text:
Is it common to drop 50% of PhD students in a program?
I recently spoke to a graduate coordinator of a mathematics PhD program I was planning to apply to. I asked about admission, requirements to complete the degree and such. The program coordinator ended up telling me that usually they only pass 50% of the people in the program in the qualifying requirement, and the rest either get kicked out entirely or can finish with a masters. At first I thought this only happens maybe once in a while or something, but I asked for a clarification and he indeed stated that they have made that as their threshold since "not everyone deserves to earn a doctorate"?
This is a US program. Is this attitude here common? If it is, I'd much rather apply to European programs. I don't want to get kicked out because a program made a mistake in choosing me. I thought programs only admit students they believe are able to successfully finish the program. Apparently I was wrong. Is this the norm or even fairly common? I am confused.

I know of engineering programs that kind of do this, although many only want a masters to begin with.

I genuinely like your "a program made a mistake in choosing me" attitude.

So, you currently hold a bachelor? Quite a few european phd programs require a masters. So you can take the US and if you exit gracefully with a masters you can take the EU program. If you have a masters already it the US program might be too slow (did they comment on the usual time? 5 years?)

Sounds like a lightweight version of the Google hiring gauntlet.

Not everyone that fails comprehensives at one institution fails to get a PhD from another. Even from a higher ranked place. People fail comps for a variety of reasons, burn out, say.

Not where I've been in Academia, it isn't.

This is a rather stupid system, if they really implement it so rigorously. If one year they only get requests from mediocre students, they grant a PhD to lots of mediocre students. If another year they get lots of requests from Gauss-level students, they ditch half of them. They rely on the population of prospective math PhDs to follow quite a stationary and invariable statistical distribution. As mathematicians they should know better statistical methods (or better selection methods, as educators). Ask yourself if that institution is really worth its name.

@LorenzoDonati--Codidact.com Your reasoning is based on the premise that the school's objective is to produce the largest number of excellent graduates they can, rather than to generate the most revenue and power for the institution. Schools are really just businesses, and are primarily motivated by money, no matter what they pretend.

@barbecue Well, probably you are right, since I realize now the question is specifically marked "united-states". Here in Italy most highly renown universities are public and state-funded (there are a few highly respected private ones, tough), so their primary objective is quality of education (at least ideally). Anyway my reasoning still stand from the OP perspective, who seem to be interested in the quality of education provided. In fact that strategy, however motivated, is a signal IMO that that institution is not looking to foster quality of education as one of its primary goals.

@LorenzoDonati--Codidact.com Here in the US, even public universities are highly motivated by money. Americans have a somewhat schizophrenic attitude towards taxes paying for education.

I am quite surprised to hear that a serious math grad program in the U.S. still operates in this fashion.
Yes, decades ago, this was somewhat the style, sadly.
Our/my program has not operated this way for decades. Many other top-rated places that formerly did operate this way have changed, so that, yes, admission (with funding) is a vote of confidence.
So, no, so far as I know, such an approach is hugely anomalous in the U.S.  In particular, there's no reason for anyone to subject themself to such a game. Go where people have confidence in you, rather than are skeptical. Srsly.

"there's no reason for anyone to subject themself to such a game."  People do it to get a visa.

Additional information: this program in the US news ranking was ranked between 70 and 100, so I am not talking about a top ranked program or anything of that sort. Still, it's a very decent school I think, so I was very surprised.

Yes - at that level in the rankings (which is quite low), its a lot less surprising, because those programs frequently have difficulty recruiting qualified graduate students, and view their graduate programs as giving a second chance to students who really want to go to graduate school but don't have undergraduate records showing they are capable.

Worth noting that this is less exploitative than just running a normal masters program, this way you get a free masters degree.

Actually, my experience from "decades ago" was that it wasn't especially common then. Your mileage may differ, of course.

@polygonlink1 My department is in this range and it's true that a lot of our grad students don't get a PhD (for a variety of reasons).  But even in this tier I don't think it's normal to put quotas on how many students can pass qualifying exams.  And I would say A. Woo's comment is partly true: we first recruit students we think can succeed, and then when we need more students we take chances on students who have less of a proven track record.

Some universities need more teaching assistants, but cannot afford to pay for good ones.  So they recruit unqualified teaching assistants as PhD students, and then kick them out when they fail their qualifying exams.
This is not an ethical practice and you should not enroll in a PhD program that does this.
At good quality universities, it is common for most students to pass their qualifying exams.  At other universities, it varies.

"Calculus fodder." These programs tell themselves that they're "giving everyone a chance."

Too pessimistic. I can't imagine a meeting of deans and such in which such a policy would be suggested.

Good quality universities get so many applicants that they only need to accept good quality students. They will have a high pass rate even if their teaching quality is poor, since good quality students will have already learned the most important life skill - how to teach themselves,

Yes, it might be hard to imagine a meeting of deans where this rationale would be proposed when suggesting a policy of recruiting more unqualified students, but I can definitely imagine it being mentioned in a discussion about whether to continue recruiting such students, in a place which already does recruit them.

I know that some physics PhD programs were notorious for taking on extra students (knowing that they'd likely fail the qualifying exam) and just using them for the cheap TA labor and giving them a master's degree after 2 years.

It's not math, but UC Berkeley Operations Research (IEOR) has a similar policy. About 50-67% pass the preliminary exams at the end of their first year of the MS-PHD program, and can proceed to the PhD program. I think you get the MS at this point, whether you pass or fail. A small number get a "conditional" pass and have to take the test the next Spring if they want to continue. Students cannot get a PhD there without getting the MS first (from the same program).
I think it's a matter of tradition and hard-ass pride: the faculty went through hell in their careers, and that seems like the right way to them. I'm pretty sure the official rationale is that the best way to evaluate whether a student is a promising candidate for doing PhD research is by putting them through the preliminary exam process. They want their PhD students to write high-quality dissertations to maintain the reputation of their department, and also because they will (ideally) be investing substantial time in thesis supervision.
I personally think it's inhumane, or at least excessively stressful, and that they should get rid of this policy, but the faculty are pretty set in their ways. I don't think the math or other engineering programs at UC Berkeley have this policy.
I'm not sure whether the nefarious financial incentives mentioned in other comments and answers hold here or not, but I don't think they're a primary consideration. (Let's just say I'm closely acquainted with some of the faculty.) And surely the explanation for this practice, in this case, is not that it's an academically substandard program.

At some point in the past, the UC Berkeley Math Dept did also have a harsh filter after the first years, in which a substantial fraction of the grad students were channeled out of the program. I do not remember what the official description of the process was, and I only saw it "at a distance".

I can't speak for all disciplines, but I do not think that that program's harsh attitude is the norm in the US. I have heard from numerous sources (though perhaps they're all citing the same base source) that only about 50% of PhD students manage to finish their PhDs[1], but it was my understanding that that was mainly due to people dropping out, particularly after the PhD Candidate stage, since writing the dissertation is the hardest thing. Note that the warnings in the source I linked to are about things like picking a problematic dissertation topic, expecting too much handholding from other people, etc. I had not ever heard that it was mainly due to programs being too brutal regarding whose work they accept or reject. (At the same time, those things are connected: If you pick a problematic advisor and a problematic topic and expect other people to hold your hand more than they are willing to, you won't produce work they can accept).
There can also be issues of being able to afford being a student, such as being distracted by needing to work full-time while doing it, so of course you also want to consider how well funded you would be or would not be.
This says the PhD failure rate in the UK is only 19.5%[2], so perhaps you do have a better chance in the UK. However, each US program is different, so you would do well to ask about the failure rates of the ones you're interested in, and also ask why people are failing. (Are they submitting work and it's rejected or do they not even submit the work?) The program you're interested in is telling you "We're terrible," so I would believe them and avoid that program, but don't dismiss all US programs based on that.

Example source: https://dissertationgenius.com/the-six-laws-of-phd-failure/#:~:text=To%20give%20you%20a%20dose,over%20the%20past%20three%20decades.

https://www.discoverphds.com/advice/doing/phd-failure-rate

I suspect the second reference refers to the completion of the PhD after completing the masters.  The question talks about a program where people need to first do the masters and then the PhD.

Oh, does it? (I don't see that in the question.) And what is the norm in the UK - to separate MA and PhD, or no? At any rate, now I'm re-looking for stats for the US that make it clear if they're talking about PhD programs that encompass the MA as well or not, and they tend... not to specify. I just keep seeing the 50% figure again and again.   (Here https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED580853.pdf and here https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/why-do-so-many-graduate-students-quit/490094/ and more.)

The Atlantic is not so clear, I agree.  When someone says they are in a PhD program in the US, sometimes that means they just completed their BA and hope to get a PhD.

