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How do you convince students that it's OK to teach them "how to think?"
Often in a Calculus or Linear Algebra class, my students may ask - when am I ever going to use this?  The answer I try to give them is "You're not. And that's totally OK. But you do need to learn how to think logically and solve problems. Mathematics provides a safe place to learn these thinking skills."
But increasingly, the focus of the students is still "Is this going to be on the test?"
They seem unhappy when questions they haven't seen before end up on the test. My thought is that if they learn the process for solving problems, then they should know how to approach a new (but similar) problem.
I'm not interested in seeing them regurgitate facts, but I want them to develop their thinking skills and use them to solve new problems.  This often causes backlash.  I get it - learning how to think is harder than memorizing facts.
How do I effectively communicate that it's not the individual questions or ideas that are important, but it's the learning and thinking processes that are key?

In the assignments and on the tests, are you just asking them for the answers, or do you ask them to show the steps they took? Do you let them use any solution to find the answers, or limit their solutions to a specific approach which you explicitly taught them? Lastly, are you showing them the math just as numbers and equations on the board, or are they exposed to the real-world situations where these would be used?

Check out the short "The Five Elements of Effective Thinking", by Burger and Starbird, two math professors. They include a lot of stories they use to inspire better thinking habits in their students.

What country are you teaching in, and for those of us not familiar with your education system: how do these students end up having to study something they don't really want to study?  In my country e.g. you choose and apply for an undergraduate programme/specialization, which mostly determines what courses you must take during the duration of the 3 or 4 year programme.  I'd argue that the specific specialization may be relevant for the answer.  E.g. economics students tend to revolt against linear algebra, but it's not hard to argue why it's very relevant for economics.

What I'm getting at is that, as J.R. pointed out, sometimes students can grossly misjudge what they really need and what they really might need to use in the future, especially considering that the required skills for a given field change over time.  With the ubiquitousness of computers and data analysis math skills are becoming needed in more and more fields.

I said that to my calculus teacher repeatedly...and have regretted it ever since as I work as a computer programmer now.  It was the abstraction that I found annoying and so I think you can't go wrong with "real world" examples.  One other thing is no one ever told me what algebra, trigonometry, calculus actually were. Never once was I given a clear definition of these areas of mathematics or the kinds of problems they could be used to solve.  So I heartily suggest you start there.

I disagree with your fundamental premise: that the concepts won't be used, and therefore the main benefit of learning calculus is to hone a student's problem-solving skills.
Many engineering problems do require an understanding of calculus. Perhaps not all your students are destined to be engineers or physicists, but, if you explain that there are people who do need and use this knowledge to advance in their career field and solve real-world problems, you might get them to sit up and realize they aren't trudging through their homework as a mere academic exercise. Fact is, some of these courses are taught to freshmen and sophomores because they will need those problem-solving skills as juniors and seniors – not just to know how to solve a problem, but to also understand the underlying theory and mathematics. If all the students in a particular demographic will never use calculus in the future, then they probably don't need to take calculus now.
I'd try to find some real-world problems that require the knowledge taught in your course to solve. Perhaps that might spark an interest and help students realize that the are not just solving integrals for integrals' sake.
If I was at your university, and I taught an upper-level engineering course in heat transfer or thermodynamics, I'd be disappointed to learn that my students' calculus teacher thought the main reason to teach my engineers calculus was to provide a "safe place" for them to "learn how to think logically and solve problems."

I consider it an implicit premise of the question that the students asking this are the ones who likely aren't going to use this knowledge - not the hard science and engineering majors, but people in fields like English, history, and politics, and others where calculus is not involved. Or at least, my point is that there are students to whom the reasoning in this answer doesn't apply.

@David - My answer could apply if one answered the class in the aggregate. In other words, maybe Bobby, Susan, and Joey aren't going to ever use calculus, but their classmates Terry and Leslie might. Moreover, it's people like Terry and Leslie who give us cell phones that work, bridges that don't collapse, and roads that don't flood. Maybe I don't personally use much of the trigonometry I once learned, but knowing there are people who do use it can make the lessons seem less futile. And if that doesn't motivate Joey and Susan, they probably shouldn't have signed up for calculus.

Thanks for your answer!  I guess I should say that they're never going to solve a problem exactly like the ones I give - but, as you point out, they will likely solve similar problems. I will think about how to get some actual engineering (or other application) inputs from today's engineers and scientists.

While it's indeed likely that many of your students will not extensively use the material they learn in your class, it may not be encouraging to them to hear that they won't use it.  And indeed, they do learn important critical thinking skills, but they may be wondering what is special about the sort of critical thinking in calculus and linear algebra that they couldn't get out of another course.
In this vein, one solution may be to present real-world examples of how calculus and linear algebra are used today, get the students involved as you present, and relate the topic to the students' lives.
For instance, after you present a basic optimization example (maximize fence perimeter given the area it contains) you might present a slightly more complicated problem (building a window of a particular shape that maximizes the amount of light coming through with a fixed amount of building material, for instance), and get the class involved in trying to solve the problem.  Ask them what's different about it, maybe have them briefly discuss a strategy with the person next to them.  (This is not usually done in a large class, but at least one very popular professor at my school does this in his large classes.)
Continuing with the example of optimization, there's a great topic on matheducators.stackexchange about real-life optimization problems here. In particular, I've linked to a problem that video-game players might find to be really cool and related to their everyday lives. Of course, it may also help to branch out and briefly discuss some current, advanced applications of calculus and linear algebra.  An excellent example where ideas from calculus and linear algebra are essential is the story of how UPS route optimization involves the minimization of left turns.  This last example might inspire a lively discussion in your classes, because it shows how calculus and linear algebra can trump everyday intuition... and how pushing beyond a basic understanding can lead to new, interesting ideas!  (I'm sure if you asked students in class, they could come up with reasons for why UPS's strategy might make sense.)
On the other hand, some students might not be moved by industry applications and might benefit from seeing mathematics as the kind of "safe place" you suggest where perfect formulations lead to perfect results.  Strogatz has some interesting words in a Math Horizons article about the importance of enabling others to experience the beauty of math, and he provides a great example of why math is beautiful.  I also just found a TED talk discussing the use of calculus in some parts of modern architecture. Though this last one is admittedly again an industry application, it at least sheds some light about how aesthetics and mathematics can interact in interesting ways.


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Importance of grades as a graduate student in math
I'm in my first year as a grad student in math at a large university in the US.  For the moment I'm just taking classes, all of which have weekly problem sets which take a ton of time to complete in full.  I have carried over the mentality from undergrad where I try to complete all the problems in the problem sets, and at least put in a significant amount of effort on each problem.  However, this is taking up enough time that I haven't had much of an opportunity to do math things outside of the class (stuff like attending seminars, trying to read papers, pursuing interesting subjects brought up briefly in class in more depth, etc).  Because of this, I've been contemplating taking less time on my problem sets, but I have a few questions about potentially receiving lower grades:
First, is it common for math programs in the US to kick out students for getting low (but not failing) grades?  I can't find any official policy from my program and I don't feel comfortable asking anyone.  A friend in a different subject said that his program regularly kicks out students in the first couple years even if they pass or are on track to pass their qualifying exams in time, but I'm not sure if this is done in math.
Also, aside from getting kicked out, what are the negative consequences to receiving a low grade?  (in a class which is not particularly close to the area I think I want to do research in)

Many phd programs would require a GPA well above failing: a B- or a C. Aside from that, you risk not getting prepared well enough for your quals, and making a poor impression on possible future committee members, advisors, and letter writers. You learn a lot by solving problems, and I think it is better for you if you put in the work. Also, math is interconnected enough, that you should not brush off a strong background in the basic subjects.

What do you have in mind as a "low grade"?  In my department, an A- is fine for a grad student, a B looks worrisome (so you'd better not get too many), and a C is a disaster.  But this may vary between departments, so you'll need to calibrate for your own situation.

It's a competitive environment. You don't want to be the weakest link. Receiving a low grade in a course is not the worst thing (but why is this happening?). Ideally, you are presenting yourself as someone that a faculty member wants to mentor.

Ok thanks for the feedback.  Re: what I had in mind for a "low grade", I not entirely sure - I don't have a good grasp of how "bad" one can do and still come away with a B/C/etc as I didn't really push this boundary as an undergraduate.  What exactly does a C is a disaster mean?  Is the student kicked out, or given a warning, or punished in some way?

