text:
Did MSCA supersede MCA or do both still fund new projects?
According to the page About the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions:

As of January 2014, with the move to Horizon 2020, the Marie Curie Actions are now called the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA). This change better reflects the Polish roots of this extraordinary scientist who inspired and inspires the programme.

This seems to suggest that Marie Curie Actions no longer issue new funding calls.  However, also on the website of the European Commission is About the Marie Curie Actions, which makes no mention of this action being finished/superseded.
Do both the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and the Marie Curie Actions exist concurrently and do both still issue funding calls, or has MSCE simply been superseded by MCA and is the MCA page out of date¹?

¹When accessed 2015-04-04, the MCA page states it is last updated 2015-03-12.

I don't know the background here, but it really sounds like they just changed the name of the program, without changing how the program actually works. Presumably the EC site just never got updated to refer to the new name.

@NateEldredge The contents seem different though.  It seems simplified.

The MCA page is indeed out of date.
See e.g. http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/about-mca/actions/iif/index_en.htm
where if you click on "How do we apply", there is a link to "People Work Programme 2013".
The name MCA was changed to MSCA with the end of the 7th Framework Programme (FP7), and the start of Horizon 2020.

Interestingly, even those out of date open calls linked from the MCA page are MSCA, not MCA...


text:
Did conferences have poster sessions before PCs were widespread?
At modern scientific conferences (at least in my field), poster sessions are a very important part of the conference.  Most posters are prepared by the authors using modern computer software which may or may not be fit for purpose, but which does fulfill the task.
How was this done before 30–35 years ago?  I'm aware that oral presentations (mostly) used transparencies.  Of course poster printing as such existed, but preparing a poster would have been much more difficult.  Did scientific conferences before the 1980s have poster sessions?  If so, how did scientists design and prepare their posters without the aid of GUI-based, WYSIWIG, or LaTeX + viewer software?

What I have seen are posters that were put together from smaller prints of text, figures, etc. (Kind of like when you see science fairs in schools on TV but a bit "cleaner" in appearance.)

@JayFromA - indeed, I would print out the figures and text on paper, drymount them to backing, and then pin them to the corkboard that was made available at the conference. All in all, actually much easier to get across an ocean on a plane compared with lugging an awkward tube around. The next question will be about how we gave talks without PowerPoint...

@JonCuster: Please give that comment as an answer.

@JonCuster I know how people gave talks without powerpoint.  I haven't used a poster tube in years, I always print on fabric now so I just fold the poster into my suitcase. I would be quite interested in your comment as an answer, in particular if you have some photos of pre-digital age poster sessions.

My technical career started in the early 1980's before the IBM PC came out. On campus we had a large mainframe and various minicomputers. I was running experiments using a Terak personal computer with an (one) 8" floppy drive, 16k of memory, and UCSD Pascal.
For typesetting, one could use text processing languages such as nroff, troff, and spinoff (IBM's version of nroff/troff) on the mainframe, Vaxen, and HPs. Tektronix graphics monitors were available on various machines, and they had thermal printers attached to save a hard copy.
For talks, generally everybody hand wrote on overhead slides. Graphics were also copied by hand onto the slide by using the printed graph underneath. If you had lots of time, the graphic arts folks would be happy to make great plots (which you definitely had them do for papers). Sometimes you would have them photograph their professional graphics onto slides for talks. Most conferences had an overhead projector at the front of the room, and a slide projector at the back. You learned to show up early to get your slides into the projector and test for up/down/reverse so it actually looked OK. Some really good speakers went ahead and free-formed the talk on the overhead projector, writing as they went.
By the late 1980's we had actual PCs, TeX/LaTeX, and HP pen plotters for great output onto overhead sheets. Thus, for a talk you could assemble a set of machine-generated overheads that looked clean and fancy.
Posters went much the same way. In the early 1980's you would format blocks of text and print them out, often cutting up the printed sheets into pieces (e.g. for descriptions of graphs). The graphs were often the thermal prints, or perhaps (with enough time) output from the graphic arts folks. One would physically cut and paste (or drymount) things together into some number of parts that could be carried to the conference and assembled with push pins on the supplied cork boards. Some folks did substantial portions either handwritten or using various graphics arts tools. In high school I took drafting classes, and certainly knew how to use Lettreset and other tools for neat, consistent lettering.
A (fairly late) example of 'assembled' posters can be found at AIP's Emilio Segre Visual Archives, where people have pinned up various bits onto boards. This is late enough (1999) that the various pieces look computer-generated, but the general idea is the same. Another from the archives is also at the AIP. I think you get the general idea.
Large poster scale printers became available at places like Kinkos in the early 1990s. I can remember taking a 3.25" floppy disk to a conference in Boston and having my poster printed on the spot for what seemed a lot of money, but it looked a lot better than my earlier ones. Now folks seem to have given up on the just-in-time mode, and lug giant tubes around with their posters. I'm not sure that is progress.
Perhaps next we will just be allotted a huge monitor, and can plug a USB stick into it, or just have the poster appear on virtual reality goggles.

"Perhaps next we will just be allotted a huge monitor, and can plug a USB stick into it": afaik, there are already conferences that have this.

@MassimoOrtolano - Looks like materials science is lagging a bit. I'd still think a bunch of proper-sized monitors to display a poster would be quite expensive for most conferences.

In fact, I've never attended one having such monitors, but I heard from a colleague of mine that a few exist.

Robotics conferences have been shifting the poster session to "rooms of flatscreen TVs with laptop cables" since about 2011. Many conference venues now have sets of such equipment available for rental.

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In a submitted manuscript, how (un)usual is a note "will be inserted in the final manuscript", or other meta-information to editor&reviewers?
I'm about to submit a manuscript describing a data product.  In the manuscript, I will advertise that the data are available for public use under the ODC Attribution license.  After submission, I will start the process to transfer the data to the World Data Center for Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere, who would like to see a manuscript before I can transfer my data.  But in the manuscript, I hope to have a persistent link, citing the actual data.  So, I have a chicken-and-egg problem.
I could solve this by writing in the submitted manuscript a note This will be adapted in the final version.  How usual or unusual is it to write such meta-information in a manuscript?  Or should I rather not make mention of it in the initial submission, and rather communicate this meta-information to the reviewers via the editor?

