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Will writing a thesis in MS Word or LaTeX impact my future career?
I wonder what is the trend or reaction of academia towards writing a thesis in MS Word. I am in the process of finalizing my PhD thesis, which is in MS Word for now. I am equally proficient in both Word and LaTeX so I have no problem in porting my work from one platform to another. Actually, I want to save my time and use it for proofreading. My university accepts theses in any format. But I wonder how it would be perceived by outside world· Maybe I am wrong here and somebody could correct me, but I think LaTeX is more appreciated especially in some STEM fields. Is having a thesis written in Word/Latex going to impact future career in any way?

Related / Duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5414/what-are-the-advantages-or-disadvantages-of-using-latex-for-writing-scientific-p

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/62400/advisor-likes-ms-word-i-like-latex

@Sursula I think it is not a duplicate if we consider that the actual question is the one in the body of the text: "Is having thesis in Word/Latex going to impact future career in any way?". OP needs to clarify and adapt the title accordingly.

Does this answer your question? What are the advantages or disadvantages of using LaTeX for writing scientific publications

I read all the related questions before writing to avoid duplication. All the links that have been shared are just loosely related. My question is particularly regarding thesis and the implications (if any) of having thesis on future career. I know some if not all take this seriously.

What field are you in? Some fields have expectations of LaTeX use. You should include this information in your post. Also.. Almost no one will read your thesis, especially if it's basically just a stapled version of papers you wrote for publication.

Do you really think people will care about the software used to write a thesis so much that this might impact your career?? As long as you are proficient in both (which can be mentioned in an application), I doubt anyone will care.

Just in case you do decide to use LaTeX (or any other WYSIWYM tool), I would highly recommend that you consider using Typst instead. It is newer and less mature than LaTeX, but the syntax is much friendlier, and I've personally found that I'm more productive using Typst than LaTeX. It is also maturing rather quickly, and new packages are added almost weekly.

"My university accepts thesis in any format." This is very unusual. Normally PDF is preferred and no one cares how it was produced.

The premise of this question makes little sense to me. They're not mutually exclusive. I write LaTeX in Word all the time. The Equation Editor implements much of LaTeX.

It's not that LaTeX is more appreciated - it's simply a pain in the ass to do many STEM things and in particular write mathematical equations in Word. And also bibliography management. But if you know how to do it properly in Word - good for you! Because I certainly don't.

I think LaTeX is more appreciated especially in some STEM fields

I'm going to agree with this and disagree with some of the other top answers. I don't know your field, but generally in fields like math and computer science, a thesis not written in LaTeX can be interpreted as a sign that it is of poorer quality. Of course, there are other solutions :)
In general, you should look to your advisor to understand publishing conventions in your field, and only deviate from them if you have a good reason to do so.

Publishing conventions in the field may or may not have anything to do with Dissertation requirements of a given school.

Not formally, but you will have both internal and external examiners with expectations of certain standards based on the conventions and standards of the field, and passing typically includes presentational corrections to meet/approach those standards.

@calebstanford Since this answer is now the "top answer" you should specify to which other answer you refer to.

The only people who will care about what you use to write your dissertation are the people who will be helping you along the way.
If your environment involves passing draft documents around and people who get it are expected to actually edit the document, then you need to provide people with a document that they can edit with no expectation of learning a new skill to do so.  In such a case, I'd lean toward Word, unless in your discipline the majority of people use LaTex.  If you'd like to use LaTex even if your editors/collaborators don't know it, you might take a peek at Overleaf, or any WYSIWIG LaTex editor that works for you -- but this may fall into the category of forcing people to learn new skills.
If your environment demands less editing, and basic pdf markup tools are enough for your helpful editors to send editing comments, then you can really use whatever you like.

For the benefit of non-LaTeX users who may not realize the following -- those of us who do collaborate in LaTeX swear by it, to the point where being forced to use Word feels like going back to the stone age. A real revision control system such as git has much better support for, say, branching, tagging, and 3-way merge, than anything MS Word can dream up. Yes, you need some skill to use these features, and if you don't have it, there is a learning curve, but once you reach the other side, there's no going back.

I would consider editing a document in MS Word as something that requires learning new skills, and I am somewhat proficient in LaTeX. I think I am not alone in this.

My advisor was proficient in LaTeX and often directly edited the source in overleaf. But he also liked to mark-up pdf's - which was slightly problematic because I mostly used Ubuntu Linux and even the basic annotations he added weren't all supported in the open source PDF viewer I was using (so I wasn't even aware he'd added them). I ended up having to review his markups on my macbook. So in general I found cloud based collaborative tools best.

@DavidWaterworth Maybe your experience was further back, but Evince has supported annotations for a while now. https://askubuntu.com/a/309526

I am reasonably good in LaTeX and can collaborate in Word. Simple version comparisons in Word are nice, but I always kept this fear that few clicks could mess up a document irreparably (with emphasis on "irreparably"). E.g. auto-citations in Word always raise my pulse and I cannot help but repeatedly check on the fly they have been handled correctly, and things always feels flimsy. Maybe it's just the experience of having seen people lose major formatting etc. in the past and it's improved now. Your captain recommends for your blood pressure: Word for smaller docs, LaTeX for larger ones.

@Anyon it was around 6 months ago, my supervisor used two different types of markup - one would show in Eviews and the other didn't. I'm not sure what the difference was, even in Adobe they'd render slightly differently.

In retrospect, I suppose my answer assumes one main driver of a paper, and that driver will be doing the lion's share of the formatting.  In my experience, this is how multi-authored papers tend to work.  Most contributors will just be editing text.  Even someone who has never opened Word should be able to do that in Word, maybe with a 10 minute ramp-up.

No one cares about the technology you used to produce the document. The most important is the content of your thesis.
It is valuable to know both LaTeX and Word specially if you work in interdisciplinary projects, LaTeX is mainly used by Physicists, Mathematicians, Computer Scientists, and professionals in other fields that require the writing of equations. Right now I have to write all my papers in Word because I need to enable and facilitate the collaboration with my coauthors.

FYI, I am from engineering background.

Most interdisciplinary projects don't include physicists or mathematicians, so that could probably be phrased better.

This is a bit overstated. In my field (computer science), if your thesis is not written in LaTeX people may interpret that as a red flag that it is of poor quality. Of course there are other solutions :)

Physicists, mathematicians, engineers, and almost certainly others.

@AzorAhai-him- in my corner of the world a lot of physicists and mathematicians work in interdisciplinary projects, myself included.

@TheDoctor I never claimed they didn't? But as you wrote it originally "It's valuable to know LaTeX specifically if you work in interdisciplinary projects" implies that all interdisciplinary projects include physicists and mathematicians, which is certainly not true.

@AzorAhai-him- I wrote it was valuable to know both, LaTeX and Word. But I agree it could have been phrased better, sorry about the confusion. Have a nice weekend!

@TheDoctor Right, I was quoting the relevant parts I was replying to. I don't think it's in debate that knowing Word is useful.

As other answers already say, the software used to produce your thesis is unlikely to directly affect your future prospects.
However: a beautifully-presented thesis creates a good impression, while a poorly-presented one may be hard to read, and raise questions about whether the underlying research also lacks attention to detail. Word and LaTeX can each be used to generate good-looking documents, but it is (arguably) much easier to make a bad-looking document in Word.

+1 for "much easier to make a bad-looking document in Word"

Loads of equations? - latex.
Otherwise, copy the preference of your supervisor.

This a great pragmatic answer

This is the correct answer to the question: which tool should you use to write your thesis? Which is different from the question asked.

I'm an engineer in a mixed academic/industry environment and I interview candidates for jobs.  I personally cringe at the idea of writing any large math/science-intensive document in Word.  By math/science-intensive I mean equations, figures, lots of references, etc.  When I see a publication, report, or thesis that was written in Word, I can tell the difference and it stands out to me.  I look at it and wonder to myself why anyone would do it.  However, it wouldn't disqualify you as a potential hire with me because

LaTeX isn't a requirement for the job,
It's not that important to me, objectively speaking, and
I've honestly never looked over someone's thesis at that stage (it may happen some day)

I've seen moderately math-heavy articles written by very advanced and experienced staff typeset in Word.  I don't think it set them back in their careers.
The reason I cringe at the idea of writing something big in Word is because Word is clunky and especially cumbersome once you reach a certain size and level of complexity.  Handling references, placing figures, and entering anything more complicated than straight text is faster and smoother in LaTeX.  Comparing, merging, and version controlling LaTeX source is also very easy.  Large documents can be split over multiple files.  Generating a full (or partial PDF) from LaTeX source for proof-reading is often faster than scrolling through a Word document.  Finally, LaTeX output is typically better looking than Word, even if Word is used properly, but I suppose that's a bit subjective.