Yeah, it's my understanding that in the US there are PhD programs meant for people who currently have a BA and want a PhD (you get an MA along the way but it's not DESIGNED for people to quit at that stage unless something goes wrong) vs. programs that would make BA-holders apply for the MA, finish it, then apply to the PhD program. My program was like the latter. It was stressful because I had to choose between them--whom I liked but who technically had accepted me only for the MA--vs. other programs that had accepted me for the (MA +) PhD.


text:
Is it acceptable to ask a university professor to add his/her name to a paper?
Is it acceptable/normal to ask a professor to add his/her name to a paper to increase the opportunity to publish the article in high-impact journals?

If that is the only reason, then NO.

In my experience,  some 'famous authors' are essentially quality checker.  They ensure the  problem is fresh, and the paper is of high quality.  Hence, their advice helps improve your chance to get published in these journals.  Also, they will not add their name to a poor paper because their reputation goes down the drain with the paper.  Hence, they choose only to be associated with excellence, and giving the impression that they seem to get high impact papers 'easily'.

@Prof.SantaClaus That practice as you describe it is against every set of authorship guidelines I am familiar with. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but it's wrong.

@BryanKrause  I'm trying to debunk the perception that including famous authors on a paper seem to get you a free pass into high impact journals.  That's what the question is implying.

To add to my previous response and on the issue of authorship, an experienced author will add his/her 'secret sauce' to the paper, and thus greatly improving the chance that the paper will be published in a journal.   This alone warrants authorship.

@Prof.SantaClaus "This alone warrants authorship" No, it doesn't. "Secret sauce" is not one of the criteria for authorship under any guideline I am aware of. If the contributions are substantial enough that they have made substantial impacts to the design, data acquisition, or data analysis, as well as being involved in drafting, approving, and taking responsibility for the paper, then they can be an author.

Op what do you think??? But it can happen.

@BryanKrause I disagree.  I never defined what 'secret sauce' is.  It could be substantial contributions, new interpretation of results, new analysis, complete rewrite, etc -- all of which meet the guidelines of authorship policy that I'm aware of.    If I managed to turn poo into a 5-Michelin star meal, I think I deserve authorship.

No, it's not okay to do that, it is academic misconduct to have authors on a paper who have not made a contribution rising to the level of authorship.
There is no single central set of authorship guidelines, but you'll find them from various discipline-specific societies, universities, publishers, etc. Some examples:
http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

https://provost.yale.edu/policies/academic-integrity/guidance-authorship-scholarly-or-scientific-publications

Under no circumstance should individuals be added as co-authors based on the individual’s stature as an attempt to increase the likelihood of publication or credibility of the work.

https://www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/653883/Authorship-factsheet-March-2019.pdf
Under the category "should not be an author":

Guest’ authors, who make no
discernible contributions, but are
listed to help increase the chances of
publication;

All of these would ban the practice you are suggesting.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
What is the best way to find research groups in my field?
I seek to find research groups in my field, start a dialogue with potential supervisors, and apply for available positions. In other words, I want to check research groups' web pages mainly, not just professors' information on university websites. What is the best way to optimize my research?

I would guess that most "research groups" are informal and don't have an online presence. Maybe an internal mailing list. The best place to find them is at conferences, but that might not be open to you.

If you already are in a field, you should already have some ideas. And the supervisors / teachers you had until now can certainly help you.

Are you applying for a PhD or a postdoc?

@FedericoPoloni For a PhD

Please add this info to your question!

It sounds like you are already in a field or have decided what field you want to be in. I started by thinking through (or looking through) the papers I had written at that point, and identified the people or groups of people I cited often, or those whose papers I enjoyed reading.
Make a short list including their institutional affiliation from their papers. For some this will then be an easy step to searching out their lab group website at their university, or a link to an externally hosted site. Some may have a 'lab group' on researchgate.
For those who do not, look them up in a database and see who they co-author with most often or most recently. This may help you identify their group even if they do not have a formal online presence.
In terms of starting a dialogue and applying for available positions - this depends what stage you are at and what field you are in. If you were looking to postdoc in my field, that initial conversation would include some fellowship or funding examples I was looking to apply for to come to their lab. You need to be thinking about what you are bringing them from the get go.

For a Phd, you still need to find out what the funding model is for Phd's in your target countries. This varies a lot and it will help you stand out to a potential advisor or avoid wasting your time. In some places, if they aren't advertising they don't have funding to support a position. In that case, bringing external funding could work, but not always. Take the time to do your research.

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


text:
Why do many papers not have proper PDF metadata?
Of course, this varies depending on your field etc., but at least for computer science seems to be true, there’s even a paper about this problem.
By proper, I mean even basic things like a title (so I don’t have to rename bla-12345.pdf to something meaningful by hand) or author. This is missing even in papers that were created with LaTeX and the Hyperref package, like these two, which make adding this kind of metadata incredibly easy – even the LibreOffice Writer PDF export sets this metadata correctly.

Where are you obtaining the pdfs from?  "bla-12345.pdf" sounds exactly like the sort of thing you'd download from a website that hosts large numbers of files, which results in "human readable" filenames being inefficient on their end and way too likely to result in collisions.

Welcom to academia.stackexchange, @Wieland! While I do not have the answer, it might be that others just do not see the need for it and therefore do not bother. I, for instance, never saw this as a problem and never relied on PDF metadata (as opposed to MP3-metadata, for example).

@zibadawatimmy The ACM links in my question lead to files with similar filenames (they include the name of the first author, but I don't find that particularly useful).

Weird, it's like the big publishers don't want you to download a massive collection of pdf files, index it and manage it automatically...

@damian Even if it's not useful for everybody, AFAIU papers in journals/conference proceedings are usually created with a template from the organizer/publisher/..., so just enabling this centrally shouldn't be too hard...

@FedericoPoloni It's 2016 - we have self-driving cars, but think people are not able to use some cheap OCR software to extract the few words in big bold letters at the beginning of documents? That would be a very cheap excuse ;-)

@Wieland So your question seems to want to decry the lack of nice "human readable" filenames (which, incidentally, have nothing at all to do with a file's metadata), yet you just provided an argument of why this is unnecessary and in many ways counterproductive.  I think Spock would say "The wants of a couple of readers are outweighed by the needs of the organization that organizes, secures, and distributes vast amounts of information to a substantially larger number of people".

@zibadawatimmy Well, yes, considering that filenames are the only thing I can think of that most applications can fall back to if no metadata is included in the PDF files, those are the primary use case for me. I could also generate headings for the org-mode file I use for note taking automatically and extract keywords that make managing multiple files easier, so this is definitely not limited to filenames.

people are not able to use some cheap OCR software to extract the few words in big bold letters at the beginning of documents? — In fact, people have free OCR software to extract the few words in big bold letters.  It's called Google Scholar.

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


text:
Is it bad form to use the word “novel” when describing your own work in a paper?
Ideally any research paper should contain novel thoughts, ideas, procedures, observations, methods, etc. of some form or another. That being said, is it really necessary to remind the reader about it by using the words novel, revolutionary, or never been done before as opposed to just comparing it to existing studies and noting the differences between the two?

Although technically a different question, I'd say the top answer here answers your question.

Related, though not duplicate: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/48873/7734

In my opinion the word "novel" might actually be useful in a similar way as "obvious" is here and here, especially if the work contains multiple results.

@zibadawatimmy (and Wrzlprmft and dtldarek), thanks for the links - they were also useful

Yes, I would advise against using the words novel or new for the following reasons (which overlap with what you already argued):

It’s almost impossible to fully ascertain that something is new. Even if you just discovered some outstanding and surprising effect like superconductivity, somebody else may have discovered it a month earlier and is just about to publish it.
At the same time, you are expected to have ascertained the novelty of what you are doing as well as reasonably possible and to document it in your introduction or literature review. To quote JeffE:

The message you want to send is "I have read every paper on this topic, and none of them do this thing that I'm about to do."

If you have any reason to believe that what you are doing is not novel, you should either document this (e.g., “we tried to reproduce this experiment”) or not try to publish at all. Thus, there is never any reason to claim something is novel – it is implicit that everything you write that is neither common knowledge nor equipped with a citation is novel to your best knowledge.

The following memo by the American Physical Society (one of the most prolific publishers in physics) argues similarly:

Physical Review adheres to the following policy with respect to use of terms such as "new" or "novel:" All material accepted for publication in the Physical Review is expected to contain new results in physics. Phrases such as "new," "for the first time," etc., therefore should normally be unnecessary; they are not in keeping with the journal's scientific style. Furthermore, such phrases could be construed as claims of priority, which the editors cannot assess and hence must rule out.