In my experience, each letter grade in a graduate class represents two letter grades in a comparable undergrad class.  So a B in a grad-level class means the same thing as a C or D in an undergrad-level class: Acceptable, but below average.  A C in a grad-level class is essentially failure.

I would suggest that you start by talking with the professors that are teaching your classes to see how they think you're doing so far.  Unless its obvious that you're earning solid A's in all of your courses, I'd suggest that you keep your nose to the grind stone for the rest of your first semester.

Contrary response: in graduate school you are typically judged on your results published.  You should prioritize things that will help you publish results over problem sets.  However, seminars, etc. may not be helpful.

@guest: Of course this is true in the long run.  However, in mathematics there is a quite considerable core of material that students must absorb before really having any hope of producing (or even being involved in) useful research.  As such, there is usually an understanding that coursework should be a high priority for the first year or two; a transition to research comes in due course but later.

I definitely know of departments that would take action if you have a single C. You might be dismissed or put on some kind of probation (e.g. asked to retake the course with the condition that you must achieve a higher grade to continue in the program).

IMHO, every grade is important in undergraduate studies (3.9/4.00 looks much better on a CV than 2.9)

Thanks again for the comments everyone.  I guess I will keep grinding away on the problem sets for now.

In my PhD math program, at least, we students viewed grades in introductory classes as a sign whether the instructor thought we would be able to pass exams with the level of work that was being graded. "A" meant "this would pass"; "B" meant "this would not pass"; and "C" meant "you should consider whether you will ever be able to pass". Some professors would directly explain that this is what the grades meant.  The expectation was that a good student should get all As.  The grades were not meant to compare different students to each other, so we didn't view this as grade inflation.

In many (US, mathematics) graduate programs, there is quite significant grade inflation.  A grade of B would raise significant concern about your progress (and maybe cause advisors to think twice about working with you), and a grade of C would create grave doubts about your ability to continue in the program.  You may have a better sense if this is true in your program, but if so, it would be a really bad idea to reduce your efforts to the extent that your grades drop.
On the flip side, it is entirely possible that you could work a little less hard and still get A's (the standards for an A may be lower than you think).  I hesitate to recommend this, though.  The better you know this material, the easier your qualifying exams will be, and failing exams definitely gets students kicked out.  Solving all the problems on all the problem sets is a really good idea in that direction - rather than worrying about how much time it takes you, you should perhaps rather be glad that you can do it at all (I bet many of your classmates cannot).
Mathematics is unlike some other fields in that (US, PhD) graduate programs place a strong emphasis on coursework for the first couple of years.  A transition to research comes afterwards.  In many cases you cannot meaningfully discuss a research topic with a potential advisor until you have mastered the material from a course.  So it probably is in your long-term interest to prioritize your coursework now, even if some of your deeper mathematical interests are temporarily pushed to the back burner.  (Don't worry, they'll still be there after you pass your exams.)
It is good to spend at least a little time on pursuits outside coursework, and you can probably find some combination giving maximum payoff for minimum commitment.  For instance, attending seminars is good exposure to current research areas, and may require only an hour or two of your time per week.  (Protip: try to go to dinner with the speaker.  It's good networking, and your department may well pay for your meal (free food)).

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Is Visa required to obtain a very short term research grant (15 days) from a US University?
I am an associate professor and I am going to the US for two weeks. I am going to visit a colleague who is arranging with her university a small grant for me to cover the basic expenses.
According to the agreements between the US and my country, I do not need to apply for a Visa to enter the US for tourism or business reasons.
However I wonder whether I will need a J-1 Visa (or any other type of visa) in order to receive the grant (I hope not, since there are only 10 days left, and my colleague has not provided me with the formal letter yet...).
Thanks!

Are you just being reimbursed for travel expenses, or is the US institution paying you a salary?

Hi, thanks for the quick reply! I don't know the details since I don't have the letter yet, but the idea is to cover the expenses, although I don't know whether it will be a lump sum, or if the actual grant will imply the reimbursement of each single expense that I will make. Could you please instruct me on the different implications? Thanks a lot!

If it's just that you're being reimubrsed for travel expenses, then I don't believe that you'll need a special visa.  See for example the web page at: http://blink.ucsd.edu/go/visa

So, as somebody else was suggesting, I should make sure that for the money I receive I have to present a receipt, since if I receive a lump sum that might look like a salary and a visa requirement may apply? Or that depends on the regulations of the specific university? For example what NIH writes at the webpage: http://grants.nih.gov/archive/grants/foreign/visas.htm

Being paid to do work is different from being reimbursed for travel expenses.  The answers to your question are telling you that this is probably OK if you are just being reimbursed for expenses and not being paid, but that if you are being paid to do some particular work, that could be a problem.

I am on leave from my University and I am going to some universities to do some research and collaborate with colleagues, not to give courses or anything like that. The grant may require that I deliver a working paper and that I present a paper at a conference (this is the case, for example, for my next academic visit to Canada), between mid-November and mid-December, but not a specific "work", so do you think I should be fine?

And in any case, at this stage it is probably better that I ask my colleague to verify directly with the University Research Office...

If the grant is only to reimburse you for your travel expenses (airfare, lodging, meals, etc), then you should be fine with the visa waiver.  You are not considered to be employed by the host institution and do not need a work visa.  (Source: Personal experience - I've been responsible for arranging travel reimbursements for many visa-waiver visitors.)
You will probably need to document your expenses, so save receipts for airfare, lodging, meals, ground transportation, and so on.

Thank you for the prompt answer! So you advice that I make sure with my colleague that the grant is not in the form of a lump-sum salary (she was talking about US$ 2,000) but that in order to have the reimnbursement I present all receipts?

@ResearchervisitingtheUS: Yes, that would be a good idea.  Also note that unlike salary, travel reimbursements are usually not subject to income tax (at least in the US; your jurisdiction could be different).

Yes, that's another very good reason for preferring reimbursement! You and Brian Borchers - who also kindly immediately replied - have greatly helped me to clarify the issue! Thanks a lot to both!!!

@Researcher if you are satisfied with an answer, you can accept it to signal to future readers that this answer worked for you.

Yes, I would do it with great pleasure. Both Brian Borchers and Nate Eldredge have been very helpful. How do I signal their answers to future readers? Sorry, I am totally new to this website...

@ResearchervisitingtheUS: See the link in ff524's comment.  In brief: you can accept my answer by clicking the check mark next to it.  Glad it was useful!

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How to detail conference presentation of my work that was given by someone else on CV?
Recently some work of mine was presented at a prestigious conference by the second author on the forthcoming journal article. On the write-up submitted to the conference I was listed as first author, but was unable to attend for personal reasons. How should I list this achievement on my resume whilst still acknowledging the roles played by each author?

A CS view on this - other fields (even other subfields within CS?) may have different conventions:
It is irrelevant who gave the talk. It may be the first author, it may be one of the other authors, it may be someone else entirely (e.g. if none of the authors could come to the conference for some reason).
During the presentation, it is important for the audience to know who is presenting, which is why in the presentation slides, the name of the person may be highlighted. However, that is not so much to assume much credit for the work, but to give the audience an indication of who they are talking to; how to address the person in the case of questions, and just to associate the right name with the right face. In a well-functioning team of several authors, chances are that the slides were not done by a single person, anyway, so the slides themselves are again a group product of several or all of the authors.
Bear in mind that, while a publication on a conference is generally assumed to mean that one of the authors presented the paper, extraordinary specifics of how the presentations were done are generally not listed anywhere, neither in bibliographies, nor in CVs. Additional people who presented, but were not authors, never appear there, nor do hints about "exotic" presentation methods (given that there is tremendous variation in what a "poster presentation" means, depending on the conference, I can well imagine that for some conferences, a "paper presentation" is not necessarily the traditional stage talk + slides).
Such details might be slightly interesting, but at the same time, it would just be too cumbersome to keep track of all of them, so lastly, the core of your work is the paper/article that gets included in the proceedings, and that is what you refer to.

It is irrelevant who gave the talk. — Unless you are on the postdoc/job market and you want to emphasize that you've given several conference talks.