Word 2007 introduced a new equations feature that makes it very easy to enter equations, mathematical symbols, etc.  What you type is very similar to in LaTeX, but overall it is easier as you can see the result straight away and you don't need to compile the PDF to check it. I also disagree that Word is clunky beyond a certain size and level of complexity. These are canards that LaTeX users have been saying about Word for decades and I don't think they are actually true.

@toby544 Personally I've found Word's equation editor to be clunky, lacking a lot of useful features, and frustrating to use, not least because the web app version of word doesn't always display them. I can typeset an equation ten times faster in LaTeX than in word, and a PDF can always display them correctly. Besides, many LaTeX editors and IDE plugins have an "equation preview" feature which allows you to hover over an equation and see the output instantly instead of compiling the whole document.

@Crazymoomin. https://superuser.com/a/509805

@toby544 I use that MS equation editor regularly and I've typeset 50+ page documents in word.  I don't know what LaTeX users have been saying for decades.

@aquaticapetheory OK. They have been saying what you said in your last paragraph, plus the claim that writing equations in Word is a nightmare. But it sounds like you know more about Word than most of them.

@ScottSeidman Thanks, I gave it a try but I struggled to get it to work.

Tables. Many large, tables.  When I got to the point that I was looking up and installing the 7th package to try to enable table formatting I've been able to do out of the box since Word 95, I gave up and moved back to using Word.  What actually matters is getting it done.  (Oh, engineering, hundreds of pages with many refs, figs, and equations.). At the end of the day, people are only going to read the PDF.


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What are the challenges to publishing a paper when you have a huge number of collaborators?
Following on from this question, I'm really curious to know about the logistics of large scale collaborations when it comes to publishing a paper that everyone has some contribution to.
To summarise, the recently published paper on the detection of gravitational waves had an author list with over 1000 names and 133 institutions. The sheer number of people involved would make publishing a single paper somewhat less straightforward than, say, a small research group based at a single institution.
So, to my questions:

What were the logistical challenges of having over 1000
authors/collaborators when it came to publishing a single paper?
How were these challenges overcome?

I want to make this question as specific and answerable as possible, so please edit this question as appropriate.

Consider also the benefits; e.g. no one author can make the publication process painful for anyone without real consequences, which sometimes happens with few authors ...

I have recently been the primary organizer and lead author on a large-scale collaboration, in my case an inter-laboratory study that took place over two years and with more than 100 contributing teams.
The paper has been accepted and is currently in press, and my experience so far has been actually a remarkably low amount of pain.  The way in which we organized the study and the subsequent writeup had very clear roles, so there was never any question of having 600+ people trying to collaboratively write up a document.  Instead, I led the writing with help from the other core authors; once we were satisfied with the draft, we circulated it to the whole community of authors for review, consent, and corrections, with a one-week deadline for responses.  Lots of small corrections came back: we integrated them and submitted the paper as planned.
With all of those eyes on the paper, it is perhaps unsurprising that the reviewers requested only truly minor revisions, which meant there was no need to involve the entire community in the revision, just the core authors.  A live-updated draft has always been available to the full community, however (Overleaf is great for this purpose), and additional small corrections have continued to trickle in, up to the very final revision.
In short, then, we simply short-circuited the challenge of many authors by using the project organization to divide into a small group that managed the actual writing of the paper and a much larger group that gave advice and consent.  There was one very busy week while the bulk of the feedback was coming in, but other than that it has not been very difficult to manage the paper-writing process in the least, and it appears to have been a good experience for all involved.

Did you only had one round of one-week response collection? Seems like some corrections may contradict each other, so you might need another round.

@svavil If there had been significant conflict in opinions, yes.  In this case, there was not.

@svavil I've been part of the process on a tens of papers signed by 80-300 people. It's not uncommon to need more than one round of comments, and sometimes comments necessitate major changes. What Jake describes here is the "it went smoothly" version, but it is not that unusual.

An article on Retraction Watch today directly addresses this question. Here's a quote from When it takes a village to write a paper, what does it mean to be an author?:

[A]uthorship is determined by a set of criteria based on time in the collaboration and/or ‘service work’ – jobs like hardware upgrades, detector calibration, data-taking shifts, and the like, overseen by a hierarchy of institutional leads and, for the largest collaborations,  national leads. People join the author list after meeting these criteria, and usually stay on until a certain amount of time (typically six months or one year) after they leave the collaboration. Authors are listed in alphabetical order; G. Aad is a prolific first author.
Everyone is an author on every paper, whether or not their specialized work contributed to that paper. Someone who worked on muon detection, for example, would be listed as an author even on papers that do not involve muons. There is no requirement that the individual authors have even read the paper, much less contributed to the writing.
Papers are actually written by a small group of authors or a committee, and internally reviewed by multiple committees. Individual authors typically have one opportunity to comment on the manuscript before submission to a journal. In some collaborations, individual comments are common; in others they are not encouraged. This is all governed by a collaboration governing document – a kind of membership agreement between the participating institutions. This is very different from authorship in a small group.

It is worth noting that many such large collaborations also have a process for "small author-list" papers for sub-projects that were limited to a few (or few dozen) people and didn't rely on the existence of the whole thing to get done. Things like like building and characterizing the special purpose detector you brought in to measure a background (which was done by people from only two groups) may generate a limited paper, while the in-situ measurement of the background will be part of a background-studies paper (or section in a large paper) signed by the whole collaboration. As always YMMV.

source: Stack Exchange

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Can somebody paste links to examples of phd theses without acknowledgements?
I read this question and the answers, and found it interesting: PhD thesis without acknowledgements
I would like to ask some follow-up questions to this topic.
Speaking for myself, I have a long time in front of me before finalizing my phd, but I would really like to skip the acknowledgements, for 3 different reasons.
1) I think there is something principally wrong for a phd student in thanking a supervisor. It is like saying thank you to your boss in public. Nobody can know if you thank him only because you are dependent on him. And to thank somebody in public that feeds you seems like selling your soul.
2) Everybody knows that a phd candidate can not do all the work himself. He doesn´t need to actually say to the general public that a lot of other people contributed. Everybody knows it. That doesn´t mean he is not a generous person, does it?
3) Regarding personal life, I´m not interested in sharing that with anybody in the acknowledgements. If you write acknowledges you must include your wife or girl-friend. So if you don´t have a wife or girl-friends, isn´t this a pretty good reason for skipping acknowledgements in your phd?
I´m not afraid of destroying my carreer by skipping the acknowledgements. What I am afraid of is to be looked at as a person who is not generous, or even a social moron.
I´m not a mathematician, I´m doing social sciences. Does anybody have good examples of people who have skipped the phd acknowledgements without being seen as ungenerous or a social moron witin social sciences or humanities? If so, could you paste the links to these theses?
Is it more socially accepted to skip acknowledgements for people who are unmarried/ single?

Welcome to Academia SE. Unfortunately there are several problems with your question: 1) You are asking many questions at once. 2) Your first question (Does anybody have good examples of people who have skipped the phd acknowledgements without being seen as ungenerous or a social moron witin social sciences or humanities?) requires evaluating somebody’s social status, which is opinion-based. 3) Your second question (Is it more socially accepted to skip acknowledgements for people who are unmarried/ single?) is either opinion-based or already answered by the question you linked.

What you might ask about however (in my opinion) is about the possible consequences of skipping the acknowledgement, if you inform every person you would acknowledge of your opinion and that they should not take it personal (or similar).

Reg (1): at my previous university -- acknowledgments were added only to the final version, that is after you passed your defense. Reg (3): you need not add your wife/GF if you don't think it fits. It's all up to you.

I think this question ultimately boils down to "Will someone who does not publicly express gratitude in situations where it is normal to do so  be seen as ungenerous?," and that's not an academia-specific question.

I'd say rethink it near the completion of the thesis.... you may think of all this questions as moot points (or moo points? it does make sense, right?)

I didn't write any acknowledgement in my PhD thesis. Instead, I put this wonderful strip from Calvin and Hobbes (with permission of the syndicate). Whether or not I'm a social moron is still matter of debate in the scientific community around me :-)

It is like saying thank you to your boss in public — Yup.  And not thanking your advisor in your thesis is like not thanking your boss in public.  Which do you think would raise more eyebrows?  Following a harmless social custom is not "selling your soul".