Almost immediately when I read the question, this APS policy came up in my mind, and if you hadn't mentioned it here, I would've posted another answer including it. In fact, I will mention that in one of my recent articles published in a Physical Review journal, one of my original sentences in the manuscript was modified at the proofing stage, on account of (and citing) this policy. So, even if an author includes such claims of novelty, they will most probably be removed before the publication. :)

I wonder. Does incremental research (always) lead to novel concepts? In CS, "a novel algorithm" would imply that there is some new idea, whereas "an algorithm" may be a slightly improved form of a known idea. So, I think using such words can be useful for stressing "this is not an increment, but an independent, novel [sic] idea".

To wit, I write things like "This type of result seems novel," particularly to contrast with other results in the paper which have existing analogues.

@Raphael: If your algorithm expands another algorithm, you have to write this. It’s more or less the difference between writing “we present an expansion of Huffleduff’s algorithm” and “we present an algorithm”. No need for the word novel. By the way, almost all papers I have read managed to make clear their contribution without using the words new, novel or similar.

@Wrzlprmft If the implication of nothing is always "novel", then where's the difference? Plausible deniability?

@Raphael: Plausible deniability? – If you so wish, yes. You avoid to make any claims that could be wrong. It’s like claiming that your method is the best in existence. Moreover, there is no real need for the word.

Let your research speak for itself. If it's worthy of such titles, it will gain them in peer review.

@corsiKa, the problem in some cases (as pointed out by an answer further down) is that the reviewer will often be less familiar with what has been done before than the author. Hence the author making explicit what they believe to be the new contribution, is, in my estimation, not only useful, but essential, particularly for peer-review. That's why I find the guidelines above so confusing; yes the paper should contain new results, but that does not imply it is not helpful for the authors to clarify what parts they believe are new.

@corsiKa That's not at all for sure. The reviewers may themselves not be very familiar with the specific methodology you are using, even if they are very familiar with the topic in general.

I'd say, if your approach is novel there is no problem in mentioning it. A word like "revolutionary" I would be much more careful with. If something causes a revolution or not remains to be seen after publication and feels to me like unnecessarily hyping your results.
So, as long as you use factual words (novel, extends, applies to new application setting) there is no problem in my opinion. But stay away from hype words mostly used by shady business men trying to sell you snake oil.

i'm more in agreement with this answer than the others that advise to simply eschew that word.  "novel" might be exactly the correct word if the result truly is novel.   "interesting" or "salient" may also be appropriate to attach to specific results that are truly interesting or have salience.  i would stay away from hype like "revolutionary" or "exciting" or "groundbreaking".  leave words like that to Madison Avenue.

For "novel", it depends on context. Obviously, any research paper is expected to contain something that is novel, so pointing this out is likely to be redundant. However, many research papers also contain much that is not particularly novel. For example, you might use the well-known techniques A, B, C, D and E to get to a situation where your novel technique F applies. Given the large amount of non-novel material that might end up in the paper, explaining how to use techniques A-E in this particular setting, I don't see any harm in pointing out that technique F is the novel part. On the other hand, you might not necessarily use the word "novel" to say that: you could, instead, write something like "We introduce technique F" or "Our contribution is to use technique F". Or it might even be that the novel part was just using techniques A-E in combination.
But certainly steer clear of describing your own work as "revolutionary". Almost nothing manages to start a revolution before it's even been published. If it truly is revolutionary, this will be obvious, so you don't need to say it; if it turns out not to be revolutionary, you'd look like a dick if you said it was.
I'd also avoid claiming that something has "never been done before" without at least a "to the best of our knowledge"-type disclaimer. At least if a claim to novelty turns out to be incorrect, it's still true that it was novel to you; a claim of "never before" is absolute and, if it's wrong, it's just wrong.

tl;dr: The answer to the titular question (which is asked the opposite way of the questions in the text) is: No, absolutely not. Do use "novel" to highlight what aspects of your paper are new.
This is my perception from a CS field:

Ideally any research paper should contain novel thoughts, ideas, procedures, observations, methods, etc. of some form or another.

Very true. A research paper should contain a contribution that will usually build upon and be embedded within related work.

That being said, is it really necessary to remind the reader about it by using the words novel, revolutionary, or never been done before as opposed to just comparing it to existing studies and noting the differences between the two?

Yes, it is! The contribution, the novel aspects, need to be clearly and explicitly pointed out several times throughout the paper. It is a way of highlighting the point of the paper.
While to you as an author, the contribution is entirely clear - you know exactly what you have done yourself - the same cannot be taken for granted for a reviewer. A reviewer will start reading your paper usually with only a vague grasp of what was there before (reviewers tend to know the particular subfield, but not necessarily your concrete research question for the paper) and starting to build a mental picture of what they perceive as new in your paper.
Therefore, the clearer your contribution is marked as such, the better. Otherwise, you increase the risk that your paper will be rejected simply on the finding that "the contribution is not clear". Explicitly highlighting the contribution involves direct statements such as "Our contributions are ...", but also certain marker words, with "novel" certainly being a frequently used and understood one.
Note that while "novel" is typically understood as such a marker, and while "never been done before" should usually be extended by "to our knowledge" (as opposed to "novel", it is verbose anyway, so three more words won't hurt), I would advise against "revolutionary". The other two options just state something inherent to your contribution, which you can make a statement about, whereas "revolutionary" implies that not only your contribution is novel, but that it changes the way other people will continue to work on the topic. That is a somewhat presumptuous claim to make before your contribution has even been peer-reviewed, let alone published.

While I agree that it is important what one’s contribution is, I do not think that the word novel helps that much and can be avoided without drawbacks. For example: “We present a novel method to transmogrify bananas” has the same effect and clarification of contribution without the word novel.

@Wrzlprmft: In that example, "novel" clarifies that the method in itself is a contribution, rather than just a narrative framing device for presenting something else, such as in "We present a method to transmogrify novel bananas.", or "We present a method to transmogrify bananas. We then evaluate that method with our novel user study model."

In those cases you do not present the method, you just apply it. As I already mentioned in another comment, almost all papers I have read managed to make clear their contribution without using the words new, novel or similar.

@Wrzlprmft: We apply it, and hence we present how we applied it. You present everything you have done, including the non-novel parts. This may well be field-specific, but as implied in the beginning of my answer, my perception is that words like new or novel are used across many papers as a kind of a convention to point out what the contribution is.

@Wrzlprmft: While it's only anecdotal, it serves well to illustrate what I am referring to: I just got handed back a text by a colleague who pointed out the contribution is not clear. After a brief discussion, we came to the conclusion that to him, the statement "In this paper, we propose an X" is not clear enough and should be extended to "In this paper, we propose a new X". I have made very similar experiences several times before, both in personal conversations and based on reviews of submitted manuscripts.

Even considering that other fields may be insanely different, I am somewhat skeptical about your example (or more specifically that adding a new will solve the issue). The word propose is even stronger than present in directly stating that you came up with this. Otherwise you wouldn’t propose X but only describe it.

@Wrzlprmft: That may be your personal opinion, especially in the case of the word "propose", that is also my personal opinion, but I do not see how that opinion helps if reviewers and other readers simply do not understand what is new without additional explicit markers such as "new" or "novel".

You definitely should make clear what the central point of the paper is, but claiming that it is "novel" or something such isn't the right way to do it. You really can't know if you aren't rediscovering something Euler did, and has since then been slumbering in some hitherto unpublished manuscript. Better stick to the facts. You can claim that your method is easier to apply, or simpler to understand, or has wider applicability, or gives better results than competing ones, and stating that conveys useful information. A clam of novelty in itself doesn't.

How can you with certainty claim that your method is easier to apply, or simpler to understand, or has wider applicability, or gives better results than competing ones? Can't there be some competing method that is better than yours, that you simply haven't come across? I feel that we have the same inherent problem here if we have to state everything with absolute certainty.

Highlight and separate the novel parts
I would consider this usage acceptable and recommended not for describing the whole of your result (the novelty of it is implicit, and should be shown during the paper, not just claimed), but in cases where it is neccessary to highlight to the reader (and editors) which part of a nontrivial process is your novel contribution.
For example, if your paper claims that you can achieve great results in frobnicating foobars by doing A, B, C and then D; and A, B and D have often been used in previous approaches (and are still neccessary for your approach) but doing C in this situation is something new - then by all means you should point out explicitly by saying that C in this context is novel, unlike the other parts.