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Why is the prospect of external funding driving hiring?
I'm curious about today's focus on external funding versus that of the past.
In Mathematics anyway, it seems that the quality of a researcher is increasingly being measured in dollars of external funding rather than by some other, more idealistic measure. That means that pure mathematics, for instance, seems to be much less valued than "fundable" mathematics.
Do any veterans have any perspective on what seems like a changing climate? Are things really different today than they were 20 years ago with regard to the importance of obtaining funding for ones research?

I am not a math expert.  If nonetheless I had to make math faculty hiring decisions, I would look to the judgement of others via publications and funding.  I simply am not qualified to make any more idealistic metrics.  I imagine that people in math departments making hiring decisions outside their specialty are in a similar position.

I agree that there is more pressure nowadays to get funding in areas like pure math in which it's valuable but not mandatory for doing great work.  It's still entirely possible to make an argument along the lines of "Sure, Alice doesn't get much funding, but look how wonderful her papers are," but it's slowly getting harder.
The short answer as to why this is happening is World War II plus inertia.  Here's a longer answer:
The first thing to keep in mind is that grant funding is on average genuinely good for universities, because the overhead rate paid to the university is often higher than any extra costs imposed on the university.  All other things being equal, it makes sense to prefer to hire faculty who can get funding, because they are subsidizing the infrastructure for everyone else (e.g., libraries and internet access).  Of course, all other things are rarely truly equal, and I wouldn't advocate for giving grant funding much weight, but there's a reasonable argument for giving it nonzero weight.
There's also a temptation to use funding as a simple numerical measure of popularity.  Universities should serve the public, and it's clear that people are much more eager to fund work in some topics than others.  It's not crazy to take that into account in university decisions.  However, if taken too far I feel it's an abdication of our responsibility for intellectual leadership.
But why do these things seem to be changing in recent decades?  Universities are generally conservative and slow to change, so it's always worth looking for an explanation of any movement, and in this case I think it's World War II.
Most funding agencies were set up in the aftermath of the war (e.g., the U.S. National Science Foundation dates back to 1950), and the whole tradition of large-scale government funding of research didn't even exist until then.  How academic leaders reacted to it was based on their personal history, and academic inertia meant the changes were slow in coming.  Some of the effects are still surfacing now.
Let's divide things up into academic generations since World War II, giving each generation a twenty year time span to displace the previous one.  Here are my impressions of what happened for cheap or theoretical areas in which funding is not essential to do good work (I'm sure things were very different in big science):

The senior faculty of Generation 1 (1945-1965) were strongly influenced by pre-war traditions.  They had never dreamt of making hiring decisions based on external funding and weren't about to start doing so now.  They were suspicious of how wisely the funding would be allocated, and they saw no reason to think these agencies were even going to continue indefinitely in their present form.
Those in Generation 2 (1965-1985) had still been brought up to be skeptical of paying more attention to funding track records than necessary.  However, they were getting more comfortable with the funding agencies and starting to wonder about how grants could or should be taken into account.  I believe this is the point at which listing grant funding on your CV became mainstream in pure mathematics.
The senior faculty in Generation 3 (1985-2005) went further and began taking funding information into account in ways that would have scandalized Generation 1.  If you didn't list grants on your CV, the dean might now complain about it.  But there was still a sense that this was somehow shallow and historically new.
Generation 4 seems to be taking the trend still further and normalizing it.

Of course this is all vastly oversimplified, and no serious history can be conveyed in a few paragraph-long sketches (even if I were an expert).  However, the key phenomenon is real: the funding landscape was revolutionized after World War II, and academic traditions have slowly been adapting to this fact.

When I was in the Netherlands, a group at the university needed about 450,000 euros to fund a PhD student.  If the money is not coming from the university either indirectly from the government or other revenue sources, then the money needs to be secured by the faculty themselves.
In the US, the story is similar, but the costs may vary.  In short, academia is not cheap and someone has to pay for it.

Let's say it takes average 5 years to make a PhD student to become a PhD, 90,000 euros per year sounds reasonable for science (not pure math) PhD students. But 90,000 euro a year for pure math???

This amount is for a 4 year program.  Some went to the student, some to the group and some to the university itself.  It is what it is.  Any money for equipment and so on is generally above and beyond this amount.


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How does one effectively assign mathematics homework when all answers to all questions are available online?
In my department, we typically adopt textbooks that are very refined, sometimes in their 7th or 8th edition. Because these books have been around for so long, all of the homework problems have been worked out in full detail, and are easily found online. So it seems pointless to assign and grade homework since student can so easily copy the answers instead of working them out themselves. But if we do that, it seems like we're then eliminating a very important learning activity.
Many of my colleagues address this by not giving very many (if any) points for homework in the final grade. They sometimes give quizzes (which takes a lot of class time) to check whether the homework was absorbed. One feature of homework is that it is done outside of class, so that the class period can be used to discuss new material. I'm concerned that taking class time to force the issue of actually "doing" the homework will detract from the other aspects of the course.
I still think that mathematics is not a spectator sport, and most of the learning occurs when the students struggle with a good set of exercises and eventually find the answers on their own. This is especially true in courses that require proofs.
I've explained to my students that if they short-cut this self-discovery process, then they're limiting their learning opportunities. Still, many students copy answers.
So, in this age where all information is so easily accessible, how should we respond with how we assign homework so that students will produce their own ideas rather than copying the work of others? How do we re-enforce the idea that learning mathematics is learning how to find answers rather than just getting a copy of the answers?

The same question was asked when symbolic math packages (Macsyma) became sophisticated enough to pass freshman calculus. I believe that was solved by asking students to show their work, and sometimes to explain it. Even if you got the answer from a machine, having to prove it is legitimate practice. The other answer was to de-stress homework, but point out that without the practice gotten while doing homework it was going to be very hard to pass the exams.


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How to contact a PI when I have been out of the system for a while?
I want to do a biology/biotech related PhD in Germany, I have an MSc in the field and some good ideas about what I'd like to research (biofilms and/or synthetic biology, those really excite me) but in short I'm out of the academic environment from quite some time, I'm in my late 30s as matter of fact. For some reasons I couldn't follow my aspiration back in time but I want to follow it now and at my age you just leave all if you aren't motivated and don't really like what you're going to to, especially with a family.
My question is therefore: how to approach a German group/PI in my situation? Especially considering that I don't really know how the German system works and I couldn't obtain letters of recommendation as often the Graduate School there ask for.
I would like to enroll in a Graduate School(or the equivalent) mainly because I'm coming from outside but what I really need is someone who take care to bootstrap me to the thing and give me the opportunity to pursue some interdisciplinar approaches.

The german system is rather diverse; every PI can do their own thing.
For structured PhD programs (i.e. international Max Planck Research Schools; IMPRS) you will need: one or more publications; and good letters from two or more of your formers PIs. Max Planck is very competitive.
For individual PIs you'll be better off with a personal recommendation by your former supervisor.
Your age will factor in as the time between your last contact with academia and now, not as ``age'' in itself. To be honest, this will make things complicated, especially without strong support from a Prof. on your side.

Seems a bit like a gridlock here and I suspected that. I'm thinking how ease my way in that. I'm thinking about participate in some winter school or event where some of my topics of interest are researched even if some of those have similar requirements.

If in any way possible, try to get your old PI to introduce you to your new PI. Going to a conference or other event will cost money with a lower chance of success than a personal introduction.


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How important is the "major" of the PhD?
For sake of argument, let's say I obtain a bachelor's degree in physics, a master's degree in physics, and then a PhD in physical chemistry but from a department of chemistry. Can I then go on to be a physics professor? Or would I be confined to teaching chemistry?
One can imagine equivalent situations for other fields. Say, for example, a bachelor's in computer science, master's in computer science, and then a PhD in computational physics from a department of physics. Could that individual then become a computer science professor?

Related (about publishing in different fields): http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/28942/2692

It depends more on the aspect of your research. If you have a physical chemistry degree but do research more in the realm of physics, it is possible that you could be hired in physics or chemistry, even hold a joint position in both.
The limiting factor that your PhD major will be in that it is the general area where you are more trained in, that is, you can probably teach courses in your major better than those in the other department. Sometimes hiring decisions do take this into account.

For example, this is a common issue in mathematics faculty searches, where you sometimes get applications from candidates in related disciplines (theoretical CS, mathematical physics, Finance, Economics, or  Industrial Engineering/Operations Research) that may do very mathematically oriented research but might not be well prepared to teach a broad range of undergraduate and graduate level mathematics courses.  Even if this isn't really a problem, it's likely that members of the search committee will be more comfortable with one of their own kind.