A while ago I saw a paper that had a "(insert statistical method here)" left in its abstract (no less) after publication. They corrected the pdf, buy you I found the uncorrected version here: http://nsaunders.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/bmcsysbiol.png

I recently had a similar problem and submitted a paper including the sentence:

Data for the analysis has been submitted to Dryad (http://datadryad.org) with DOI: xxxxxxxx (Note: data will be uploaded at publication, during the review found in Appendix A).

The journal did not have any problem with this, and I have now recieved the reviews. However, I contacted the journal beforehand and asked about this, since Dryad only accepts data from papers that are published or in press. In this case I included the data as an extra, review-only, appendix, and the need for this will naturally depend on specific journal policies.
Only communicating this information to the editor (your last option) should also be fine. However, for the reviewers it can be useful to have the information in the actual manuscript when they are reading, instead of buried in an email from the editor.

I agree that it's doable, with an editor's approval.

For the record, this paper has now been published online, now including the Dryad doi, which was updated during the typesetting stage. @gerrit

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Plagiarism in acknowledgements?
Subsequent publications rely on the exact same set of funding agencies.  In total, that is an alphabet soup containing no less than 35 acronyms.
I'm using the exact same paragraph in the acknowledgements.
Would that be (self-)plagiarism?
It does seem to fit the definition, but... it seems silly to rewrite or to add a citation...

I'm waiting for the one that'll ask, whether the fact that his exact same name appears on all his papers, is considered (self-)plagiarism.

@RanG. Having an Umlaut in your name can give you a few variations ('ü', 'ue'), but ultimately it comes back to bite you :p

@RanG. I'm waiting for the one that'll claim, whether the fact that his exact same name appears on all his papers, is considered (self-)plagiarism. (Btw. is this plagiarism? ;)

If it is truly an ordered list of funders and grant numbers, then there is no original idea that you are plagiarising. It is like reusing a list of affiliations in the author list. If you are describing how each person/funder/agency contributed, then there might be some originality in the statements and the exact contribution potentially changed between studies.

Not only is it not self-plagiarism, but often funding agencies will require a particular exact wording in the acknowledgements.

Nobody should care if the acknowledgments section of a paper is reused from a previous paper you have written. There is no proprietary "intellectual content" in an acknowledgments section, so you are not stealing anybody else's work.
It would be inappropriate (and very odd), however, to use someone else's acknowledgments as your own.

What if they happen to have the exact same set of funding agencies?

Funding agency statements are formulaic, and are therefore not considered plagiarism.


text:
What are useful tips and tricks for collaborating remotely?
What techniques have you found to improve collaboration with a remote colleague, in particular to make it feel more like collaboration in person?
The majority of my collaborations are with colleagues outside of my state.  The simplest model I've used is that we each write up certain proofs, and then eventually one of us organizes the various pieces into a draft of a paper, which gets passed back and forth via email until we agree that we're ready to submit.  However, this typically feels quite different from collaborating in person.  One technique that I've used with surprising success is to skype with my colleague.  He was actually able to write on the chalkboard so that I could read it.  What techniques have worked best for you?

One of the hardest parts of remote collaboration is making sure everyone is on the same page. Agreeing on work flow in advance is critical. To me the most important thing is that everyone has a good understanding of the roles and expectations of the individuals. A good timeline, that is flexible, is also very useful. Agreeing upon software, programming, and writing style issues at the outset is also useful.

A good Revision Control!! I use Git coupled with github being an efficient way (and free) to share and complete a collaboration, especially for code and latex files.
Else, google docs is also free,  allows to multiple persons to edit the same file at the same time, and you see who is doing what. You can do most "Microsoft Word" formats and things. You have also have as service free video-conference and chat.
I highly discourage Dropbox to share files edited per more than one person.

Note that all revision control software are not the same. Some like RCS, CVS, and SVN make branching and merging difficult and require a central server. Newer systems (e.g., GIT, HG, Bazaar) are "distributed" and branching and merging is trivial.

@DanielE.Shub I should have emphasized "good" before Revision Control, which of course depends of your needs :).

We use virtual world Second Life for team meetings. It is fun and we feel like we have traditional F2F meeting. We deal with the research of virtual team management. Some of our findings are available in my publications

This was really creative!

I am in a mixed group of wet lab and dry lab (bioinformatics) people, and preferences are very different (Word vs. LaTeX), but the last three papers we have written in Google Docs. It has quite some benefits.

Use of Google Docs is free, you just need an G+ account
Every one has immediate access to it
You can write the manuscript collaboratively in realtime. You see the cursor positions of the other blinking.
Since June 2014 Google Docs has "track changes".
You can also easily exchange files (even huge files with Google Drive)
No need to send multiple MS Word files around the globe and merge them afterwards
Inserting references and formatting the bibliography works perfectly with Paperpile. Also collaborators that do not have Paperpile installed see all the references and citations properly formatted.
Google Docs has excellent MS Word and PDF export.

As of writing the current free storage in Google Drive is 15 GB for regular users.

If you have some money to spend, GoToMeeting will hands down make your collaborations feel as if they are in person. You can have a meeting with video, screen sharing, etc. and I believe they have a 30 day free trial.
If you are looking to go the free route, try out Dropbox for sharing drafts. It will automatically keep version history and it eliminates all the emails. You could also hold meetings over Skype, however, it is only free for two video feeds.

Dropbox is terrible for multiple co-authors. Use SVN/git instead.

Skype has recently updated their features with more than one video-conference allowed at the moment.


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Grading schemes to encourage effort
I'll be teaching a graduate-level mathematically oriented class with probably less than 20 students. I have to grade the students (our system doesn't allow for pass-fail grading), and while I don't want to be overly fussy about the grades (this is after all advanced level material and mostly Ph.D students), I would like to provide some incentive structure so students will do the classwork and hopefully learn something in the process.
One possibility is "coarse-resolution" grading where in each homework, the possible grades are +, 0, -, where + denotes having done about 75% or more of the work, 0 is between 50 and 75%, and - is below 50%.
At the end of the semester, the number of +/0/- determines the grade, with "mostly +" getting an A, "mostly 0" getting a B, and mostly - getting a C.
Is this likely to be effective ? Is there something else I should do ? I'm open to the idea of not grading at all and giving out dummy grades, but I do think that people who put in effort should be rewarded in some way.