Even more useful is to point out what is not novel, as well as what is: "Results of Frobnicating foobars are shown in figure 1. While it has long been known what foobars behave in ways X, Y and Z can undergoing Frobnication-like processes, what is novel here is the purple tinge that they take on afterwards"

The crux of this debate comes down to the scientific discipline and the definition of 'true'.
Whilst in Mathematics a concept can be said to be provably true or false, very little if anything in Biology is so certain, since we sample observable processes rather than deal in hypothetical absolutes. Our theory of Evolution, although it has never ever been seen to be incorrect, cannot be proven also to be correct - at least not with absolute certainty - because it is a phenomena that is happening all the time, rather than, say, set theory which is demonstrably provable with just a pen and paper today, tomorrow, and in a million years from now.
So when a Biologist says 'X is true', they are always implying 'to the best of my knowledge, X is true'; but to actually add this qualifier to the end of every sentence would be a complete waste of everybody's time because you would have to say it after every point you make.
To say 'you should not use the terminology "novel" because you cannot be certain of novelty' is akin to say 'you should not say polarbears cannot survive in space because you haven't put all the polar bears up there.'
OK, I could say "to the best of my knowledge, polarbears cannot live in space", but not only is it a waste of time because it is implied, it is also dangerous because when someone else says "all crabs can live in space", you might entertain the idea, just for a second, that the qualifier "to the best of my knowledge" doesnt apply.
And this, leads to believing nonsense.
The qualifier always applies, no matter who is saying it, and no matter how novel they think it is.

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


text:
How do you verify facts claimed by a deceased author?
The question is not a arising in my capacity as an academic.  I was recently reading a book, and I came across a claim that seemed dubious; so I wanted to find out whether it was accurate.  I thought of contacting the author, but then I disovered that the author had been dead for a few years.
My question is, what is the appropriate thing to do in such a case, where the author is the only one who has the information necessary to verify a claim, and yet the author is deceased?  Assuming you cared about it enough, would you contact the family of the author, to see if they had notes the author had used in writing the book, or is that impolite?  What else can be done?

Fair question.  I thought the title was overly casual given the subject matter, so I edited it a bit.

I came across a claim Is the claim of scientific nature?

@scaaahu In this case the claim was that a story from Hindu mythology was mentioned in a particular Hindu scripture.  But I've come across this problem in other contexts as well, for instance a claim that a particular theorem holds under certain conditions, without mentioning what those conditions are.  The common property is that you have a claim which would be very easy to verify if you could pick the author's brain.

You mean something like "no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation a^n + b^n = c^n for any integer value of n greater than two".

an interesting example of this situation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primo-vascular_system

@StrongBad Well, Fermat's last theorem is different, because there you have something that at least in principle could be duplicated by other scholars. What I'm talking about would be if Fermat had written "I have found a proof that a^n + b^n never equals c^n, assuming certain conditions are satisfied. But stating those conditions or the proof would be too large for this margin." Similarly, in my case it's an author saying "I've found a quote in this Hindu scripture which I consider to be an allusion to the following story from Hindu mythology.  But I won't tell you what quote I have in mind."

The best you can do is report it as a claim.  Include the information/sources you have.

@GEdgar Well, I'm not talking about cases where you want to cite a claim but are unsure of its veracity.  I'm talking about when you just genuinely care about the veracity of the claim for its own sake.

Note that example link to Wikipedia article on Primo-vascular system has moved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Bong-han#Primo-vascular_system

the claim was that a story from Hindu mythology was mentioned in a particular Hindu scripture — If you really care about the veracity of this claim, you have no choice but to read the actual Hindu scripture yourself.  The fact that the person who made the claim is dead is irrelevant.

@JeffE Well, there is a choice if the author left notes on what verse of the scripture he's referring to.

Assuming you cared about it enough, would you contact the family of the author, to see if they had notes the author had used in writing the book, or is that impolite?

It's implausible that the author's files are well-organized and clear enough that a non-expert family member could easily answer your question.  And unless the answer is dreadfully important, it seems inappropriate to ask whether you could fly into town and spend hours/days searching through any files the family possesses.  (One can accumulate a large number of boxes of papers over the course of a career.)  That could make sense if you were working on a major project about the author and the family was eager to help, but for an isolated question it feels like far too much of an imposition on the family.
If the family felt the files were likely to be of continuing academic or historical interest, then they may have donated them to a university library or archive (most likely at the university the author worked at, if any).  I'd start by doing web searches to try to find out.  If you can't find out online, you could enquire at the most likely university library.
Before trying to track down the author's files, it's worth convincing yourself that there's no other way to get an answer.  For example, maybe the author is alluding to something well known among a certain community, or maybe the author supplied more details in a different publication.  You could try ask online (e.g., on a suitable stack exchange site) and see what happens.
If the author worked with a collaborator or had a student who specialized in this topic, then they would be natural people to ask.  You could also try asking another expert (e-mailing someone out of the blue will come across best if you give an explanation of how you have tried and failed to find the answer).
If nobody else knows and the author's files weren't formally archived anywhere, then I'm not sure how much more you can do.  The author's information may simply be lost and will have to be reconstructed from scratch.

Would it be appropriate to ask the family if the author's papers were formally archived (in case you have no idea what institution would have archived them)?

I think this gets at the importat difference between academic and non-academic authors. Academics usually have colleagues and other people interested in the topic, where as non academics often work in isolation and write for consumers.

I'd spend some time trying to track them down first.  For example, when I do a web search for "r h bing archive" I quickly find http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utcah/00222/cah-00222.html.  If the web has no information on where someone's papers might be archived, then that's a bad sign.  However, if the papers seem important enough to be archived somewhere but you just can't find them, then asking the family doesn't seem unreasonable to me.  It's certainly less of an imposition than asking whether you can search files in their possession, and they may be pleased that you are interested.

Dealing with a claim by a dead author is exactly like dealing with a claim by a live author who isn't answering emails.  Or, for that matter, dealing with a claim by an author who is answering emails, but not to your satisfaction.
In science, no single statement is the end of the story.  If a statement can be backed up, then it should be backed up by some combination of other scholars and the universe at large.  If you can't find sufficient justification in the text, or the sources, or other scholars working in the same area, then it is appropriate for you to treat the statement as an unjustified assertion.
That doesn't mean it's wrong... but it does mean that you shouldn't depend on it to be correct.

I'm not asking whether unjustified assertions should be blindly accepted.  I'm asking, if you're in a situation where the author is the only one who has the information necessary to verify his claim, and you desperately want to verify his claim, what should you do?  Should you reach out to his family, or what?

@KeshavSrinivasan No, you should not bother the family!  If the author is the only one who can possibly verify the claim, then the claim has no scientific validity.

No, I'm not talking about a claim for which the only possible evodence is the author's word that it's true.  I'm talking about a claim which can be independently verified, but in order to independently verify it you need a piece of information that only the author has.  So assuming the author had some important piece of information that you desperately want, and the author is deceased, what should you do?

You are confusing together two independent cases: either 1) You want to know whether Author X was correct that Scripture Y refers to Story Z, or 2) You want to know about references between (a possibly restricted set) of Hindu scripture and Hindu mythology.  If it is Case #1, you're out of luck: you can no more obtain this information than Joe McCarthy's list of communists.  If it is Case #2, then you're just going to have to do the hard work yourself (or find others who are doing it).  But why would you actually want to know Case #1?

So @jakebeal ... would you consider answering emails sufficient to show proof of liveliness, or is it merely necessary? ;)

There is a very good case of this in Korea.  A researcher had written a paper, claiming to have found a 3rd system, the Primo Vascular System, which can carry cancer and other things.  They were able to dye it and trace it.
However, he died, and no one else knew what he was doing.  His paper also did not explain well enough for anyone to recreate it.
So how do you deal with it?  As Anonymous Mathematician points out, unless you consider this a monumental breakthrough, there is little you can do.  In South Korea, Universities and Funding agencies agreed with someone (maybe like you), that it is worth millions of dollars to invest in recreating this system.
Reference: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2013/587827/


text:
Free ways to automatically get notified if new papers are published on ACM or IEEE?
I'm looking for a way, tool or technology that allows me to define keywords and/or authors and/or conferences for which I want to be notified if a new paper is published on ACM or IEEE. I couldn't yet find a way to achieve that. What are my possibilities? It shouldn't cost any money.

Offhand google scholar alerts may be able to come close to what you want. Restrict the search terms to journals you want (and keywords of course).

I've had great experience with Google Scholar Alerts. To use them, go to scholar.google.com and search for any term. In the results page, you will see a link to Create Email Alert. Click on that and create the alert to send you notifications.
One very good use of this is to follow specific papers. For example, I have a star paper of mine that I'm currently extending and I like to keep track of who is citing this paper. So, I search for the paper on scholar. In the results page (just under the result for the paper I'm concerned with), there's a link Cited by 'n'. Click on that and you get results for only those papers that cite this article. Now, create an alert on this page. This way, whenever someone refers to this paper (and Google finds out about it), you get an email. Do this for all the important literature in your field and Alerts will make sure you are kept abreast of your field.
Never miss out on an important finding!

sometimes this method is slow. For example, one of my papers was cited in November, and the citation did not show up in cited-by until March.

@ArtemKaznatcheev: Exactly, so are there any better methods to keep track of citations as soon as they are cited?