The answer is very field specific. In many departments all that matters is your research. Does your dissertation and publications fit the department's vision for what it means to do research in field X, regardless of the field of your degree.
However, in some fields it is really hard to get in the door without a degree in that field. The example I am thinking of is Mathematics. Theoretical biologists, economists, social scientists etc. with degrees in the field of application tend not to end up in math departments even if nearly 100% of their research is proving theorems. This isn't to say it can't be done, but it seems as though it is much easier to move in the opposite direction from a math department to a science department. For example if you work on pure problems in probability but your degree is in economics, it is hard to get a job in a math department.
Disclaimer 1: it is unclear how much of this is due to selection bias by the job candidate vs. discrimination in the math department against people without math degrees.
Disclaimer 2: this is based on anecdotal evidence and faculty listings on department websites that show where mathematicians from science departments end up after their degree. I have not sat on a hiring committee.

In general I think it's easier to move "down" the spectrum than up it. Of course that's just a heuristic, most things don't really fit on a nice single dimensions like that.

@RogerFan I don't understand your comment, what spectrum are you talking about? I'm talking about a good mathematician who has a degree in a field other than math, there is no "downward" movement in my post.

It would seem to me that a person who did their undergraduate and master's degree in field X but their PhD in field Y would be better at teaching field X than Y except for the part of Y where they did their thesis. Do you disagree? For example, in the case of math: if a person did math until PhD and then did, say, economics, they could possibly teach many areas of math but only the area of economics where they focused. In contrast, if a person went through in economics and a PhD in some subsubfield of math, then presumably they would be better at teaching undergraduate economics.

@rhombidodecahedron this is true, which is why culture is #1 and teaching is #2. I think teaching tends to me more of a rationalization rather than the real reason. I deleted my unfounded hypotheses from the answer based on your suggestion.

@WetLabStudent Ah, I should have made it more clear that I was agreeing with you. I was talking about a general "hard" to "soft", or "mathy" to "less mathy". For instance, Mathematicians can often get placements in Econ departments, but rarely vice versa. The same goes for Econ getting placements in Public Policy schools.


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Value of PhD candidacy ("ABD")
If one is intending on leaving a graduate program before completing their PhD, is there value in obtaining candidacy status before leaving?
Does it depend on where they are leaving to? If so, consider the cases where the candidate is either leaving for industry or leaving for another PhD position. (And say they are contractually obligated to not leave immediately, so they would have time to reach candidacy.)

Note that candidacy=/=ABD in some programs.

My experience is that people outside academia are unlikely to know what "candidate status" even means.

My experience is that people even within academia are unlikely to know what "candidate status" even means.

For those Europeans wondering what a PhD candidate is: link

This is yet another one of those questions that seems to be implicitly USA-specific.  This should really be tagged us such.  I have the impression that this site has a fairly strong bias towards American viewpoints and issues, and doesn't explicitly identify them like Workplace.SE tends to.  In most places there's no such thing as "obtaining candidacy".

For some departments, reaching the candidacy stage means you have earned a degree (often an MPhil, but it varies). If your department gives a degree when you reach candidacy, then it provides a nice break point to leave. Industry might be fooled by it, but PhD programs often know the difference between degrees that you were intending on getting and those that signify a departure from original plans. A degree might have some value Thor industry and PhD admissions, but in general, people are interested in what you have done and can do, and not in pieces of paper. If there is no degree, then reaching candidacy, doesn't really matter for industry or PhD admissions.
While it might not help for getting a job or another PhD, reaching candidacy might give you a sense of closure and/or accomplishment. The value of that is deeply personal, but a lot of people describe themselves as being ABD even if they have no intention of finishing. You need to weight the value of being ABD against the cost of getting there. Often reaching candidacy means taking qualifying exams. Quals can be really hard and if you are not 100% committed you could fail! which might be worse for your psyche. I am not sure anyone goes into quals thinking, I am going to pass and then quit. Did I mention quals are painful. I have since forgotten all my coursework scars, but my qualifying exam scar I think is with me for life.

A Master's degree definitely has value if you enter industry even if it is received as a "golden parachute" out of academia.

If you are committed to leaving your current program, then candidacy is very likely irrelevant. It has varying meanings even inside academia (as noted by @JeffE in comments above), it will not matter to industry employers, and it is unlikely to sway other Ph.D. admissions committees. You should focus on getting the Master's degree, if you do not already have one - if achieving candidacy is in the critical path to that, fine, but otherwise I would ignore it.
I agree with @StrongBad that closure is important, especially after going through the trying process of making the decision to leave your Ph.D. program. I would suggest trying to find that from an achievement that will help you (a Master's degree) much more than candidacy will.


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Should papers try to be self-contained?
I gave my supervisor a paper draft today. They told me that I need to cut out the 5 pages of appendices that give all the equations (along with references of their original sources) needed for reproducing the results found in the main text.
My supervisor's argument was that papers should not be self-contained but rather that papers should direct readers to the different sources that came up with these equations. My supervisor went on to say that others might think I am trying to steal their future citations by attempting to have people cite my paper for a formula that someone else came up with (even though I provide attribution for the formula).
In my particular case, I am submitting to a journal with no page limits, albeit there are page charges that my supervisor will pay for.
Obviously, I am going to do what my advisor says for this paper. However, is this the general advice that I should carry with me throughout my career?

Every paper has a target audience.  How much info you include will be determined by what you assume a reader knows.  For 'basic' knowledge or concepts, it is sufficient to refer to them by their technical name.

@Prof.SantaClaus For the sake of argument, let's say there are fewer than 10 people in the world who are already aware of the equations I was listing in the appendix (I believe this to be roughly the case)

@rhombidodecahedron I would then trust that the editor will send my manuscript to a subset of these 10 people.  Also, just in case, I would provide references to anybody outside of these 10 and also provide a concise summary to guide readers on major concepts needed to appreciate the paper's contributions.  Another strategy is to have the full version on ArXiv.

Depending on the journal, those 5 pages of clarifying material might be candidates for the 'supplementary material' available on-line.

Self-contained software doesn't mean it has to statically compile everything into a big fat binary. Or to include every easily accessible library with release.

There is no hard and fast rule on whether to include calculations in papers that have appeared in other papers. It is a judgment call on the part of the author. For my papers, I have sometimes included these equations (either in the main body of the paper or in the appendix) sometimes I have omitted them and directed the reader to the bibliography, and sometimes I have just provided a brief sketch of the argument.
The reason to include them is because sometimes they are convenient for the reader. The main reason to exclude them are because they detract from the focus of the paper. As an extreme example, if your important new ideas in a paper take up 3-4 pages, it is strange to include 50 pages of previously published calculations, say, even if it is in an Appendix. It makes it harder for me as a reader to understand exactly what is the main point of your paper, and I might get the impression that the authors are adding fluff to make their contribution seem more important than it is. You want to keep your novel, important ideas at the forefront of your paper.
And don't discount the page length: even if they are no explicit page limits in a journal, you generally want to convey your idea in as few pages as possible. First of all, is the possibility that potential readers might be discouraged from reading your paper if it seems too long. Secondly, journals do hold longer articles to higher standards. When I was submitting to the top ranked journal in my field (which had no explicit page limits) we were told by a senior professor that our idea was worth publishing there if we could keep it under 30 pages, and probably not worth publishing there if it hit 40. In other words, there was a sense where our idea was not worth wasting 40 pages worth of someone's time, although it was worth wasting 30 pages worth of someone's time.
In summary, papers don't necessarily have to be self-contained, and how much to include previous work is a judgment call on the part of the author. I will add that as a student, it is probably best to defer to the advisor when making these judgment calls, as the advisor will be more familiar with the conventions and culture of your research area.

@user2390246 right! i misunderstood in my first reading. I delete the comment.

I think it's simple: if the tools or techniques that you need are easily accessible to the reader with clear references etc., then I think the best you can do for the journal and readers of your work is to give the intuition of that work and a clear reference. Nothing more is needed and indeed sometimes full details of such techniques might produce opposite than intended effects.
Keep your paper simple and to the point and avoid "fillers".
Be also careful that many journals with no page limits actually do have such limits: Siam journal on Discrete Maths is one on my mind in my field at least which, although it has no explicit page limit, it silently imposes higher standards to longer papers.

