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If I start a blog to spread my ideas in academia could it be successful?
I consider myself a scientist and researcher into a very interesting topic-the most fundamental questions of Life and the very foundations of biology. I'm using the phrase I consider myself because in reality I have no publications in any journals with real impact factor and all I have managed to "publish" up until now are a few short excerpts in my native language in printed medias (I really couldn't even call them journals) for a general "scientific" (but more likely for everyone interested in science, than in any particular field of science) audience and from conferences (also in my native language) I have attended. I managed to write about it here and there on the Internet, too, but as you could see there is nothing deserving the title of a real scientific publication, so I don't give those attempts any merit.
Of course, I tried, and am still trying, to manage to write a publication for a "real" journal in English language with an impact factor greater than 0.01 (which is what I think the publishers in my native tongue have) but I have not been successful. I'm either out of scope or don't meet their academical standards. The reason I think is I'm not used to write papers. Of course, I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of papers and am fond of reading them but am not good at actually writing them. So, I think I need some professional guidance here.
But what I think is the greater issue here is the fact that my object of investigation has become so far "off" the current hot research topics in biology that it might have turned into a field in of itself and am having considerable difficulties communicating it to my colleagues. I had such problems ever since I started dealing with these topics about 10 years ago when I was in the middle of my BC in Molecular biology, but what this "deviation" had now turned into something entirely different from all current discourse in all the major fields of biology as far as I can see and I am having really big trouble trying to go "back in track" with my colleagues.
My field used to be a combination of biochemistry and microbiology in the context of theoretical biology with an emphasis on the origins of Life (at least this is where I started from) but as time went by I delved ever deeper into an intersection of biology and philosophy very different from what modern philosophy of biology is about, too. I also touched on various aspects of physics, chemistry and even engineering through the years and in the end came up with a terminology I find seems unintelligible to any field in particular. This is why I feel like I'm stuck with my own concepts and my own terminology and I really can't get anyone from any particular field to look into it with understanding. I guess this is what you get when you go A-wall from every other field or researcher and get into something all by yourself. But, yet, the question remains as to how could I communicate my ideas for evaluation to anybody?
When I started I was planning to use the little I knew from biochemistry and microbiology to develop my own definition of Life and proceed to see how it can fare. This was around 10 years ago when I still was a bachelor student in molecular biology. That time I had the idea that the answer for distinguishing Life from non-Life was its ability to keep a process necessary for its existence outside the causation of external factors. In order to understand me I will give a simple example-consider a vortex in a waterpool. As long as there is strong enough current the vortex is caused by the flow of the current through a particular geometry shape of the bottom of the pool. So there is an external causation responsible for the existence of the vortex. As long as there is this current flowing though this particular shape on the bottom of this particular pool this vortex will result from it. However, if the vortex was to somehow "come alive" and dramatically change its behavior it will start to display patterns of behavior unpredictable by neither the strength of the flow through the waterpool, nor the shape of its bottom. I decided that in order to distinguish Life from non-Life we should concentrate on those pattern which give rise to a behavior impossible to explain by the mere sum of the laws determining the behavior of the system.
Now, that isn't any entirely new idea and in fact I was later able to find many papers pertaining to it, but what is important is that it started a passion I could only enjoy and drove me further and further on a path very different from any of those of my fellow students and peers. While most other students pursued carriers in a well defined fields like physiology, biochemistry, microbiology and so on I ventured on a journey in "no-man's land" where the borders of physics, chemistry, biology and philosophy merged into a single subject existing on the "fringe" of what can be considered a valid scientific enterprise. Or at least that is what some of my peers told me.
My research interests started to get me in troubles with my teachers who preferred narrowly specialized interests which could be channeled into an already existing research programs in the well defined departments of the university and my too broad and unclear (for them, for me what I wanted to do was always crystal clear) topic wasn't anything they were willing to invest their efforts in. This is why they sent me to the philosophy department and was forced to introduce myself with the philosophy of biology. It wasn't my initial desire as I had always considered myself a scientist first but this is what they preferred to call me. So I found an expert in philosophy of biology and started to read up about the field. However, the more I read the more I understood it wasn't my place either.
My concept was centered on the inevitable interconnectivity between emerging organization and the direction processes arising from this organization were heading to. The common element of all Life according to it is its direction, its path, its "strive", not any particular combination of factors or conditions or even characteristics which distinguish it from inanimate matter. If you search genetics journals for papers about the difference between Life and non-Life you could find a few attempts to distinguish a minimal cell from a mere artificial chromosome by the number of genes it needs to contain. That is so because for a geneticist a living organism is mere "list of genes" and if you manage to score the right combination you get a cell, not a mere chromosome. If you ask a biochemist Life emerges when a particular combination of molecules and their interactions manages to build up a closed system of interdependent reactions which reproduces its constituents (this is known as metabolic closure). If you ask a philosopher he or she may give you a list of properties which distinguish a living entity from a mere mechanical object but I surely guess that among the first on the list would be the concept of agency or the ability of an entity to act on its own behalf. All at all it is safe to say that every expert would give you a definition from its own background and it's sometimes very tricky to be able to distinguish one definition from another. But that isn't what I had.
In my view there is a common background behind all and every attempt to characterize life and it comes from the innate ability of living organisms to determine their own behavior and characteristics by themselves. That actually means that any attempt centered to produce a definition of Life from any particular background is destined to fail precisely because it comes from a particular background, e.g. from a particular pool of ideas and methodology for analyzing reality that is external for the object being analyzed. So there would always be some other pool of ideas and some other methodology which could give similar results but makes statements contradictory to the statements made by the first one. The reason is that while both are legitimate paths to discovery in their respective ways what they are trying to analyze is no subject in either of them, therefore when we try to overlap one methodology with the other the end result wouldn't be a perfect self-consistent core of ideas but a "fuzzy" border caused by the impossibility of the core ideas and the results of the application of the methodology of the 2 fields to completely even themselves out. For example if we try to use a genetic definition of a minimal living organism based on the minimum number of genes which can form a metabolizing cell we may come up with very different combinations of synthesizable macromolecules than if we use a biochemical approach striving to produce a self-reproducing pattern of chemical reactions and neither of the 2 could claim their respective results could have all the attributes of a living organism. This is a simple illustration of a fundamental problem in any attempt to characterize Life-when we head from any limited point of view of any particular subfield of science or methodology we always end up with a result which could be considered either too general and will include systems which are living organisms but aren't included in this definition or things which obviously aren't living organisms but are included in it. There is virtually no complete overlap between any 2 separate attempts to determine what constitutes a living organism.
However, the idea that I had was to use an internal "background" to construct a framework of characteristics distinguishing Life from non-Life and to further use it to try to answer all those questions pertaining to Life which can be suggested to be a problem of biology and not any other science. In order to do so I defined self-causation as the distinguishing property of Life and tried to create a list of all systems which could express it and compare it with all those system we perceive as living entities. It was an incredible match!
Instead of creating a short list of characteristics like n number of genes, m number of proteins, membrane boundary etc. to define a living organism I decided I had to focus on only a single issue to distinguish any form of organization from a biological one. It was the idea of a process being the cause of itself. I named this self-sustaining change although that over the years I started to think this naming I now inappropriate and prefer the Latin phrase autocausa sua or what in a "rough" a cause by itself of in itself. The real meaning of these phrases is the ability of a process to serve as a reason for the continuing of the same process only by its own existence. Let me give an example-if there is chemical reactions network constructed by the combined interactions of the reactions which constitute it after a certain point in time the reaction network becomes self-sustaining and what is more important self-modulating, e.g. after this point any quantity of raw materials coming into the network will get "distributed" over all the reaction pathways of the network and not increase the quantity of only those reactions directly utilizing this raw material. I'm sure you can see where I'm going to because if a living organism changes its diet the new food materials don't go only to those cells and tissues who have the enzymes to process that but are turned into "common building blocks" for all cells to process it. And what is even more important is that any changes in the respective topology of the reactions comprising the system start to have global impact on the entire system, not only to the reactions directly connected with them. I don't want to go into greater detail but what is important here is that through the auto-causation definition I managed to come up with a bunch of criteria to describe the topology of networks of chemical reactions and understand how and why certain networks can support what we perceive as living organization and why others can't.
Furthermore the self-causation of determinable processes implies a search of general processes that can be prescribed to the entire system to define Life instead of any particular characteristics. That means that if we want to determine whether a certain entity is alive we need to get a look at its dynamics and not in any particular list of characteristics it constantly has. For example, I'm certain that almost everyone would agree that a dry seed isn't alive but also almost anyone would strongly disagree if we call it "dead". The big difference in a self-causation based definition of Life comes from the fact that we will be looking at the process which builds a certain structure, like the seed is an example of, not at the structure itself per se to determine is the entity displaying that particular structure alive or not. Thus, if we can show that the same process which builds this structure is itself impossible without the structure it builds, then we have the reasons to consider it a living entity. This criterion actually means that alive are always only things which can't be produced by other processes and that inseparable connection between the process that it makes possible and the structure build by that process is THE hallmark of Life. Just like seeds can come only from other seeds and trees come only from other trees, so cells come only from other cells and even we could argue that things like viruses and viroids are alive as long as they require an uninterrupted non-replicatable process for their creation. Actually the auto-causation concept goes further because it states that those structures which can support processes which in turn can build the very structures that support those same processes are the only examples of Life possible and that the structure and the "function" in Nature are actually the very same thing because they are different aspects of a same phenomenon-self-sustaining autocausation spreading in the Universe any way it can.