Recently I found out that Microsoft Research can be really helpful for people in academia. You can subscribe to conferences, journals, institutions or even authors by the subscription at the right top for the page. For example, check this page for ICSE.
Plus, in the Publications section you can sort/filter publication in various ways. The Academic Search section gives significant information about professors and even colleges.

Thanks for the comment @JeffE. I edited the answer, now it should answer the question.

Semantic Scholar got all you want and constantly improves using SOTA technologies. Far better than google scholar.

Flagged as spam.

hi @scaaahu why spam? My answer is correct and concise.

Are you affiliated with Semantic Scholar? If you are, please disclose it. Also, please explain why this answers the question.

Thx for explaining. :-) I'm not affiliated, thus didn't add.

Not really a spam but while your suggestion may be good, you did not elaborate why you think "Semantic Scholar" is far better than Google Scholar. I think you should add at least a sentence to describe what's the advantage of using "Semantic Scholar" in comparison to Google Scholar.

Having just had a first look at Semantic Scholar, I'm greeted with a dropdown to choose between "All fields", "computer science" and "medicine". This... does not seem terribly comprehensive!

@Flyto questioner specifically asked for ACM and IEEE (they publish almost exclusively computer science).

@EssenceBlue for ACM, that may be true (I'm not familiar). For IEEE, lolnope. I take your point that this (based on ACM, if you're right about that) could indicate the questioner is only interested in CompSci, but it's also nice to make answers general where possible.


text:
want to Pursue Phd in Philosophy?
Want to pursue a PhD in Philosophy, but my Master degree is in Fine Arts (Painting). I want to know how likely will I be considered for the program? I have art history and Aesthetics, as my theory in Bfa and Ma.

In my dissertation I interviewed artists about their works,and what initiated them to pursue painting. one in particular have philosophical inclination, which is evident through his unique style.

@Matinking The OP has Masters is in Fine Arts. You seem to assume he has M.Sc (in your suggested edit).


text:
Suffering from a third world country academic culture
I live in a third world country where I have no chance of getting into good graduate schools in my country for MS CS which are tickets to US Ph.D  programs. I am not a perfectionist but other schools have no connections with current research community or professors there have no idea how to write a recommendation letter.
Problems:
Working full time, no chance to relocate to other city or job. I always get a biased approach from professors here when I approach for collaboration as an outsider. Impossible to get into their MS programs for me so I have no chance for getting some research experience or any recommendation letters.
What should I do ? I am continuously doing self study on some topics but biased approach and discrimination in my country gives me no chance. I have started to think of completely burning all my books and other stuff because all my efforts are useless going nowhere purely based on where I live.
Do you have any suggestions? Is there a way to find a professor outside this system lacking funding or student, with whom I can work remotely? I can work for free if it comes down to it.

I down voted this question because no chance to relocate to other city or job and I can work for free do not add up.

People might have personal reasons for not having a chance to relocate, such as a family.

@xepebo Would you care to explain why it is impossible to get into the MS programs in your place?

Whatever you decide, please do not burn the books. Sell them, give them away - just don't burn them.

...better yet, scan them and then burn them.

It would also help to give what kind of discrimination you are facing, is it based on gender/religion/ethnicity/social status..? There might be ways to tackle discrimination, even though I can imagine that in some places that'd be pretty difficult.


text:
Is it appropriate to follow up on a faculty application?
I am currently applying to faculty positions, primarily teaching positions at 4 year colleges and universities. I am told many of these jobs have more than 100-200 applicants. Some of the jobs ads themselves say they get hundreds of applicants, and go on to say something to the effect 'you probably aren't going to hear anything from us', which says to me - 'don't bother us'. I have 3 questions, which overlap:

If I don't hear back from them at all, is it appropriate to contact the department?
If I hear back that they got my application and materials, is it appropriate to contact the department?
People that I know from the business world encourage me to be more aggressive by calling the departments to check in, and even asking if I can come visit the department. I am concerned that this sort of attitude can have a backlash effect. Is this sort of aggressive approach accepted in academia?

You should keep in mind that the people running searches are busy academics who are doing this as service to the department. Checking-in aggressively — following your intuition for how this would work in business — will annoy and will be very unlikely to help. At the moment (early/mid- February), it is still early enough in some job markets that interviews have not been scheduled so asking for updates might be seen as pushy. I think it's unlikely that your chances will go down if you ask, but it still might be nicer to wait.
That said, there are many situations where contacting in normal and you might to do it through one of those channels:

For example, if you have another offer from somewhere with a deadline, it is normal — and a good idea — to contact other departments to let them know that you will have to move forward without them. I've had friends who have had interviews offers within hours of telling a department this.
Also, if you have updated material on your CV (e.g., a paper accepted, positions changed, an award, whatever) go ahead and send your updated CV. You can mention in that email that you're excited to hear about any updates from their search.

Contacting search committees in this context is normal and can signal that you continue to be very interested in a job. I was told by a search committee that ended up making an offer that they thought I might be unlikely to accept an offer and that one of these update emails rovided a useful signal. Of course, if they're not interested, emailing will probably just be noise and extra work for them.
I think that emailing or not-emailing is unlikely to tip the scale either way. They're going to make a decision based on the intersection of the quality of your work and what they're interested in having in their department. But out of kindness for the work of the search committee and its chair, try to do it as little as possible.

It is certainly appropriate to ask whether they got your application. It is also appropriate to enquire about how the process is progressing. I would avoid being too pushy about it, as this will not influence anyone, at least not in a positive sense. And sometimes these application processes take an extremely long time.
It may be appropriate to visit the department to give a presentation, as this is one thing academics do anyway, even when they are not applying for positions. Give a good presentation and this might help your application – though it could be the case that the people judging the application are completely disjoint from the people in the audience.


text:
Is a professional doctorate beneficial for someone looking for a career as a programmer in industry?
I am a software developer by profession and was wondering what a professional doctorate (PdEng) would add to my career if I plan to work in the industry.
EDIT: I am not talking about a Phd rather a Professional Doctorate program (PDEng).It is a 2 year program and used for getting a job in a very specific sub discipline of a field.

Can you be more specific about what type of work ou are considering? If you want to wark as programmer, there are nearly no benefits. If you wnat to do project management or work in research and development, it is a plus.

I want to work as a Programmer

There is a similar question Can a Ph.D. have a negative impact on your career in the software industry? on Workplace SE. Your question is about Professional Doctorate program(PDEng). I was going to suggest you to ask the question there. But, I am afraid it's likely going to be closed as a duplicate there.

Have you contacted the school? They should have some idea about the success of previous students. Alternatively, have you contacted some of the companies you might want to work for and see if this impacts the hiring manager's decision?

@earthling's comment reminds me of an answer of his question http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/15811/546, you may want to take a look at it.

@jojo Have you spoken with HR at some of the companies you would eventually like to work for? Ask them specifically if they would prefer a PDEng over a MS or MCS with two years' experience.

Closely related: Will taking a post-doc position harm my future chances in industry?. "[...] in computer science, a postdoc does not harm your chances to go into industry directly[,] but unfortunately it will also likely not help you much when applying for an industry job. That is, I would expect that your CV for an industrial job is about as strong after the postdoc than before. Given that there are opportunity costs [...]". Just replace postdoc with PhD.

TLDR: It trains you in both technical and soft skills (technical writing, meeting management, etc.), and lets you gain experience with small and large industry projects, using different technologies. It essentially compresses multiple years of industry experience into two.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about what the program actually is. The Professional Doctorate in Engineering (PDEng) programs offered at Dutch universities have more in common with industry traineeships than with a traditional academic doctorate. As such, most of the negative effects of a PhD on job propspects (trouble actually writing code, far less job experience, etc.) simply do not apply.
For example, Eindhoven University of Technology describes their Software Technology PDEng program as follows.

The Software Technology program is designed to prepare you for an industrial career as a technological designer, and later on as a software or system architect. It starts with 15 months of advanced training and education, including 4 small, industry driven training projects, followed by a major design project of nine months in a company.

The program is specifically designed to teach MSc students with a good grasp of the theory how to efficiently apply that theory to practical applications. It is presented as a way to "fast-track" your career by gaining a lot of cross-disciplinary experience in only two years.
They write the following about their graduates:

The Software Technology program has been around for more than 25 years and to date trained more than 370 technological designers. Most designers have joined the companies where they carried out their design assignments and many now fulfill a management position.

Their alumni association XOOTIC released a detailed survey (pages 25-28), stating

Having a job as an XOOTIC is still easy: only
  1% of the XOOTIC’s is unemployed. [...]
  By far the most XOOTIC’s have an indefinite contract
  (82.6%).
The OOTI program is known in the industry according
  to 80% of the answers and is rewarded
  according to 44% of the respondents.
  [...]
  XOOTIC’s, considering what they know now,
  would still do the OOTI program (96.7%).