@user2390246 I mean exactly that: that although they do not explicitly say anything about page limits, they silently impose one. For example, in the mentioned journal, if the paper is greater than a given length (20-25 pages) then they apply different and higher standards or review. But something like that is not explicitly written anywhere in the Guidelines.

sometimes full details of such techniques might produce opposite than intended effects -- Wait, what? If full details produce unintended effects, isn't omitting the full details lying?

@JeffE I do not mean full details of your result but full details of the techniques used to derive these results. A pointer would suffice. If I try to include all the full details of the relevant literature, the reviewers might well say "look, are you trying to artificially inflate the length and complexity of your paper"?  That is what I mean by "ünintended" effects.

Papers must be self-contained to the point where, given relevant background knowledge and access to the same equipment/tools, a secondary party is capable of attempting to reproduce and/or verify the results of a respective paper. This is not about achieving brevity, but about ensuring clarity and comprehensibility. Detailed methodologies, data sets, and analysis techniques used in the study should be provided. The aim is to encourage transparency and facilitate scientific discourse by making the paper as accessible and understandable as possible, rather than merely limiting its length.

I almost always make them self-contained. Technically there were just 3 exceptions during my whole career where I needed to "borrow" some big chunk of an established theory well-written in some easily accessible textbook that would be hard to compress into a short sequence of relevant lemmas needed for getting the result I need.
In my opinion, the purpose of writing a mathematical paper is acquainting the reader with either new result or a new (at least, for him/her) idea (the latter IMHO is more valuable, but much more rare as well) in the most efficient and the least painstaking way. Everything that goes towards this purpose should be welcome and everything that goes against it should be frowned upon.
Creating a long chain (if it were just a chain, usually it is a branching tree growing exponentially in size when you try to dig deeper and deeper!)  of references, IMHO, impedes the process of reading and makes the verification of the proof extremely complicated. You are no longer saying: "Here is the result and here is how to obtain it in the shortest way from the basic principles", thus putting it in the context of not the irrelevant temporal history of who did what and when or what is the latest fleeting fad of the times, but in that of what exactly was really needed to be developed before your approach/technique/observation became possible as it is. Instead you downgrade your exposition to the conditional statement that "if 5 references I give, 25 references contained in those 5, 125 references contained in those 25, etc., are all correct, then what I'm writing follows" and create the (most often false) impression that to understand your work entirely, one needs to read several thick textbooks, several hard to get research papers often written in not the clearest possible way and proving only something similar to what you really need in a completely different notation and with a completely different emphasis, so you still need to make the final adjustment yourself. A 30-40 page argument written in a clear and coherent style becomes a monster encompassing thousands of pages of patchwork of loosely hanging fragments pulling in various directions and making the reader totally confused about what the main thing in the whole business is (note that the main thing in the proof is not necessarily the last step you added to it, even if the latter is truly novel).
That is about references the theorems. For just the equations, you can do it if all equations you need are contained in one textbook that is both well-written and easy to access and derives them sufficiently early in the exposition (so you don't need to read 300 pages of the linear text or do the painstaking backward search trying to figure out what on those 300 pages is relevant to what you are after to arrive at the result). If your advisor can come up with such a textbook, cite it. If he cannot, I would recommend denying his request for the appendix cut and keep the things as they are.
Now about My supervisor went on to say that others might think I am trying to steal their future citations by attempting to have people cite my paper for a formula that someone else came up with. Are you really "trying to steal"? If you aren't, don't bother too much about what other people might think (or even do think) about you. I'll tell you one unflattering truth: most of them do not think about you at all and are completely unaware of your existence and totally indifferent to it. When they are reading your work, they are interested in what is written there, not in you personally. Their goal is to understand your writing, not to judge your moral character based on it.
As to In my particular case, I am submitting to a journal with no page limits, albeit there are page charges that my supervisor will pay for., I believe that it explains the whole thing in a crystal clear way: your supervisor wants to spare a few bucks and, since people are usually reluctant to say such things plainly, invents a whole bunch of bogus "ethical" and other explanations of why the cut should be made. I have no idea about what moved you to the submission to a predatory journal in the first place (every journal that charges authors for their own work is predatory in my classification) while there are plenty of decent ones around (that is on the topic of "advice that I should carry with me throughout my career"), but once you've made such choice, you created an obvious conflict of interest, which you are trying to deal with now. In general remember that you don't need to publish anything beyond the initial minimal amount of few papers to get a decent position and then occasional couple of papers for promotion and such. You know how to prove the results you proved. It is the outside world that doesn't, and if it tries to make you pay money for sharing the proofs with it and going through the long painstaking process of creating the clear exposition in the form of "publication fees", "conference registration fees" and other modern nonsense, you are always free to send it to the Hell and keep the results to yourself, just sharing them with a few friends and colleagues in the form of private communication.
Just my 2 cents, as usual.

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As an American considering a post-doc in Australia, how does superannuation affect me?
I have been offered a temporary (3 years) post doc in Australia with a salary and superannuation.
As an American,

Can I access this money? Is there a penalty?
Can I transfer it to a tax-advantaged American account?
Is it held in an investment vehicle? Can I choose it?
If I do not retire in Australia, can I still let it sit in an Australian investment vehicle until I am retirement age and then withdraw from it?

@NajibIdrissi are you sure? Some countries have special tax/retirement conditions for post-docs.

https://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Super/In-detail/Withdrawing-and-paying-tax/Super-information-for-temporary-residents-departing-Australia/

The comment above about non-specificity to academia is mostly correct, but there are special considerations for academics.  Australian academics (including postdocs) typically receive their superannuation from Unisuper.
All Australian academics need to know that the rate of superannuation contributions varies and that there are defined benefit and defined contribution systems, depending on your contract you may not have the defined benefit option.  Most Australians do not have defined benefit.
If you are a nonresident you can (and are incentivised to) withdraw your superannuation when you leave Australia, but there is a big tax.  You may be able to obtain residency in order to avoid this tax, but it is very complicated.
If you are an American, you need to study up on Passive Foreign Investment Corporations.  In short, this is a tax the American government imposes on superannuation.  There is no way to calculate how much tax is owed.  The IRS says it will take you 40 hours/year to complete the forms.  Despite this idiocy, it is worthwhile to work in Australia.
I am not a lawyer.  Talk to someone who specializes in international taxation and/or investments.

"The IRS says it will take you 40 hours/year to complete the forms." What the heck? Are they asking for an essay on how you will be using the money?


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Should I accept authorship on large collaborations for which I have made little contribution?
I have just started a post-doc. So far all of my papers have had small author lists (4-5 people). I have just been invited as a co-author on several papers with hundreds of authors. The papers are pitched as community-wide collaborations: some being white papers describing a future experiment that the community plans to engage in, others being the results from first data from such experiments. My contribution, and the contribution of 99% of the authors whose names are already there, have been negligible. What are the pros and cons of agreeing to be on such a paper?

If there are hundreds of authors, realistically how big a contribution can one author make? Be a part of it if you are in the field. The field will understand the level of contribution.

@corey979 I'm not sure that meetings should always count as pro.

Keep you name on the paper - at least you made a contribution and therefore deserve the recognition... Unlike some of the other questions on here...

"Several hundreds of co-authors" sounds really dodgy, was this a predatory/low-impact/junk journal(/conference)? Who solicited your contribution - the journal editors themselves or their associates? Be suspicious. With so many authors, there is a possibility of some of them falsifying data.

@smci Rather than necessarily being dodgy, this sort of arrangement is completely routine, particularly in fields like genetics, where dozens or hundreds of sites must pool data to reach the numbers required for meaningful analysis. Rather than being dodgy, such papers are often published in prestigious journals and can receive thousands of citations. Also look at large physics collaborations, like the Large Hadron Collider paper on the Higgs boson in Nature: it had 5000 authors.

@MichaelMacAskill: perhaps (I never heard of that), but everywhere outside of fields like genetics it's unheard-of and extremely dodgy sounding. I can confirm that from CS, EE, Economics. Now we've determined the answer is hugely field-dependent, the question should reflect that. There are also predatory journals and conferences, as you know.

@smci It's extremely common in physics as well. Far from being predatory, these papers are published in the very best journals of our field, led by the top experts of our field. Surely it is field-dependent, but given that these papers often have many thousands of authors, it is a question that affects many academics.