Some acknowledgments are mandatory for reasons of scholarly ethics: if anyone made a real intellectual contribution, then you have to acknowledge this to give credit (even if it doesn't rise to the level of coauthorship), just like in published papers.  There's some wiggle room regarding what counts, but as a general rule you should mention anyone who contributed ideas, had lengthy intellectual discussions with you on your thesis work, or offered substantive feedback on a draft.
It's perfectly fine to restrict the acknowledgments to strictly academic matters.  You don't need to mention friends, romantic partners, or family members, except to the extent they made academic contributions.  They might feel left out if they were hoping to see their role in your life highlighted, but only you can judge whether that will be an issue in your own case.
It's common to thank your advisor even beyond what ethics requires, but this is not necessary.  However, if you don't thank your advisor at all, it will suggest that you are disgruntled and feel your advisor's contributions don't merit acknowledgment (in particular, that your advisor didn't offer useful feedback or guidance).

And to thank somebody in public that feeds you seems like selling your soul.

Maybe it would for personal thanks (although this is very common), but academic acknowledgment is different.  If it makes you feel better, you could try to word it carefully.  For example, "This work would not have been possible without the supervision of [advisor], who guided me at every stage of this project: understanding the literature, carrying out field work, and writing the dissertation."  It sounds pleasant and generous, while being a strictly objective description of what happened rather than expressing personal judgment or gratitude.  (The other extreme is to write something fawning: "I am grateful to [advisor] for taking time away from more important projects to share his brilliant insights and wisdom with me, despite my unworthiness.  I will never be able to repay this act of staggering generosity."  I agree that this is problematic.)

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


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Submit my R-package to CRAN or Bioconductor?
I have a new academics R-package for bioinformatics and I would like to submit my package online.

Where I should submit? If I submit to Bioconductor, they have a 6 months release cycle. What about CRAN? Will they release my package once it's reviewed?
I don't think the users care where they get the package from; CRAN or Bioconductor. What's the advantage of submitting to Bioconductor? Why not just to CRAN? Why all the bioinformatics packages get submitted to Bioconductor? I don't see they actively promote the packages. Why not to CRAN?
Can I submit to CRAN, then later change to Bioconductor?
I have a very detailed user guide in DOC/PDF format. However, the Bioconductor requires a running vignette. I think they mean a markup document that all the examples can be run automatically by the build process. What should I do? Should I convert the 100 pages guide into the markup format? Should I just submit to CRAN because I don't think (but I'm not 100% sure) they require a vignette.
Does a static DOC/PDF document sufficient as a vignette?

There's a lot of questions here and I'll try to address them. Full disclosure: I'm experienced with CRAN but not with developing on Bioconductor.

Where you should submit depends on a variety of factors. Since it's a bioinformatics package, it would fit well in Bioconductor, but also in CRAN. A CRAN maintainer will review the contents of your package for compatibility with CRAN's standards and let you know about any issues. If there are no issues, the package can be published on CRAN within a few hours of submitting. Though sometimes it takes longer. I've never had to wait more than 24 hours.
I'm not in bioinformatics, but my best guess is that Bioconductor exists to help make finding relevant (i.e. bioinformatics) packages easier. According to the website Bioconductor provides tools for the analysis and comprehension of high-throughput genomic data. Thus it may be advantageous to put your package there because it is more likely to be found. CRAN currently has 8907 packages available while Bioconductor only has 1213 software packages. While this is still likely too many to sift through, it may be easier for users to find your package than amongst all the non-bioinformatics packages also on CRAN.
According to Bioconductor's package guidelines page: Authors are strongly discouraged from placing their package into both CRAN and Bioconductor. This avoids burdening the author with extra work and confusing the user. If you plan on submitting to Bioconductor, I'd suggest going straight there and avoiding CRAN altogether. It's frustrating to the end-user to write lots of code using one package to find that the package is changed and your code is no longer compatible and needs to be manually fixed everywhere you used it.
CRAN does not require vignettes. Changing a Word document to a Markdown language may be faster than you expect and worth the effort if your functions require explanation for most users.
Static documents won't fly on CRAN as a vignette. Here's some good info from Hadley Wickham: http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/vignettes.html#vignette-cran

My suggestion is to submit to Bioconductor. Your audience is more likely to find it there. If you're concerned about the wait to publish, you can make a public repository on GitHub where your peers can find your package.


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How to search for one phrase in the title and a different phrase in the body of the paper in a single Google Scholar search?
Google Scholar is a very good source of knowledge especially with its advanced search, but the options in the advanced search is either search in the title or in the whole paper. How can I search for a word in a title and a word in the paper itself?
e.g. I want to search for papers that title contains the word "meta analysis" and the body contains "Alexandria". Is there a regular expression to do this?

I am not sure what this question has to do with "regular expressions". A more suitable term might be "faceted search" (?)

note on RE, there's a very nice answer on google and regular expressions here: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/19673/is-there-a-way-to-search-in-google-using-regular-expressions-regex = google can't do regular expressions as running them over so large data would require too much computational power. but I believe on "faceted search" the question has a response.

@puslet88 It is capable of some regex operations, such as wildcards and ranges.

@AustinHenley oh wow, thanks, it allowing asterisks (*) is news to me. At least it didn't use to be a case once upon a time. Thanks!

You can use intitle: to search for phrases in the title (no space after the colon) and similarly you can use intext: to search in the body.
intitle:"meta analysis" intext:Alexandria

Thank you, can you please show me how to include more words? e.g. the titles contains meta-analysis OR cross-sectional and the text contains Alexandria AND Egypt.

@ahmedmar You can just use multiple intext operators as well as use the typical Google operators for boolean operations (e.g., OR). Also, more help about Scholar operators can be found here.


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Is ethical approval needed for online studies?
An online study, the participants had the full choice to fill the questionnaire and they signed (a check box) that they agree for sharing their data in the study. In this case, Do we need an ethical approval ?

The answer to the question "do we need ethical approval for X study" is ALWAYS yes.  The format is irrelevant.  Your institution's ethics review committee will have a category for "minimal or no participant risk" which will often have fewer detailed requirements for submission in instances such as the one you describe.
Nevertheless, the issue is about /independent/ assessment of ethical research.  Even when you believe your study guarantees /zero/ risks, you must have an independent panel validate your method.


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Is it unethical to edit the text of my undergraduate thesis prior to sharing online?
My undergraduate thesis was completed almost a decade ago and is not available online, nor was any publication made from the findings. I would like to share it online, but looking back on it I notice many grammatical errors and conclusions that make less sense to me after gaining research experience. Is it unethical to make considerable changes to the text, or should I produce the document as it is to provide an honest representation of my early work?

Another alternative: Correct only form, not substance (grammar and style fixes) of the original text, noting so at the start. Then, add an appendix or something clearly marked as a later addition, commenting on inaccurate conclusions.

I like your suggestion muru, but I think it would be important that the primary text be the more coherent (edited) version. So having it the other way round - the original as appendix to the revised text. This is similar to Peter Cordes answer.

It's unethical to misrepresent it.  Change your views 180 degrees if you like but don't misrepresent.  The safest alternative is to provide both your revised and your original versions.  Do that and you can ethically do what you damn well please.

Why not simply putting both original and revised version online? (With clearly stating which is which.)

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/51277/should-i-correct-a-successfully-completed-masters-dissertation-before-publishin/51483#51483

If you were posting it somewhere like Github (not sure what field you're in, but it's standard in CS for instance) you could easily post the original, edit the next and explain the edits in your commit message. It allows people to see the full history with a changelog at no extra work for you (apart from running these commands: git init git add git commit git push git add git commit)

IMHO it depends on why you want to make it available.
If your primary reason is that you want to make information available more publicly, you could produce a "revised edition" of the thesis and add a preface stating that this is a substantially revised and edited version of your thesis - just like other books do. If you just correct typos and grammar, just say that.
There is also the possibility to comment on the conclusions you don't see like that any more in a way (formatting, footnote) that makes clear that this is a point where your opinion now differs.  (like a commented edition of some work).
If your primary reason is to give the text your online CV refers to, then leave it unchanged.

The OP could post both versions, so readers could even diff them if they wanted to.  You'd probably want to direct readers to the version you think is better / easier to read.  You should still write a short summary of why you updated it and what the changes were, but that section can link to the original.

Is it unethical to make considerable changes to the text

No, it's not unethical, but if you make changes it would be useful to include a note or a preface disclosing that that is an amended version of your original thesis, and if your conclusions have changed considerably after further experience, you can explain why.

The important thing in such matters is to be honest.
Releasing a revised version clearly marked as such is perfectly ethical.
Releasing a revised version while leading people to belive it's the original thesis that you submitted to the university years ago would IMO be unethical.

If you don't assert that the item posted is your thesis, I see no problem.  If you want its connection with your thesis to be known, you could just state that it is based on your thesis or is a later revision of your thesis.

How would you refer to it other than by calling it your thesis? It doesn't sound possible in practice...

I might just say it's a later edition of a work whose first edition was your thesis.

Oh sorry, I meant without making the connection to your thesis at all, which was the basis for your second sentence.