I'm not sure this question can be answered in the abstract; what works depends on the local grad-student intellectual culture.  In particular, what worked at Berkeley doesn't seem to work as well at Illinois.  I think.

That may be true. I was hoping for some general principles or "statements of experience".

I think this [http://web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/204/winston.html] is relevant to the discussion.

Nice. that's quite interesting.

Especially at the PhD level I expect the student to be more or less self motivated, and not needing additional incentive to do his/her job. That said, providing feedback at the end as to how good someone performed can be valueable information for the student (do I need to invest more time for example).

Someone can get a guaranteed A in this class just by doing the homework problems with a friend?

One approach is to have a number of clear learning objectives. For example:

At the end of this course the student will be able to differentiate functions of a single variable.

Then for each of these provide a description of what it means to obtain each of the various grades available.

F: The student does not grasp anything about differentiation.
  D: The student is able to differentiate simple functions.
  C: The student is able to differentiate many functions, but has difficulty with composite functions.
  B: The student is able to differentiate most functions and employ the chain rule.
  A: The student is able to differentiate all functions and can apply first principles.
  A+: The student employs novel approaches to differentiation.

Of course, you'd need to tailor these to your course and make them more precise than mine.
The learning objectives and the descriptions of what each grade means can be given to the student. A course may have different learning objectives, each with their own description. Your assessment can be tailored to measure the learning objectives based on these criteria.
The idea, apart from making your job of assessing more objective, is to replace scores by learning objectives, so ultimately the course will not be about scoring points, but learning.
You could even disassociate the grades from the learning objectives and replace them by unsatisfactory, satisfactory, good, very good, excellent, and fantabulous.

You are describing a rubric. Some rubrics are qualitative, using words like "novice", "proficient", and "expert" to delineate student achievement. Some have numerical values attached. Both need to be provided to the students at the beginning with a description of what each level of achievement looks like.
For my upper level courses and my courses with large independent projects, I use a five-point rubric (technically six, since I can assign a Zero):

5 - Exemplary
4 - Above Expectations
3 - Meets Expectations
2 - Below Expectations
1 - Deficient
0 - Absent, Missing, or Irrelevant

With the above descriptors, most students earn a 3 with good students earning a 4. A 5 is difficult to earn. However, since I provide my students with examples of each level, I give out very few marks of 2 and even fewer marks of 1. I reserve zero for when the student did not do what was asked, or turned in something else entirely. For example, if you ask for Problems 1, 7, 8, and 11-15 from Chapter 6, and the student turns in several problems from Chapter 5, that warrants a zero for not following directions.
Now, you have a simple and rapid grading scheme that still has numerical information. You can average over all of a student's scores (or weight them or whatever) to then assign a final grade. For an entry level undergraduate class, maybe the following is appropriate:

F
D
C
B
A

For an upper level undergraduate or a graduate level course, the expectations are higher (and the grading should reflect that, i.e. it should be hard to get a 4 or 5), the following might be appropriate:

F
C
B
A
A+

I had mixed experiences with a three point grading scheme.
On the positive side, grading is easier for you. Also you have very clear rules for who gets which grade. On the downside students tend to find the system unfair. The main concern was the following. When a student was able to solve, say 70% of the assignment correctly, he only gets the second highest grade. The complaint was that they solved 20% without getting credits for it. (I had a slightly different system, I think 1 point for 50% and 2 points for 80%). Let me add that this is not my point of view, since they also get the full score when they only solve 80%. So in the end these effects will cancel out. The next term I used a more granular system and giving up to 15 points per assignment. All students that took both classes preferred the 15 point system. For me it was not much difference (grading was done by TAs), so I stayed with the 15 point system.
I think it depends very much on your students. The first time I had the 3 point grading at MIT and it worked great. In Germany I had these more negative experiences.

One version of the three-point grading scheme I've seen is 2 = perfect, 1 = mostly right, 0 = other.  When students complain about getting only 1 point even though they're 90% correct, or only had an off-by-one error, or only had one tpyo, the proper response is "Yes, that's right.  It wasn't perfect."

These effects won't cancel out if their population mean for all their courses is around 70% and they have low marks variance. This would be a gigantic penalty to that proper subset of students. The effects can only cancel out for someone with a population mean of 75% or whatever the cutoff is (and even then they only cancel out in expectation; what actually happens is another matter).

I have also tried a three-point grading scheme. I got exactly the same complaints you did: more than a few undergraduates found the system unfair. Like you, I disagreed, but my opinion wasn't important enough for me to continue arguing the issue, so I switched to a 10-point scale and the students are now happy with it. I did change this, though: if the student fails to submit a weekly homework paper (this applies only to homework papers), I score the missing paper as 4 of 10 -- which approximately transforms the scores back to my old three-point scale, only the students don't realize it.

Why are you grading at all?  Do you expect students to learn anything from your grading efforts, or only from attempting the problem on their own?
If you intend to give your students feedback on how they did in their homework, then you will have all the information you need to produce a more accurate numeric grade.  Giving detailed feedback can make the students feel that the quality of the work is important.
If you are not going to pay much attention to the homework, and the three-level grading scheme reflects that you won't know enough to do more, how can you expect your students to care much more about the homework?  If you care about the quality and accuracy of the homework, your students will.  If you don't, well, you might induce some to, but you'll be fighting a losing battle.

I see. so your point is that a refined grading is a proxy for careful grading attention, and so if the refined grading goes away, some other mechanism needs to replace it.

@Suresh - Indeed.  Comments are even more important than detailed numeric scores in that regard: they are directly helpful to understanding, and they demonstrate your attention to and interest in what the student did.  This is neither necessary nor sufficient to produce motivated students, but it can help considerably!