@rhombidodecahedron: okay for those fields, but outside I never heard of

What are the pros and cons of agreeing to be on such a paper?

Pros

Your contributions to the collaboration are formally acknowledged, both incentivizing you to continue working on it as well as putting the candle under your butt to get up to speed on anything you should be getting good at.
Leaders in the collaboration see you listed as a contributing member, allowing your candidacy for the next round of projects that need attention by working group members.  Generally, people reach out to include you going forward.
You will be put on mailings that automatically include all researchers on the paper, keeping you up to speed as developments happen in real time.
Your association with the project is beneficial to both your career (i.e., Look at this thing I worked on!) and the project itself (i.e., Look at this great contributor we have!).

Cons

None.  Literally none.

There is a related problem in academia called illegitimate co-authorship, or sometimes authorship inflation, but that is a problem to be tackled by policy.  If this problem bothers you, find ways to contribute to the policies and incentives that systematically reinforce this behavior.  Boycotting it personally will only serve to harm your career and be a drop in the bucket of the larger problem.

Cons: they will always be highly-cited papers which will inflate your citation count and other metrics. People will interpret your citation counts with more skepticism or a "correction factor", so your individual work may get lost in the noise.

This sort of thing is common in many fields and unheard of in others. I suspect that in your field there are many such papers and, among other things, they establish your connection to a group of researchers who will, in the future, become leaders in the field.
So, yes, do that. And, as your career progresses your contributions will improve and increase.
There is at least one example of a paper in which the list of authors is longer than the paper itself. Possibly in a field like biochemistry, but I don't remember the details.

Large particle physics collaborations used to have a full author list in the paper. Fortunately that did not count against the page limit in, e.g., Physical Review Letters. Now the ‘author’ of those is a ‘collaboration’, the members of which can be found online.

@JonCuster You likely refer to the (current) champion with 5154 authors (https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.191803, open access).  Which is set in context to a few other "hyperauthorship" papers in a nature publication (https://www.nature.com/news/physics-paper-sets-record-with-more-than-5-000-authors-1.17567) -- equally accessible by open access.

@Buttonwood - even back in the 80's there were PRLs with an author list longer than the actual paper (nominally limited to 3 pages only at that time!). Somewhere around 1988 or so they switched to listing just the 'collaboration', thereby keeping everyone to the 3 page limit.

@JonCuster The varying discern of 'collaboration' and 'co-authorship' (e.g. the related drosophila paper with  ~900+ contributing undergrads), which may be a problem already within much smaller groups of authors, too is a reason why I like a section "Author Contributions" in PLoS One's publications.  And why the OP should seek to publish his/her results, if reasonable, separately, where his/her contributions may be more visible & influential to others. As reading body and SI of https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06185-8, the "management style" in such "enterprise-like" groups varies.

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Google Scholar has indexed the arXiv version and publisher version of my paper - but lists arXiv over the publisher. How to fix this?
I published a paper in Nature. (Not really, but just an example.) I put the preprint of the article up on arXiv. Now on Google Scholar it shows:
A definitive proof that P=NP when N=1
R Dodecahedron
arXiv preprint arXiv:3141.59265 12  2017

When I click the article, it says "Cited by 20    Related articles    All 6 versions". When I click All 6 versions, the Nature bibliographic information is listed there. How do I get that to be listed as default, instead of the preprint version, on my Scholar profile? As the article was published two years ago, I do not think the problem will fix itself at this point.

Does the arxiv entry contain the link to the published version?

I'm not 100% sure this will work (since I don't really have a way to test it), but I think you can try this. On your Google Scholar page (signed in):

Click on the link to the article in question --> this should pop up a window with more details.
Click on the "edit" symbol (pencil).
At the bottom, select "Unmerge this article and add it to my profile as a separate entry." --> close the window.
Select the two (or more) versions of the article and select merge.
This should pop up a window asking you to "Select the best version of the article." --> choose the Nature version.

The answers to these related questions may also be helpful: merging, linking

Thanks. That worked for fixing my profile. Unfortunately, when someone just searches for the article, it still comes up with the preprint version, and its publication information is masked until they go to All 6 versions. Any idea how to fix that?

Ahh I see. Hmm, no I don’t know. That’s annoying. Maybe the change on your profile just takes time to propagate to the rest of google scholar?


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My PhD advisor is writing most of an article without considering some of my inputs
We are currently writing a first article with my PhD advisor. The research was mainly designed by him; I performed all the experiments and found a model to explain the results.
The article is soon to be finished. I am supposed to be the first author of the paper but at this point, I am more and more considering to ask my advisor to put me as the second author or maybe even ask to have my name removed.
My advisor wrote most of the article, which I already find weird given that I am the first author. This is not due to my lack of initiative, I've been explicitly told not to write some parts. It really feels that I am simply a secretary asked to check for typos, formatting issues, and to make graphs and figures as he sees fit.
When I correct some of his writing, he sometimes takes into account what I propose/correct, sometimes he disagrees and explains why, but sometimes completely ignores it (my comment is deleted and not addressed). Some of these ignored comments are not fundamental, but I find some others very important and I am really not comfortable with some parts of the manuscript (he knows this given that I wrote it in the comments).
As an example, my advisor is very excited by a small theoretical model I proposed to him once that could roughly explain the experimental results. Yet there are still gaps and unsupported hypothesis. He knows that I am very reluctant to make this modeling an important part of the paper (which otherwise present both qualitative and quantitative experimental evidence of phenomena not previously reported), but this is now becoming more and more important and is almost the central part of the article. We discussed that once, his answer was simply that I should be proud of myself to have explained something rather than be too critical.
Other examples include him writing something along the line of "when XX was observed, we systematically found that this was due to YY". Something I actually only observed once and I am not confident that it can be so easily generalized.
My question is simply how to deal with that. My relation with my advisor was great but it is becoming more and more strained (especially from my side) as this article evolves. Is this a regular flow between a student and its advisor during the writing process? This is a long, in-depth >30-page article, if this information can be useful. With my Master advisor I had written and published a short-letter (4 pages), and I was completely leading the writing.

On the 'systematically found....' comment, perhaps your supervisor already knows it to be true.  This is usually the case if your supervisor is experienced and hence he/she can safely make a claim stronger even though you may have only seen it once.

consider yourself lucky. most phds have advisors who don't give any help

No. It is not a normal flow. At least it is not a good flow. Perhaps I was extremely lucky and or good during my phd.  I suggest you to be patient, show that you care a lot of the current paper, and perhaps things will go smoothly when you will write the second one. I wish you so.

I want to add that indeed writing "systematically" when the student say basically "once", well, doesn't have justification of sort. An experienced one shall write the paper so that won't be easy for a stupid referee to bother with details which are not the point, but without inventing even a single word as "systematically".. (if they're the points, then the paper shouldn't be written at all, but experiments repeated).

I do not know whether this could be an answer to your question or not.
I find it completely normal, especially because it is your first paper. My advised changed 99% of the first version of my first article, and when I read now what I wrote, I laugh about it because it was really low quality. Of course, this is normal because I was new in writing papers. My advisor did not even explain the changes. Instead, he said: "check my revision, and you will learn how to write papers".  Now his revision does not exceed 1%.
Back to your case, I think, your advised found that this paper has a high potential to be accepted, and he wants to increase the chances. Even if a scholar did the experiments by himself, the adviser has an experience of many years in writing papers. In the first paper, we usually try to write all the details, believing that they are all important. In most cases, what is important for a scholar is a part, which took more time. On the contrary, an experienced researcher knows what is important and what is redundant.
Overall, It is too early to disagree with your adviser about what to write, where his experience makes the difference. Try to follow him and if you are right, the reviewers will prove it. Otherwise, you will learn from your mistakes.

This answer gives good advice in general but I'm not sure how it applies to the specific situation. The advisor is claiming that something that was seen once is a systematic finding: that seems to be a straight-up lie, not a more experienced author knowing how to write better.

@DavidRicherby As far as I understood the description of the OP, I would not call it a lie. Rather, jumping to a quick conclusion. May be it is a weak point from the scientific point of view, but still OK, and they can indirectly discuss with the reviewers (in case it is submitted to a journal). Calling it a lie is an exaggeration in my opinion.