If you don't want to mention the connection to your thesis, I think you could just say it's something that you wrote.

If the subject matter merits publication, but a good publication would require a lot of change, just write up something else and publish that instead; say it's mostly based on your undergraduate thesis. I wouldn't try to rewrite my thesis in retrospect (except for fixing typos etc.)

This would be the preferred action to take and IMO it does merit publication. However, I no longer have the data set - broken hard drive.

You could publish both versions, so readers can even diff them if they wanted to.
You'd probably want to direct readers to the version you think is better / easier to read (i.e. the revised one).  You should still write a short summary of why you updated it and what the changes were, but that section can link to the original.
It's probably fine to correct grammatical mistakes in the original, but any changes to how the ideas are presented should only go into the revised version.

If you want this to be an accurate representation of your undergraduate work, then you should leave the suspect conclusions intact.  There's something to be said for the logic of inexperience.
If I were doing this, I would edit the text for grammar (including spelling, typos, etc.) and possibly form (section headings, page layout, etc).  I would also add a preface discussing the changes, pointing out that they are for readability and do not affect the content of the work.  I would also comment on the content in the preface, discussing how I would amend the old conclusions based on new experience.
It might also be of interest to address why this is a worthwhile endeavor at all in the preface.  Was there some new finding that sheds light on this old work?  Is the old work a step in the direction of a recent technique?

This came to mind for several reasons: 1) After posting the title of the work online I received several requests for a copy of the text 2) The work is in line with my current focus so will add to examples of my experience in the field 3) I no longer have the data set, otherwise I would attempt to publish the findings instead.

I meant that statement as a recommendation to include the worthwhileness (?) discussion in the suggested preface.  I'll clarify.


text:
Is it possible to ask two professors to write a joint letter of recommendation?
I have been working with two faculty members on the same project. I took a class from each of them, and the three of us meet in person on a weekly basis. I think it's reasonable to assume that they've seen the same level of research ability from me.
I am planning on applying to graduate school, so I was wondering if it's appropriate to ask them for a joint letter? My motivation behind this is

the two of them mentor me on the same project, so 2 separate letters may have unnecessary overlap?
applications typically require 3 letters (I already have 2). For schools which you can submit > 3 letters, I would think they still value quality > quantity
may be slightly less work for both of them (?)

I don't want to come off rude by asking the two of them to co-write a letter of recommendation for me. Is it generally deemed appropriate to ask two faculty members to do this? I think this is quite uncommon because on applications I only get to designate one writer per letter of recommendation (i.e. provide just one name, his/her title, email, phone, etc.). If so, how should I phrase the question of asking both of them to co-write a strong letter of rec for me?

Concerning your last point: Writing letters of recommendation might be different from other writing tasks, but I have so far never found jointly writing something to be less work than writing it on my own, so I think that question mark is probably well warranted.

@sgf, surely jointly writing research papers is less work than writing it by yourself?

Before going down the path of getting one letter from two people, you might want to determine if it makes more sense to not go forward with a letter from one of the other two people who have already agreed to write letters and, instead, proceed with two distinct letters from the two faculty members you mentioned in your question. (You might also consider editing your question to elaborate on who your other two letter writers are and why you think those letters are helping to strengthen your application.)

Two professors offered to write me a joint letter of recommendation for graduate school. I had not worked particularly close to any of them, but had taken classes with both and we were all participating regularly in a seminar. Both professors had previously attended the school I was applying to and I got accepted. In this case the school welcomed 5 letters and I had 4.

I have received applications that have had such a letter in them (well, at least one).  It came from a lab director and the applicant's immediatiate postdoc supervisor in that lab.  I thought the letter conveyed the student's experience in that lab very well, provided a nice bottom-to-top view, and it was more clear than if it were two letters, as I didn't need to put the connection between two letters together in my own head.
The letter did not raise any eyebrows, and it seemed entirely appropriate to me.
It's probably not the right thing to do more often than it is the right thing to do, but when it's right, it's right.
To directly answer the "how do I ask" question, something along the lines of "given the limit on the number of recommenders allowed, it occurs to me that there may be certain advantages to getting a joint letter from you and Dr. X, especially because ... [reason goes here].  Do you think this is an OK approach, and are you amenable?"

To be honest I have never heard of such a thing.  Even when getting letters from professors who co-advise all their students (such as husband and wife profs), I have been given distinct letters.
I would recommend picking one of them.  If in their letter they were to say that they're working with you along with Professor Plum and the letter writer believes Plum shares his/her sentiment, that would be fine.  But co-signing does seem very unusual.
PS.  If you were applying someplace that required exactly one letter, there might be some stronger case for combining them.  Given that there are 3 but you've already allocated 2 of them, I think it would be really odd to try to have the 3rd cosigned: it's like you're cheating to get 4 people to recommend you when you're allowed 3.

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


text:
How to politely ask supervisors for a 1-2 month contract for finishing some work?
I've been doing my PhD in a research centre for four years with a contract, and abroad from my hometown. My contract finished 3 months ago and I recently defended my thesis (consider the economical effort from my side for that period).
Now I am looking for a postdoc and my supervisors are pushing me to publish some results and to write additional manuscripts. However, I have no contract anymore. No income. How could I politely let them know that I require a contract for at least 1-2 months in order to finish that work? I cannot live much longer without income, as my savings will be seriously affected (I have already lost money).
I have a fairly good relationship with them, but I think they are taking advantage on me in an unethical manner, but they may believe I owe them this because I have been their PhD student so far and very proactive. So I think it's complicated.
I do not want to be impolite and to keep a good relationship, but just to let them know that they have to pay me if they want my work now because it's money and time that I'm losing.
Sorry for the long text and thanks for any help that you can provide.
Some remarks:

My supervisors always complaint about the difficult economical
situation due to the crisis (Maybe I'm wrong, but the crisis was 10
years ago?).
They have recently made another contract for one year to a postdoc
who has been here for 6-7 years already.
Last year the 5 permanent positions of the group (and any PhD
student) went to 1 or 2 conferences in US for a whole week, with the results
of the students. Considering the overall expenses of those conferences, that is more than a whole year salary of a PhD student here.
I achieved the highest mark possible in the dissertation defense. I
have also published several manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals
with high impact factor and Q1 in my scientific field. So I think that I have
been highly productive.
I consider that some of the works that they push me to publish have been delayed by them because they claim to be "busy". I do not complaint about their organization skills, but their delay is our delay.

I have also made administrative tasks which do not correspond to PhD students during my PhD.

Wouldn't publishing additional work benefit you in your search for a postdoc position? Maybe they are encouraging you to do this for your own benefit.

I don't think that it is impolite to ask for a contract. Simply asking if there is any money budgeted for a contract is understandable. I too am often afraid of communicating with professors on this topic but I'm certain they very much understand where you are coming from. If you do not get a contract, you may have to find some other form of work, but you certainly should not work for free. Maybe they believe you are still under contract?

At least where I am from, professors do not pay from their pocket: it is typically grant money used to fund students. I assume it is the same case here. You're not begging them to give up any money that is actually theirs, and you will be doing good work for them. The money is set aside for instances just like this. Do not overthink the situation.

I see your point @ff524 and that's way I will finally do it, and publish my work. I like to conclude everything what I start. On the other hand, the postdoc may be a different topic, and the time I spend producing manuscripts is time that I do not use for postdoc/job-seeking.

Thanks Kraig. They know my contract finished 3 months ago. My PhD contract was granted for a certain project. Here in Europe contracts can be also paid from projects. This is made for other workmates. Other old PhD students got even 3 months contract when they needed (looking for a postdoc). Is a 1-2  month contract not fair to conclude some remaining work? Might I be wrong? My salary was the lowest of every PhD student in the group and I've never complaint about that. I only deserve similar conditions to other PhD students who finished if they consider worthy the work that I have carried out.

IME it is not uncommon for PhD students or postdocs to work "for free" between jobs, to get manuscripts finished, and so forth. Many would argue that it shouldn't happen, but it's not uncommon. It's entirely reasonable for you to explain that you can't afford to do this, and ask if they can help. It's also possible that they'll say no.

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


text:
Hiring a PhD student who left another PhD position
It's the first time I'm recruiting for a PhD student. I advertised the position and have received a dozen applications and there are still 2 weeks left on the 4 week announcement.
What caught my eye is that I have two applicants who are already PhD students at other (lower ranking) universities. They both have very strong CVs and even some good publications. However, they haven't included any references from their current university or the reason they want to leave from there. One is a second year PhD and the other a third year. Both have similar topics to the one I'm advertising for.

Is it OK if I ask them directly why they want to leave and why they haven't included any references from the place they have been for 2-3 years?

