their reaction to the suggestion ("sorry, i don't have time") will help you clear things up.


text:
Encountering former, abusive advisor at a conference
I'm a PhD Student in the US and am going to a conference for poster presentation soon.
I just realized that my poster will be right next to my former advisor's poster (To be precise, it's his student's poster).
To explain the history with the advisor, I worked with him for about a year. But he was emotionally abusive and unsupportive. I had panic attacks whenever I had a meeting with him. After a year in the program, I quit and applied to another program again. This second program has worked out really well, and I'm very happy with my current advisor.
The separation with the former advisor seemed okay at first (he wasn't upset or angry about my decision at least when I talked about it. He sounded like he understands my decision). But then, after the conversation, he started ignoring me, which means that he wasn't okay at all.
The thing is that I'm now having a panic attack and become very anxious after realizing that my poster is right next to his. It seems unavoidable to run into him at the conference.
I'm really stressed out as this reminds me of all the traumatic events I had gone through. But at the same time, I want to use this opportunity to overcome this anxiety associated with him.
Can anyone give me advice on how I should react when I see him at the conference? How can I react in a professional way? Should I just ignore him? I can say hi to him, but I'm concerned that he will ignore me (This happened previously, and likely to happen again).
Any suggestions or advice will be appreciated!
UPDATE: Thank you all for very helpful suggestions and support! I think it's too late to relocate my poster. But after reading all the comments, I start to think maybe I just misinterpreted his neutral response or indifference as something negative or aggressive. Maybe I was overreacting initially. After reading everyone's comments, thinking about it for a couple of days really helped me reappraise the situation. Thanks all!

Given that you’re having panic attacks, I think it would to be much more helpful to discuss this with a therapist than with people on this site.  I’m really sorry you had such a difficult experience and this sounds like it’s a very difficult thing to navigate.

Just in case it helps: It sounds like you parted on good terms. Maybe it's reasonable to interpret any "ignoring me" not as malevolent but maybe more of a sign that you have both moved on and are doing your own thing?

Definitely worthwhile seeking professional help and support. There may not be enough time for therapy to kick in and therefore medications may need to be considered. We can suggest all we want, but once the panick kicks in, it will be an entirely different ballpark when the adrenalin is pumping...

I love how seeking professional help is always the first (and probably best) recommendation. Only issue is that a grad student usually can't afford such help. I wish I could afford it for sure.

When you say "he started ignoring [you]", do you mean actively not responding when you try to communicate with him, or just not going out of their way to do things like say "hello" when they see you?  The latter can simply mean that the advisor is either an introvert, or just doesn't like interacting with people they don't need to; as he is no longer your advisor, you were moved back into the "no interaction necessary" category alongside ~99% of the rest of the people he meets.  (The former, yes, means he might have a problem with you.)

Is your advisor presenting his own talk or poster at this conference?  If not, then it is likely he will not be attending at all.  Usually students present posters by themselves.  This might vary by discipline.

even if (as @AnonymousPhysicist says) the old advisor is present, perhaps with a talk, they're unlikely IME to spend much time near the student's poster.  Assuming the student will be there to present the poster, the advisor may stop and say hello, but probably not much more.

If he insists on hanging around you, suppose one way to deflect him might be to say "I wish I'd gotten to know you earlier and better, but it's too late now." This has a double meaning that if you'd gotten to know him earlier, you'd have left earlier, but he doesn't have to know it. I admit I do roleplay this in my head, picturing how I can remain calm and move on. It helps, it's a decent imagination/problem solving exercise, it's not too melodramatic, and it helps with other sticky situations.

Be natural
Greet him the first time you meet him, shake his hand, say "how's family," or whatever suits the circumstances. For you, what happened is water under the bridge. You've parted ways and you're now under a different advisor. He's got no power over your career. Even if he tries to subtly insult you (which I think he won't, because as you said, he's simply ignoring you since), there is absolutely no reason for you to feel bad about it. If he indeed does so, that would be pathetic of him and you should feel pity about him. Worry about the important stuff and the people that matter to you; not for grown-ups whose behavior is stuck in 6th grade and you've only known for a year or less.
Do NOT ignore him!
Ignoring him will only bring more awkwardness to the situation and more stress to you.  Imagine the set-up. You're both going to be in the same place for quite some time (a couple of hours?) and in close proximity; you'll both be standing in front of your poster and there's going to be times where there won't be anyone around asking questions. Actually, there might be moments where he's going to be the only one around. Trying to ignore him will only add more pressure to you ("oh my god, we've just had eye contact! aaaargh!").
Ask for help
Having been through similar situations with my PhD advisor in the past, I agree with Noah's comment that you need to get help to overcome your panic attacks. It doesn't necessarily need to be a therapist; it can be friends, family, trustworthy people you feel comfortable discussing it with. You need to learn to manage such situations because you'll get many of these in your life. To move forward, you need to stand on your feet and handle them, not ignoring them and praying they won't happen, because they will, anyway.

+1 (not sure why it was -1) Cowardice is not the way to face an abuser! He has no power over her career now, she should just smile and wave, she is superior to all of this.

+1 Don't try to avoid this person (nor to directly seek contact). Act as you meet a former colleague and this will hopefully solve your anxiety problems related to this person once and for all.

This doesn’t answer your explicit question, but have you considered sending an email to the conference organizers asking for your poster to be reassigned to a different part of the poster presentation area so that it’s not right next to the former adviser’s poster? This could go a long way towards minimizing the possibility of trouble, and will probably make it easier for you to handle the task you have set yourself of overcoming the anxiety you have related to meeting him at the conference, while leaving you some wiggle room to maneuver in case that turns out to be more difficult than you expected.
The email doesn’t have to go into details, just say this is a person you’ve had some conflict with in the past and you would prefer for your poster not to be close to theirs. If I were an organizer I’d be more than happy to accommodate such a request.
Good luck, I hope things go smoothly and that you’re able to focus on sharing your work with others and having fun.

From what I understand OP, if fact, does not want to avoid the former advisor. OP rather prefers to "overcome" his/her issues.

@BoatyMcboatface the two goals don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But good point, I edited my answer.

@BoatyMcboatface: The best way of overcoming something is by tackling what you can handle. One can't learn to swim by jumping straight into the deep.

@user21820 hence the answer I wrote.

@BoatyMcboatface: I did see your answer. I commented only in response to the clear implication in your comment that avoiding the advisor is necessarily exclusive of overcoming the fear issue.

Ignoring him and refusing to respond to any uncomfortable advances or comments might be best.
You don't owe him anything, especially the satisfaction of making you feel uncomfortable. Focus on your poster and on interacting with those who are interested in it. Do what you should do anyway and make some professional contacts at the session.
There is no need to do anything more than if the next position over was by someone unknown to you and whose work you aren't interested in.
You have just as much right to your space as anyone else. Dominate that space and try to let the rest go. With practice such uncomfortable encounters, that may occur from time to time with others, will become easier to manage.
And by "dominate that space" my intention is beyond the confines of a poster location.