The one seminar in which I put in most effort and most continuous work (and, not surprisingly, learned most) had as incentive not a grading scheme, but the following set of rules.

all calculations were done during the seminar (tutor realized that we wouldn't/couldn't put in much effort at home - I found that true throughout my studies, but few seminars would take this into account).
The work was handed out at the beginning and had to be handed to the tutor at the end of each seminar. He corrected it till the next seminar.
The most important rule was: if all groups over the whole semester have at least X% (IIRC 80 %) correct, no written exam was necessary. This was the incentive that kept us continuously working hard.
I think the required level needs some experience - our tutor probably had some decades of experience with this seminar when I took the course.
We formed groups of 3 people at the beginning of the semester which did not change for the whole semester. The 80%-overall-rule makes these groups quite similar in expected performance: there are very good reasons why someone good should be in each group. And why the bad students not cluster together, so that the 80% cannot be reached...
For each task, one of the group had to declare himself responsible. There was some rule, that everyone had to be responsible for roughly the same number of questions. And anyways, there were too many tasks for even the best students to solve within the available time frame.
Usually it took the form that everyone started at "his" task, got the layout of the question and the rough scheme for solving. Then this was discussed in the group. Next step was actually doing the calculations, then explaining to the others. Then showing the result to the tutor, who'd accept the solution or point out mistakes. Then either get the next task, or help some group mate who was stuck (not to waste those precious 20% of "allowed" mistakes...).  In between he went around and had a look that we were progressing with the calculations (I since realized that not needing a written exam is also a strong incentive for a tutor ;-) )

This was just a pass/fail seminar, but I think the tutor could have given marks for everyone at the end at least as easily as any school teacher can. I think you'll get a very good idea of the level of understanding if you just listen to a few explanations. And it is far easier to make everyone explain things to just a group of a few fellow students than make them come to the blackboard.

So there was no lecturing ? Otherwise how could you work during the seminar ?

@Suresh: the seminar went along with the "proper" lecture (IIRC 2 x 90 min lecture + 90 min seminar / wk). At times there were explanations at the beginning (if the handed-in answers showed confusion). But the main part of the time was everyone working on the calculations.

I see. so it was half lecture/half seminar. It's an interesting idea, but I fear that I'd end up covering very little of the material if I had to use a significant fraction of the time on class work of this nature.


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Risks of shifting to post-publication review
I've heard some compelling arguments from open science advocates for a system of reviewing scientific research outputs that focuses almost exclusively on post-publication peer review. The idea is that research would initially be published in free and open venues, with little to no lag time resulting from pre-publication review (pre-pub review, if any, is focused on weeding out large and obvious flaws and not on assessing perceived significance or impact). Once published, social tools similar to those in place at Amazon and StackOverflow (reviewing, commenting, reputation systems, etc.) would be used by the community for more in-depth assessment and critique of research outputs. Scientists could get credit for post-publication reviews, which (if openly accessible along with the article) are  valuable scientific contributions themselves. On the other hand, junior scientists afraid of unjust retribution for being critical of a senior scientist's research could post reviews anonymously/pseudonymously, protecting their professional reputation but still making an important contribution to the scientific discourse.
I've seen two primary arguments against this kind of system: 1) that pre-publication review is an important quality control mechanism, and 2) that it ensures that the published scientific literature actually gets read. Regarding this second point, many raise the point that many research articles go uncited (and potentially unread by anyone other than the authors and reviewers). It could be tragic if a major scientific breakthrough existed in the literature, but was never widely acknowledged because the paper never got any attention and post-publication review.
Do these risks give real cause for concern? Is there some level of quality control that can only be done pre-publication? Do we risk missing out on important research by not requiring rigorous review of all published material? And are there other risks not mentioned here that would make a shift from primarily pre-pub review to primarily post-pub review problematic?

Originally posted at http://openscience.stackexchange.com/q/79/22.

As a pure mathematician, my reaction is "Don't we already have post-pub review system?" Essentially all the new papers in my area first appear on arXiv, which is where people find and (possibly) read them; they are then sent to the journals to play the status game.

I agree with Boris Bukh (although I'd describe formal publication as more than just "play the status game").  It's worth separating the issues of gamification and reputation systems from post-publication review.  The latter is certainly possible, if you're open-minded about what counts as post-publication review, while the former is much more questionable.

+1 to @BorisBukh's comment. The other form of post-publication review we have is citations - crappy articles don't get cited, so your citation index (h and others) suffers.

I think that in thinking about this question it is good to consider the idea of epi-journals: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/why-ive-also-joined-the-good-guys/

@StephanKolassa: The crappier the article, the better the opportunity for citing it as a negative or inferior example compared to one's own work.

This paper http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/OIR-06-2015-0182 is likely to be quite useful here, though (as it's a minor Emerald journal) I don't have access to say for sure...

In my mind, there are three semi-related problems with post-publication peer review:

It's difficult for the lay press to distinguish between pre- and post-publication reviewed papers, and for many "breaking" articles, I'd be concerned about reports of spurious results becoming more common, not less. For example, if I publish a paper on a risk factor for X disease, how long does the press have to wait to report it? Do they have to let peer reviews build up? Pre-pub at least ensures that someone has looked it over.
Article readership is nowhere near uniform, and there's no reason to believe reviews would be different. At the moment, every single paper published by a journal is subjected to some form of review, whether anyone else cares about that paper or not. Relying on post-publication, it's possible some papers will get few/no reviews. What's a non-expert to make of those papers? Similarly, what's a non-expert to make of a post-pub vaccine study that's been flooded with anti-vaxx rhetoric dressed up in technical jargon?
Post-pub peer review is inherently non-anonymous. I'm pretty sure Big Deal Figure in the Field is not going to be judged as harshly as New Grad Student even for the same work - and this will also likely effect those with clearly female or minority "sounding" names. Prominent scientists may be more likely to get a pass under the assumption that they're  right. In my mind, breaking review anonymity is a step in the wrong direction.