You might get different answers for different countries. This answer is for the US.
Speaking as a person who has hired many programmers (both for my own company and for other companies) I feel quite confident that having a doctorate of any kind will not help you land a job as a programmer. The simple fact is, people care about what you can produce. What frameworks, models, patterns, languages, etc. are you effective in? This is what people generally care about from a technical perspective. They will care about other things like how committed you are, how many hours you can work, etc. but what you would gain from a doctorate will not be of value to people who hire in industry.
That said, it can be useful for career mobility. For example, I have see people chose one person over another for an IT management position because one had a doctorate. That turned out to be a terrible choice for the company, but I don't think the problems were connected to his doctorate (he simply had no experience managing people). Some people might see the value in the doctorate but only at a higher level (not entry level).

what you would gain from a doctorate will not be of value to people who hire in industry - Not true. These programs are specifically designed to prepare you for a job in industry and include working with industry partners on actual projects.

Disagree. It will not help you land certain kind of jobs, but can help you land others.

@Mangara There are some kinds of jobs, as einpoklum mentioned, for which a doctorate can help. For example, a data scientist. As for being a programmer (the Op's question) I would love to hear any concrete examples of how it would be of value. I am always happy to learn.

In general, for software engineering (in the UK), it will not help a lot in my experience - PhDs,PDEngs and EngDs will add to your initial salary over a masters. But probably no more than the extra experience that working in industry would get you.
The main exception is start-ups - if your tech guy(s) have post-graduate degrees then it can help with the early sales (proves you are smarter). Plus there is a valid argument that when you are limited in the number of heads you can get, it is worth getting the smartest ones you can.
The other exception is if it is for a very specific field and you want to go into that, it may help you beat out candidates with more experience in nearby fields (or satisfy a requirement of having experience in that field).

proves you are smarter - can you explain that one to me, please?

It's a sales/appearance thing. If you tell people that all of your tech team have phds/equivs, the customers will more easily believe that your super-startup-tech is as good as you claim as you have more credibility in their eyes.
Whether you are smarter or not is entirely unrelated.


text:
Is it ethical to blog about your publications to communicate your research without being restricted by the journal?
I've always been interested in communicating research to the public. I also strongly believe that research publications should be in the public domain, especially if the work was funded with public money.
I found the responses to this question to be pretty interesting, and they got me thinking about scientific blogging as a solution.
So my question is -- can I put up my scientific findings on my blog or webspace that is not written exactly like my published article but contains essentially the same data and results?
Edit: I am not suggesting blogging as an alternative to publishing, but as an additional mode by which I can communicate my research and not be handcuffed by any publishing magnate.

Many journals allow you to post preprints of your articles on your website, both before and after publication.  This seems like the easiest solution.  However, you should keep in mind that many journals consider the referee's contributions to be their intellectual property, in which case you should not distribute a version of the paper containing anything that arose from the referee's comments (the easiest way to comply with this is to only post the version that you submitted to the journal in the first place.)

@Trevor: "However, you should keep in mind that many journals consider the referee's contributions to be their intellectual property" I find this to be quite dubious: do you know any journals which explicitly say this?  If the referee's comments are the intellectual property of anyone, it must be the referee, not the journal.  But referees give comments without knowing whether a paper will be published or not (and, in some cases, recommending against it).

@Trevor: I think you're confusing changes made by editors employed at the journal (and approved by the authors) with changes made by the authors, possibly influenced by reviewer or editorial comment.

The idea that if a referee points out an error in your work then you are ethically prevented from correcting that error in a freely available copy of your work seems distressing.  Also, when I referee, I take the perspective that everything I write is given to the authors of the papers to do with as they please.  If I actually wanted to retain some intellectual property, then I would communicate the information through some other means.  And the idea that the journal has the property of what I wrote does not make me happy.

@TrevorWilson: But in the interest of full disclosure, am I not obliged to supply any expert commentary on my article, especially if I find that the comments are relevant for any reader? Of course, I will credit the comments to the referee. But I see your point, it does seem a little sticky.

@TrevorWilson: I'm aware that journals often permit preprints on personal websites, but I have some reservations with regard to this. Firstly, from the many faculty webpages that I've gone through, I haven't come across too many with links to preprints. You could attribute this to the indifference of the faculty or to the low number of journals that permit this. Secondly, I find that in the interest of being rigorous, journal publications are often quite hard to read for non-experts. In a blog, I would be looking to make my research more accessible to people from different fields.

@PeteL.Clark  You may be right, and I can't find any journals that say this explicitly.  But some journals allow the author to distribute a preprint but do not allow the author to redistribute the published version of the paper, which raises the question of what exactly they consider the essential difference to be.  Not the typesetting, because we do most of that ourselves these days.  The copy-editing, maybe? But the substantial difference seems to be the referee's contribution....

@PeteL.Clark And if the referee wishes to place his or her contribution in the public domain, or to transfer copyright to the author, the author should get this permission in writing (which would be complicated by the matter of anonymity.)

@ArjunNarayanan As far as academic ethics is concerned, it would be fine to credit something to an anonymous referee.  But I am not so sure about the legal aspect of the situation (maybe just due to my own ignorance.)  As for why more people do not post preprints, it might be a combination of author indifference and journal policy.  It also may depend on the field.

@BenVoigt I'm not sure it matters who makes the actual change to the document, if that person is incorporating someone else's work.  But I admit that my first comment may be wrong (see my response to Pete L. Clark.)

Please refer to this list to understand better what you can and cannot do with you article. Search for your own publisher and see the policies in place for posting post-prints or self-archiving.

I'd like to add that it may be good to post a scientifically mature "lay person" blog about your research with a link to the article and preprint.

@MHH: This is exactly what I have in mind, and I am definitely going to carry it through as my research work reaches a stage where I have a decent amount of communicable results.

I'm not sure why you ask this question. The only reason why some research findings could not be published online on a website or blog, in addition to your published paper, is if there is some confidentiality agreement which binds you not to do so.

I think the answer is yes, but you should aim higher: the line you're drawing in the sand is uncomfortably close to you and that's causing more work for you than is necessary.
Namely, trying to put the essential content of your papers on your own website for the purpose of freely disseminating your work seems wrongheaded: instead, you should be putting your own papers on your webpage and/or freely available preprint servers like the arxiv.  In order to do so fully legally (which is not necessarily the same as ethically: it is possible to feel that the law is unethical, in which case the ethical thing to do could be to break the law, but be willing to live with the consequences of that) you need to arrange this as a condition of the publication.  This is absolutely feasible with all of the major scientific publishing companies.  How common the deal is seems to depend on the individual journal and on the standards of the field.  In my field (mathematics), I do not know of a reputable journal which would not allow its authors to post on the arxiv.  (Once I dealt with a journal which initially asked me to remove the copy of the paper from my homepage.  After some back and forth, the editor in chief told me that it was absolutely okay for me to do that and he was surprised that the editorial assistant had said otherwise.  In retrospect, this was a clear warning that I was dealing with a shady journal.)
I gather that in some scientific fields, there are "popular" journals which do not allow authors to put papers on the arxiv (or, alas, there may not be an arxiv or clear equivalent) or -- gasp! -- on their own homepage.  I find this strange, because in my understanding in most scientific fields the majority of journals are owned by Elsevier, Springer, Science Direct... -- i.e., by enormous multinational, multibillion dollar publishing magnates which are not renowned for their generosity or enthusiasm for open access.  But when you publish a paper in (e.g.) mathematics in one of these journals, the copyright notice that you sign allows you to post the paper on the arxiv and your own webpage.  I find it hard to believe that the copyright notices for different journals by the same publisher would be so different on this point.  So the battle has already been won in these hardest places.  If there are trade journals specific to your field which are less generous to authors than the evil empires I've mentioned above: well, if you care about this sort of thing, don't publish there.
In terms of putting copies of published papers on the arxiv, in light of the comments above let me share my understanding.  What you publish should not include any journal-specific formatting: it should not look like a Journal X publication.  As a general practice, most authors upload to the arxiv before submission, and then only upload a new copy if some kind of significant, content-related change was made.  In particular, if an error was pointed out, then it would be good to correct that.  If the journal did copyediting for you -- which is not the same as directing you to do copyediting after acceptance -- then maybe it is best all around not to incorporate those changes in the freely available version: on the one hand, aside from formatting, this is the only place in which the journal itself is contributing to the paper; on the other hand, going back and manually incorporating the copyediting for an entire paper could take some time and effort.
To respond to what was said in the comments: in my opinion, whether your revisions were motivated by a referee report should not have any bearing on whether you want to change the freely available version.  If you are making changes in response to a referee report, then including that information in a "comments" section on the paper would be a classy move.  But as a frequent author and referee, I feel strongly that the changes you made in response to the referee report are not proprietary to the journal in any way (or in any other way from the rest of the content of the paper).
Added: The task of checking out policies of publishers and journals with regard to preprints is not something that an individual researcher needs to address from scratch: there are several online repositories of information about this.  Here is one.