There is an outside chance that the conference leadership would respond positively to a request to be moved. "I'd be more comfortable elsewhere" is all you need for an answer if asked why.

Specially given that the adviser has ignored them before. This is about two human beings extending courtesies to each other. If he already failed to do this there's no reason for you to do it from now on. Also +1 for requesting to be moved.

This answer is inappropriate given the severity of the situation.  The last part is good, but better stated by Dan.

I'm really stressed out as this reminds me of all the traumatic events I had gone through. But at the same time, I want to use this opportunity to overcome this anxiety associated with him.

Are you having profesional help and are you sure you want and able to manage this without affecting your performance in the conference? Your desire to overcome is reasonable and probably is the right thing to do. However, overcoming emotional trauma or stress triggers might require gradual work and most likely professional help. I just worry you might end up worse than you are right now.

Can anyone give me advice on how I should react when I see him at the conference? How can I react in a professional way? Should I just ignore him? I can say hi to him, but I'm concerned that he will ignore me (This happened previously, and likely to happen again).

The answers you will recieve here most likely cover the professional aspects of this interaction. I guess anything in the range of "smile and wave" to "small talk and questions about poster" would be approperiate. But again, I really believe it is up to you and a medical professional to decide to which extend you are comfortable and emotionaly ready.

Focus on yourself and your actions, not his. If you see him, be polite. Smile and say, "hi, it's nice to see you!", or just simply "hi". Act in a way that makes you proud to be you. The way he decides to react is not up to you. He can choose to be polite and have a conversation. He can choose to ignore you, and be super rude and turn around and walk away. You will know that you behaved well and did your best. That is all that matters in life.
If he's a rude person at heart, people already know that. If they see him be rude to you, they will know it's him and not you. If anyone asks "what was that all about?", say "I don't know, maybe he's having a bad day." Or, be honest and say that you think he might be upset because you changed advisors (but that could open up conversations that are too personal and could harm his reputation.) In any case, don't be preemptively rude yourself "just in case he's rude".
Also, try to not assume reason behind actions. It may be true that "he wasn't okay at all". Or maybe he's a very busy person and decided to put minimal effort into your relationship because you two no longer have anything to do with each other professionally or personally. Of course, you might be right about the "why". Maybe he's not ok, and he's insulted or has his feelings hurt. No matter the case, you should still be pleasant.
Just be the best You that you can be, and these sort of situations will work themselves out and you can be at peace knowing that you did what you could.

Tl;Dr: Relax, you won't encounter them. Probably. So let the stress, you feel now, to influence you only in the case they are actually near your comfort zone.
And have a talk with your current advisor. You are neither The first neither The last one with such issue.

I suppose this is not a first time the conference, you are about to attend, is organised. I also suppose you are not the first PhD. student of your current advisor/ first student in the department.
Therefore there is some history to get the information from. So relax, calm down and DON'T PANIC! (written in large friendly letters)
Ask your older schoolmates, ask postdocs. You can ask your advisor. The question is: How are the posters and other contributions organized? There is high chance the professor won't be there at all and even higher chance they will be somewhere else most of the time. Usually, there is one person per contribution discount for academia, others have to pay full price. You can ask for a list of presenters and look for the professor.
From my personal expirience my advisor was never attending the conference I was attending, although he was one of the authors of the poster/oral presentation. The department head did not interfere with their PhD. students' presentations unless they were caught passing by and namely asked. In the only case a professor had a poster presentation I've witnessed (because I had my poster next to their) I saw them two times during the poster session. The longer one was when we discussed our papers for couple of minutes. In the rest, they were watching the other posters. "My" department also applied the policy that the PhD student has poster for their first conference (to see how conferences work) and oral presentations for the others. - You can see how are the presentations evaluated.
Don't take it badly but they are more likely to look for something more important than mocking you. You are no more their pet and you have no obligation towards them. Besides basic ethics, obviously.

Short and hopefully practical advice:

Try to get the conference organizers to re-position your poster or his student's
poster. When you give a justification, just tell them he's your former advisor and that you parted on poor terms (you don't need to start explaining what he did or what you did etc.) They are likely to oblige.
If the organizers don't move your poster, consider moving the poster yourself: Very often posters are mounted on mobile boards - move yours someplace else; or just find an empty slot elsewhere and do it.
Ask a friend or a colleague to stand with you near the poster during the poster presentation time slot. While in practice that friend may not need to do something, it definitely helps with the pressure and anxiety to know that someone "has your back" vis-a-vis that advisor guy.
He will likely not spend a lot of time near the poster: It's usually the student who stands near the poster, entertaining passers-by. The advisor might be there for a while but not for long; and while the advisor is there, it'll probably be busy (e.g. poster presentation time slot).
Don't completely-ignore him, but rather mostly-ignore him. If you outright ignore him, that's paradoxically a bit confrontational and may elicit a reaction and interest out of him. Instead, say hello to him, politely, but without engaging in any conversation. If he asks you something trivial (e.g. "Are you presenting this poster?") give a brief answer ("Yes, I am.") without continuing the conversation. If he tries to engage you in a more serious conversation, tell him something like "I'm sorry, but I have to stay focused on my poster right now." When you're standing next to the poster, don't focus your attention on him - but at the same time, don't actively try to avoid seeing him. This should be the most "disarming" behavior, minimizing the chances of a clash or argument.


text:
Do people intentionally make papers shorter in order to avoid grammar or reference errors?
Does anyone intentionally make papers shorter in order to avoid grammar or reference errors?
I've pondered this, because it seems like it could be a good strategy. However it may come with pitfalls, such as not saying all that might be necessary.
But having fewer words and sentences would make proofreading easier and have a lower probability of errors happening in the first place.

If you understand error correction codes, you will know that redundancy is important.  I can deal with minor grammar or presentation errors, but if there is insufficient information or vague terms, then a paper becomes unreadable.  You are better off explaining the same message 2x or 3x using broken English.  If the message is sound, a reviewer won't kill a paper, because presentation is easily fixable, but a wrong theory or flawed work is not.

"The man saw the woman on the hill with the telescope." <- Nice and short. No grammar or reference errors. But plenty of ambiguity.

Short papers can has grammar errors.

On a similar note:
Someone asked my professor the difference between "affect" and "effect" and he said, "Honestly I have no clue. I have a PhD and wrote my entire dissertation without using either word. Just try and avoid it at all cost"
https://www.reddit.com/r/thatHappened/comments/7wd4ed/phd_doesnt_know_know_the_difference_between/

You should in general not be able to make your paper shorter. If you make it shorter without losing any of your contents, you should have made it shorter for that reason. When you write a paper, it is already your goal to clearly and concisely. When you try to remove contents to reduce grammar or other errors, you're removing value of your paper.