Now, I understand that if you aren't a philosopher of biology all that may seem to you very vague and you may even wonder what is the point of all that wording but the truth is that this is a major departure of any style for describing biological phenomena as far as I know and it constitutes an entirely new approach to many fundamental biological problems. I don't want to venture into details because than this question would get all the way too long but I should just mention that the "standard" philosophy of biology doesn't "work" that way. The common approach is to tackle particular biological question through the prism of particular philosophical school of thought or methodology of investigation and in the end to come to a conclusion of the various relevance of different philosophical concepts to a particular biological problem. What you see here is not how philosophy of biology usually proceeds! Actually this is a very unusual line of investigation and although it may look like "something philosophical" it's not what you will come across in most papers on philosophy of biology. And this of course creates quite a mess with the editors. And here come phrases as "unclear", "out of scope" and "inappropriate for our audience". But the big problem is the unique thinking employed to arrive at criteria for the distinguishing between Life and non-Life here and the concentration on a single particular thinking pattern which is given not only priority, but outward superiority over all the others. And this isn't something often used in philosophy. It's something used in science.
Furthermore, straight out of the concept of self-causation comes the idea of goal-oriented behavior or teleology as it's known in philosophy which has always been a hot topic of debate. Now, this concept manages to crisscross the boundaries between science and philosophy and at the same time to touch on the "hot" issue of whether or not we can say a living organism has any goals in mind internally and consistently with its very definition. This is something which creates problems for both biologists and philosophers because it ties 2 very important questions altogether-the definition of a living organism and its teleology and that mean double grounds of doubts and double difficulty at conveying the reasoning behind this approach because it now has to touch upon not only on those who doubt the ability to define Life altogether, but also the validity of teleology in biology. And needless to say I had a lot of trouble with people who prefer biology to stay biology and philosophy-philosophy instead of building bridges using radical concepts.
However, the problem is I think reality might has other opinions and the very idea of causation, be it self- or not, also implies a direction where this cause forces the entity to head into and this directed development is the very definition of goal-oriented behavior. Thus, the defining cause of the process which constitutes Life actually set goals for the entity to follow and those goals are exemplified in the behavior it exhibits in order to ease the sustaining of the process which constitutes Life itself for this entity. That way I think teleology can be embedded very deep into a foundation of biology and stem out of the very definition of Life itself. However, I'm meeting serious objections from philosophers not inclined to believe in such an easy explanation for the place of teleology in biology and am having hard time publishing for that audience.
Furthermore, I managed to demonstrate very interesting relationships between the ideas of structure and function in biology using my idea of self-causation as a basis for the definition of Life and the concept of hyperstructures in biology. This idea states that there are special structures created by vital processes for any living entity and the Life of that particular entity is practically impossible without them. Like for example the DNA-replication, transcription and translation complexes, the cell membrane, mitochondria and other structures which could vary in size from a supramolecular complex to an organelle. Even the cell itself can be considered a hyperstructure. This isn't very popular idea and actually here are very few biologists who are familiar with it but I immediately saw the potential to integrate it into the reasoning I managed to develop with mine ideas of goal-oriented behavior arising from the particular processes needed to be supported for their own continuous existence and so, I came up with the idea of interdependence between the vital processes constituting the self-sustaining and self-causing process determining the living state of an entity and the hyperstructures we could find in the same entity. I believe there is a clear and easy to determine relationship between large-scale organizational features of the living organisms and the processes which together constitute the self-causing self-sustaining process defining Life as such. I also believe this is precisely what determines both the organization of a living organism and its evolution and place in the environment and using this line of thought we could establish not only a particular definition of Life but a true General Theory of Life which could eve spring a new science of the fundamental organization of the living organisms and why it is such. This is the content of the publication I want to publish.
I have been working on this paper for almost 7 years I think and I have managed to amount what I consider huge amount of evidence that using the interrelatedness of the concepts of self-causation for a definition of Life and of hyperstructures as the "physical manifestations" of the processes together comprising the self-causing process defining particular form of Life it's possible to create a consistent body of concepts to explain virtually all fundamental characteristics of Life and its behavior. I believe we could touch on the questions what constitutes biological organization and why it is so, why Life needs to evolve and how the different mechanisms of evolution relate to each other, how to distinguish the minimal organization necessary for a living organism and many other questions if we consider the implications of the self-causing and self-sustaining processes materialized through hyperstructures into a real tangible physical organizations. This is what I want to present the world as my General Theory of Life and may be manage to build a solid base for further investigation of the most fundamental questions of biology into a single theoretical framework.
But the deeper I went into that direction the more I distanced myself from virtually all the experts in my field and eventually reached a point where I couldn't communicate neither to biologist, nor to philosophers. I also started to develop my own terminology which was inapplicable to any of the fields I was deriving ideas from and my research took a turn very different from what any of my peers had expected it to be. Needless to say, that meant I was going further and further off track from what any of my colleagues was doing and found myself in various conflicts with my peers. It came to such a point that I wasn't able to proceed following my ideas in the university any more and decided that there wasn't the right place for me. I also had some personal issues at that time and the spending for science in my country was very low. That meant only research which could deliver immediate result was preferred for funding and my far-fetched and difficult to communicate ideas had no chance no matter would they turn out to be true or not. I did manage to came out with a more "moderate" version of my ideas and to actually propose a valid research project but it was nonetheless too far away from what could be funded that time. This is why I eventually decided academia wasn't the place for me and went on to search other jobs. And this is actually pretty much what I'm still doing today. I have managed to pursue my ideas further for years outside of academia and frankly I think I managed to develop a very unique concept that might help us connecting many problems in life sciences by a common "theme"-the very definition of Life itself, so, I don't think all that time and effort had gone into waste.
However, I'm still having one hell of a problem convincing ANY journal to take my manuscripts. As you can see my research has great promises at hand and can build bridges where nothing else as far as I know can, however it uses a brand of thinking and directions for investigations which aren't touched upon by no one as far as I know of it and even the closest thing I can relate to-the concept of autopoiesis in biology is very far away from my ideas of "materialized" self-causing self-sustaining processes by hyperstructures. I have a really hard time making anyone "buy" it, so I have decided to come to this site, tell my story and ask you for advice could a blog help me out. At least do you think anyone would be interested in reading about such ideas as the ones I present here in a blog over the Internet and try to help me find an appropriate publishing medium? Do you think I can draw enough attention to my research by posting it on the Internet for free and people who are interested in how it all can relate to modern biology could advise me where and how to present it?
Actually my biggest problem is that my ideas are very unique and for a lack of a better word-distinct from what anyone else has presented before, so, that is why my colleagues and probably the editorial boards of journals as well are unwilling to invest their reputation on them. At least this is the most obvious conclusion I have come up with. I couldn't find anything "wrong" with my ideas per se and although I did managed to present them to experts everything I managed to get from them was uneasy stance of neither accepting them, nor being able to deny them. Of all the people I have talked with no one has been able to deny me or prove me wrong. I hear way too often that I'm out of the "hot" topics in modern biology or that my concepts are unordinary but I never managed to get anybody to actually deny their validity. That is why I'm so fervorant to try to push them through any way possible. I really don't see anything misleading or incorrect about the Nature of reality in them, only people who are either too specialized in their respective fields or aren't comfortable with my position. But as you may come to understand whether we like or hate something doesn't mean this thing isn't real or not. I'm not able to see any fundamental mistakes in my research, so I want to see how it can go into the wider world but the inaccessibility of academic journals makes it quite difficult, this is why I want to explore my options and would like to ask you what do you think about it?
I really don't do it for the money I could make or the jobs I could take if I get my work published. There was time in the past when I was thinking about that but this isn't the case any longer. I just want to present my work any way possible. I don't mind if I get labeled or called names if I have to as long as the community is forced to at least take a look at my ideas and make a stance on them. What I'm fed up isn't the lack of acceptance for my ideas or the decline to pursue them. It's the utter lack of communicability with both the biological and philosophical communities who seem to be aiming at each in its own subjects of investigation and the lack of intelligibility by their respective journals to consider me seriously. Even if I got proven wrong I will celebrate it as long as the other side actually looks at what I'm presenting and use facts to argument its refusal. But what I do not tolerate is the mere refusal to even engage in discussions about my ideas which is precisely what I'm seeing right now. If people could use their knowledge and expertize to point out mistakes in my actual ideas I would be content but if they just blindly deny me the platform to express myself and the media to present my ideas I really don't know what to say. Or should I ask if modern science has become such "close-circle" enterprise it's now impossible to even present your ideas if you aren't on a payroll in academia?
I just want to get your advice what should I do. I think I managed to present my story and ideas in a detailed enough manner and was able to put up the reasons why I'm having such a difficult time publishing and why I just couldn't go with the "normal" way of convincing experts in the field to publish me in journals. So, I'm now wondering what will come out of my blog and could I get enough attention through the Internet to actually drive some real experts to my ideas and manage to spread them in that way? In the modern world the Internet had proven to be much faster and broadband environment for spreading ideas that the "classical" academic publications could ever have been but at the same it's also had proven to be a medium of much lower standards for information than it. So what my question actually amounts to is whether I would be able to attract enough attention from people who are actually deep enough in science and philosophy to manage to help spread my ideas in the respective fields and eventually give me advice where to publish it "for real". What do you think about that? How are my chances of success? Or would I be "engulfed" by the enormous rubbish of the Internet to the extent when only people without any background would be the only readers I could get and my ideas would be doomed to never enter the academic discourse?
By the way, do you think even if most of my readers are profane they could create enough "buzz" to eventually force a reaction from the professional biologists and philosophers? I mean if something gets popular enough to actually make people talk about it a time comes when the experts in the field can't really ignore it and must devise a response. Or at least I think so. After all they can't just ignore questions forever, right? Could they? So, even if the people I get to read my ideas aren't scientists or philosophers if they could create enough "commotion" to spread them do you think a time may come when the community is simply obliged to take them seriously even if only to try to disprove them? I mean I really don't want to go that road but if the experts aren't willing to even take a look at certain ideas just because the authors don't have affiliations could they be "pressured" to do so by the general public spreading those ideas? What do you think?