Should I try contacting their current supervisor and ask for info? I even know one of them personally. I don't know if I should (could land the student in trouble).

In these situations, don't you feel that this person could suddenly leave if he/she finds a better position? Can I really trust him/her to stick through a 4-year project?

P.S.: My wife switched to another supervisor 6 months into her PhD because she really couldn't get along with her 1st supervisor, so I understand these things happen. I want to give these candidates a fair chance, but I want to cover my bases as well.

Your third concern, that the student might suddenly decide to leave your program as well, depends a lot on the student's personality. If I were such a student, then after leaving one program, I'd be very reluctant to leave another, for fear of creating a reputation as a chronic leaver.

To get a feel for this situation from the student's point of view, I suggest reading questions such as Changing PhD programs: should I submit a recommendation letter from my old advisor if it's not purely positive?, Incompatibility with the PhD advisor, Switch PhD program: how to contact possible PhD advisors when already enrolled in PhD program?, and many others.
The decision to try to switch programs is a difficult one for the student. They may be worried about harming their relationship with the current advisor if the move does not work out. From this point of view, contacting the advisor, rather than the student, would be like calling a job applicant's current employer.
Although if they asked here they would probably be advised against it, there may be a temptation to just not mention the current PhD program other than to the extent that they have worked as a research assistant.

The key question you need to ask both the students and yourself is "What would be different about my project compared to your current one?". Of course, there are no guarantees, except that you will not be able to get through a reasonably interesting life without embarrassment.
For example, see How to explain in PhD interview about leaving current PhD due to lack of funding?. If you have good funding, and the student is switching because of lack of funding, there is no reason to expect them to be particularly likely to leave.
The OP for that question wrote "I did not mention my current PhD in CV, and just wrote about my working experience in the last 1.5 year.". I have no idea why students do that, but it seems to be a common urge. Many questions either discuss the advisability of not mentioning incomplete degrees when applying for a PhD program, or are trying to deal afterwards with the consequences of not mentioning them.

I understand the side of the student all too well (my wife went through the same hard decision). However, this is the first time I'm forced to see it from the other side. My fear is that I'll hire someone to work on my 4-year long, EU-funded, project and he/she might decide that he/she doesn't like the project or myself and leave. If this happens during the 1st year, I can understand it and I might salvage the situation. Nevertheless, 2-3 years into the PhD, it could create a big issue and embarrassment.

@electrique I have edited into my answer some thoughts inspired by your comment.

I would contact the students directly for answers before contacting the supervisors. This way, you can get some feedback and further information before deciding if you want to contact the supervisors.
However, I would in any case not take a student from the lab of an acquaintance without the "blessing" of the acquaintance. Otherwise you risk setting up an unnecessarily antagonistic relationship between you and the other advisor.

Well, the problem is that the candidates themselves have listed their time spent there as research assistant. Only when I looked on the lab's website did I realise they were listed also as PhD students. So, asking the student directly is acceptable by you? I should go with: "Btw, I see that in addition to research assistant, you are also a PhD student in that lab. Why are you searching for another position? Why haven't you listed Prof. X as a reference?"

Yes, you can definitely ask a student those questions.

Like others have written, there may be uncomplicated reasons that motivate the student to leave (like lack of funding, or a position that was advertised as PhD position but is incompatible with a PhD due to the work-load).
But let's suppose it's a problem with the supervisor:

Ask students? Yes, ask, but it's a touchy subject. After all, bad supervisors do exist, and some are surprisingly "good" colleagues. Criticizing a supervisor is usually seen as disloyal (talking among PhD students in a bar excluded). Which is a problem if the loyalty is one-sided and the supervisor is exploitative or abusive. (Then again, there are students who have rather strange ideas what a supervisor should do for them so things aren't always clear-cut.) So I'd ask for their reasons for leaving (Funding? Did things get tough and the grass looks greener here? Do they want a higher-status position?). And if it's an issue with the supervisor, I'd go for a student who states it rationally, sees the interaction as two-sided (even if the other person is a jerk), and -- above all -- maintains a basic level of respect (as a sign of maturity).
Ask the supervisor? Like others have written and you suspected, ask the student first. Yes, it's better if things happen in the open, after all, that's the polite thing to do and Academia is small (well, the respective sub-domain is). But there is also a power-imbalance at work here. Here I'd simply ask why they did not include any references (might have been an oversight), and if it's a problem with a specific person, whether there are other people who can be contacted (not being able to work with a supervisor is one thing, not being able to work with the whole department another).
Are they quitters? Depends on their reasons for leaving. Actually, I think it's a sign of competence if a person leaves a bad position. The worst situation you can be in is when you are exploited/abused with no chance of establishing yourself as a scientist, yet feeling unable to leave due to escalating commitment/one-sided obligation. So, it is an accomplishment to leave a dysfunctional environment, esp. if you naturally feel a strong commitment to a position.

But yeah, in every hire there is risk, and there are concerns. But I would look at the qualifications and treat the history as one factor (dispassionately, you are not responsible for their situation and they have to fit in your environment). I'd also ask the following questions:

What did they learn so far?
What do they think they need to finish their PhD successfully (and is that realistic)?
Are the habits they have acquired helpful?
Can I work with them?
What are their plans for the future?

Thank you very much. You have provided me with good questions I should ask myself/them!

I think I am in the exact same situation with these two individuals.
I work as a research assistant(!) and PhD student in Turkey and I have applied many positions across Europe.
The exclamation mark indicates that my title is research assistant, but what I do is simply proctoring and assisting the courses. No one expects me to conduct research, and more importantly, I am only as valuable as I carry on proctoring.
Therefore, as any human being would do, I want to work as a happier person and do something that I enjoy in my life.
Regarding to your questions:

Is it OK if I ask them directly why they want to leave and why they haven't
  included any references from the place they have been for 2-3 years?

Cannot argue about that. This is a fair point.

Should I try contacting their current supervisor and ask for info? I even know one of them personally. I don't know if I should (could land the student in trouble).

I think it is always better to know the applicant better, if you have any chance. Maybe there will be no positive feedback, but at least you may understand why the student wants to leave, based on the response of his/her supervisor.

In these situations, don't you feel that this person could suddenly leave if he/she finds a better position? Can I really trust him/her to stick through a 4-year project?

I certainly do not. In my situation, what I want to do is pure research. If I somehow get a position that I have a lot of time to do my actual job (research assistantship), I would not risk with a so said better university.
So, that person might have some reasons to leave, and if these reasons are gone, they probably will not even think about quitting.

Is it OK if I ask them directly why they want to leave and why they haven't included any references from the place they have been for 2-3 years?

I think the most important thing to get clarity on is what kind of work environment the student expects.  You don't want to end up taking in a student who may later quit for the exact same reasons.  Expectations of students in academia can vary wildly (and honestly, many research groups, even highly successful ones may not be bastions of even good management practices!).
As to why they include no references from the current position, I mean the fact that they are willing to transfer (and delay their PhD completion time) suggests that they are unhappy with the work environment,  and may additionally fear retaliation if their current PI is contacted.  I would suspect that they have a conflict with the PI or working environment, and that this isn't just over funding (over which I think most PIs might even help their students find new positions).

Sometimes the situation is so much unbelievable that it totally changes the student's life.
Currently, I am a Ph.D. student at Texas A and M-Kingsville University. I was offered a teaching assistantship position.
My visa is in processing for the last 9 months. As a result of this situation, I have to take online classes with a partial fee. The dean assured me that they will support me in the first year despite my online classes. My supervisor is young and very helpful. I really want to work with him, but he has a lack of funding in the current semester. Dean denied issuing any funding, although he promised that I will have funding in my current semester.
Now, I have realized that the offered funding is not enough for me and my family. And secondly, the situation is extraordinarily complex regarding visas, knowing nothing when they will issue the visa and what will be the result.
I have 24 publications including 10 SCI index research papers. I am hopeful that I will get funding from another Professor, but I do not want to cast a bad image on my advisor because he seems very helpful.
Now, what should I do in this situation ? So, some things are very complex at student side.
As, a student I would suggest you to contact students first and understand the situation from them. Reconfirm their details from you own sources and that's it.
Regards,


text:
How would I cite multiple authors from an online forum?
How would I cite two authors from this online forum (http://www.thenation.com/article/one-thing-do-about-food-forum)?
The forum is edited by Alice Waters and my quotes come from Wendell Berry and Peter Singer.
In my paper, I include the in-text citation (example below)

Singer mentions that "Etc etc etc" (qtd. in Waters, ed.)

Originally, the citation in my bibliography was ...

"One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum." The Nation. Ed. Alice Waters. N.p., 11 Sept. 2006. Web. 01 Oct. 2014.

but is that actually correct? Do I have to instead reference them like ...