Yes obviously, but the question is whether it's possible to retain information, while avoiding grammar mistakes by selecting short and easy expressions. I for example read several papers, which did not use page numbers to references, possibly in order to avoid making mistakes in page numbering, which can be tricky, if the publication has many incarnations in different sources.

The first and second part seem unrelated. Avoiding grammar mistakes by selecting short and easy expressions is already a good idea, but is very hard to do without losing information (as mentioned in Rolands answer). The second part (references) doesn't make your paper shorter, right?

"You should in general not be able to make your paper shorter." Sure, but sometimes you have to to avoid going over the page limit for the journal you're submitting it to.

@nick012000 sure, hence the 'in general'-part here.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." Albert Einstein

@mavavilj If your page numbers get messed up when your paper is published in a different source, then you need better authoring software.  Those are the sorts of problems that computers are very good at taking care of, you shouldn't be trying to do stuff like that manually (page numbers, figure numbers, "above"/"below", etc).

From my experience reviewing papers (and for example, reading posts here on Academia), the length of the paper doesn't really matter when it comes to making spelling or grammar errors. Some people are just more prone to make them (due to being non-native speakers or other reasons), and they will make them no matter the length of the text. Sure, the overall number of errors will probably be smaller, but the readability of a shorter text doesn’t improve.
Instead, trying to force the content into a shorter text might even lead to a decreased readability and understandability because some vital information might be omitted to fit the shorter text. That being said, trying to say what you want to say in as an easy and short expression as possible is always great, because it will make understanding easier. But as Roland suggested, this is often more difficult.
If you don't feel confident with the language quality of your paper, instead of forcibly shortening just to reduce the overall number of errors, I suggest to try to find a person with good English and/or written language skills to proofread your finished paper prior to submitting.

There are good reasons to try to keep papers as short as possible while conveying all of the important intellectual content. The shorter your paper is, the more likely people are to read it; keeping your writing lean forces you to focus on the key ideas; etc.
Avoiding grammar or referencing errors, however, is not a good reason to write a short paper. For one thing, the length has no bearing on whether or not you have omitted relevant references. More to the point though, conveying the content clearly should be the main factor determining the length. (Along with length guidelines from the journal where you choose to submit the paper). If you aim for a different length for any other reason, you are necessarily sacrificing the clarity of you communication.

"Brevity is the soul of wit."
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Sure: Being brief is a good thing. Shorter is generally better and easier to read. It should be a goal when writing, especially technical and scientific writing, to express the idea as quickly and crisply as possible.
I do find that when I edit my writing, it often gets a little bit shorter as some clunky phrases or repeated wording turn out to be unnecessary and get removed. And redundant references are in fact a pitfall that things might fall out-of-synch when edited. But I broadly doubt that's a top-level priority for anyone when structuring their writing. The top goal is to be clear and expressive, and not elaborate more than is necessary.
That said, there is a practice in software development called refactoring which pretty much boils down to exactly the OP's intuition here -- take existing, functional program code, and edit it for readability and maintainability. In most cases this leaves the code shorter than when it started, and indeed more robust in terms of attack-surface for bugs and broken references.

In computer programming and software design, code refactoring is the
process of restructuring existing computer code—changing the
factoring—without changing its external behavior. Refactoring is
intended to improve the design, structure, and/or implementation of
the software (its non-functional attributes), while preserving its
functionality. Potential advantages of refactoring may include
improved code readability and reduced complexity...

Does someone intentionally make papers shorter in order to avoid grammar or reference errors?

AFAIK, most people make papers shorter because they need to meet submission length limits. Given that, it doesn't matter what other possible reasons you might have to shorten your papers.

And, by the way, those submission length limits cover even references to previous literature, which are actually some very inflexible content to fit, because they can't be omitted ethically and their required formatting is specified by the journal as well; plus there's often a rule that every referenced item must actually be referenced at least once in the body of the article as well, so the room for reference errors is not reduced by a lower submission length limit.

@JirkaHanika: In some/many venues, submission length limits don't cover the references section.

Interesting and nice to hear.


text:
Why don’t some PhD students publish their thesis works in a journal?
I want to know why some PhD students don't publish their works in a journal.
For example, I have seen many good, high level German theses which were written around 1970-90, but were not published in any journal.

Because journal publication takes too long, perhaps beyond the remaining length of the student's PhD.

If so, why others publish their work in a journal?

Why should they want to do this? For many people, journal publicatons are useless. For others, they are useful. USefullness also changed over time

sometimes journal committees find many errors in the submitted work.

Out of the examples you have seen, how many did continue in academia? Also especially back then, when people were less obsessed with useless metrics, publishing the same result twice, once in a thesis and once in a journal, has no benefit.

Is this question about 1970-90? Or was that just an example? That is, are you asking Why some PhD students (1970-1990) don't publish their works on a journal? or the question stated? Answers are learning towards the former. Perhaps edit to make it clear what you're asking

@C.F.G On "why publish in a journal", there are rarely good answers. In some disciplines, journals are considered mostly useless window dressing, and people are experimenting with very light-weight versions focused on what matters, alias "overlay journals". https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-overlay-journal/ If your dissertation thesis is published with a free license in an open access repository, there's little more you can do to reach your audience. Several projects exist to digitise old theses, e.g. https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=1718

In Germany, to get the PhD degree publication was not required (I think it is different nowadays), therefore people were not publishing. In most places it is a requirement.

@Greg: Journal publication was not required (and it still isn't). In contrast, publication of the thesis as a monograph (not cumulative) was typically required. Similar to how (Bachelor and) Master theses are handled nowadays: if there's sufficient outcome, a paper may be written in addition. But the grade is given for the monograph (which in the case of BSc/MSc theses and in contrast to PhD theses is typically not formally published).

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX It is interesting that this question got closed: maybe it was not asked enough precisely, but there was a well-defined answer to it ( mostly summarized up by you and captain emacs)

The obligatory journal publication of scientific work done for a degree, no matter what (think: "publish or perish") is a fashion that spilled over from the US to Europe and especially Germany around the late '80s-'90s. Before that, people bothered only publishing work that they felt was outstanding, and sometimes not even that.
I am aware of work that exceeded in thoroughness and quality by far other publications on the same question that were published more than a decade and half later, where the original authors did not feel that it was up-to-scratch for publication and refused to do what they felt was a "half-baked" work.
One may say it might be desirable if some this self-critical attitude would still be maintained (not in its totality, so much good work went effectively lost this way), it would save one a lot of sub-par reading and reviewing duties today. However, this ship has sailed long ago.

Yes, we'd need more Gauß (pauca, sed matura) again.

@DanielFischer Or Wittgenstein: "Worüber man nicht reden kann, darüber soll man schweigen." ("When one doesn't have anything to say, one should keep silent" - yes, I know this translation is probably not what he meant in his context, but it is a possible interpretation which fits better here :-)

It's worth noting that Wittgenstein published none of his work other than the Tractatus.  He was appointed a Professor at Cambridge with only one 20 year old publication whose ideas he had already mostly repudiated!