If your blog is like your question here, my short answer is an absolute NO. It's too long and lacks of readability.

Then, try advising me how to put something which obviously can't be put in a short abstract into a short abstract? How can you find a place for something that simply has no place in any particular context other than the context it itself creates into some other context? How can you shorten something which doesn't allow itself to be shortened? How can I write a paper whose abstract only is going to be the size of the paper itself? Any words of advice on that @scaahu?

Related question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/91065/546 and the linked question in that one.

In particular, "The burden of proof is on the author to convince the reader of the result." from the answer @ff524 provides

Writing in paragraphs would be a good start.

@scaahu ,I read both entire Q&A you provided and as far as I can see it this is about submitting a work from the base of an already very well defined field within the context of a previously established results. I here don't even know where and what to submit. I don't have any clear idea how to proceed with my ideas because they are so far off of what the others have done before me that I don't even know do they constitute a field on their own or a part of theoretical biology as we know it. This is why I'm not asking here a question of can I publish or not, but rather the question:

"Can I get any help over the Internet if I manage to open a media where I could clearly present my research in the form I'm doing it, not in the form the journals want me to do it?" Can you understand my point now?

@YordanYordanov yes you can. An example(perhaps a bit extreme): think about authors who write about conspiracy theories. They have managed to get a body of followers through their books and talks. What you ought to consider, however, is who you are trying to convince in the end: the scientific community or a general public. The fact that you can rally followers who support your idea won't guarantee that the scientific community will be more receptive to your ideas. Finally, build a general vision and work on individual pieces towards that goal. Your idea is too dense right now.

How does your field differ from the study of emergent complexity?

I did not vote to close as duplicate because you're asking about blog, not peer reviewed journals. I am not a biologist, please take the following as grain of salts. One of your answer on Biology SE looks concise, received upvotes and accepted. The other answer looks wall of text (just like your question here) received downvotes and a comment "Your answer is rather hard to follow, are you saying metabolism started inorganically?", Do you get my point?

I submitted an edit to your question. Please see if my edit makes the point clearer and also ask yourself if we need all the information in the body of the question to help you to start a blog to divulge your ideas.

FYI, you should look into RNA World (first paper paywalled here and the vast literature from  computer science / math / bio chemistry / theoretical physics that it has sprung.

Surely you know these books, but on the off-chance you don't, you might want to look What is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger's and Life Beyond Earth by Gerald Feinberg and Robert Shapiro. In the mid 1980s I wrote a weekly science column for my university's newspaper, and for one of the columns I explored some of the topics discussed in these two books, and thus I can assure you that there are some pretty general and far-fetched ideas in these books. There are probably much more general and far-fetched ideas in print by now, but in my opinion these two books are still worth looking at.

I have managed to put it all, at least in general terms, in the question and break it into paragraphs. I have also underlined all of my key words and made an effort to create a consistent presentation of my ideas in the text, so, you could all get what my blog would be about. Now that you can see my entire concept what do you think of it?

@PatriciaShanahan as far as I know the study of emergent complexity doesn't deal with any "philosophical" interpretations of complexity and generally complexity isn't associated with goal-oriented behavior. On the other hand this is part of the very core of my ideas-I strive to show fundamental connection between the emergence of goal-oriented behavior and physical structures who embody the processes comprising and directing this behavior. As far as I know this is a novel idea and the field and I don't know about any attempts to relate teleology with complexity.Do you know about such attempts?

Even if you give me -100 points I WILL STILL BE ASKING THIS QUESTION! I find nothing inappropriate in the endeavor I have been on for the last few years. Do I present a new point of view on a legitimate question? Yes, I do. Is this a site where one can ask on a method for disseminating valuable information? Yes, it is! Then,....who is the biased one here-me for telling my story and asking can I make an impact without using a journal or you who are trying to shut down my question by giving it -1000000 points without even bothering to make a comment on your decision???

A blog is not a reliable source and will never make its way into the mainstream scientific community. If you want to be accepted into the scientific community, then write a paper, back it up with empirical evidence, or write a review paper summarizing knowledge about a topic.

Go for it!
No. I have not heard of anyone whose ideas entered mainstream through a blog, but then, i have also not heard of anyone who claims he has a general theory of life.
Given that the internet is a recent phenomenon, it makes sense that there are no successful examples. But do you have any problem in trying to become that example?
It also makes sense that since the final answer to the fundamental questions about life will involve multiple fields, an expert from any one of the field might not be able to understand you. So what you experienced from your peers is predictable.
You can also try vixra.org. Or you could self publish a book describing your ideas on Amazon or Smashwords. Although blog will be more freely available.
Such attempts will atleast establish priority.
Go for it. The internet is full of garbage. I would rather prefer to read a blog trying to describe the secrets of life.
I would love to read your research. Sounds interesting... Share the link of the blog in the comment...

You can also try vixra.org — ...but only if you want to write CRANK across your forehead in large friendly letters.

Raja thank you for the general advice I will have it in mind :)  @JeffE I have always believed in the principle that what ultimately matters isn't medium a research is published in, but rather what its contents are. I don't know whether I will be using the vixra option or not but I have come to the conclusion that it's better to publish even a rough sketch of your work in a dubious media, than to wait years and write and rewrite it for "prestigious" journals only to get rejected by them. What would I win if I wait more years to try to publish a paper in a good medium even thou peer reviwed

if I could present much more information in other medium even thou it may cause controversy? At the end what is better-a small amount ofinformation in a prestigious ally or huge amount of information in a "little corner" of the Internet. If the research is worth it people will eventually find it, right?

You'd be better off just posting a pdf to your web site (so that Google can find it) than posting a paper to vixra.

No scientist is going to take your blog seriously.  If you want to convince non-scientists of your ideas, you might have some success (if you manage to write much more clearly and concisely than in your question here). But your blog will not give access to any remotely mainstream science, and if anything it will harm you; scientists looking at your blog will conclude that you are a kook, and will actively avoid anything you have to say in any forum.

Since when the scientific community became so close minded that it started to evaluate people on the basis of the medium chosen to present something and on the basis of their workplace instead of on what they actually have to say? I have always believed that what science is ultimately about is the WORTH of research and whether or not it can accurately describe reality, not what some personal feelings of any scientists are about. Is it still the case or science has changed into a club of "the privileged"?

You asked the question.  If you refuse to accept the answer, that is your problem.

do you really want to tell me that even if I try to keep the highest standards possible, write down my complete set of ideas, reference them extensively, provide examples, propose experiments, take all possible precautions not to go out of the fields I use and don't let any amount of pseudoscience or Internet rubbish in my blog the community would still remain oblivious to my efforts and nobody would take me seriously just because I can't find the "proper home" for my ideas in the current academic environment? Had really all scientists became so close minded?