Regardless of whether the end-result would be better, one problematic part of a shift is always the shift. There are a lot of processes in place based around the current system, and it's very unlikely all stakeholders will simultaneously be in favour of change. Even if all academics agreed that moving to post-publication would be beneficial, there's a good chance that those allocating jobs, promotions, grants, league-table positions, student funding... would still only consider traditional journals. That could make the cost of change too high for those who, for example, need to support their families.
I would say that the UK open-access situation is an example of this. The government decided it liked the idea of open-access, but then realised that the cost of transition from reader-pays to author-pays was higher than it was prepared to pay right now.
As an aside, there have been historical examples (at least within maths of)

a major scientific breakthrough existed in the literature, but was never widely acknowledged

The function of the editor in a regular reviewed journal is to determine whether a submission meets the intellectual standards of that journal. The standards are in fact largely established by the editor, via explicit policy statements, choice of reviewers, and the editor's power to make final decisions that are contrary to the opinion of the majority of reviewers. If one were to replace carefully-focused criticism by a small number of well-chosen experts with a count of "likes" within an undefined "community" (e.g. Stackexchange / Reddit style voting), the valuable contribution of the few experts who write detailed comments would probably be nullified by the vast number of uninformed voters who are really in no position to render a professional opinion about the paper.
It is extremely difficult to persuade qualified experts to spend the time reviewing journal submissions, and such "credit" as is attached to reviewing comes in the form of a line in the "service" entry in your annual report, where you attest to having reviewed mss. for various journals; or, even worse, your skills as a reviewer may be recognized and you will be invited to be an editor or associate editor. One fact that motivates quite a number of reviewers is not the "credit" for reviewing, but the opportunity to significantly influence the course of the field. This comes about in the review system both by giving the reviewer a privileged opportunity to nudge the research in a certain direction (e.g. pointing out that the facts are compatible with multiple theories; pointing out that the logic of the argument doesn't support A, it supports B), and by putting them in the position of absolutely preventing the publication of a bad paper (recommending reject, and doing so persuasively). When rejection is a possible outcome, authors will take criticisms seriously.
In a post-publication review system, this reviewer incentive would be missing. What, then would be the motivation for an expert to write an after-the-fact review of a terrible paper, so that the world at large would know that the paper is terrible? And without some reason to think that a paper is worth reading, why would you bother reading this one when there are hundreds of others coming out every month?
Your suggested post-publication review essentially describes a blog. Perhaps it works in some fields, but in mine, nobody puts serious research in a blog.

"the valuable contribution of the few experts who write detailed comments would probably be nullified by the vast number of uninformed voters who are really in no position to render a professional opinion". MathOverflow seems to have high level questions and its vote system does not seem to be spoiled by uninformed voters. Why would it be different for a "crowd-reviewed" publication system of research level articles?

"giving the reviewer a privileged opportunity to nudge the research in a certain direction". Your answer has a very aristocratic feeling to me. Why should we keep a limited number of privileged persons (in particular, the privilege to have editors in own's academic network) the opportunity of influencing their field, if we can have a global opinion? Of course, the privilege of having a developed academic network is usually    a consequence of quality of work and productivity, and I don't deny the merits of experience, but why not entrusting a more democratic system?

@Taladris The main difference is that there is nothing to gain from MathOverflow prestige, and this by itself keeps the non-informed people out. But with a publishing system like this, can you imagine what will happen when the next crack posts a "proof" of the RH and gets 10000 of his twiter followers to give it a like... Technically this would count as a published proof...

The dark side of post-publication peer review
The main issue raised here seems to be the problem of policing who gets to comment on an article, and how they are identified. Anonymity is important to allow good criticism to be made, but also opens the flood-gates for trouble.


text:
Is it considered okay to ask for the opinions of admission staff or committee after their decision of declination?
If one applies to a graduate school and gets declined, is it considered okay to ask for the opinions of admission staff or committee, about their thoughts on the person's application package (gpa, experience, personal statement, recommendation letters), for better adjusting his plan of applying to other schools and career?
Thanks!

There is nothing wrong with asking, but don't expect an answer that is particularly helpful (although you may get very helpful answers). You may get a standard response that doesn't tell you much, and I would think it pretty rare for someone to take the time to craft a detailed response.
If you do ask, make sure you do it in a professional manner, with a couple of key questions about particular issues, like those you mentioned. I would avoid a generic email that simply asks, "Why didn't I get the job/an acceptance?" or "What didn't you like about my application?" Obviously, if you do get a response, follow up the response with a brief thank you email (and definitely don't get in an argument about the response if you don't agree with it!).

Tricky. The selection committee may refrain from telling you anything very specific about your case, because if they don't walk carefully and say something dumb, there can be a lawsuit. So, mostly you'd get some cookie cutter responses such as "it's not a good fit" or "the selection process was highly competitive" or something like that.
To soften them, I'd suggest sending the chair of the committee an e-mail thanking for their time to evaluate your case. Express a reasonable amount of sorrow but show a strong will to pursue this degree or career. Propose an informal meeting or a phone conversation to lessen their stress of crafting a written response (stress "informal"). Schedule a time, and meet or call. In the communication, never ask why you were not selected. Twist the question a bit by asking what are the traits they value in this field/industry, and in light of your application, how you can enhance your portfolio so that you can become a stronger candidate in the general pool.
Also, one school's rejects can be another school's successful candidates. On top of this very institute, you should talk to other institutes or at least attend their open day as well. The comments of the committee of the next school you'll apply probably matter a lot more.

Regarding the potential for litigation, would this conversation be any more likely to succeed over the phone, since there's no incriminating paper trail?


text:
Is ps preferred over pdf format in some cases?
Some people use ps over pdf format for their paper.
Are there some advantages of ps format over pdf format?
Thanks!

ps works on ancient printers.

Some older papers are in ps format because it was popular 15+ years ago, and a few people continue using it to distribute new papers.  I could be wrong, but my impression is that it's because they developed a workflow back when ps was popular and don't want to bother with changing it.  Not having to change your habits could be considered a kind of advantage, but I'm not posting it as an answer since it is not a general property of the formats.

Details from Adobe: PostScript vs. PDF

Years ago, I learned that Windows users may not by default be able to open postscript documents, even though it's an open standard and quite common.  As an undergrad, classmates asked me to convert postscript files the lecturer had sent, to PDF.  If this is still the case, postscript can be a way to troll Windows users.

Especially for physics, share of pre-prints is more common than in other disciplines. The [arXiv][1] project owned by Cornell is a notable repository; to quote them:

Open access to 914,611 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics

Preferred input is (La)TeX---yet PostScript is possible, too.  Among the formats offered to the reader is ... PostScript.
A side: PostScript is a programming language, used esp. for printing. Adobe's pdf format is younger, initially was built on a subset of it.
[1]: http://arxiv.org/

@gerrit as far as I know, Windows can open neither ps nor pdf files without third-party programs. Since the pdf format is more common, Windows users are more familiar with it and will often have such a reader already installed. Sometimes the reader is pre-installed (by the computer vendor, not by Microsoft).