@AlexanderWoo Indeed. And neither Feynman nor Goedel would be metricised highly today. Another example is Higgs.

First, in the olden times there was much less pressure to publish, and many researchers would publish only a handful of papers in their whole life, and they would publish only very complete works. I personally know researchers, considered anyway leading researchers in their field, who would publish just once every few years and who retired with probably less than ten published papers. Something that nowadays wouldn't even get you a tenured position.
Second, many PhD students leave academia for industry once graduated, and they may lose interest in publishing their work, right at the moment in which their work is more mature for publication.

If you're off to industry there is no benefit of converting your thesis into the format of a journal paper, even if you go back to academia later on. Your thesis speaks for itself, re-hashing in the form of a journal paper benefits only the rest of the world, which may take notice of the paper in Journal X, but not the thesis itself.

@DohnJoe - Not everyone thinks like that.  If the paper attracts a citation or a dozen, while you are "off to industry", that can facilitate returning to academia; no citations are guaranteed, but why not shoot for some while the research is still current.  Plus the publication process, if the student hadn't published much until that point, is a life experience worth undergoing in itself.

My PhD thesis contains (what I and my committee considered) a significant breakthrough in a certain experimental technique. It is French, hence unreadable by most topic experts. Publishing a paper would have required about one month of work on my side for zero tangible interest (PhD publication prerequisites already met, not staying in academia). I suppose many last-year PhD students face the same pile of incentives and end up not publishing even if they care about their topic (and scientific progress in general).

There are good answers pointing out things were different in the '80s and '90s. Another thing to keep in mind is the differences between disciplines. There are disciplines, e.g. (some parts of) history in Germany, where journals don't have the standing it has in other disciplines. Slightly exaggerated (but only slightly) the attitude is that the only really scientific publication is a book.
There are good reasons for that: history, by the very nature of the thing they study, is not a very fast paced field. So if the speed of journal article writing is not a big benefit, then why not use the space of a book to make a really thoughtful argument?  In those disciplines publishing your thesis in journals is still not encouraged, and in part actively discouraged.

Surprisingly not yet mentioned in the comments or in the 4 answers thus far is that for some people, and this is mostly for the 1970s to early 1980s, there was also the problem of typesetting journal papers for submission if you were no longer in an environment with department secretaries to type your work (because writing papers is not "mission central" at non-research colleges/universities, such as The University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople). The situation was even worse if you were not in an academic position or if you were in a non-academic research oriented position that was not closely related to whatever esoteric subtopic your dissertation dealt with. Obviously this was especially problematic for someone who never learned to type (not all that uncommon before the early to mid 1980s), but even for those with competent typing skills, the task of preparing multiple copies (via carbon copies) of a nearly error-free document, full of math or other technical symbols carefully handwritten on the copies, often just wasn't a sufficiently high priority for the effort needed, especially in those cases where there would be essentially no career or other advantages in doing so.

I can think of a few reasons specific to the period you describe:

If these theses were written in German, they would likely have had to have been translated into English for publication. These days it is more common that theses are written in English across Europe, lowering the effort required to adapt the work into a publication.
Before the internet, there were fewer journals and no keyword searching. Libraries only had the space for a limited selection of journals. A publication in an obscure journal would likely never be read, whereas these days internet searches allow people to discover papers wherever they are published. Back then, searching for publications in your field meant phoning up a librarian and asking them to search through their index cards (or later, a primitive computer database) for you.
Historically, the thesis itself would have been considered a full-on publication. Sharing a print of the thesis with other researchers, checking a thesis out of a library etc. were all more common. The benefit of duplicating the content in a separate publication was therefore lower. These days, physical theses tend to be locked up in a basement somewhere, never to be seen again. If a pdf is published online, it may have restricted access, and will not be indexed by sites such as PubMed.

Translation would not have been an issue. At least in the 1970s most journals accepted papers in German, though few authors published in German.  (In mathematics, many journals will still in theory accept papers in German but no one ever takes advantage of this.)

In chemistry at least Angew. Chem. (one of the bigger general journals) still publishes a full German language edition (though I think in this case German native speaking authors are encouraged to submit a German and an English language manuscript, and the remainder are translated by the journal).

"These days, theses tend to be locked up in a basement somewhere, never to be seen again"? These days, all the universities I'm familiar make all theses available online as pdfs making them more accessible than ever. Is this not universal?

@JackAidley No, it is not. In my field there are a few universities that makes their theses searchable and available online, but there are others without any access to their ones.

@JackAidley I've updated the answer to reflect that many universities do upload online copies of theses, but these are not indexed on the main scholarly websites.

One minor point: PhD theses are considered full publications, comparable to a book. E.g. my thesis is listed in the German national library catalogue (like AFAIK any other German PhD thesis).

Most of the other answers focus on the theses written prior to 1990 not being published in journals. However, even nowadays theses are sometimes not published in journals for a variety of reasons – including mine from 2017.
This will, depend on the field, obviously; but my thesis was written in organic chemistry which is traditionally a field where journals are valued highly. My specific sub-field (total synthesis of natural products) has a couple of difficulties that, taken together, prevented my work and the work of most of my colleagues during their PhD from being published.
Publications in this sub-field typically consist of a complete synthesis of a large and complex molecule; one entire PhD typically consists of synthesising only one such compound. (In some cases, maitotoxin being the extreme, multiple PhD students work on the same compound over the course of many years, sometimes even in succession.) At the end of one’s time, there are two possible outcomes: a completed synthesis which has a high chance of ending up in a top-tier journal or an incomplete synthesis which, at best, can be published in a very low-tier journal – even if the work itself is thorough, high-level and extensive.
Unfortunately, it is not really possible to predict whether a project will be successful and what time it may take. My project was initially given to a master’s student because it seemed easy to complete and when I took over, I expected to complete it in a year maybe a year and a half and move on to a second project. This did not work out and ultimately another PhD student took over when I was finished – but she also was unable to complete the molecule. In the end, we settled for a partial synthesis in a lesser journal, probably because my supervisor was completely fed up with the compound. This partial synthesis covers maybe 40 % of what I included in my thesis (the PhD student who took over declined authorship, stating that she had provided no significant improvements or additions to my data).
On the other hand, one of my colleagues had a similarly complex molecule but a couple of strokes of luck leading to his completed synthesis being published within his first year as PhD. He spent the remainder of his time synthesising related natural products and derivatives and ended up with three papers to his name. (This being natural product chemistry, there were three people listed as authors: the PhD student and his two supervisors.)
The above leads me to another aspect: publication in a journal is often not mandatory to receive one’s PhD. At my university, publications were entirely optional. On the other hand, instead of writing a separate thesis three (or more) publications of similar or related topics could be submitted together with an introduction and a conclusion in what is known as a cumulative thesis. My colleague who ended up with three papers chose this path.