Scientists are required to have a low tolerance for kooks, nuts, and cranks, because cranks, nuts, and kooks will ignore advice, believing that they can bypass reality simply by adding more and more paragraphs of demands. You therefore need to not look like a nut, crank, or kook if you want to have attention from scientists. Your approach is not serving you well in this regard.

but at the same time I'm clearly not finding the right way to communicate my ideas in papers. I can't get even one of them accepted. What does it means-that my ideas are wrong and no one wants to read them or that I don't know how to write a paper and this is why I need a place where I can "practice" (like a blog, for example) my style and attract peers who can help me polish my style and help me find the right journal?

Writing a blog is so different from writing a paper that I can't imagine it will help you.  How many papers have you read? If the answer isn't "thousands", then you haven't read enough papers to properly write your own.  You need to read papers in your field and related fields, understand how they are written, and build on that.

@iayork You're supposed to read "thousands" of papers before you're able to write papers on your own? I probably won't have read thousands of papers before I retire.

A couple a day during grad work sounds about right on average; that's about 3000 already. I've been a professional scientist for 30 years, and I estimate I still average about that. If you haven't read thousands before you retire, then you're not reading one paper a week on average.  I don't know what field you're in, but that sounds pretty odd to me.  So, yeah. Math.  In any case, that's aimed at the OP, who seems to be trying to self-educate, so he/she certainly needs to read thousands.

The simple fact that I comment(ed) here and there on your question means that I put some (might be minimal) effort. I personally have trouble fully understanding the beautiful "the case and the necessity" by Monod. How could I understand what you have in mind? If the blog would be like the question, it will be unreadable. If it will be clearer, I do not think it will help you to enter mainstream nor mainstream will take a look at it. I literally could not finish reading...


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Seeking publishing advice for an academic textbook
I have written a new academic mathematics textbook that I think can become popular, perhaps even very popular, as far as math books are concerned (which I recognize in the broader scheme, alas, is unfortunately not so very popular). What is the best way for me to proceed?
I can of course follow the traditional route and pursue the usual academic publishers, such as MIT press or OUP and so on. But I think that royalties are often somewhat low and prices rather high, so I'm not sure this is the best way. Meanwhile, I have some experience with newer publishing arrangements, such as Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, which pays an astonishing 70% royalty rate for electronic books (but they limit the book cost to $10). That style of publishing appeals to me and per book, that amount is probably higher per sale than what one might get from a old-fashioned publisher.
My question is, is it a bad idea to put my textbook first on KDP, which would be very easy for me to do myself, before I find a serious academic publisher?  Does it help or hurt my negotiation status with them? I think I can remove my book from KDP at any time. I have thought that having a proven sales record on KDP might help my negotiation, by proving my worth, but perhaps this is wrong, and that the big publishers will simply reject me for already having electronic sales in which they are not partaking. Which is the correct way for me to think about it?
Any advice is appreciated.

What is the target audience for your book?

Is your goal to make money?  If so, it's really hard, and this is not the best forum to ask in.

Libraries might not be able to buy your e-book, if you publish on KDP. Regarding a mathematical textbook, I'd suggest to allow libraries to buy the book.

Not that I have any experience with this, but does the Kindle format lend itself towards mathematical textbooks (or really any kind of text books)? Isn't the Kindle plaintext-only?

Is you main concern that you get to less money or that students have to pay too much money? I would not buy a KDP textbook (if I was not forced to) because I feel Amazon is covering a too broad field and gets to powerful on the market. I also agree with FuzzyLeapfrog's comment. But I am not your target audience because 10 years older than most first-year-students. However, I would really like to have academic eBooks in the epub Format rather than as PDF Documents (which is often the case).

The target audience of my book is undergraduate mathematics majors. My goal is to have a successful book, which includes making money but also having many students benefit from my book. Libraries can buy electronic books, and I believe students more and more use this format---it is convenient to have all your books on a tablet.  My question is:  will it hurt my ability to find a regular publisher, if I go with KDP now? My plan was never to go exclusively with KDP, but find a traditional publisher for the paper version. @xLeitix, KDP is not just plain text; it can handle anything.

Is this about the book on proofs you're writing? Independently of the question, it appears to me that you'll be competing against various freely available texts here (Day, Hammack, and Lehman-Leighton-Meyer come to my mind, all of them CC-licensed and thus unlikely to disappear), which is probably an uphill battle, particularly if the price and the method of procurement for your book change midway through the process.

@darijgrinberg Yes, that is the book. You may be right that things are difficult and uphill, but meanwhile people seem to like my book, so I am hopeful it can be successful.

Writers SE has some related questions you may want to take a look at.

One factor you should keep in mind is that most academics consider publication to be permanent.  Books used to go out of print because it was economically infeasible to keep them available, but with print on demand and electronic publishing, there's a broad expectation that anything available now will remain available forever under similar terms.  This doesn't really apply to standardized low-level textbooks, which can disappear if unsuccessful and are regularly replaced with new editions if successful, but it applies to anything with noteworthy scholarly content.  Based on your stackexchange contributions, I bet your book will fall into this category (and I'm certainly looking forward to reading it).
In particular, if you publish a book through KDP and later withdraw it to do something else with the book, you may upset people.  I'd certainly be unhappy if I had decided to use the book in a course (or had recommended it widely to students) on the basis of price, only to discover that it had abruptly been removed from KDP and now cost substantially more from another publisher.
I assume you would have to remove it from KDP, and couldn't keep it there while publishing a paper edition elsewhere.  It doesn't seem impossible, but it's not plausible that another publisher would put work into promoting a book that was available much more cheaply online from a rival publisher.
I don't know how academic publishers would react to having had a previous edition published by KDP.  I'd bet they would be open to it in principle, the same way other books occasionally move between publishers when the rights are available, but I also suspect they'd worry about anchoring to a very low price.  I think the only way to know for sure is to ask representatives (for example, you can easily chat with them in person at big conferences), since reluctance to do this could easily vary between publishers.
I'd also keep two additional factors in mind:

Academics who are enthusiastic about electronic publishing are often wary of digital rights management.  By emphasizing this aspect, KDP may decrease some of the enthusiasm for this approach.
If your book is not particularly successful on KDP, it may undermine your negotiating position with mainstream publishers.  This means you may need a plan to get publicity for your book, since you won't have advertising (outside of the Amazon ecosystem) or bookstore sales.  There are a lot of factors that are difficult to predict.  For example, will anyone publish book reviews if the book appears to be essentially self published and you are said to be seeking a mainstream publisher?  If there are no reviews, it will hurt your visibility; if there are reviews, they probably won't review it again upon finding another publisher, which might lower other publishers' enthusiasm for taking it on.

Thank you very much for your answer! This is just the sort of advice I was seeking.

DRM is an important consideration.  I think academics, more than most people, have specific technologies they prefer to use, to best fit with their preferred workflow.  DRM typically ties you to a particular platform and software environment.  If your book is only published on Kindle, and DRM prevents it from being converted to another format, I won't use it, because I don't want to have to get a Kindle, and I won't be able to do everything I want with it.  Can I display pages on a projector for my class?  Can I copy and paste excerpts into assignments?

I think that the KDP books can be read on basically any device. I don't have a Kindle device, but I read Kindle books on my phone, on my tablet, on my computer, etc. What is DRM?

I guess you mean digital rights management.

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Make changes to (my own) already published IEEE paper?
The initial copy of IEEE paper that I had submitted required some changes which the conference convenor requested after reviewing.
So I made the changes and submitted again but the convenor accidently must have forwarded the original submission to IEEE and it got published. So how can get make necessary changes (to a published) IEEE paper. Please help!

I know one professor who keeps updated versions of all his papers on his web site.

But keeping updated version on personal website won't serve the purpose I think bro cause people might say updates are not peer reviewed... Maybe I'm wrong

If it is possible, you can update the paper on arxiv. Of course, this depends on the copyright agreement. Anyway, if it is the publisher's fault, please contact them right away. Check for example how many mistakes a publisher can do http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.049904.

You can have the journal publish an erratum, if the changes are limited and bear on statements of fact. For example, if you inverted the array indices in proof 3, or a typo in lemma 2 changes its meaning, or you quoted from another paper and forgot the citation. The journal's web site will show a link to the update.
Otherwise, the published version is the version of record, and wholesale changes wouldn't normally be acceptable for two reasons. First, the journal would have to ask the reviewers (in this case, ad hoc reviewers for a conference with which the journal is not associated) to re-evaluate the manuscript. Second, other scientists may have already based work on the published version in good faith.
(An analogy, if you are a user of the git version control system, is forcing a push to a public repository. Don't be that person.)
If you can substantially improve the original by these changes, then it is worthwhile to make an updated version available through ArXiv or on an institutional archive. At least it will be indexed and will show up in searches. It is common to see this kind of update in CVs and publication lists.
If the changes are only cosmetic, or bear on things like citing existing work or improving figures, then my suggestion is to stick with the old version. Everybody has papers that they would have liked to improve, but couldn't. Save your energy for the next paper!