If something is "systematic", it must, by definition, happen almost every time. The only thing I can think of that's worse than describing something that happened once as "systematic" is claiming that something that never happened at all is "systematic". It's so egregiously untrue that "lie" seems to be the only possible description. It is claiming something as a conclusion that is completely unsupported by the experimental data.

@DavidRicherby I know neither the field of the OP nor the data. Therefore, I think this is not the right place to argue about this technical point. I still believe that it is wrong to call it a lie, except if (and only if) something different is mentioned in the discussion of the result. Otherwise, this is the job of the referees to find the weaknesses of the paper.

No, it is the obligation of the authors to make sure their paper is correct, not the referee's job to expose untruthfulness and overstatements.

This mainly depends on how you interpret what is correct and what is not. I do not see at all that the OP's description indicates something about a deliberate mistake. It is more about the belief that this conclusion is correct. Therefore, this is the job of the referees. Otherwise, we accept papers directly because everything in their content is assumed to be correct. The question in my understanding is about thee agreement between the student and his adviser.

This does not seem like the "regular flow" from my experience, contrary to what other answers state. Whether it is normal may depend on your field, country, and institution. Most PhDs I know or knew wrote their first articles with more help from their supervisor than latter articles, but ultimately they wrote the articles themselves. There are benefits to writing an article yourself, such as learning.
My answer probably can't just give another side to other answers, so my advice would be:
Discuss with others in your group, is this normal for them?
Discuss with your supervisor, explain that you want to learn to write a paper and this involves undertaking the writing.
Taking the lead is also a skill, which involves taking initiative in a way that does not create confrontation (although with some people, this may be impossible). One thing you can do for next time is simply to start writing yourself, then in meetings control what advice you are given, ask for the supervisor to look at specific definitions or how you have phrased a hypothesis. This way, you are in control but you are not in confrontation with your supervisor, in fact you are doing exactly what many supervisors want (becoming an independent researcher).

This is totally aberrant. I am a Professor (even when I was a student) and currently with my students, I take the time and effort to sit down with them and explain every single change. A student is not a photocopy machine and he/she should understand the writing process, not just memorize phrases and regurgitate them in following papers.
Keep in mind that this PhD student will become a Professor and a mentor one day and being currently a student is his/her only time to learn basics.

I think it answers whether it is normal, which the original poster asked. I think it's a good anewer,  multiple perspectives are useful.

If you have good relationship with the advisor this is probably the most important thing. Make you best to preserve this asset! The concerns that you describe indeed seem like issues related to the work, but not to his negligence or lack of respect to you. As people said before, your advisor is much more experienced than you. Writing and ultimately publishing the paper is very different from a seminar work. You will understand it, particularly, when you get your first reject from reviewers. Do not even think about changing your authors position in this paper. This is pretty usual that for the first paper the advisor makes a lot of work. If there are really conceptual issues that are red lines for you, try to explain and convince your advisor, to soften the phrase. Do it gently and keep in mind that you might not understand many things. If you now make all the editing by Email, ask to meet your advisor personally. You might be furious by Email, but when you meet, this probably can be resolved in several minutes.


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Asked to referee a paper on a topic that I think another group is working on
I have been asked to serve as the (only) referee on a paper that is in my field, but is not within my specific area of expertise. As far as I can recall, this paper seems to be on a topic that is also being independently worked on by a large collaboration of established researchers in the field. The work I am reviewing seems to be OK, though not especially good. I am under the impression, though I am not sure, that the large collaboration is working on a much more detailed and thorough version of the same work, but they have not published it yet. Should this affect my review in any way?

Suggest to the editor to approach members of that group as additional referees. Then write your own review anyway.

@Bergi An author on a competing, unpublished work would have a huge conflict of interest and could not serve as a referee

@thegreatemu Sure, but OP said "I am under the impression, though I am not sure". The potential referee would know whether they are currently authoring on the topic :-)

No. Jugde the paper based on the currently publicly available knowledge. The authors are not to blame for future knowledge.


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Should I ask for reference letters when soliciting applications for a postdoc?
The norm in my field is for every job advert to require 3 letters of reference.
From my point of view, this is a massive waste of effort.
I am going to put out my first ad for a postdoc, and I am considering not asking for reference letters unless the candidate reaches the shortlist.
What are the pros and cons of this?

Does your field regularly have "shortlists" for postdocs? You might be overestimating the number of applications you receive. I am applying for postdocs, and most ask only for references (not letters) at the start. A field tag would  be helpful

@AzorAhai-him- In my experience this isn't just field dependent, but also country dependent.

@TimRias Very true.

Whatever you do, make it clear in any advertising what is required. I'd at least ask for contact information for references, but letters would probably be preferable.
If you don't have comments from people that know the candidate and probably trust them, then all you have to go on is data and what they say about themselves. The latter may not be entirely trustworthy as they have a vested interest in the outcome. The "tone" of reference letters, along with what is said, can give a better reading of the candidate and how they are perceived.
But, again, if you only want letters from those short-listed, mention that in the ads.

While I fully agree with Buffy's existing answer, I want to add the following:
Your institution may have regulations regarding the number of and time of receipt of reference letters for postdoc applications.
In other words, you might have no choice. Some universities require a certain number of references to be received before the closing date of the application. Others require you to provide contact details upon which HR solicits the letters before shortlisting takes place. Others only require reference letters after ranking the candidates as a sort of last "sanity check".


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Is the editor-in-chief's advice sincere?
After submitting my paper to a reputable journal, the editor-in-chief sent me the following e-mail:
I am writing to let you know that I have briefly read your paper. It appears
that your submission is better suited to (and will be better appreciated by) the
IEEE Transactions on X, or Y. I am, therefore, recommending that you submit it there.

Both recommendations are also reputable journals and since the work is inter-disciplinary, such a reply does not surprise me very much.
However, I wonder if I can interpret this also as a kind of quality evaluation for my work, because after all she recommended high-impact-factor journals?
Or am I reading to much into this and the only message is that this is off-topic for the particular journal.
In other words, is this a common type of response or do editors base their responses also on the quality of the work (e.g. recommending lower ranked journals, conferences or straight forward not to publish anywhere)?

It sounds perfectly sincere to me, just reading the message itself. The article may be suited for those research journals more based on scope. Whether or not those journals were selected based on quality or familiarity is impossible to determine.

I would not interpret the message as a statement about quality. If the editor felt your article was below par for the journal you will most likely get such a message.
That journals reject papers because they are not suitable is not uncommon. In this case, as you say, the alternatives are also good quality publications and so it seems like good advice. The fact that the editor recommends these journals could actually mean that your paper is seen as suitable for publication in them and thus can be taken as a positive evaluation, however, not a guarantee for success.
I will finish by saying your editor does the job well. The alternative of accepting a paper for review although it may not be suitable for the journal could lead to a drawn out process leading to rejection and loss of much time.

I would actually think if your paper is of insufficient quality for the journal, you may get a generic answer like "We are not interested in publishing your paper at this time."  But if something more specific is said, I think you can assume the editor means it.

If nothing else, writing a message like that involves work for the editor, and editors are busy people.


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How to refer to advisor in nomination letter
I want to nominate my advisor for an advising/mentoring award. I always use my advisor's first name when I talk or write to him, and as far as I known most students in my department and university do the same with their own advisor. But would it be appropriate to do so in a nomination letter? It feels weird and distant to refer to Professor Smith, but I also fear that John may be seen as too informal in this context.

You're writing a formal letter, use the formal name, i.e. 'Prof. Smith' or 'Dr. Smith', you can even use 'Pr. John Smith' if you want it to sound less awkward, but 'John' is inappropriate in this circumstance.

Who is going to read the nomination, someone at your department or someone more like the Nobel Prize committee?

I would begin the letter referring to him by his full name with title and after this I would then go on to use his first name only. It implies that you know him well, allows you to easily change the tone of the letter to be more friendly and it's the way you're used to addressing him. For example:

I am writing to nominate my supervisor, Professor John Smith, for the XYZ Mentoring Award. John has been my supervisor for the past three years and his mentoring during that time has been second-to-none (etc.)