In other sub-fields of organic chemistry, publications are far more predictable. However, in these fields a PhD thesis often encompasses several individual projects that may or may not be strongly related. Individually, these projects are sufficient for publication, but it might not be possible to publish the entire thesis in one, as the projects aren’t related sufficiently. So the entirety of a thesis may be split across several publications rather than collected into one.

When I started my PhD in analytical chemistry in 2004, the regulations didn't even mention the possibility of a cumulative thesis. It had to be a monograph (I published a bunch of papers alongside. But the thesis has further content which is in no paper, in particular details on side-experiments). Other languages than German required request and approval by either the department or the exam committee (I don't remember which). When I finally handed in 10 years later at a different university, my German monograph was somewhat unusual compared to English cumulative theses.

Well, talking about the period the OP mentions (70s-90s) the 'publish or perish' idea wasn't really a thing. So then chances of publication would depend very much on if the supervisor of the graduated doctoral student had much interest in said students work. Coupled with the fact that staying in touch, co writing drafts and such was harder pre internet. Both of my parents have PhDs (UK, early 1980s) from which nothing was ever published in a journal. My Dad was explicitly told by his supervisor when starting his research 'If you publish, it won't be with me.' (an attitude that mystifies me, but it was the case). Bits of my own thesis (Germany 2010s) remain unpublished as my supervisor was less interested in those particular bits and / or they needed just that bit more work, topped off by the fact he retired a few years after I finished.
So really in summary, there are a whole pile of factors, the ones covered here are just a few examples.

While I don't know about German universities in the 1970s-90s, there is (at least in my experience) a fairly obvious reason why PhD dissertations (and master's theses) aren't published in journals: they're way too long.
The typical journal paper runs about 8-10 pages (per Google and my own experience), while a thesis/dissertation might be closer to 100 pages.  Many journals impose page charges - $100-$200 per page - so publishing papers of that length in traditional journals would be financially impossible for many people. https://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science-publishing-1.12676
What often happens (again, in my experience) is just the opposite: the research will be published in several short papers, which will be expanded to form chapters of the final thesis/dissertation.  Then too, if the research is part of a larger project, the papers might well be published with several co-authors.

Those dissertations are closer to 150-200 pages. The OPs question is about why not publish those results at all, not the specific format.

@Greg: No, the question specificially says "in a journal", both in the title and the body.  Also, if they were not "published" in some form, e.g. on microfilm in the university library, then how did the OP come to see them?

I a not talking about microfilms. The question is not asking why the thesis was not published as a 100-200 pages long article in a journal. Many German graduate student has not published even parts of the thesis at all, ie no "several short papers" or one short paper, nada. It was common around my field (Physics, Chemistry) even with people who become famous professors.

@Greg: You must be reading an entirely different question than I am :-)


text:
How should project based assessments be implemented in order to prevent cheating?
Project based assessments are advocated by some as an alternative to oral exams and written exams for assessing students' knowledge at the end of a course, for example here: How to detect cheating when students take online quizzes or exams from home?
Some ways of cheating that are available during exams are not available for project work, for example looking up solutions online during a take home exam.
On the other hand, some other ways of cheating are still available, for example paying someone else to complete the course for them.
Therefore the question:

How should project based assessments be implemented in order to prevent cheating?

One example mentioned in M. Halaweh: Are Universities Using the Right Assessment Tools During the Pandemic and Crisis Times? had the instructor oversee group discussion meetings and ask each student questions about their project after submission.
This seems to be just effective as oral exams when it comes to preventing cheating, but seems to be more labour intensive than holding an oral exam for each student which would be prohibitive in big lectures with 500 students or more.
In light of this, I am also interested in answers to the following second question:

How should project based assessments for lectures with 500 students or more be implemented in order to prevent cheating?

For context, the lecture I have in mind is an Analysis lecture with around 500 students, one professor, six PhD student teaching assistants who each hold two weekly tutorials, and eight graders (mostly Master's students) who work 10 hours per week each.

Say something about the scale of the teaching staff, including TAs, etc. Is it just one professor for a lot of students or is the student/staff ratio reasonable, say less than 30/1.

The lecture I have in mind is an Analysis lecture with around 500 students, one professor, six PhD student teaching assistants who each hold two weekly tutorials, and eight graders (mostly Master's students) who work 10 hours per week each.

You should design the assessments to assess the learning objectives; without identifying the learning objectives, a quality answer is not possible.

@AnonymousPhysicist "Learning Objectives" are just bureaucratic fluffwords. What one wants to know is if the students have understood the material themselves rather than outsourcing that effort, no matter what the "learning objectives" are. If they do collaborative projects, this boils down to: "did they pull their weight".

@CaptainEmacs "What one wants to know is if the students have understood"  That's unacceptably vague; this is why learning objectives are needed.  I recommend training in inverse design.  If you are getting bureaucratic fluffwords, I suggest that your bureaucrats need some training too.

@AnonymousPhysicist First of all, we are talking about plagiarism, and I do not know what learning objectives (as opposed to not cheating) have to do with this. Second, I got educated in my time in Germany under what you would call the "vague" concept of "education".  I can assure you that the level of education in terms of coverage, systematicity and depth exceeded anything I have seen since in so-called "objectives-driven" academia (and I have seen quite a bit of that). I'll concede that maybe I do not know what you specifically mean by "learning objectives" and you mean something else.

Of course, I meant "plagiarism" as pars pro toto, i.e. "plagiarism, collusion and other offenses"...

@CaptainEmacs You claim the education you received is better than inverse design-based education.  Consider that it might only be better for people like you, and not for the typical student.  "Coverage, systematicity, and depth" are not incompatible with inverse design, but they also are not what all students need.  Actually, no teaching method or content are incompatible with inverse design - it's a design method, not a teaching method.

"what you would call the "vague" concept of "education""  That is not what I said.  There was one specific sentence that I said was vague.

@AnonymousPhysicist I believe to know what "learning objectives" are. I do not know what inverse design-based education is, never heard of that before. The education I got was good enough for many of my classmates to get quite far (academia, leading industry positions etc.). Many of my students do, too, and I regularly get very positive feedback (just mentioning for context), so my old methods seem to be ok, but I am always prepared to learn more. Again, I do not understand what the whole inverse design discussion has to do with academic offenses, though.