Indeed... The economic model that we trade intellectual property to multi-national corporations for the professional status they may grant, while they also enjoy the free labor of our colleagues, ... is bizarre. Well, very nice at one end, but that time is past: appraisal of the scholarly merits of work no longer need be mediated by corporations, etc.

It is worth noting that this varies highly from field to field.  Biology and chemistry have notable rapacious publication policies, in which even putting something on arXiv can count as prior publication and prevents you from publishing.

@jakebeal: One should certainly check things out first.  My understanding is that some journals in biology and chemistry have this benighted attitude.  If you don't care about the issue, then why not go along with them.  However the OP is clearly does care about this, so he should publish in journals which are more reasonable about it.

Conversely, by publishing in a "rapacious journal" it seems that you risk losing the moral high ground.  I find it unlikely that any journal will start a crusade against authors describing their own work on the web (!!), but ethically: well, it depends on how demonic the contract is, doesn't it?  Maybe you did sign away your rights to do this.

@PeteL.Clark: Thanks for your reply. I would definitely put up my publications on my webpage or arxiv. However, I was also viewing a research blog as being a place where I could discuss my research (possibly in a more informal way). In hindsight it does seem that I was choosing a far more laborious alternative (but possibly novel and interesting?)
Anyway, your comments have been very helpful. Thank you!

@Arjun: If you want to discuss your work on your blog for its own merits (rather than to "circumvent journals"), you should certainly feel free.  Unless your intention is literally to replicate the essential content of your paper in order to circumvent a nasty publication contract, I don't see why anyone would (or how they could) object to this.

 can I put up my scientific findings on my blog or webspace that is not written exactly like my published article but contains essentially the same data and results?

This is completely OK with the copyright: as you describe it, the blog post would be a new work. It is even clearer if you want to reword it so that it is readable for a larger audience. Copyright is about a particular piece of work, it does not prevent anyone from using the idea expressed in the work.
Problems could arise if the blog is copy & paste from the paper (figures?, tables?). However, I'd say that blog format and paper usually more or less require different renderings of figures and tables, and producing a new figure/table containing the same data is OK as far as I know.
I do copy and paste the abstract assuming that the publisher won't object to their paper being more prominently visible. I always put a link to the official version (as well as to the manuscript, e.g. on arXiv or on my personal web page, as the copyright transfer allows)
Note that I chose not to put in the additional work of writing yet another new text, and instead basically link to the paper.

Detail thoughts:

The copyright of the publisher does relate to the facts (data points in the figure/table).
Thus, if the paper has a LaTeX-looking LaTeX table you put together and the blog has a HTML-looking HTML table you put together, there shouldn't be trouble.
I'm not sure about, say, microscope images. But then you may have chosen one of several photos for the paper, and there is maybe a second-best photo for the blog.
For graphics, again, the plotted data is not owned by the publisher. I often prepare at least two versions of my plots: for presentations I choose a different layout (larger text, sans serif font) than for the paper (serif font, often smaller text compared to the actual plot canvas). I'd anyways think that the presentation version is more suited for the blog.
In the end, you'll have to read the copyright transfer agreement as this lists which rights you retain.
Or maybe even to tell them before transfer of the copyright that you grant them the non-exclusive right to reproduce the schematic diagram in figure 7b (if you know in advance you'll want to reuse it).
My experience in asking for permission to include tables and figures into another paper (with citation of the original) is that I got the permission without hassle.
I'd argue that the blog post you describe is at least as different from the article as, say, a presentation you give. But IANAL

Thanks for your answer. I figured that reproduction of figures and tables would be the sticky part. And going by your answer (and the other answers so far) it does seem like pre-prints are the most viable option. However, I would still be greatly interested in blogging about my research because it gives me a place to be more descriptive and less "jargoney" (this is purely my opinion and I don't imply it in a general sense).

@ArjunNarayanan: pre-print is certainly the easiest way. I added some thoughts about tables and figures.

I find it very surprising that (a) superficial changes seem to be the most important distinguishing factor and (b) I cannot freely and without hassle talk about my own research. sigh a new paradigm is required. Thanks for the added details though, especially if it keeps me out of legal troubles with publishing companies.

The superficial details nevertheless must be large enough. The examples I give are superficial, because what constitutes the protected rights of the journal is also only "superficial": it is not the content, but the form they present the content in. So if you find another form that should be sufficient. The main point is: copyright is not about the idea, but about the actual form the text/figure/table takes. This ensures that everybody can talk about your research. Just not by copy & paste from the publisher's version of the paper: you basically sold them this right.

@cebeleites: In retrospect it's perhaps comforting that I sold them just the formatting and nothing else!

I'm not an expert on the copyright part of your question, but previous responses are more detailed.
The short answer to the ethical part though is: yes, of course, and thank you for doing that.
Scientific research is too important to just let the scientists understand that. The aim of open access is to spread scientific results and notions to the largest audience as possible. It is also good for you as a scholar (you gain readers and widen your audience, you're more likely to receive citations).
Remember the goals of the Berlin Declaration:

Our mission of disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the
  information is not made widely and readily available to society. New
  possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the
  classical form but also and increasingly through the open access
  paradigm via the Internet have to be supported. We define open access
  as a comprehensive source of human knowledge and cultural heritage
  that has been approved by the scientific community.

I don't see how your blogging and explaining your scientific results does not comply to those words.
Making science accessible for everyone is one of the deep, perennial goals of academia: more, it is crucial for democracy.
So, thanks!

Thanks for the answer and encouragement. As a (relatively young) grad student, I often find that the literature I read would be more easily understood if they came out with some form of "paraphrasing" or "commentary" by the authors that would enable easier understanding. I'm not implying this in a general sense, but I do believe that several researchers are not quite adept at communicating clearly and lucidly.


text:
How to review a paper that relies heavily on references to unpublished work?
I am currently doing a (blind) review of a paper for a Journal in the engineering field. The manuscript seems okay so far but relies to a large extent on a unpublished paper, cited as Miller et al. forthcoming. That publication was not submitted along with the manuscript. The author seems to be involved in that publication, but is not co-authoring it. Since no journal or publisher is given, I am assuming that the manuscript is under preparation and to be submitted to a Journal.
Furthermore, there is no summary of the central data and results e. g. in the supporting information. That makes it hard to follow some of the assumptions and conclusions.

How should I proceed?
And does this in principle justify a rejection of the paper?

Oh, because you wrote it as "Author, et. al" I understood it as the author of the manuscript under review ("the author.") thanks for clarifying.

@ff524 Yeah you were right. it was misleading.

Every matter in a paper should be verifiable, including the references. All results should be supported by relevant explanation with sufficient detail.
Instead of rejecting the paper straight away, you may initially tell the author of correspondence (through the editor) to provide the unpublished cited materials. The author is to be obliged to provide you the tangible material from which you may assess the credibility of the facts cited.
Bear in mind that all communication between the author and reviewer must go via the editor of the journal.

Actually, you should contact the editor and ask the editor to get the material from the author and make it available to the reviewers.  If the author isn't willing to do this, then it's grounds for rejecting the paper in my opinion.

Of course all modes of communication must pass through editor, be it reviewer to author or vice versa.

So you think in principle missing references justify a rejection?

This depends on the related information cited to the missing reference. If you state "X is the best method for the application Y" in your manuscript, you must justify it with relevant reference. Otherwise your manuscript cannot be accepted.

@ÉbeIsaac please edit your answer to include your comment about only communicating via the editor: at the moment, your answer appears to recommend contacting the author directly.

Edit confirmed. I thought it would be obvious as the question is from a reviewer.

@n1000, you say the paper "relies to a large extent on a unpublished paper". Obviously that creates a situation where you cannot evaluate the claims of the paper. In my opinion the only reasonable response is to reject the paper (or to communicate to the editor, as some have suggested, that you are suspending your review until such time as the missing material is provided to you, but that is almost the same thing; the point is you cannot accept the paper without the missing material).

@n1000, and as for your question "So you think in principle missing references justify a rejection?" -- that is a more general and somewhat stronger statement. There are situations where missing references may not impede one's ability to evaluate the paper and as such should not be a cause for rejection. However, your situation does not sound like one of them.

Although not all unpublished work can be labelled unverifiable since there are papers that are readily accepted for publication but awaiting release. Papers in ACM Computing Surveys could take up to a year and a half to get published after they are accepted.

If those reference papers are already accepted by some journal, then make comments to provide the summary of those accepted papers.
If those reference papers are just submitted to some journal, then make comments to provide the used results as supplement.
If those reference papers as just cited as forthcoming or next work, then make comments to provide valid / published previous reference.
The overall comment may be like: "I cannot recommend the manuscript to publish at this moment".