If changes were not made because of an error on the convenor's part, I suspect the journal would be willing to make much more substantial changes than they ordinarily would allow. There might be an erratum in the printed version, and probably a replacement of the online version (which is the only thing anybody looks at nowadays).

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Switching research topics to something less interesting?
I'm finishing my undergraduate degree this year, and I'm deciding which PhD program to attend: School A, or School B. I do have other offers, but these two stand out to me. My background and current interests are in topic X.

School A has exactly one professor working on X, but my would-be initial advisor works on topic Y. I don't oppose doing research in Y, but my background and current research interest really is X. This initial advisor is recruiting me very aggressively, so it'll really hurt turning him down.
School B has 2-3 professors working on X, but I can't see myself working with anyone here whose research is not in X, which would be bad if I lose interest in X someday. If the would-be initial advisor at School A weren't recruiting me so aggressively, I'd choose School B.

All of the aforementioned professors are quite productive, though the students at School A are slightly more productive than those at School B. If it matters at all, I prefer the location of School A slghtly.
tl;dr: School A is aggressively recruiting me and may be the better place overall, but for my current research interests, School B is the place to be.

Go to School B. What does it even mean to "recruit agressively"? This does not make sense to me. After all, the aggressiveness of the recruiter should not be a relevant factor in your decision making.
Also, I also don't think it is reasonable to consider the possibility of suddenly loosen interest in X. Do you see any sign of that??

I guess the recruiting has made me more emotional about the decision than I should be. He basically sounds like he wants me to go quite badly. And no, I don't see myself losing interest in X, but I've repeatedly heard the advice of keeping an "open mind" and such.

He may want you badly as much as he want. For me this only count against him. It makes no sense to go do research on Y, if you are really interested in X. Your research topic is the most important choice that you have to make, and discarding your first option seems the worst action. You should keep your mind open, but you can always try to transfer school if everything goes wrong with topic X.

Supervisor & topic are the most important criteria for your thesis. Everything else is secondary. If one of them is iffy, don't. Aggressively recruiting? For a topic that is less interesting for you? That sounds as if, when you choose this topic and it is indeed boring, you will be aggressively hassled to do it. Do you want this? Do you need this? (Some students do, the question is not rhetoric).

Also, going somewhere with just one person working on X is dangerous. What if they leave or retire? What if you don't get along? What if they have no funding to work with you? There are people who are terrible advisors, and the fact that you haven't been paired with person X (even though presumably you stated that you were interested in X) might be a bad sign about one or more of those things...

If you want to do research on X, you should go to a place where you can do that! Going to school A, working on Y, and hoping that you might be able to switch advisors does not sound like a good idea. How much the professor at school A wants you should not really matter, you have to do what is right for you; he will find someone else. Moreover, I would not already think about what to do if I lose interest in X. This is hypothetical anyway, and in this case, there might be some topic Z that is more interesting than Y etc.

Before you decide, you need to

Ask the recruiter to give you some space to think on your own.  Insist if necessary.
Figure out how compatible you are with the professors in your target field (X) at both schools.  (Look at some papers, try both some email and phone communication.)
Make a chart of pluses and minuses of the other schools.  If any are reasonable candidates, include them in #2.
If money is tight, make a careful comparison on that aspect.
Similarly with respect to health coverage.
(Optional) You might want to add some other criteria to your chart, e.g. if you like cross-country skiing, that's a minus for "free time" for a school in a warm climate.

You may wish to plan one or two campus visits.


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Starting an REU late because of quarter system?
So I am really looking forward to participating in math REUs after sophomore and junior years in college, but I just noticed that since I am on a quarter system I will only be done with finals at around June 14-15ish. Most REUs I have seen start like June 6-7 and some even (say like Texas A&M) start May 31. Are REUs accommodating of this problem?!
Thanks!
Originally posted in Mathematics Stack Exchange: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1801319/starting-an-reu-late-because-of-quarter-system

I was an undergraduate at an institution on the quarter system and the three math REUs that I attended allowed me and others in the same position to start late. In my experience, math REUs are very accomodating with these sorts of things. I also saw other students leave slightly early or travel somewhere in the middle of the program for a week for various reasons. You should inform whoever is running the REU about your situation once you are accepted to check if starting late will be OK, however. There are also several REUs that start reasonably late, maybe the first or second week of June, so that a student on the quarter system should not have to miss more than a week.

I have seen this happen also.

As somebody who runs an REU program, I would say that the answer is generally no, we probably cannot accommodate a student who wants to start late.  There are a number of reasons for this.  First, missing the first few weeks of a program deprives a participant of a significant part of the research experience.  The first week of my program has a lot of orientation activities for the students.  They get to learn about the campus, tour the various labs that all of them will be working in, and take safety training classes.  It is not so easy to replace these for a student who arrives late.
There is also the research time that is lost if a student arrives late.  I would generally prefer to offer a space in the program to a student who can attend the whole program and thus get maximum benefit from it.  Because of my university's schedule, all our REU programs start quite early.  The programs have already started as I write this in the last week of May.  Yet we do not have difficulty finding enough well qualified applicants, and I would not like to offer a space in my program to a student who will not be able to get the full benefit of participation.
The second major reason for not allowing students to start late is that is may simply not be permitted by the terms under which the REU program is funded.  Most REU sites are funded by the National Science Foundation, which has strict rules for how funds are supposed to be used.  The terms of my grant from the NSF specify how many students we will support, and (approximately) how long they will be part of the program.  Deviating from these parameters could imperil future funding for the REU program.
We did once have a student who had an emergency that prevented him from getting to campus for the first week of the program, and we made allowances, but this was an exceptional case.

Working in labs and taking safety training classes are not typically part of REU programs in math. So this answer may not be too relevant to Math_Student's question.


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On conference abstract based on my research lab job, not university where I am currently an undergraduate, should I include university affiliation?
I am an undergraduate student working at a National research institute (I call it NatLab), not my University (Acme U).
On a proposed abstract for a conference which one of my coworkers will be presenting our work, my name is tentatively listed along with NatLab, but not Acme U.
Should I ask to also include Acme U in the affiliations?
EDIT: The reason that I suggested that my question question is related to, but not identical to the link below is that there are a few subtle differences between my question and the link.
First, I am still considered to be a student at my University while working for Natlab, and my university is associated with Natlab (they collaborate heavily, and I believe they co-fund Natlab).
The second is that I will be applying to graduate school at my Acme U (among other places), and I am hoping to avoid stepping on any toes.
Having said that, I believe I will still lean towards the answer provided in the link, and I do think it encompasses what I need, but if anyone has any other opinions, I would be happy to hear them.
Possibly related: For paper based on thesis, should I list my university as affiliation or the name of the company I currently work for?

I think aeismail's answer from the linked question applies fully.

Usually people include their new institution under "current address" on papers, and I think you could do the same for abstracts & posters.
So you can ask them to list you under Acme U and include Natlab as your new address.


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Is it advisable to cite papers in PhD Statement of Purpose?
I found out some similar questions, such as https://www.quora.com/Should-I-cite-papers-in-my-Statement-of-Purpose, Is it advisable to use formal citations in a statement of purpose?. However, I think my question is more specific.
I am preparing statement of purpose for PhD in Material Science (in US). I have some professors in mind to work with. To demonstrate on what problems I would to work, should I formally cite the professor's paper in Statement of Purpose? The idea is not to write a technical paper but to illustrate on what problems I would like to work.
If someone does not write citations, how would you convey what problems you would like to work on? I think that it would be too generic just to describe research interests. I see some pros in citations:

Being specific in what you want to do
Indicating you studied professor's work and showing interest in the professor's research.

Is citing papers statement of purpose a normal practice?

Can you explain why you think the answers to Is it advisable to use formal citations in a statement of purpose? don't apply to your situation? What reason do you have to believe that the specifics of your situation make the answer different? Please [edit] your post to clarify.

Edited the question. Also there is another question I'm making. If you don't cite, how will you convey specific topic you want to work? More details are in my question.

...how will you convey specific topic you want to work?--- By describng it in English (or more generally, the primary language of the program to which you're applying). But you need to do that anyway; mere citations are not enough. Okay, so you like this specific paper, but that describes past research. What do you want to do next?