I can, perhaps, give you a few ideas, but note that I've never had to deal with this scale. Many of my courses (CS) were project based.
First, make it very explicit what you expect of them. Have some sort of honor code that they agree to by taking your course. Don't assume that the already know what is right and what is wrong. University wide honor codes are effective in some places. And also make it clear that the purpose of the exercises is less to "get answers" (which you already have) than to "get learning". Shortcuts are a form of self-defeating behavior.
Next, is that if you want to prevent cheating you won't be able to do it. You can, at best, reduce it, unless you are willing to run the course in a way in which cheating can't happen because it is irrelevant. I don't think that a first course in math analysis is especially amenable to this, but the idea is that students are allowed to use any source that they cite, just as if they were actual researchers. But to make learning, not just copying, happen, the questions you ask of them need to be a bit deeper and require some reflection beyond what they are likely to find in print or online. It is difficult, of course, to create such exercises.
The next idea has two parts. The first is to make all of the projects team (or at least pair) based so that the scope is reduced a bit. For 500 students you have 250 pairs or 100 teams. My preference with pairing would be to have a lot of small exercises where the pairs switch for each exercise. This may be easier now, in the zoom era, that it was when people mostly got together physically.
The second part of that is to use some form of peer assessment with the pairs/teams. Search this site for that or for peer evaluation to get a better idea of how to do that. Note that it isn't peer grading, but each member of a team can give you some idea of who the best players are and what those people contributed as well as listing their own primary contribution. Over many projects you will get an idea of who is doing a good job and you will sometimes be surprised.
One alternative you might be able to do is to partially "flip the classroom" so that the "tutorials" become work sessions and the projects are then done under the eye of someone with some skills. If the instructor can also do this twice a week then you have seven smaller groups, to which the "graders" might also contribute. Having students work in pairs in such a situation reduces the number of questions that must be answered by faculty and TAs, since partners will have the answers to some questions. If they work alone, then there will probably be too many questions and people will get stalled waiting for help. It might, however, be necessary to make the "tutorial sessions" longer and to move some of the content to videos and other online resources. And having students to their graded work under the eye of staff reduces the opportunity for cheating (but doesn't eliminate it in large groups).
One of the big problems with huge classes is that you have such a variety of ability, but also a huge variety of student goals and expectations. One way to make it possible for students to define and meet their own goals is to use cumulative grading rather than percentage grading. See this answer to a different question for a description. Not every student needs to reach for top marks. And this grading scheme lets every student know exactly where they stand in the course and what needs to be done to meet their goals. With a lot of smaller projects, every team member gets the same grade for a given project. In bigger projects you may need to make occasional exceptions.

Notes: I will probably add to this over the next day or so.

Spreading the grading out over many projects also means that no single project is "high stakes". This means that there is less incentive to cheat on a given project and to "cheat your way to success" means you need to do it repeatedly, increasing the chance of being caught.

Requiring writing projects rather than computational ones makes some kinds of auto checking for cheating a bit more reliable, reducing false positives (at least). For a mathematician, learning how to write is a valuable skill of its own. But this is admittedly difficult for an analysis course.

Permitting students to resubmit work is very useful for learning, though the scale is probably out of whack here. In fact, I think the scale and the ratio of students to staff in this scenario makes any sort of learning difficult. It is very difficult to give feedback to individuals to permit re-work to have a valid effect.

Projects are to be done by students on their own. They have to make a file and write all the stuff that is needed for the topic as told by the teacher. These kind of projects can be done by students from home. Therefore, students are able to cheat. But there are several ways by which you can decrease this amount of cheating.
What you need is to prevent them from asking their classmates, asking someone else to do it for them or looking it up online.
I would suggest that you ask them to do their  project in class. Here, what you can do is not give them the entire topic at once but only in bits. You can tell them to prepare the specific chapter needed for the project and then ask them to do it in the class only.
If you are afraid that students may copy each other’s work, you can announce that students who copy from online sources or use someone else’s project can be suspended, get a negative marking or a 0, parents could be called or they get taken to principal. This should reduce the chances of cheating drastically. You can also tell them that the school uses a device for plagiarism checking.
3rd point I think is to encourage the students. Tell them about the benefits of not cheating:

You become independent which is a very big factor. It can be used for interviews, job work and in many other fields.

It gives you confidence and makes you proud of yourself.

You can think of things like this. These methods should definitely reduce the amount of cheating.


text:
What does the envelope sign after the author name mean?
I'm in the process of writing a paper for an upcoming conference. The conference provides a LaTeX template which can be found here: Information for Authors of Springer Computer Science Proceedings.
Looking at the proceedings of the previous years I noticed a little envelope after the name of the first authors.

However, I was not able to figure out what it means. So my question is what is the meaning of the little envelope after the name of the first author?

Probably that they are the author to contact, the communicating author, about the paper.

And, in fact, the corresponding author need not be the first author.

Full link to the paper. I find the {name1,name2}@domain.com syntax to be jarringly pedantic, but maybe it's just a computer-science thing.

With Springer journals, the envelope simply indicates that they are the nominated corresponding author for the paper.
Sources: this forum topic and a Springer 'Instructions to Authors' PDF.


text:
I think I have discovered an interesting result as an independent researcher in mathematics, can I use this to gain admission to a PhD program?
I am an independent math researcher and I think I have discovered an interesting result in a particular field (in math). I would like to present my result in front of a committee of PhD admission.
My question:  Is there a possibility that i can prove my research skills and the result in such a way that some committee will decide to integrate me into its doctoral (or graduate ) program ?
N.B. Do I need to publish the result (Do you think that all maths journals and referees can be absolutely trusted?) in order that it will appear credible, or at least to capture the attention of the members or any one who can recommend me to a PhD or graduate school?

Putting your work first at arXiv may be another way.

Unless you have done a bachelors degree(or similar) in mathematics, it's likely the interesting result is not interesting. That being said, having an interesting result is definitely not all it takes to join a PHD program. They want a wide range of skills in your skill set, and often you have to take examinations.

Since arXiv has been mentioned both in the comments and in both answers, just a note: You will need to get endorsed to put the paper on arXiv. To do this, find someone who is an endorser on arXiv (each paper has a "which authors are endorsers" link that you can use (make sure to find an author of a relevant paper), and ask this person for an endorsement (they will obviously need to see the paper).

There are some problematical implicit assumptions in the question. First, PhD admission committees do not conduct interviews of the sort you imagine. They might look at a manuscript accompanying an application, but there's much more substance to an application for graduate-program admission than showing one item. (For that matter, professional mathematicians' perception of your work may be different than your own, so it might be unwise to put so much stock in the anticipated saving grace of your research work.)
You'll want letters of recommendation attesting to your future potential, based on your current and past performance, whether in literal math classes or in informal situations. If you've done a nice piece of work, this would contribute a bit, but it's by no means enough on its own.
Although it's of dubious serious value, the GRE Math Subject Test is something you'd want to sign up for and take it the Autumn before applying to grad schools (which needs to be done by early December for entrance the following Fall).
Publication is nice, but is an enterprise in itself, and not strictly necessary. For one thing, conventional peer-reviewed publication takes about a year or more in the best of times, so it wouldn't help you in the immediate future.
As in @PerAlexandersson's answer, you'd definitely want to type up your work in LaTeX or TeX, and make it conform to the general style of papers you can see, for example, on http://arxiv.org/archive/math  There is nothing truly sacred about the formatting and such, but for someone trying to enter, it is often best to be generally conforming in superficial regards, to avoid too loudly announcing that you're an outsider.
Not all "publishers" are serious or honest, no. One way to form a list of plausible submission venues is to look at papers on arXiv, submitted by people with .edu emails, and see what journals their bibliographic entries have appeared in. Some of these will be very-high-status, so possibly inappropriate, but if you sift through you will have a good inclusive list of the most legitimate journals. Still, no compulsion to try to publish in this sense before applying to grad school. If anything, it'd be more important to simply have your result typed up in LaTeX and to create a fairly conformist appearance (for example, matching the arXiv papers). You can even get TeX templates from those papers, to see how the effects are achieved, since the TeX source is available at arXiv.
The traditional journals' editors and referees can generally be trusted, because they have much to lose by bad behavior. Still, there are no guarantees, so pre-publication [sic] on arXiv would establish your priority.
But, in any case, there are more parts to grad school application than just one or two or... pieces of work. Most math depts' graduate programs have web pages that elaborate on what documentation is required.