Singer, P. "One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum." The Nation. Ed. Alice Waters. N.p., 11 Sept. 2006. Web. 01 Oct. 2014.
Berry, W. "One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum." The Nation. Ed. Alice Waters. N.p., 11 Sept. 2006. Web. 01 Oct. 2014.

I'm not too sure how I would go about in this so any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

What style are you supposed to be following, MLA?

I have seen some papers citing SE questions and put people who answered as co-authors.

Starting with the principle that the goal of a citation is to make it as simple as possible for somebody to find the particular reference, I can see two ways to approach this publication:

Treat it like a journal special issue or chapters in a book, where there are multiple articles bundled together under one editorial title.
Treat it like a single multi-author article.

In this particular case that you have linked, it seems that none of the contributors have titles for their individual sections.  That means that you can't readily separate out the individual contributions.  I would thus recommend citing it as:

Alice Waters, Jim Hightower, Eric Schlosser, [etc], "One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum." The Nation, 11 Sept. 2006. Web. 01 Oct. 2014.

Then you simply to who you are quoting in the main text like you are already doing.
If they had individual article subtitles, you could do:

Singer, P, "Singer's Article" in "One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum." ed. by Alice Waters, The Nation. 11 Sept. 2006. Web. 01 Oct. 2014.

Without the secondary titles, though, listing Alice Waters as editor makes it sound like she's the editor of The Nation not the forum.
[Note: I think my style may be slightly off from your required format - the key point is the person/title pairings]


text:
Position of infixes of names (e.g. “van”) in bibliographies
When I create a bibliography, do infixes of names always go with the surname as follows?

Van de Sompel, Herbert
van Leeuwen, Theo

The examples come from bibliographies I have within my collection where this style is used. My question is more about whether this claim is generalizable. More precisely, are there differences between different style guides or depending on the background of the name?

I have a 100 page book on this sort of issue, which basically boils down to "Its complicated".

This might not directly relate to the question, but if you use LaTeX for bibliography management, you could use the tilde glue (~) as a work around if the BST file doesn't mitigate this. E.g, van~de~Sompel, Herbert.

Unfortunately, it's complicated.  The proper organization and alphabetization of names is dependent on the identified nationality of the person in question.  Thus, a German "van" name is handled differently than a Dutch "van" name.  It may change further again upon immigration, e.g., Americans of Dutch or German origin typically follow English conventions or even remove the space.
Here is a nice guide to navigating these muddy waters, as well as a question from the German Language SE.

This answer may be a little disappointing, but I’ll give it a try:
I assume that the author’s name is [First Name] [infix] [Surname] (omitting other possible pecularities for simplicity’s sake) and you want to decide between the following ways of citing:

[infix] [Surname], [First Name]
  [Surname], [First Name] [infix]

Obviously, your question boils down to whether the infix is considered to belong to the surname or the first name, i.e., whether the first name is [First Name] [infix] or the last name is [infix] [Surname]. Now, in all European cultures/languages that I am aware of, such infixes go with the surname. Moreover, I am not aware of anything comparable in other cultures.
Now, I cannot possibly know every styleguide, but given the influence of European cultures on academia, I do not expect many to group the infix with the surname as a default or general rule. Going by this answer, at least some seem to do this, however. Moreover, the bibliography software BibTeX considers every non-capitalised part in a name a prefix to the surname by default.
However, if there is a culture in which such an infix does not belong to the surname, I would consider it appropriately to group it differently. As already mentioned I am not aware of any culture that does this (but you could probably ask for this on Linguistics).
What is much more problematic than listing is sorting, i.e.: do you ignore the infix when sorting or not? Even for a given language, there may be different approaches to this. You could devise some complicated rules here that treat names differently depending on their origin, but I consider this a horrible idea: As you cannot expect readers to be familiar with those rules, not using a consistent approach for all languages here is a disservice to them, as they are more likely to search entries at two positions. After all, facilitating the look-up of entries is why we bother with sorting in the first place.
Finally, note that infixes may also occur in between two parts of the last name, e.g., in the German surname Schmoll genannt Eisenwerth.

My recollection of the Amsterdam phone book is that, while the infix goes with the last name, they were ordered by the last name itself with the infix following the last name.

Now, in all European cultures/languages that I am aware of, such infixes go with the surname.

That's incorrect. Examples, all from the Chicago Manual of Style, 16e, 16.71:
Beauvoir, Simone de
Costa, Uriel da
Keere, Pieter van den
Kooning, Willem de
La Fontaine, Jean de
Medici, Lorenzo de’

Those examples are not counterexamples to the quoted claim. Neither of these infixes are considered part of the first name. Simone de Beauvoir’s father was Georges de Beauvoir; Willem de Kooning’s father was Leendert de Kooning; and so on. What this example does demonstrate is that there are style guides which prefer to ignore the semantic grouping when splitting names (which is pretty silly in my opinion, in particular “La Fontaine, Jean de”).

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text:
An invitation from a not-so-famous journal called "world biomedical frontiers" to feature my paper on their website
I received an email from world biomedical frontiers journal:

Your recent paper “XXXXXX” (published in “YYYYYY”) has been selected to be featured in our next issue of World Biomedical Frontiers, because of its innovation and potential for significant impact.
  Research results with significant potential to improve health – or to treat or prevent disease – often deserve an immediate leap onto the “front page”. However, scientific breakthroughs don't always make the front page – and some don't make any page! We are the platform for you to stand out from among ~100,000 papers published each month, in order to attract more attention from the public and potential investors.
  World Biomedical Frontiers [ISSN: 2328-0166] focuses on cutting-edge biomedical research from around the globe. Our website receives more than 8,000 visits per month from an international audience of academic and industrial researchers and developers, providing greater opportunity for your results to be recognized and appreciated.
  If you accept our invitation to feature your paper on our website, a $38 processing fee will be charged. We will then post the abstract/summary of your paper in the latest section of Stem cells , with additional information from you highly recommended to further explain your novel findings and concepts in plain language; photos and/or figures are welcomed. Here are two examples (1 and 2 ).
  In order to report breaking publications in a timely fashion, please contact us within two weeks if you wish your paper to be featured in our next issue.
  Sincerely,
Editor
World Biomedical Frontiers,
New York, USA
Phone: 1-(917) 426-1571
E-mails: editors@biomedfrontiers.org
Website: http://biomedfrontiers.org/

Should I trust them?
I read this question and also this one, but I wanted to know about this specific case and what to do about it.

Run away from this like from the plague...

Duplicate of How to identify predatory publishers/journals. I thought we talked about adding a predatory-journal tag? Ah, it's called [tag:disreputable-publishers]

General rule of thumb: Unless you have a very good reason, don't do business with journals that you don't know/read.

No; this isn't how reputable venues approach authors. This will have at best zero value (possibly negative value if someone notices, which is unlikely given how little visibility they apparently have), and will cost you $38.
(Its funny that they advertise that they get 8000 website hits per month. This strikes me as an exceedingly low count, given that they probably get a hit from many people they send this spam email to)

IMO any website advertising how many "hits per month" they get are trying to impress people who don't know much about the internet/computers in order to scam them. Half of those 8,000 hits are likely web crawlers. Hell, I have a publicly-published beta version of my app that has 2 users and I get a few thousand hits per month!

I suggest that you do not trust them.
Reasons not to trust them:

Their home page has a bare url lying around which accounts for lack of expertise.
Their FAQ page has some serious grammatical errors (capitalization) which again point to the same direction.
Their Alexa Rank has fallen and the stats provided by them do not look reliable according to the Alexa page.
Who provides site hits in an invitation? Thats like Google interviewer telling you Google's gross profit of the quarter to you before your interview.

I wouldn't compare 8,000 hits per month with "Google's gross profit for the quarter." It's more like some company you've never heard off telling you their gross profit was $1.17 for the quarter.

@DavidRicherby Yes. That would be a better comparison.