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MPhil applications - How flexible/sure should I be, and should I mention this possibility?
(I don't think there's a master of philosophy tag here)
I'm applying to PhD programs in pure math. I have a research master's degree in applied math. While it doesn't have a thesis, it has a course project. I've been reading about requirements for PhD programs and it turns out US-style PhDs expect only a bachelor's and a statement of purpose while European-style PhDs expect a (research) master's degree
I'm applying to universities places not in Europe or in the US that are somewhere in the middle. These universities offer MPhil.
Now, I have a feeling I won't be seen by universities as qualified for PhDs but will be qualified for MPhil. My ultimate goal is to pursue a PhD. I am perfectly fine with having to do an MPhil first.
My understanding is that

if I would apply for a PhD, then I should specify a certain area of math (for a statement of purpose; for a research proposal that's just the basics I guess) which I should be sure about researching otherwise I am a candidate who is not sure about research interests
but if I would apply for a master's, I should be flexible and thus state a certain area/s of research as merely a possible route

So what should I do for a statement of purpose for MPhil, which is somewhere in the middle of a master's and PhD? How sure/flexible should I be?
Additionally, is it disadvantageous to:

state in a PhD application that I am open to doing an MPhil?
apply for both an MPhil and a PhD in the same university?

I am concerned that doing either will count against me in being accepted for a PhD because it seems like I'm not so sure of myself.
I was advised to ask the admissions offices of the universities but that seems to me like asking a jury how to appeal to the same jury. I would ask a lawyer how I would appeal to the jury.
I was advised also to apply to MPhil's in some universities and PhD's in others. What do you think?

Typically departments (at least in the U.S.) will tell you on their website whether they have a preference about how you present your intentions.

I think you should try to get into a PhD program if possible.  However, you could apply to one or two master's programs just in case.
If your intention is to eventually get a PhD, just be honest about that.  In fact, for many departments, that would be a plus.

No one is going to hold you to what you write in your SOP.

They want to make sure you are motivated and have some sort of creative idea(s) -- but no one is going to check you against your SOP two years from now.
I'm not sure I covered everything.  To get useful responses, try to modularize.  It's okay to write more than one question.

Thank you aparente001! Are you European? (based on the second "e") ? Well I find asking the university like asking the jury how I should appeal to them. What are universities looking for in an MPhil application? Wait, is what you said about SOP applicable to any graduate program (assuming the grad program requires SOP and not a research proposal so let's not include European PhD's and I guess European MPhil's)

Actually I'm not quite sure you  exactly answered 2.1 or 2.2. I think it will be a bonus for MPhil applications if I say I want to pursue a PhD after but my question is if it may hurt my PhD applications if I apply for MPhil (in the same university) or say I am open to MPhil in my SOP for PhD?

Let's see if I've understood. Your preference would be to enroll in a PhD program, with the intention of earning a PhD; to hedge your bets, you are considering applying to both the PhD and master's track in University A, hoping this would increase your chances of acceptance at University A; you're wondering if doing so would weaken your PhD application to University A?

aparente001, yeah pretty much! Some universities need research proposal for PhD so I may consider applying only to MPhil there

@JackBauer - If you have a handful of departments in mind, maybe it would be helpful to share the names.  I really think that looking at what the department has published about its admissions policies and instructions could be the key.

@JackBauer - sorry I missed the first question.  I live in the U.S. currently but I am blingual, English and Spanish.  // I also somehow missed your comment aobut the jury.  I really would not look at it this way.  I would take the same approach as in a college course.  My point of view is that if I don't ask questions (I do try to ask good questions!), I'm not getting my money's worth.  From the point of view of the department, if a prospective student asks questions about how to navigate the admissions process, that will make his application easier to process, and his questions...

... provide useful feedback to us that we can use to make our instructions on our website clearer.


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TOEFL or IELTS - Which is more likely to be substituted for the other?
English is sadly my only language even though my parents and majority of my relatives are bilingual, and I completed my bachelor's and master's in a university where the medium of instruction is English and in a country where English is one of the official languages.
Despite this, some departments/countries/universities insist on TOEFL/IELTS, which is expensive and a hassle.
Which of the two tests covers more countries/universities/depatments?
I mean, let's say we pick 10 random universities on Earth that require at least one for fluent English speakers, how many are we expecting will accept TOEFL? IELTS?

What would be the point of picking 10 random universities? Find out the policies of the programs you want to attend, then see how many of them require TOEFL/IELTS.

Possible duplicate of In case of admission of international students, do the US,Canadian universities prefer more on TOEFL than IELTS?

Keep in mind that many universities recognise this issue, and so they offer waivers of the language requirements. E.g. Oxford.

@ff524 Most of the ones I want to attend won't require in my case. I may apply to others I haven't yet decided on applying. Of course the safest thing to do would be to take both exams, but I don't really wanna do that because of the expense, hassle and ridiculous nature of my having to take any of those exams

@101010111100 Well that's good but I have encountered in exhibitions or browsed some online that really require this regardless. So what about those few?

@JackBauer Have you asked them specifically? Some may offer waivers (or at least consider giving you one), even though they don't advertise this?

@101010111100 Yeah. I've definitely heard/seen of some universities or departments that require either. Among those, I think I've heard/seen only very few that require specifically one. Not just universities. I heard that there are some countries that require such exams for international students (although I am not sure they are strict with which exam to take)

Either works, I guess. You can always write to them asking about the alternative consideration.

Its my understanding that TOEFL is primarily U.S. based, and IELTS is more likely to be used in Canada, UK, and Australia.
Realistically, you should choose the universities you'd like to attend, then look at the English requirements.  Some American universities accept IELTS(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English_Language_Testing_System#United_States), and I'm guessing some European universities accept TOEFL.  If you have to pay for both, do that.  The cost and hassle is nothing compared to the cost of actually attending a University, and you're likely to score very well given that you speak English natively.

Just being able to speak English is not a guarantee that a candidate will gain top marks for either exam. You do need to prepare,  study, and take mock tests. The candidate must be familiar with the format, and be aware of what examiners are looking for. It is, therefore, a waste of time and MONEY (attending a course, buying exam prep books, hiring a private tutor etc.) to sit for two different exams, whose formats are significantly different to one another.

While yes, even native English speakers will need to study for an English proficiency exam, it will be much less study than a non-native English speaker.  The amount of study time and money will be far less that what is expected of a first year grad student.

Substituting is irrelevant. Many universities/programmes give their expectations for both TOEFL and IELTS.
However,

TOEFL is US-based.
IELTS is UK-based.

some departments/countries/universities insist on TOEFL/IELTS.

Universities/programmes will more likely favour either TOEFL or IELTS, i.e. you don't have to take both exams for applying to one university, for instance. You select to take one or the other.
From experience, reaching the required level of English skills for a UK university is easier with the score they expect in IELTS, than the score they expect in TOEFL, for obvious reasons - encouraging applicants to UK universities to preferably take the UK test.

Can you provide evidence (e.g. by linking to admissions requirements of US universities) that "If you apply to US universities, they will likely be more - if not only - interested in TOEFL score."? Your statement is at odds with what I have seen, which is that almost all US universities accept either exam, and among the few that only accept one, it's not necessarily TOEFL. (See this question)

That was also from experience, @ff524 . Might have changed since.

If it is correct, you should be able to provide evidence to support your assertion, by linking to many examples of admissions policies of US schools that only accept TOEFL. But I think it's not correct at this point in time.

Fair enough. Happy to take your feedback on board and retract.


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How to export references from Endnote web to Endnote X5?
I understand that Endnote X7 has the Sync feature to sync with the Endnote Web. But for some reason, the Sync is not working and my program is just getting stuck. So I have decided to use Endnote X5. But I do not know how to download the references from Endnote Web to Endnote X5. Can someone please help?
Thanks!

Here's a step-by-step guide, provided on the EndNote's Online Help page:

Export references following the export instructions using "RefMan (RIS) Export" as the export style;
click the Save To... button and save the export file to your computer;
open EndNote;
open an existing or new library;
select Import from the File menu;
in the Import dialog, click Browse to select the export file;
select "Reference Manager (RIS)" as the Import Option;
for EndNote 8 or later, select "No Translation" as the Text Translation (not applicable in your case).

Thanks for your answer. I had already tried this. But when I export it always seems to export a ".txt" file irrespective of which export style I choose from the list. Am I missing something?

@Yathi: You're welcome. RefMan (RIS) Export produces a text file, but with a corresponding internal structure. Try renaming the ".txt" file to ".ris" and then importing it.

Wow, it was that simple and it worked! Thanks!

@Yathi: My pleasure! I'm glad it helped.