Do you have experience in writing down math, for example, have you typeset your results in LaTeX?
It is probably quite hard to get a position by just "showing up", but independent research is definitely in your favour when applying for a phd position.
You can and should trust mathematics journals, if they are good ones (it takes some experience to learn which ones are good). If they ask for payment to be published - run away!
You should also put your preprint on arxiv, so that people can get access to your results early, and this also looks good when contacting a professor.
Make sure it fulfils the guidelines.
A word of advise: A lot of independent researchers have a tendency to just focus on their own research, and not read other mathematicians papers. You really need to get familiar with the field you are studying, and make sure to reference all relevant articles. A paper with no references gives a bad impression, and it looks like you have not done your homework.

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


text:
Is informing your advisor about a community cause considered unprofessional?
Background: I'm a PhD stident in Russia with an advisor coming from the US.
There are several community causes that are related or slightly related to academia; two that come to mind are Academics against the immigration executive order and Battle for the the net neutrality. Whenever I learn of a similar community cause, I'm inclined to send a personal email to my advisor, because

I feel it is important to know about these causes,
My advisor can take action and support them.

However, there are concerns that discourage me:

Academics are busy
My advisor might already be aware of the cause, in which case, I'm wasting his time
Emails that seek to support a cause may seem unprofessional, if not downright spam.

Is there a community consensus on how appropriate such messages are?

Why don’t you ask your advisor whether he is interested in receiving such emails? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t - we have no way of knowing. If he isn’t, it certainly is a form of spam, and is likely to cause some annoyance and be perceived as mildly unprofessional.

Stuff like that is best discussed in an informal setting, along a coffee or a lunch. Some advisers will insist on a strict separation of science and politics and not be open to blur the boundaries; others would not mind it. But, to avoid risk, this should not be initiated during work time.

I don’t think that there is a norm for this kind of interaction, and I think that’s a good thing. Some people will be interested in talking about it with you, others will not. It wildly depends on who your advisor is and what they care about.
It sounds like the issues you’re talking about are issues that are in vogue in the US, a country you aren’t from and potentially have never visited. I would leverage that as a way to talk about it with your professor. Ask the professor about it casually. Say that you have been reading a newspaper or blog or something, that you heard about this political issue in America, and that you were interested in getting his perspective on it. Presumably you don’t know a lot of Americans, and it’s natural to ask one who you already have an established relationship with about it.
Bringing it up in casual conversation is a lot better than email, in my mind. There’s less of a chance for the message to get lost, and I know plenty of academics for whom that’s a major factor.


text:
Do I HAVE to have a PhD to get a post-doc position?
I suppose this is probably largely lab dependent, but I'll go ahead and explain anyway.
I graduated last year with a bachelor's degree in engineering, and landed a job as a Research Assistant (negotiated up to Research Data Analyst). I was hired at the same time as a Post-doc fellow, doing very similar work together. I have done well, and for various unfortunate reasons my colleague has not done so well. Long story short, he is quitting from frustration.
In contrast, the PIs are very vocal in their appreciation for my work, allow me to take place in interviewing candidates for his replacement, and allow me to take on more responsibility and make sure I feel like a valued  member of the team. Add on the fact that I have learned a tremendous amount in the last year here, and I am feeling very confident in my abilities (after all, I succeeded with a bachelor's where a PhD struggled)
I have been entertaining the idea of seeking new employment for financial reasons. They do not pay me what I believe I deserve. They might, if I showed them an offer from another institution though, and many of the job postings I've seen would suit me extremely well - I have all of the required and preferred skills. I would need very little training and love the work.
The problem is a good deal of the job postings specifically ask for a post-doc, because the typical bachelor's degree would be unqualified for this type of work (never published, can't read papers well, and doesn't have the computer skills to survive), although a couple postings did mention they would hire based on skills.
So in your experience, if a lab is looking for a research assistant type of position, and are hiring post-docs for it, are they specifically looking for a post-doc, or would they hire a research minded 'employee' with a lesser degree?
Am I going to have to go back to school for 4 more years to apply for jobs I'm already qualified for?

You haven't said anything about your field or where the money for the position comes from. In my field almost all such positions are grant funded, and the funding agency can review hiring decisions. A PI would have to think very carefully about hiring a postdoc without a doc under those circumstances. This is to be compared to a position which—whatever its title—is just a middling-seniority semi-independent researcher in a lab.

@dmckee Neuroimaging at a large hospital in a research lab attached to a clinic. The funding comes from grants, mostly, but there are also private donors. We also have an agreement with the NFL.
I have published one paper as lead author (admittedly small and technical), and am second author on the major project we are working on right now, but I have been responsible for methods and the really important stuff, I make figures, and know how to make the paper as clear as possible, using other well written articles in our field as a reference.

I would caution against looking at a PhD as "going to have to go back to school for 4 more years". Doing a PhD will be much more similar to what you're doing now (mainly research) than what your past experience of school at the undergraduate level has been.

It makes sense that available positions depend on the source of funding that's something I hadn't really considered. So it probably is lab dependent then... I get the impression that where I am, the money for personnel doesn't come directly from grants really - after all I am a full-time employee of the hospital... I guess this is different depending on the lab.

after all, I succeeded with a bachelor's where a PhD struggled — Whoa, easy tiger. Without knowing more details, it is probably safe to assume that the postdoc was also given a fair bit more to chew on.

Well his work was transferred to me when it became clear he was struggling. Though I will stay here for a bit, maybe they will have some options for me to continue my education while working.

postdoc without doc cannot exist... You might be hired as something else, another description, same job, but not officially as a post-doc, by definition.
As commented, the funding might just not be there for such different position. I'm sure that, if I'm reviewing spending information from a grant, I wouldn't agree with that switch, unless it is significantly cheaper. Further, most of the sponsoring agencies I know, have a some sort of guidelines for paying people, and it would be difficult to justify someone without a phd receiving postdoc level money...
Your question sounds like "Do I have to go to medicine school to be a surgeon" or "Do I have to pass the bar to practice law". Doesn't matter that you think you are qualified, officially, you are not.