This is a pretty clear scam. These things are unfortunately common as of late in academia. There are scam journals that try to make money off of things like "processing fees," scam conferences with scam talk invitations, and so on. Unfortunately, they'll just keep on contacting you, and you'll get more of them in the future.
In this case: if a legitimate group wanted to feature your work in this way, they'd just do it on their own. It's very possible they wouldn't even contact you, or wouldn't be contacting you with the choice of whether to have it in their publication or not. And as has been noted in some comments here, 8,000 hits per month is nothing; it's surprising that they don't lie and give a reasonable number.
In general, you shouldn't need to pay for things you are invited to; this is often a good way to discern scams from legitimate invitations. Additionally, you can often tell by the lack of effort (eg, form letters), and lack of knowledge about what you actually do (just copying your paper title).


text:
Consequences of a paper with major errors, but unrelated to your field/dissertation
Background Info:
So, to make a long story short, I'm worried about paying for mistakes I made when I was a younger, unprofessional, ignoramus.
I'm an engineering PhD student at a U.S. University.  I did my BS and MS at the same university which I'm doing my PhD.   About 3 years ago, my previous advisor wanted me to publish my work (from late undergrad early MS stage) to a respected international conference.  At this  time I was young, nieve, and frankly did not care very much.  I submitted the paper and it was accepted, and I presented at the conference.  I have since left the lab, and changed fields to a different engineering discipline.
Years later, I have realized the conference paper has numerous errors, some are theoretical errors, others are sloppy errors.  My initial reaction was that this does not matter because it's a different field (a conference/journal not relevant to my current field) and not related to my current PhD dissertation.  However, upon further thought, there could be serious consequences to this.
MY QUESTIONS
1) What are the consequences for having submitted a conference paper with major errors?  The paper is sitting in the proceedings with errors.
2) Are there actions/charges/reprimands the university can take against me for having submitted a paper with major inaccuracies while a student at that university?  Can they expel or revoke a degree?
3) Since this work has errors, I worry about charges of rigged data/results.  Since there are inaccuracies, this could lead to charges of rigged data (side note: paper was on theoretical and computational work, not experimental).  The way to combat these allegation would be to reproduce the error-filled work  -  which would be very tough for me to do since (1) the work had errors and (2) the work was done a long time ago with some files now missing.  Even though I did not falsify data, what are the charges for a grad student falsifying data?  Although the paper is not related to my dissertation, allegations of rigged data could have serious consequences, what could they be?

Charges of data falsification are for people who intentionally fabricate data or modify the data they've collected to make it look better, not people who make honest mistakes and get invalid results because of it. Relax.

Whatever errors you can correct (e.g., straightening out a proof), I'd consider submitting as a corrigendum. As you didn't falsify anything intentionally, see what @ff524 said. I think the actual question you should be asking - which might already have an answer here - is: other than correcting what you can, what should you do? Retract? ...? (Arrow, a Nobel prize winning economist, had reportedly a paper published in which he failed to check the second order condition for a maximum; it was indeed a minimum. I'm not sure if this is a true story, but honest errors happen even for stars)

@gnome: Can you even retract a conference publication, necessarily?  (I honestly don't know.)

@Pete: Me neither. :) Your answer, which was posted right after my comment, makes some good alternative suggestions, like using a personal web page for errata.

To be honest, I find that most of the moral / cautionary tale in your story lies in the trend to push younger and greener students into publication.  I feel strongly that having a professional-grade mastery in one's discipline should be a prerequisite to submitting a paper in a research journal.  But note well that I am not scolding you: as a BS/MS student, you don't know the profession, the standards for publication, or (most likely) even your own level of mastery, really.  Your advisor let you down.  Moreover, a respected international conference should read its submitted papers -- especially from student authors, I would argue, but if you don't like that then OK, from everyone! -- carefully enough not to accept something that through the simple process of learning and maturing you will eventually find shoddy and embarrassing.  You were too young to know any better: what was their excuse?

1) What are the consequences for having submitted a conference paper with major errors? The paper is sitting in the proceedings with errors.

Well, the consequence is that you have published something with errors.  If you are worried that the errors will mislead other researchers, you should consider writing an erratum.  For conference publication you may not be able to publish the erratum with the conference, but you could still include it on your webpage, and if e.g. you have a google scholar profile, that will go a long way towards giving people the right idea.
I should say that I am in a field (mathematics) where conference publication is quite rare nowadays, but I assume that the merit of conference publication is that it gets out results judged to be of interest to the community more quickly, and the corresponding demerit is that the results are more tentative and more likely to be wrong.  Do you have a good reason to believe that your publication is especially shoddy compared to other work published in similar venues?  In fact, the shoddier it is, the less likely it is to mislead: in my experience, most serious researchers have a good nose for taking the good and avoiding the bad in published work.  A certain kind of subtle error in a striking result can be really insidious, but once again you make it sound like once you matured a bit you find the mistakes rather obvious.  So maybe other people will too?  It might be good to get some expert opinions on this.

2) Are there actions/charges/reprimands the university can take against me for having submitted a paper with major inaccuracies while a student at that university? Can they expel or revoke a degree?

Practically speaking: no.  You are at least an order of magnitude too worried about this.  Degrees only get revoked for substantial academic dishonesty.  Making mistakes, even embarrassing ones, does not qualify...thank goodness.  Does it make you feel better if I tell you that one of the six major theorems in my Harvard PhD thesis is false?  Suffice it to say that I can keep my degree.

3) Since this work has errors, I worry about charges of rigged data/results. Since there are inaccuracies, this could lead to charges of rigged data (side note: paper was on theoretical and computational work, not experimental).

@ff524 has the right answer here: just relax.  Move on and try to do better in your current work, which people will take much more seriously than one early paper, especially if it's in a different (sub)field.  At the most, write an erratum and include the erratum on your CV.


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Repeated demand for citing a certain paper in the referee report
I submitted a paper to a journal and got the referee report. In the first referee report the same surname has been repeated 10 times, and since then the referee has insisted on a discussion about that paper.
I've read the paper, and the paper is dealing with a different subject. It can seldom be considered as relevant. The demand for commenting on that particular work was declined by us and the paper was eventually rejected. Apart from the editors, should there be a way to control this excessive use of the refereeing power?
After putting the paper on the arXiv, the lead author of that paper already contacted me to cite some the related works (of course mostly his works). Interestingly, the citation in question is not even regarded as relevant by the leading author.

"A simple text search". When you get a referee report that suggests certain bibliography, you should at least get the suggested papers and at least skim through them. Everything else is just sloppy.

As @Alexandros says, at least if it's in broadly the same field.  The same analysis can, after all, be applied in very different situations.  If they want you to cite a paper on chicken evolution and you're writing about black-hole physics, you probably don't need to read the paper.  A courteous referee would use a few words to indicate why it's relevant.  Referees are not required to be courteous.

After putting the paper on the arXiv, the lead author of that paper already contacted me to cite some related works (of course mostly his work). Interestingly, that citation in question is not even regard as relevant by the leading authors. So I am very confident that it unrelated.

What else can one do to prove that it is irrelevant?

@gastro. Read the paper(s) proposed to you. Similar to RTFM. All people here say the same thing. You should listen. When you disagree with the suggested proposed paper, you should reply that the "in our paper we do .... and ..." but "paper B does .... on Section3" or "does ... in Section 4" and hence the results of Paper B are not really relevant to our work. Hence, we decided not to include it in our related work.

Please ask one question per post :)

Apart from the editors, should there be a way to control this excessive use of the refereeing power?

Straight-forward answer: no. This is what an editor should check for. If (s)he does not care or does not agree with you, your only option is to go for a different journal, with consequently a different editor.
I should also add that, in my experience, few reviewers request their papers to be added willy-nilly. If this reviewer thinks her or his work is missing, you should at least do a thorough check of why (s)he would think so, and then accurately report in your response letter. It seems unsurprising to me that your paper was rejected if your response to "important related work from XYZ is missing" was "we did some high-level searching and it seemed kinda unrelated, so we skipped it". I as an editor would also consider this at least a substantial nudge into "reject" territory.

Thanks, as just edited, the reviewer is probably not the lead author of the paper in question. Supposed that it is unrelated, what is the right way to address this?

In my experience, one of the reviewers could also be the editor!  I've encountered this where the editor insists of me citing his/her work.  Yes, this is for a reputable journal.

these can be expected, because (a) scientists are rewarded based on citation. (b) one can put pressures onto the authors through the review process.

Refusing to discuss the references suggested by the referee is not a wise move. There are two cases to be considered:

Either it is in fact highly related work, and then your dismissal of the suggestion appears unprofessional, even if the referee is the author of the said papers, or

The papers are in fact unrelated. But then there should be a reason for that. For example in the response you could write something like:
Thanks for the suggestion. We read paper X and found it to be about topic Y, whereas our paper is about topic X. Techniques from topic Y cannot be used for X because of (TechnicalDifficulty). We also checked the technical contributions of the paper and found that none of the ideas can be adapted to the problem that we are solving.

You need to ensure as an author that you make the impression that you thoughtfully considered adding the related work and that there is a good scientific reason for not including it. Skimming through the paper is not sufficient. As an example, I once needed to tell a paper author after a scientific talk that his main idea was already in the literature: it was a lemma in a paper on an only marginally related topic, but since the technique applied there was exactly the same as in his new work, this still counts as a duplicate. In the other paper, the result was never mentioned in abstract and introduction, because for its authors, it was only a lemma.
As to the actual question: If you make a proper response and the referee still insists on the inclusion in the second reviewing round without giving good reasons, then the editor should see that the request for reference inclusion is unreasonable - so the editor should then just ignore the referee's comment. This is the mechanism by which this unfair power difference is balanced, and hence there is no need for a change in the process (at least not for this reason).