@gerrit: You can install ghostscript/Ghostview for Windows to get around that limitation.

No.
There are no advantages of PS over PDF.
Any modern computer system that can display PS files can also display PDF files. (The converse is certainly not true.)
Any modern computer system that can produce PS files can also produce PDF files. (Again, the converse is not true.)
Any material that you can present with a PS file can be presented equally well with a PDF file. (Again, the converse is not true.)

Some printers can print ps natively.

A good printer should understand PostScript as one of the more common page description languages.  PCL is an other one you meet often. Yet partial disagreement with Jukka: despite pdf's tend to be smaller in volume than ps' a showcase like this shows a lot PostScript (here through LaTeX) may offer, so it is not dead.

@Buttonwood But (at least functionally) PDF is a strict superset of PostScript. Everything in that showcase can be done in PDF as well.

As for the final format, no, there are no significant advantages, as the other answers point out. There are however a couple of quirks in TeX (which is the standard typesetting program in many fields) regarding ps and pdf support.

pstricks, which is a popular package for producing drawings, only works if you compile to a ps file (there are workarounds, though).
microtype, which is a package for making automatically small typographical adjustments to the document and producing a better-looking line breaking, only works if you compile to a pdf file.

So users of the former package are encouraged to use ps, while users of the second are forced to use pdf. Of course there are converters in both directions, so it is not a binding choice.


text:
How to reduce the load of professors writing recommendation letters for graduate school application?
If a student can't decide which school to apply at one time, and different schools have different' deadlines, how could the student do to reduce the load of professors writing recommendation letters for graduate school application?
One possible solution. I heard of interfolio (http://www.interfolio.com/). Does anyone know if it might help? My concerns are that each school has its own only application system, and it might not be good for recommendation letter to not have specific school name in it. What do you think?

Don't. Writing recommendation letters is part of our job.

@JeffE If only every professor thinks the same way as you!

@perfectionm1ng - When a student has been an exceptional performer, both in attitude and aptitude, writing recommendation letters is one of the most rewarding parts of the job.

@J.R.: Does it mean that it is painful to recommend a non-exceptional, non-traditional (not good in the traditional sense), or even troublesome student?

@JeffE: I contacted some professors several times, who don't respond to inquiries of writing recommendation letters online, even when they have already agreed to do so. It is really painful to me. I am an international student, and it especially hurt me when I saw average American students could get their letters very easily (Btw, if you still remember, I am not a traditional student, and have posted some questions before and got your replies. I sounded like a terrible student, but it wasn't the whole story, and I didn't give more details in my previous posts).

@T.. if a professor doesn't think a student has the aptitude to be a great researcher, then it certainly wouldn't be an easy letter to write. However, the student won't be unreservedly recommended for the job: above all, letters of recommendation are a confidential and honest opinion.

Does it mean that it is painful to recommend a non-exceptional, non-traditional (not good in the traditional sense), or even troublesome student? — No, it's not painful at all, because most faculty just won't agree to write letters for unexceptional students in the first place.  And that should be a relief; you really don't want a recommendation from someone who doesn't think you're exceptional.

T: I've never been asked that favor by a student whose observed work was not at least above average, so I wouldn't know. But something that isn't "rewarding" isn't necessarily "painful," either. I also concur with the opinions expressed by Moriarty and JeffE. Back to your original question: Let's say a student said, "I'd like you to write a recommendation letter for me," and I readily agreed. If the student followed that up with, "Just to let you know, I'm applying to more than a dozen schools," I wouldn't be filled with pangs of regret – especially in the age of word processors.

As for I am an international student, and it especially hurt me when I saw average American students could get their letters very easily. I don't know any professor who would be less motivated to write a student for an international student, but most professors I know would indeed drag their feet when it comes to writing letters for an underperforming student. Remember, a dishonest or disingenuous recommendation makes the professor look bad. If I give you a glowing recommendation, and you don't meet their expectations, no one at that institution will ever take my word on anything ever again.

Is the word exceptional susceptible to inflation?  There are many, many graduate students and certainly they're not all exceptional.  Is it not good enough to be just... good?

@gerrit - The better the student, the easier the letter is to write. I've had "good" students ask me to write letters as well, and I've obliged. But a few of my exceptional students asked me to do the same, and, well, I considered that an honor.

Is it not good enough to be just... good? — No, not really.

You can reduce the amount of work the professor needs to do by following this excellent advice from Prof. David E. Keyes.  Here are some of the most relevant bits:

To ensure that such a writer is well primed to execute your reference efficiently, you should create a self-contained packet containing all the information the author will need to dispatch the reference in one sitting: (1) contact information for the recipient of the letter, (2) a description of the position and application closing date, (3) your own application essays and cover letter, (4) a resume, (5) relevant transcripts and scores, and (6) an explanation of the niche of the writer! It is very useful, as a reference writer, to receive a reminder along the following lines: "Professor Keyes, your letter will be the one that comments most authoritatively about my analytical ability, my promptness in completing projects, and my reasons for wanting to pursue X next fall. Remember that you gave me an A– in partial differential equations two years ago and it was your suggestion that led to my summer at Los Alamos with Y." You should provide this packet in both hard and soft copy. Writers of lots of references maintain files that may be hard or soft, or both, and you should make it easy for those writers to locate your files quickly for subsequent updating and future requests.
Some faculty write many dozens of letters of reference during peak months, and they may even ask candidates for sample text to be incorporated into letters, to ensure that they capture their niches. You should not be flustered at such a request, and should not be modest in complying. You should be aware, though, that your words will not pass directly into the delivered product; they will be used simply to get the author's juices flowing following the formulaic paragraphs of the letter.
To help maximize the time a writer has available for each candidate, you should complete the reference process as far as legally possible yourself. For hardcopy applications, this means printing out and filling in as many fields as possible, both about you and about the writer (title, affiliation, contact data). For reference letters collected online (the vast majority for positions filled by junior candidates), you can usually fill in each writer's basic contact information. Such streamlining is always appreciated and leads to fewer errors and faster completion.