Yes institutions I know of will be strictly prohibited from offering a Postdoc until official proof of PhD completion has been provided. This often has pay scale implications as well if they are to offer you an intermediary title/position.


text:
What to do when there are no courses available to help with my research? How will it affect me?
I am a first-year mechanical engineering PhD at a Canadian university. I had by undergrad and a master's degree in materials engineering. My previous master's research was mostly experimental with some implementation of a mathematical model in Matlab and Fortran. All graduate courses were on programming or simple mathematical modeling or experimental analysis.
Now for the PhD degree, my research topic involves continuum mechanics, variational mechanics, and finite element analysis. There are no courses available in my university for the next two semesters. I had taken an "advanced" course last semester which had some continuum mechanics in it, but I found it fairly introductory.
My advisor says that in graduate school one must learn topics by oneself. And no one will look for these courses in the CV if one can publish papers using the methods.
I am starting to learn these from online courses and books. But I feel inadequate because of my poor undergraduate background in mathematics and these topics.
My PhD funding is for three years (can be extended to one more year). I need to start my research by the second year. I don't know what to do.
My advisor just points me towards relevant literature. I wonder if she has my best interests in mind.

Is there any sort of summer institute tradition in this field? In Econ we have various summer institutes where you go and take one-day courses on key topics from the experts.

When you say, "There are no courses available in my university for the next two semesters", do you mean "no courses in my selected topics", or "no courses whatsoever being held at the university"? In other words: Is this the normal schedule, or has it been specially disrupted by covid-19?

Part, or most, of a PhD is about self-learning, so you have to step up and work on those subjects you need.
A PhD is usually to push the boundaries of knowledge in topics / areas etc so learning methods or techniques relevant to moving your research forward is what you have to do - simply said your supervisor is correct.

While this is absolutely true, a good supervisor should also understand that there is nothing wrong with asking for help (on the contrary), and do anything he can to make the projects of his students a success. Unfortunately this does not appear to be the norm in academia, making this answer a good one.

@Louic I'm not sure what you are suggesting the advisor do differently?

I do not know how much effort the supervisor has put into this already, but OP has the feeling that he is not getting enough help and that issue needs to be addressed. The supervisor could possibly try to find a colleague or student with the desired expertise who could help the student with his questions, schedule some time to do so himself, or even better: ask the student what he thinks would be the most helpful solution. He has a PhD student who is eager to learn and has spent the effort to read books and online courses, but still needs some help. This help should be provided somehow.

For context, I am a third-year PhD student in physics who has completed all my coursework.
I think that your experience is the norm. As you get more advanced in your education and transition into focusing on research, it becomes less and less likely that your department will offer courses that cover exactly what you need (though this might depend on your research area). At some point, there will be topics that you will have to teach yourself by finding the right textbook, deciding what is important, and learning it.
It may be helpful to take courses that are tangentially related to your research area. I did this a few times when in your situation and found that many of these courses happened to come in handy later. However, I've found that the most efficient way to learn specific topics was by teaching myself. Taking a course is not always the fastest approach because it sometimes forces you to jump through hoops that you don't need to go through.
I think your advisor is right to point you towards relevant literature related to your project, as these will give the best indication of what topics you really need to learn for your research. Then you can aim your self-learning so that you get up to speed with the most essential skills as quickly as possible.  Good luck!

You say "But I feel inadequate because of my poor undergraduate background in mathematics and these topics."
Given that, you should consider the possibility of taking some less specialized courses. Do not depend on getting the actual knowledge you need from the courses. Your advisor is right that you should be learning to learn from papers and books. Instead, aim to fill any gaps in your background knowledge and skills that are making it harder to learn independently.
Since you do not need any grades or diplomas from the background courses, you can consider on-line courses if they work for you and are available in the topics you need.

Many people, including myself, have had similar frustrations to this. What I have learnt, over time, is that courses in the things I needed to learn simply didn't exist. Any where. The things I was interested in were simply too cutting edge to ever be taught in a classroom like setting. At the time I felt like this counld possibly be true. Surely there were lots of poeople out there that needed to know these things? What about all the people publishing papers in the field? Where did they learn?
Well it turns out, you just have to muddle through. No one is going to "teach" you these things.
Okay, now that i've effectively said the same as everyone else, what can you do about it and how can you get help?
The first thing is that you need materials. Collect together any papers, books etc, any online courses. It sounds like you've already done this - well done.
Now you need a general overview of the field. What are the main uses of the field. What categories do the main techniques fall into etc. Get a grasp of the things you don't know. Turn the unknown unknowns into known unknowns. Do this by reading broadly but shallowly. Read the introductory chapters in books and the introductions to papers etc.
Now set your self specific goals. Not "I want to understand the field" or even "this week I will understand this subfield". One of the first things any training in pedagogy will teach you is that "understand" is not a useful word. A good goal would be "I would like to know when it is appropriate to use tool X". Or "What are the steps in derviving the main model in approach Z". Its good to focus all this on a particular question or application, presumably the one you will be tackling in your PhD.
If you are feeling that you lack the background in a particular sort of mathematics, then organise to do a course in that piece of missing background.
How can your supervisor help in this? They can't "teach" you the subject. They do not have the time. Instead, arrange for your supervisor to help you plan with sub-bit you will tackle next and give you some accountability on your progress. They can help steer you to what sub-fields are most appropriate. You can also get them to help with with specific problems "Can you help me with thisstep in this derivation?" Or "I keep getting a different answer to the authors in this paper, can you see why?". Make sure the questions you are asking are specific.

You should look into the Western Dean’s Agreement in Canada. It allows graduate students to take courses at other universities without paying additional fees of attending another university program. It is incredibly powerful and can help you to address the needs of courses your institution does not offer.

You could theoretically take one or two courses at a different university, that's close enough for you to travel there once a week. This is often officially sanctioned and counted towards your course requirements after some intra-university and cross-university paperwork; and if it isn't, you could still probably just "take" it unofficially.
Now, I'm not saying that this will necessarily be a good idea. You will have to get used to self-study - since most subjects you'll need to study up on don't have courses online, nor anywhere. Many will not even have any books, just a bunch of papers.
But - it might save you time and effort despite the travel; and you might even make academic contacts.

This is very sad.
Is this research something that the advisor actually wants to do? Has she published in this area? Or is this just something that there was grant money available for? If so you are being used as cheap labor just so that your advisor can appear to be active and engaged.
That most certainly should not be norm, but it is not unknown. You have been assigned to a project for which you have expressed no enthusiasm and in which you have no training or experience. If this is the case what can you do about it? Others have made practical suggestions, but how approachable is your Head of Department? This one of the things that they are paid to sort out. They might be able to point you toward suitable resources. They could assign you to a new advisor. Your Department should also have a Graduate Chair,which might be a better place to start.
It could be however, that doing anything to make the department look good on paper is a deliberate policy. In that case, you may really be on your own. Ombudsman?

If the OP really lacks background as they describe, it takes a bit more than just pointing them in the right direction.In fact it should always take more than pointing in the right direction.