For the specific question of "should I cite a paper by one of my people of interest whom I want to read this application", I don't see a reason why you couldn't. I think there is no way in which your question, at the high level, is any different from the others you referenced.
However, there is more subtext to your decision to cite this professor. "I know your work", you want to say: "I'm ahead on my literature. I stay up to date." Well, you need to be careful making that statement because you could totally be wrong and not know better. If you say you want to work on exciting new problems and pick a 2012 paper (it's the latest on his CV!) where the conclusion is "this field is tapped out", the professor will specifically know you're talking out of your ass.
You need to do your research here especially, and be very careful about your statement. Don't be stupid, generally. But no, I don't think the answer is any different still, it's just a more careful balancing act. Go for it. One of the other questions points towards successful NSF applications, and I find them to be generally good guides. I used my application as the basis for all but one of my personal statements.


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Profs who have done a full year sabbatical overseas with a family: How did you make it work?
I'm curious to hear from any American professor out there who has successfully done a full-year sabbatical overseas, with his or her family along for the ride. How did you make it work for you financially and personally?
For context: I'll be eligible in 2018 for my first sabbatical in my 20-year career (I changed jobs twice and the tenure clock got reset). I would very much like to take an entire year, and I have contacts at a university in the UK (I am in the US) with mutual interest in me coming to spend a year there doing teaching and research. What I don't have is any idea how to pull this off logistically, since I have three kids ages 7, 10, and 12, and a wife with a full-time job. My university only gives half salary for a full-year sabbatical, so we would have to replace half of my salary plus all of my wife's salary (about $30K US), rent our house to cover mortgage expenses, enroll the kids in schools, rent a house in the host country, etc. I believe I would be given a small salary at the host institution if I taught a class (which I would love to do) but still, that's a lot of income to replace and I am not sure if my wife can take a year off.
I do believe the professional experience would be amazing, and it would be an incredible experience for my kids that would be absolutely worth the upheaval. But I'm at a loss to know how to make this work -- so your experiences and ideas would be most welcome.
I have looked into Fulbright fellowships, but my understanding of how those work is that you can only pick from the universities and positions that Fulbright has in a list. The institution I am referring to is not one of those. Also -- simply squirreling away money to save up for it is not an option for a number of reasons.

If you are a US citizen, I am not sure you will qualify for any UK visa. A UK visa that would allow you, or your wife to work, is very unlikely. Some of these questions might be better at expats.se

I am looking fwd to the answers to this, but I am afraid it may boil down to "this is why most people take shorter sabbaticals".

@StrongBad Five seconds of Googling turned up: https://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/personnel/permits/acvisitors/academic/ That's only for unpaid visits, but there's also: https://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/personnel/permits/tier5/temporaryworkers/ which sounds a bit more complicated, but the OP is certainly eligible with an appropriate host.

My wife and I (both mathematicians) took simultaneous sabbaticals overseas with our kids two years ago.  This was made substantially easier by the Simons Fellowships mentioned by Ben Webster.  If we hadn't gotten the Fellowships, we would have gone anyway, and I imagine our experience would have been much like the one JeffE describes.

@ChrisWhite Another important thing to factor in is that taxes are quite a bit higher in the UK. In particular, income tax (tiers are 0%, 20%, 40% and 45%, plus between 0% to 12% national insurance), sales tax (20% for most things), and petrol tax (last time I visited the US petrol prices were around 40 - 50% of the prices in the UK). Google "UK income tax calculator" to get an idea of how much after-tax income you'll have.

@strongbad It is generally easy to get a temporary work visa in that kind of scenario. The wife being able to work will be more challenging, but doable e.g. if her current company has a UK office and is willing to transfer her (the easiest option), or she can find another company willing and able to sponsor her (more difficult).

@JBentley as a UK lecturer my income tax was about the same as it would have been in the US and my NI contributions were about the same as my contribution for my US health insurance. VAT/sales tax and gas/petrol are much higher in the UK.

@StrongBad Well, how much tax you pay depends on what your income is. There may be some bands at which it is similar, but in general they are significantly higher here. The UK also taxes on worldwide income, so rent/mortgage will have to be factored in. That's why I suggested the OP run his finances through a UK tax calculator to get a rough idea.

@JBentley Actually because of the US-UK tax treaty, he wouldn't have to pay UK taxes.

@BenWebster Which treaty are you referring to, and can you cite a source? The only one I am aware of is the double taxation treaty. Those are designed to prevent you paying tax twice on the same income. They don't enable you to avoid taxes of the country you reside and earn your income in.

@BenWebster In the case of a US citizen working in the UK, they would pay UK taxes. There wouldn't be any "choice" in this, because the tax is deducted at source. The tax treaty means that the US (which otherwise taxes its citizens on worldwide income regardless of residence) will not also charge tax on the same income.

"A professor or teacher who visits one of the Contracting States for a period not exceeding two years for the purpose of teaching or engaging in research at a university, college or other recognized educational institution in that Contracting State and who was immediately before that visit a resident of the other Contracting State, shall be exempted from tax by the first-mentioned Contracting State on any remuneration for such teaching or research for a period not exceeding two years from the date he first visits that State for such purpose."

@JBentley That's from the UK-US Tax Treaty, on the IRS website: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-trty/uk.pdf

@JBentley I haven't checked extensively, but this seems to be a common provision in tax treaties; always look for the section on teachers.

Incidentally, this is definitely one of the questions I've answered where I'd be interested to see a "Where are they now?"

@BenWebster Hi, I'm the OP here, and I just posted a "where are they now" update as per your request. Thanks!

I've taken two full-year overseas sabbaticals, each on my half-salary plus a small ad-hoc stipend from the host institution, the first with just my wife and the the second with my wife and our two small children.  Fortunately my wife's job is flexible enough to allow for occasional leaves without pay.
We rented out our house (at a slight discount, because the renters also took care of our dog).  We lived like students in a small apartment.  We took public transportation everywhere.  During the second sabbatical, our kids enrolled in the on-campus kindergarten; that was one of the key reasons we went where we did.
We also burned through several thousand dollars in savings and racked up several thousand more in credit card debt, which took a couple of years to pay off, but the experience was worth every penny.  We're looking forward to doing it a third time in a few years, despite the extra complication of older children.
The most important thing I can suggest is to forget the idea of making up your and your wife's missing salaries, or even a significant fraction thereof.  It's just not going to happen.  You just have to live with less and make it work.
The other important thing is that it has to work for your entire family.  No matter how good the experience might be for you professionally, if you aren't visiting a place where your family can actually enjoy living, you are all going to be utterly miserable.  I strongly recommend making connections with the families of your colleagues at your host institution, well before the final planning stages.

@djechlin A home equity line of credit would be much lower than credit card rates

That rather depends on what kind of credit card rates he is getting. I don't know what the situation is in the USA but here in the UK 0% deals on credit cards are not uncommon. You have to transfer the balance to a new card after a year or two which can come with a fee but the effective interest rate is still very very low for people with good credit history.

What @PeterGreen said. The real trick is to bounce the debt between multiple 0% cards every year until it's gone.

I can only speak from my experience as a child, but I'll share that perspective since you have children of your own.  My father, a law professor at Notre Dame, took a year's sabbatical in Oxford when I was four years old (1960-61) to research a book he was working on.  We had four children, and a fifth was born over there.  Obviously, a four year old isn't going to mind much where he lives, and will adapt easily to the changing culture.
Ten years later, we took two years in Oxford.  My father had one year of sabbatical, and a year teaching in the law school's overseas program.  Again, I can't speak much about the financial aspects of the trip.  By this time, there were seven children, and the house we stayed in was pretty small, so that will tell you some things!  On the other hand, the cost of living was lower there than in the US at that time.
I left the US at the end of 7th grade.  This time, there were more challenges for me personally.  When I got to Oxford (a month before school was to start) and we got sorted in our house, I took off to look around.  I went into a newsagent's and struck up a conversation with Bruce, the older kid behind the counter.  (He became a lifelong friend.)  He told me about his school, and said I would like to go there.  As it turned out, they were looking for someone to deliver papers as well.  I must say my parents were quite surprised when I came home three hours after moving in, telling them that I had a paper route (they would say "paper round") and a lead on a school to go to! Dad went and had a chat with Bruce.  One of my brothers and I wound up going to his school.  So, I guess one of the things I could suggest is to improvise a bit, trust to providence, and trust in children's innate ability to connect emotionally with one another across cultural boundaries.
On the other hand, your children (especially your older ones) will have more than the usual challenges to fitting in.  I started school in second form.  The kids had already had a year of algebra, a year of French, and a year of Latin.  I had a gift for languages, and my mother taught French and knew Latin very well, so those weren't much of a difficulty. However, I had difficulty with algebra and wasn't the sort to ask for help when I needed it.  Then, when we got back, I was a high school sophomore, and in second year algebra again.  The upshot of all that was that I never really did well in algebra until I took a remedial class in college.
If you have a child who will be 12 on the way out and 14 coming home, he will have gotten a lot of mixed messages about social rules as well.  This is a great way to learn that social rules aren't as important as they often appear, but the effect of the confusion shouldn't be minimized as well.  Kids learn a lot of their ways to interact with one another during those two years, and having to adjust a lot of them during that time shouldn't be underestimated as a difficulty.  The usual adolescent insecurities get magnified, and parents may have to do a bit of extra work to help a child get over them.
When people ask me if I liked living in England, my response is generally "Did you like being 14?"  But all kidding aside, as a grownup, I can say that this was a great life experience for me.  Exposure to a different culture at a young age gives me a deeper understanding of what does and doesn't matter about my own.  Also, I was exposed to an entirely different educational system, which educated me on some of the strengths and weaknesses of our own.  Finally, I'm probably the only Oxford United fan in the entire United States.  :)

I wouldn't be so sure about the very final sentence.