I don't think something like Interfolio would help, because the last thing you should do is force the professor to learn to use a new tool just so he/she can write a letter for you.


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Is an academic probation for not finding a research advisor in time considered "disciplinary sanction"?
Is an academic probation for not finding a research advisor in time considered "disciplinary sanctions by any university"?  This is asked in a graduate school application.
Does "sanction" mean penalty?
Does "disciplinary" include the issue of finding a research advisor in time?
Thanks!

Can you explain the meaning of disciplinary sanction? Thanks!

A sanction is a penalty imposed for violating a rule. A disciplinary sanction usually implies the intentional breaking of a rule. (For instance, committing plagiarism or theft.)


text:
Why do professors ask candidates at PhD interviews what specific problems they are interested in?
I am currently interviewing in several universities across the U.S. for PhD programs in computer science. In every one of my interviews so far, there are always 1 or 2 professors that are eager to know which specific problems I am interested in researching (and it normally comes out as the most important question they are going to ask me). This question stumps me every time because I am not trying to enter a PhD program and start working on a specific problem right away. Instead, I want to do some lab rotations first and get a deeper feeling for the work of the institution's faculty (that works on my subarea of interest) and then, after these rotations, pick a specific problem (perhaps this is the wrong motivation?).
It does not seem to me that interest is a reliable determiner of success in completing a PhD. I could say that I am interested in Dr.X's research on complex manifolds because I skimmed through some of his papers. However, from my personal experience, I think there is a very big discrepancy between having read a little bit about a topic and claiming it as an interest, and actually doing research in that area. In other words, one might be interested in doing research in modelling the response of cancer patients to drug Y (because they want to defeat cancer or something similar) but a lot of times that person might realize that the actual research is far from his expectations and end up switching to different area.
I could list a few other reasons why I think interest is not a good measure of student's commitment but I might be wrong since professors like to ask this question. Why is this and what would be an honest way to answer it?

Well, if you express interest in Problem Y that's related to the work of Dr. X, the interviewer can say "Hey, that's great, Dr. X works on that.  You should definitely come here."  (Remember, interviews serve for them to recruit you as well as to help decide if you should be admitted.)  Conversely, if you appear dead-set on working on Y, and nobody in this department works on that, they can let you know that this department is not a good fit for you.  But I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that you want to try some things before making a decision.

@NateEldredge I looked into the research of the faculty before applying to each school  and I saw some problems that looked interesting but I am still an undergrad. Naturally, I don't have the time to start some in depth reading of the research of the faculty at each school and if I say "I am interested in Dr.X's research in Problem Y", then I would look ridiculous if the interviewer asks something along the lines of "In problem Y, how would you deal with Y_1, Y_2, and Y_3 and what do you know about Y_4?".

@Lucas: In my field at least (math: that's close!) it would be surprising for an undergraduate student to have read the research of the faculty at the school.  However they may have some coursework or done some outside reading in the research area.  Thus for instance if Dr. X does research on complex manifolds (in the CS department? really?? cool!) it would be relevant to say that you know something about manifolds.  I would find it strange if they asked you about specific problems -- much of the PhD training (in my field...) comes before students choose specific problems to work on.

@PeteL.Clark Of course we don't have PhD interviews in math, so in this sense we're not too similar to CS.

@Kimball: Well, usually not.  In my program we have a grad student visitation day, and not all of the students who are visiting have been admitted to the program.  It can happen that impressions gained during the day impact the admissions decisions....a little bit, in edge cases.  Moreover we ask for a personal statement which is somewhat in the same ballpark.  But of course you're right that a formal interview is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Other than the previous answer, we ask this question because a candidate may be interested in an area that is not in fact well represented in the department. If someone wanted to do research on numerical methods for optimization, my department has nobody to advise such a thesis -- but the candidate may not be aware of this.
I personally ask this question because too many graduate students come to me and ask whether I could be their adviser and then expect me to pose a problem they should work on for the 3-4 years. But I don't want to do that: if a student doesn't know what they want to do for research, yes, sure, I can give them a topic, but if it doesn't match their interest, it's going to be a painful 3-4 years for everyone involved. So I typically want that my students come up with topics they find interesting themselves, and then we can see how that fits into my research group and program.

This is an important one. "You're interested in Dr. So-and-so's work on X, but we all know that grant didn't get renewed...". Or just no one really works on that.

I'm not familiar with CS departments in particular, but I think this is less a "we ask because we want to know what we can expect you to hit the ground running on" and more of a "we ask to see what you know about us and where your general interests are".  It's pretty much a job interview, so take it as a job interview type of question.  A company wants you to show an interest in their company that goes beyond simply submitting a job application.  They want to know what you know about them, and how that influences your job hunting.  People that simply throw in an application and demonstrate no knowledge or specific interest in the company are unlikely to be hired unless the position is rather non-competitive. Companies want interested, happy, inspired workers; not some guy just looking to cash in his next paycheck, and likely biding his time for something he'd enjoy more to come along.
Look into the department before you arrive and see what things the faculty are working on now, or have worked on recently, and single out ones that seem most interesting to you.  If you find there are none, this probably is not the right university for you.
This isn't something that binds you in any way.  As one of the qualifying exams for my Ph.D., I was to present a talk on some recent research to demonstrate my knowledge and interest in doing research.  Ostensibly, interest specifically in the subject matter of the talk, but in no way was that binding.  My actual thesis could, and ultimately did, have absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter of this oral exam.  To this day I have not produced a single piece of research that's relevant to the topic of that talk.

A candidate with no intrinsic motivation and own research interest appears to be only in for the name of the lab and the title of PhD, not the topic.
You want creative students that are eager to pursue research and come up with ideas of their own. When you are reading the research topics of the lab, and you don't come up with ideas, then you are the wrong guy. It may be possible to choose the advisor later - but you really need to be highly motivated for the specific topic of at least one of them...
I'd never accept a candidate with a "tell me what to do now" attitude, or a "maybe I will find out later what I like" attitude. It's okay if you switch topics (if it's early enough) but you have to burn to do this.