Apart from the editors, should there be a way to control this excessive use of the refereeing power?

What do you mean by "apart from the editors"? That's like saying, "Apart from gravity, is there anything that makes apples fall from trees?"
Referees do not accept or reject papers. They make recommendations. Editors accept or reject papers based on their opinions of those recommendations. If the referees recommend spurious changes, your response to the referees comments should explain why those changes are spurious. If your paper is rejected after that, either it was rejected for other reasons or the editors believed that the requested changes were not spurious.  In the latter case, your only option is to find a different editor, i.e., resubmit the paper to another journal.
Referees do not have the power you think they have. For example, as a referee, I've had an editor accept a paper after I gave what I believe to be good technical reasons for rejecting it. Why? Because the decision is theirs to make and they obviously valued the other referee's opinion more than mine.

I think they have. There was another instance, where the referee demanded some additional simulations, which is not necessary. I wrote a 1-page justification why this is not necessary, without responding to my 1-page justification, the referee simply suggested rejection afterwards, which was agreed upon by the editor. I think, minimally, one should demand the rdifferent eferee reports from the same referee consistent.

No, that's not an example of referee power; that's an example of the editor accepting the referee's recommendation.  The editor rejected the paper, not the referee.  (As others have pointed out, the referee and the editor might have been the same person.)

One suggestion not mentioned in other answers so far: ask for clarification!  That is, send a short email to the editor, something like:

Subject: Request for clarification from referee A
Dear [editor’s name],
We are currently revising our submission based on the referee reports, and there’s one point on which we would be grateful for further clarification.  Referee A suggested we should mention the connections with (Jones et al, 2005); however, it’s not clear to us which points of (Jones et al) they had in mind as particularly relevant to our submission.  (Briefly, (Jones et al) studies the weights of birds, while we study the heights of trees.)  Could you ask Referee A if they can elaborate on this suggestion, please?

Do make clear that you have read (Jones et al) — not necessarily a totally thorough reading, but you should at least read the introduction and skim-read the whole paper, say.  Provided you’ve done that, a quick request for clarification is completely reasonable (at least based in my experience refereeing in pure mathematics — I’ve received a couple of such questions passed on from editors).
Possibilities for what you might get in response include:

Referee A points out a genuine connection that you had overlooked.  “The object of study is different, but they use a closely related novel statistical method (though with different notation)…”  Then you can follow their suggestion and mention the connection.
Referee A takes back their suggestion: “I was thinking of the similar statistical methods, but I notice now that Jones was drawing on (Wilson, 2002), which you already discuss in Section 3.  So there is no need to cite Jones as well.”
Referee A doesn’t say anything particularly helpful.  Then the editor can see this (as they pass the response back to you), so you are on firmer ground to ignore this particular suggestion.

I have made this clear to the editor in our cover letter during the resubmission, but the editor never commented on it.

Requesting clarification before fully reading the paper suggested by the reviewer is not good practice, in my view.  A skim-read is not sufficient.


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Do I have to disclose all academic history?
I'd like to go back to school for a BS in Physics but most universities don't admit students who already hold degrees.
My first time around I was not academically mature and only pulled a 3.0 for my first BS in Mathematics.
If I rebuilt some class history through a community college and then try to transfer to a full university can I avoid telling them I have a degree?
And are there consequences for trying to hide that information?
I would try a different method but the options seem extremely limited for someone holding a bachelors who wants a second bachelors and can't get up and move to a university that allows it.

See http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/14983/1010.  Short answers: Yes, you have to; no, you cannot avoid it; yes, there are consequences.

IMHO, you should not bother with a second BS.  Contact the place where you want to get the physics degree and find out if there are certain deficiency courses you should take to be able to apply to the M.S. in Physics, take these over the summer, then apply to the M.S. program.  Math is a rather reasonable degree to serve as passage to a Physics M.S. program.  Also, as mentioned by other commenters, most schools will ask you for your transcripts and it would be fraud not to submit them.


text:
I quit a master’s program for a PhD program. How do I list this on my CV?
Before starting my PhD, I was enrolled in a master’s program for one year that I quit once I got accepted to my current PhD program.
What do you think I should write on my CV so as not to give a bad impression to potential employers?

University A, 2016 to present
B.Sc., University B, 2015

University A, 2016 to present
MA program, University B, 2015–2016 (quit to start PhD at A)
B.Sc., University B, 2015

University A, 2016 to present
B.Sc., University B, 2015 (followed by a one-year enrollment in the master’s program)

something else?

Who are your potential employers? Academia or industry?

@user111388 Academia.

I would suggest something like "left to pursue PhD" rather than "quit" or "abandoned". The explicit meaning is the same, but there is an implicit negativity in quitting or abandoning something.

PhD student, Dept of Rocket Science, University A, 2016 to present (expected Spring 2032)
MA student, University B, 2015-2016 (left to pursue PhD)
B.Sc. Physics, University B, 2015

(I'd also probably add the program name/degree titles and anticipated graduation date)
In your case, it's a short enough window that you could also probably leave it off without any notice, especially if you are applying to industry positions.
One time to definitely not leave it off is anything asking for your full academic record - the cases where this typically applies are in graduate admissions (which likely longer apply to you) and some grant applications (which still could).

Your second version seems clearest, but the wording might be "Abandoned on acceptance to doctoral program". And state on the first line that you are in a doctoral program. Give complete years for BSc.

Doctoral Program, University A, 2016 to present
MA Program, University B, 2015–2016 (abandoned on acceptance to doctoral program)
B.Sc., University B, 2013–2015 (or whatever)

Opinion, though. Just make it as clear as possible. One line for each program.

I would probably stick with something like "left to pursue PhD" rather than "quit" or "abandoned". The explicit meaning is the same, but there is an implicit negativity in quitting or abandoning something.

@BryanKrause  What about the first option where I just don't write anything about programs that I didn't finish? It looks bad because I look like I did nothing between 2015 and 2016?


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Being sure of date of publication of a book
I am practicing making citations of quotes and I am currently stuck on
publication dates.
To illustrate my issue, let’s use this this book:

The front pages state the copyright date as three separate years, which I have no idea how to interpret (see image below).
I checked on Google, and I found this on Amazon stating the publication date of Aug 10, 2010.
Checking the official site of publisher, I see "© 2011".

Do I need to make assumptions when taking the date, e.g., taking the first date from copyright without being certain that it is the correct publication date? I know I can contact the publisher and ask, but that seems like (a) a lot of work and (b) it’s pretty unlikely I’ll get a reply. I want to know if there are any tips on making sure that the publication date of the book is correct.

The three dates you see are the years the copyright was renewed. You probably just want the most recent of those dates, as that's the edition of the book you're working with.
Note that it can get more complex than that—edition and copyright date are not always the same—but its definitely good enough for citations.

So in this case, I can't be completely sure? Feels so wrong to just assume publication date and most recent copyright renewal date are the same...

Or perhaps would it more fair to just write n.d. for no date, as the book does not provide a publication date, but only copyright date, and the two are different.

@Dmitry n.d. is useless. When I look at a reference, I want the year to get an idea of how recent it is, and how it relates to other similar research I may be aware of. The copyright is usually close enough to the real date.

Your best bet is probably to look the book up in WorldCat, which (because it contains records from thousands of libraries) is quite likely to have separate records for each edition of the book. (Why? It's a long story. Seymour Lubetzky was a nitpicker.) Looking at the earliest available records indicates a 1990 copyright date for the first edition of the book, which is probably close enough to the publication date to satisfy an editor or instructor.
The real question is which edition you should be citing. It's probably the one you're actually using, the fourth! WorldCat's consensus (though not unanimous; bad records do sometimes sneak in) answer to the date of the fourth edition is 2011.

Publishers often fudge on the copyright dates by putting one year later than the real publication year. See for instance this answer, or google for "publication date vs copyright date".
So it is very likely that the book was published in 2010.

Cite 2011. The other two years, 1995 and 2004, correspond to the first two editions of the book. If you're citing this (third) edition you should naturally use 2011.
As for the fact that you can find the book on Amazon in 2010, as the marketing department explained to me when I was in academic publishing, it's because when the book is "printed" (read: arrives at the warehouse) it's already late 2010. From the warehouse the book still needs to be shipped around the world, so that when it's actually available for purchase in Amazon, it's 2011. In the meantime, it's available for pre-order, because once the printing process starts it's usually clear when the book will be complete. The time required to produce a book can be very uncertain, but the biggest uncertainties are earlier in the production process.