That's great advice and a great story. Thanks. Out of curiosity since you said your dad was a Notre Dame, is your family Catholic? We are, and one option I've sort of explored is Catholic schools -- my kids go to US public schools now but if this happens, putting them in Catholic schools might lessen some of the complexity of navigating a new public school system. Or so I think -- I don't really know for sure.

@RobertTalbert Catholic schools in the UK are generally publicly funded and in the same school system as the other publicly funded schools (public schools are something quite different, and are generally expensive private schools).

@RobertTalbert yes, we were brought up Catholic, as you probably know Catholics are in a minority in England.  We went to a public school (I think) called the Oxford High School.  As I recall, it was publicly funded as well; at least I remember my father saying we didn't have to pay for it.  My younger brothers went to a Catholic school called Bishop Kirk, and I don't remember my parents saying that they had to pay for that either.  I don't think any of us had more or less difficulty navigating their respective school systems than the others.  The curriculum will be the biggest problem (more)

...because there are significant discrepancies in the time at which students take up various subjects.  I found the curriculum to be more challenging there than in the US (which I think is a good thing, personally).  Also, they focus a good deal on drill and rote learning, which I think also is a good thing.  For example, we did hundreds of trig problems over the course of a year.  The teacher explained a concept, and then started writing problems up on the board.  We'd do maybe five problems in a class, and then five more for homework.  Languages had a great deal of repetition of (more)

...sample sentences. That sort of thing. Aside from keeping up in the lessons, it was a challenge to deal with the teachers, who are (or at least were at that time) much more authoritarian than they are in the US.  While corporal punishment is no longer allowed there, I hold the dubious distinction of being the only boy to receive "six of the best" from the headmaster during my time there. (Of course, if one lets off a stinkbomb in religion class, in which a student teacher is being evaluated by a crown inspector, such punishment seems reasonable. 14 was a tough year all round.)

@gerrit Are you one?  :)

I just did a year sabbatical in Japan with my wife and two kids, also at half salary, to visit one of my collaborators.

Finances  My collaborator and I applied for a fellowship from the JSPS (like the NSF in Japan), which more or less gave me half salary for the year (not quite, but enough).  I don't know if EPSRC has something like this, but you might have your colleague look into this (assuming you're in STEM).  Besides specific fellowships for sabbatical type visits, look for internal and external general grants which can provide summer salary/travel money to help set off expenses.   (My university has some fairly generous internal funding options.)  I did not teach for extra money.  We did not rent out our house for various reasons, though many people do this, to help cover the "double rent" issue.  One place where we did save money was not having to pay for family plan US health insurance, which eats up a huge portion of my paycheck.  Financially, I think we came out about even, maybe minus plane tickets for everyone.
Logistics For renting your house, you can either try advertising personally (maybe a new faculty member will want to) or use a rental agency, or a site like sabbaticalhomes.com.  Check with your colleague/host institution about visas and help with housing.  Visa assistance came along with my JSPS fellowship, and we stayed in university housing (not particularly cheaper than the market rate, but convenient). (I hope by UK you don't mean London--housing there is expensive.)  Schools we just sorted out when we got there, though it's probably a good idea to check in advance what you need to do to enroll (take birth certificates, health records etc just in case).  In general, universities deal with a lot of foreign visitors so your host university should at least have pointers to helpful information for moving there for a year.

I doubt there's a satisfying general answer to this question.  The problems and opportunities are so individual that it's hard to really say anything.
One useful note for mathematicians: the Simons Foundation has realized this is a problem and gives out special grants to pay for an extra semester of leave in a year you have a sabbatical.  If you look at the list of recipients, you can see that it is fairly competitive, but you do not have to be a Fields Medalist to get it (though I'm sure it helps).

Your biggest issue is likely to be your wife's job- will she be able to take an unpaid leave from the job and return to it later, or will she simply have to resign her position?
I've taken two semester long sabbatical leaves, and both times I went alone since my wife couldn't take leave from her job as a school teacher.  Fortunately, I was only a short airplane flight away in Los Angeles, and we visited in one direction another every few weeks, but it certainly was not a pleasant way to handle this.

Someone in the answers asked for a "where are they now" update, so I thought I'd check back in as the OP to mention what finally happened with my sabbatical.
I ended up not doing a sabbatical overseas. The financial and logistical requirements were just too great. My wife actually found a new job in her field shortly after my post, so there was no way for her to get leave, and even if there were, I think it would have been a net negative for my kids to uproot and leave for a year. And there were no good grant or fellowship opportunities connected with my overseas leads to cover expenses, and there's no way we were going to go into massive debt to do this.
Instead, I managed to develop a really unique sabbatical leave with a local company that's right in my backyard. Steelcase is fairly well-known for design and manufacture of high-end furniture and architectural products, and they have a huge presence in the education market, so I worked with them to design a scholar-in-residence program wherein I was/am embedded with their education group three days a week, doing educational research and contributing to their product design and business planning. They're located in Grand Rapids, MI which is just 30 miles from my house, so there was no uprooting required. I started with them in August (2017) and will wrap up the residency on May 31 of this year. It's been a truly unique, fun, and amazing experience and I have learned a lot that I will be porting back into higher education when I return to my campus in August.
You can read more about this at my website, and starting next week I'll be posting some articles where I'll be looking back over my experiences and discussing the big lessons learned.
This kind of opportunity wouldn't work for everybody, but it turned out to be perfect for me, since my research is in undergraduate math education and I will be moving into academic leadership positions when I return. The takeaway that I think would work generally for others, is that if an overseas experience isn't a good fit for you, there's no need to force it --- there may be a cool and groundbreaking sabbatical experience right around the corner.
I'll be up for a sabbatical again in another 6 years, and at that point two of our three kids will be out of the house --- so that's a much better situation for thinking about overseas extended stays.
Thanks to all who have contributed to the answers here -- I think it's been helpful for me and for many others.

I’m in almost the same exact situation as you. I’m a US academic wanting to do a Sabbatical in the UK. Wife (not working) and two small kids (4 and 7 years old). I have an invite to get an unpaid visiting scholar at a university in London for a full year. But, because my sabbatical is at full pay from my institution money is less of an issue. The confusing or frustrating part is figuring out the following:
1. To do a full year in the UK not needing pay, what visa do I apply for that will cover my family?
2. How do I register my kids for “public” school?
3. Do we apply for UK health insurance? Can we use our US based insurance? Is that advisable?
Here’s some advice I got:

Don’t buy a car to get around. Public transport is very good.
You need an address before you can do anything, like register kids at school. Get a lease first. If possible, avoid lengthy background check by paying rent for 6 months up front.
Use a visa service to get your travel docs in order up front.
Drop your health insurance in the US and pay for access to the UK NHS. It’ll be more convenient and comprehensive.


text:
What resources are available for clarifying academic and scientific terminology?
I have found that wikipedia is not a coherent, exhaustive, or detailed reference. I would like to find a similar resource that explains academic/scientific terms and methodologies clearly, briefly, and in a detailed manner. Ideally, this resource would be freely available on the Internet and provide descriptions that clarify these sorts of terms e.g: theory, theorem, hypothesis, assumption, conjecture, lemma, corollary, law, rule, principle, etc.

This may sound mean but it's not intended as such: have you tried a dictionary?

@MarcClaesen No problem. I would like something that describes these terms in more depth and more precisely than a dictionary or an encyclopedia. E.g. providing some examples and explaining why they are one thing or another. The dictionary says that a conjecture is a theory, which is "a body of principles, theorems, or the like". A principle is a law, and laws are only good for lawyers there...

imho, wikipedia is remarkably good for many of the examples you laid out. For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis is very good. I don't know how much more detail you require. The other alternative is to read books on research methodology. They will have most of these laid out in great detail.