I don't think the paper is ready for publication. Even if you get access to their draft, future readers won't have that benefit.
A few years from now, your favourite paper database will spit a bunch of hits for "Miller et al 2015" (or perhaps 2016, or 2017), but there is no guarantee that the title or the author order will be the same; or that the paper will ever be accepted, for that matter.
I was actually working on the results of an old paper that described an idealised model. They mentioned that it performed well when compared with experimental data, with the details in another forthcoming paper. To the best of my knowledge, that paper was never published, and thus I have no idea how really accurate their model is and under what circumstances without doing a costly analysis myself; rendering the whole paper moot.

Good point and I mostly agree. However, I understand the necessity and time pressure (e.g. for PhD students) to publish individual results from a larger project. So I find it hard to be too strict on this point.

@n1000 the acceptance may be withhold until the other manuscript has been accepted and has a permanent reference, or enough self-standing content is provided as supplementary material.


text:
Writing a critical appraisal
My dissertation is cumulative, meaning that it basically consists of the following three sections: Introduction, Chapters, and Conclusions. The introduction gives an extended literature overview and describes the overall research question. The chapters are copies of my published research articles. The conclusion section typically has the following sub-sections: critical appraisal, relevance of work, and outlook.
Naturally my supervisor gave me some ideas what the critical appraisal should look like and I can also look for inspiration in previous theses.
Nevertheless, I wonder what a critical appraisal normally is. It seems to be a term mostly used in medical research. I wonder:

Is this something typically used in academia?
Is there a definition or a generally accepted form?
What elements does a critical appraisal include?
Is there literature or guidelines on how to write a critical appraisal?

Could you provide some insights on what a good critical appraisal (for a thesis) should look like?

If your institution has no regulation for a cumulative thesis, then most likely it is not permitted to write one. Or do you mean they simply do not supply a readymade MS-Word template?

Please update your question accordingly.

@mobileink I tried to be more specific in the edits of the question.


text:
What is a short CV?
I have been asked to help teach a one-week class (a scientific conference-type class in Italy). I am one of about six other teachers involved.
The organizer has asked me to send a "15-line CV" for the course web site. My CV is two pages long, and I am not sure what a 15-line CV would include. Do you think the organizer may just mean a biosketch? Or is there an abbreviated CV format that I am not aware of? I could easily email him to ask for clarification, but he is clearly very busy and I do not want to bug him with minutiae unless I have to.

Just a wild guess: But if I recall correctly, in some countries CV has adopted a broader meaning and is used for all sorts of things relating to an applications, while it is has retained its literal meaning in some European countries. Thus, if you come from one of the former countries, this may explain your confusion.

I am from the US, where CV is still pretty much synomymous with formal academic résumé.

Typically the web site that describes the program for a meeting/short course like this would have short blurbs about the presenters.  Something like "Prof. Doe earned his PhD at MIT in 1992.  From 1993 to 1995 he was a post-doc at Big Huge Lab.  From 1996 to 2001 he was an assistant professor at university X.  In 2001 he moved to university Y, where he now holds the distinguished chair of Z." It sounds as though they're asking for something like that.

It's an IEEE thing, so maybe they mean one of the biography blurbs like they have in EE journals.

Basically, a "short CV" is a CV with your basic career highlights:

Where you did your undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate (postdoc) degrees
Any appointments you have held following the completion of your research (academic, industrial, government, or otherwise)
Any major awards or honors that you've received
Any other notable accomplishments that you'd like your audience to know about

You do not need to include (unless specifically asked to include it):

List of publications and presentations
Service activities
List of funding sources
List of students supervised
Courses taught

As well as any other item that you would not mention in a short introduction to you and your work.

I sent the organizer an IEEE-style biosketch, and he said that was what he wanted. So, I think there may be some semantic variability in the word 'CV' in Europe versus the United States (I am from the latter), or he was just very loose in his terminology. Feel free to edit this answer if it is the former and not the latter.


text:
Changing research group during a PhD
I am currently PhD student, just finished 3rd semester. But it is just 5 months that I defended my proposal, and due to university rules, you are considered an official PhD student just when you defend your proposal. I would like to change my group, due to different reasons, one is financial matters. As my one year financial support from an external fund ( not offered by my current supervisor) is finished and my supervisor also said he has no money!
I already applied for a new open PhD position (not in the same university but in the same city). The new Professor invited me to his office for interview. Should I tell him that I am already PhD student? What if I say nothing?

Doing everything behind the backs of everyone (old and new advisor) will blow up in your face, sooner or later.

@ Alexandros: But my current supervisor told me 2-3 months ago that I am free to leave whenever that I like! Whar shall I do actually?

In any job, people are free to leave at any time. But they should notify their supervisor before leaving, within a reasonable time (notice-period).

@ Alexandros: I would tell to my current supervisor for sure, but when I am sure that I get the new position ( I am in final selection but still not sure if I will get the job). Why shall I tell about my leaving while I am still not sure if I would leave?

It looks like you are having trouble commenting on your own question and its answers. Please use this procedure to merge your accounts so that you'll be able to comment on and edit this post.

When it comes to your academic and professional life, you should always be honest. Starting a long-term association on a wrong note can be damaging for your life and career. I would say whether or not the supervisor asks you, you should inform him about your current position and the reasons for leaving. It is your moral responsibility to inform him. If you hide such an important information from him, it might lead to trust issues later if he finds out.

Leaving a group because you are not getting paid is perfectly reasonable, and thus you should explain that to the new professor. This may play to your advantage, as you already have some experience, and can start being productive earlier. That also explains what have you been doing your last year.
If you don't tell him, and he learns somehow, he may either ask you directly, imagine some (realistic or not) possible scenarios, or wonder what else you may be hiding. He may also wonder if you would do the same to him, leave after one year, and deem it too risky to hire you. On the other hand, if you are upfront with your case, you show that you have a legitimate reason to leave, and you won't probably leave for as long as he can fund you.

I did something similar, and I fully agree with @Ghost and @Davidmh's advice which upholds honesty is the only policy in academia. I shall tell you what I did (NOTE: I am sharing my personal experience, by no means I am asserting that my way is the way that it should be handled, as situations differ).
In my second year of PhD, I realized that I was not satisfied with my research area, and that I should look for an opportunity which will let me explore ideas that I want to for my PhD.
After I made contact with a professor with whom I would have liked to work, I informed the person that I am yet to have a discussion with my present adviser regarding moving to another university, and requested him/her to refrain from contacting my present adviser, until I could have that discussion. After getting an approval from the school and the potential adviser, that I would most possibly be offered a position, I sought out to have a discussion with my current adviser to make him/her aware of the situation.
In that discussion, I was very frank about why I am considering to leave my lab, and that I would be very open for future collaborations. I spent the rest of the semester wrapping up my work and discussing about future project directions with my mentor and another lab-member who took up my role. I left the lab on a nice note, and I still maintain a healthy relationship with my previous adviser and lab members.
In research, we never know with whom we would need to collaborate in the future. Apart from that, many jobs require recommendations from past advisers. Hence, having a trust-issue-free-relationship with peers, advisers and fellow researchers is a must for personal development.

Such matters are of both sensitive and ethical concern. The best thing to do is to tell the truth.

If the new prof ask me in interview, I would tell him. But shall I tell him myself even if he doesnot ask?

@Lisa Put yourself in the new prof's shoes.  Would you want to know if a potential new advisee was transferring from another institution/adviser?

Your current student status should appear in the top half of the first page of your CV, which you already sent the new prof when you applied.  Riiiight?


text:
If i am the first coauthor of the paper, is it possible to change the order of names on the paper in my resume?
If i am the first coauthor of the paper, is it possible to change the order of names on the paper in my resume and show my name on the first place?

It seems a little passive aggressive (at least to me). I am not sure that I'd recommend it.

I think being about "co-first author" makes this different from the possible duplicate. (The answer is the same, but the question is different.)

I'm glad you've asked this question, which you were unsure about, so I'm voting the question up.

Since you write that you are co-first author, I assume you are from a discipline where authorship order matters (e.g. life sciences), and then the answer is NO. In fact, this may be seen as purposeful misleading.
The authorship order is essentially part of the paper and how it is indexed.
And if authorship order in your field does not matter, why would you want to do this?

Even in disciplines where author order isn't important (e.g. some areas in pure mathematics and theoretical computer science) it isn't appropriate to change the order around.  You want the CV to include proper citations that the reader can match to search in online databases and journals, and having a different author order makes it look as though you're talking about a different paper.

Do not change the order as it appears on the publication.  If you are officially a co-first author, by some declaration in the paper or elsewhere, such as an * with the comment that 'these authors contributed equally, you can do the same on your Resume by having a * claiming you are a co-first author.