I'm a little confused as to what you would like. You write that you'd like a reference source that is - amongst other things - brief and rigorous. It is occasionally possible to have both qualities. You find Wikipedia entries not exhaustive and therefore deficient. I suggest that it is quite unlikely to find a reference that is rigorous and exhaustive and, at the same time, brief.

Each definition should be brief and rigorous, the number of definitions should be exhaustive. I was assuming that exhaustiveness is referred to elements (like definitions) in a set, sorry for that.

Here is a short list of resources, for different fields, which I frequently use for reference:

Springer, Encyclopedia of mathematics
IEC, Electropedia: The World's Online Electrotechnical Vocabulary
IUPAC, Compendium of Chemical Terminology - The Gold book
IUPAC, Quantities, Units and Symbols in Physical Chemistry (pdf)
JCGM, International Vocabulary of Metrology
IEEE, The Authoritative Dictionary of IEEE Standards Terms (requires subscription)

If you find wikipedia not clear and brief enough, try wiktionary instead.  Instead of a full scale encyclopedia type site, wiktionary only provides definition and examples.

Here is the result for entering "theorem" into Wolfram alpha:

A theorem is a statement that can be demonstrated to be true by accepted mathematical operations and arguments. In general, a theorem is an embodiment of some general principle that makes it part of a larger theory. The process of showing a theorem to be correct is called a proof.
Although not absolutely standard, the Greeks distinguished between "problems" (roughly, the construction of various figures) and "theorems" (establishing the properties of said figures; Heath 1956, pp. 252, 262, and 264).
According to the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, any theorem, no matter how difficult to prove in the first place, is viewed as "trivial" by mathematicians once it has been proven. Therefore, there are exactly two types of mathematical objects: trivial ones, and those which have not yet been proven.


text:
When applying to grad school with a mediocre past how can you make yourself stand out
So the title question is not real clear so let me try to elaborate. I am currently 30 and a senior in college. I will be graduating this spring with a BS in Computer Engineering. The way my school is set up the Comp-Sci and Computer Engineering departments are together and the Electrical Engineering department is separate. I expect to graduate with over a 3.5 gpa (not wonderful) but have no research or intern/on the job experiences. I am looking at continuing on at this same institution with their phd program. My gre scores verbal 165, Quantitative 158. Their cut off is 146 verbal and 156 quantitative. I still need to talk with them and see how they utilize the gre scores and see if I need to retake the gre and up my quantitative score.
So from that mediocre beginnings I come to the grand finale. When talking with professors and otherwise looking/learning in my field. How do you find those areas that are new and pushing into the frontier. When I write a letter of intent and they want me to tell them what I want to be doing. Where do I go read up on the new stuff for my major. What are some all around objectives and methods that people use and then specific to computer engineering what are people reading or procuring their resources from.
What other things could I do in this last year that may help my chances of being picked?
As an additional question, Letters of recommendation would be coming from professors from within the department that will be doing the selection. Some of these Professors would be the ones heading my thesis committee(i think that's right). Does anyone have any experience they can relate where they went to grad school at the same institution that they go their BS degree from.  I will have one outside reference as a peer mentor for our freshman engineering program but otherwise most of the professors have seen me go over the top in my work for their classes.

Why do you think you should be admitted?
The admissions committee will ask themselves: if this applicant has mediocre qualifications, why should we admit them?  Why should we believe they will be successful?  So, you should be asking yourself that question, and thinking about what your answer would be.
If you have a good answer to that question, that might tell you how to make yourself stand out: emphasize the parts that make you think you are well-qualified to succeed.  Your application is a chance to tell your story and answer that question for the admissions committee.

A 3.5 GPA is a good, but from your post, it sounds like you may need to focus on your letters of recommendation.
I would focus on my letters of recommendation.  Three good letters of recommendation will likely remedy a good (but not steller) GPA, and average GRE scores.  Especially if you are applying to the university you are currently attending, I'd focus on forging relationships with profs that you like, and getting as involved as possible in your department.
If you already are involved, kudos.  Go to the profs that are your faculty contacts for the clubs/organizations you are involved in, and get 3 great letters of recommendation.
If you are in the US, you should also consider applying for a masters degree if you feel your application will not be strong enough.  This will give you extra years to build your PhD application, and will set the bar a little lower for acceptance.

About your last question about moving from the undergraduate to the graduate programs at the same university. I have known well three people who did this. The first two, in a math program, had had mediocre grades/test scores but had very strong relationships with faculty members and were admitted to the graduate programs because the admissions committee knew the students beyond their grades/test scores. The third was in an engineering program and he was accepted at multiple graduate programs and chose for personal and some academic reasons to stay put.
Long story short, if the committee knows you personally and not just as an application folder that can make a huge difference in your chances. So take advantage of the fact that you know the faculty who are making this decision and talk to them.


text:
PhD application cover letter closing formula(e)
A friend has asked me to proofread their cover letter and CV for applying to a PhD position. I've done such proofreading when it was about more-or-less unskilled labour, or for friends who'd done a Bachelor's or Master's degree and were applying somewhere at some company. Never for a PhD, and I'm generally wondering what differences there are.
Specifically, the cover letter has the "thank you for your consideration" phrase at the end, followed by an "appreciate the opportunity to meet" phrase. A PhD is not a very common thing, so my question is: how appropriate (or not) is it to use such omnipresent formulae at the end of a cover letter seeking admission to one?

It might depend on how the phrase harmonizes or resonates with the rest of the letter.

I doubt it matters. Readers will see a wide variety of these and pass over them with little thought.

It doesn't matter. I'd probably suggest editing it to just one of those phrases, but it doesn't matter.

Would you consider working Buffy's and TLDR's arguments into your answer? I feel both are valid and it'd make the answer a little more rounded.

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


text:
How to get professors to reply to my email of inquiry for research opportunities / Co-Advising
I am now in a thesis-track Master's program and will be applying to PhD next year. Now I want to do some research projects with some of the professors who have areas of interest that I am also interested in. There are only 2 (or 3 if you count in another one who only publish 2 papers in this area in the past 10 years) of them listed under my program right now as other people retired or moved. I already sent 3 emails (including follow-up emails) to these two professors respectively, and they don't seem to be replying at all. I don't know if I should continue to send more follow-up emails - I want to but I am worried that this might be annoying. I am sure that they are not on sabbatical nor stopped doing researches at the moment, so is there anything that I can do at this moment if not finding advisors in another area? Would attending the same conference with them, pretending that I bumped into them help, and then starting a dialogue be a good idea at all?
Also, how does co-advising really work? Is this some request that students actively make with two professors, or is this some request that professors make for students?

Please clarify whether these are professors involved in the programme you are enrolled in, or others.

Thank you for your comment. The professors I am trying to reach is under the program I am enrolled in. All these professors are affiliated to multiple programs and my program is one of them.

I would recommend contacting your program's graduate director and asking his/her advice on how to find a thesis adviser.
Graduate programs differ by country, by subject area, and by individual department. That said, it's common that you'd get to know these professors before "popping the question". For example, you might take a class with them, or attend a weekly research seminar that they participate in. If you have any such opportunities, I recommend taking advantage of them.
The Covid-19 pandemic has made a complete mess out of everything. It has reduced opportunities for students to meet professors and each other, with many programs moving mostly or entirely online. It has caused a huge amount of stress, for example to parents of small children, or others who have difficulties working from home. And many people have either gotten ill, or have close friends or family who have gotten ill. As such, many people are not keen to take on additional responsibilities at the moment.
So, when evaluating the non-response, keep in mind that this semester is extremely unusual, and try not to read too much into it.
Finally, I recommend starting small. Don't ask for a big commitment from a professor who doesn't know who you are. Instead, first ask if you could talk with them about their research, if there are any books or papers they recommend reading, if there are any seminars or other opportunities they recommend taking advantage of.

Would attending the same conference with them, pretending that I bumped into them help, and then starting a dialogue be a good idea at all?

I don't recommend being dishonest in any way. But if you are interested in their research, then attending whatever conferences they're attending seems likely to be a good idea.
All this said, I'd recommend talking with your program's graduate director first -- h/she will know your program and be able to offer more detailed advice. Good luck to you.

EDIT: I did not see "3 emails" when I originally answered the question.  I thought we were talking about 1.
In light of that, it seems probable that they are not interested or don't have an opening. There is a chance they are just busy, but seems unlikely.  You could wait a month or so and e-mail again, but unlikely to get a different result.
You should either look for different professors, or start looking around for other schools that have good programs and email them.

Morgan thank you for your reply. Does this mean that professors are not interested already? :( If so does this mean that I have no chance of getting them on hook does it? :(

Ah. @MorganRodgers I read the question too quickly.  I did not see "3 e-mails".  I thought we were talking about one e-mail. You are right.  I will edit my answer.