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How early should one request a letter of recommendation for graduate school?
I will be applying to start graduate school in the U.S. next year during the Fall. Currently I am an undergraduate senior student and most programs require three letters of recommendation with the application. I know professors are busy people and many programs have different requirements for the format of the recommendation. Hence, it might take some time for a professor to do the different recommendations. How early should I send the initial email requesting for a letter?

Contact the professors now! There's no reason to wait. You can just tell them you are interested in having them write letters for you, if they are willing; they can at least start thinking about what to write. Then as soon as you have decided which schools to apply to, send them the details on  how to submit the letters and the deadlines. I would say this should be a bare minimum of 2 weeks before the deadline, preferably much sooner.
After that, don't hesitate to remind them periodically of the deadline, until they tell you the letters have been submitted.

But the professors can get to know the student much better over the course of the next ten months or so until the student graduates -- and the letters aren't due until several months after that. It seems much too early to me.

@msh210: The student is planning to start grad school next fall - in the US system, applications (including letters) will be due early this winter, about 3-4 months from now. It's definitely not too early. Anyway, I'm not saying the professors will actually write the letters now (that will happen close to the due date, given human nature) but they will at least start thinking about what to write. And if any of them decline to write, this will give the student more time to find someone else.

Oh, I understood that he or she will be applying next fall. I see now how you read it, and concur that you're probably right (though the question could be worded more clearly).

The earliest deadlines are often Dec 1, ... so you'd want to be requesting letters at least two months prior. Further, do be sure to make such requests _in_person_, not by email (even if you arrange an appointment by email). As you can imagine, it is a bit of extra work to generate such letters and do the (often ridiculous) on-line stuff to register them at several places... so you are asking a favor. Not a huge sacrifice, but something. So don't just do it by email, I think: go, in person, smile, and use affect and body language to express your appreciation. :)

How well do you know the people you will be asking for letters of recommendations from?
Have you consistently gone to office hours?
Have you shown an interest in the material of the course above and beyond what was required for a grade?
Have you assisted any of them in their research efforts, and if so, what contribution have you made?
Does your department have a formal policy on how letters of recommendation are handled? Some programs of study (Pre-Health, Pre-Law, etc.) have offices dedicated to the coordination of the application process for advanced degrees and will have their own criteria on deadlines and how applications are handled.

If you have done your part as a student and been actively engaged with the people you will be asking for letters of recommendation from, then you should already have an idea of who your references will be and what their styles are as to how approachable and willing they will be to give you the recommendation and what the demands on their time are. If you haven't been engaged with them, then

Don't expect much more than a form letter or a flat out refusal
Expect to ask as soon as possible as you will go to the bottom of their list of people to write recommendations for as they will prioritize those students whom they know on a more personal basis and have engaged them.
Unless you need to remain a student to fulfill the requirements of a visa, then consider a gap year and work on the third and fourth bullets above so that you gain the experience and build the relationships you need this year to get more than just the perfunctory letter of recommendation from three disinterested faculty who will only have as much time for you as you had for them.

You are obviously asking them to do you a favor, even though it is one that is an expect part of their chosen profession, so the more time that you give the person you are asking for a recommendation is not only the courteous thing to do, it also shows that you are organized, committed, respect their time and effort in your success, and are deserving of more than just a Lucas was in my X course and he got a grade of Y answer to a boilerplate letter of recommendation. Participation in a course and doing the work to earn a respectable grade is part of your job description of being a student. Asking for a reference comes from the things that you did that went above and beyond those requirements.
Also prepare a highlights sheet of your life and academic career to this point for your reviewers, in writing, and invest the time in it that you hope that they will invest in you, so no grammar, spelling, or punctuation mistakes. Give your pertinent autobiographical information including the grades and instructors for course work related to the field you are applying to. List out awards you have received, accolades such as making the Dean's list, etc. Tell them about why you are applying to the field you are applying to, what went into the choices that you have made to get you there. Give them an outline of the things that you hope that they will say about you in your letter. And personalize it. Let them know how they influence your choice in the direction that you will be taking with the rest of your life. If you can articulate the difference that they made in your academic career in order to want to pursue it further with an advanced degree, then they will likely put more effort into your request.
Oh and don't forget an old-fashioned, hand written, Thank You note, in a card or on stationary if they do agree to be your reviewer. It will show that you value their time and your future.

When I write letters, I specifically try to avoid much reference to things that I have not observed myself about the student, and focus on what I have observed directly. Among other reasons, when I read a letter of recommendation that merely recaps the transcript and other aspects of the student's CV, it strikes me as conveying precisely zero new information... and is actually a bad letter, then!

@paulgarrett. All of the faculty I have known well, i.e. done most all of the things I have recommended have asked me for that bullet list when writing a recommendation. All of my references also offered to write my recommendations without me ever having to bring up the subject. If you don't want to use it, then don't... That is also why my first point was how well do you know the person you are asking and why I said if you have already done what you should have been doing your entire undergraduate career, you will have a good idea of the person's style and how they do things.

Hm. Long ago, I did also ask for further information, but after some years of reading letters and seeing how things worked out subsequently, I've become sensitized to the issue of the degree of genuine information content in letters. But tastes vary, evidently, ...

@paulgarrett. Even if you do not require it or use it, subconsciously, who will you respond better to, the A-student with an oversized sense of entitlement who sticks their head in you door and says "Hey Prof, how about a Rec?", or the student that has taken the time to thoughtfully prepare an information sheet about themselves, if for no other reason than it says "My future matters to me, and I am taking the time to be professional about it. I realize that I am asking you for your time to help me, and that time is valuable enough to put this together."?

If I don't have independent information about a student, I won't write a letter, certainly not without warning them that I don't know anything first-hand about them. What is the point of quoting transcripts and personal statements? It makes a letter look weak, at least to some peoples' eyes. I myself want to avoid having my appraisal tainted by second-hand information. A different approach than some use, I'm sure.


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Is it hard to get a scholarship for graduate school in Mathematics?
I am currently majoring in Physics but I am thinking about changing my major to Mathematics because feel more attracted to it as a subject. However, I have been told that in Physics, one almost always gets a full scholarship to attend graduate school. Is it hard to obtain a scholarship to go to grad school in Mathematics here in the U.S.?

At most US universities, Ph.D. students in mathematics usually receive full financial support that covers tuition as well as a modest stipend (i.e. money paid to you directly for your living expenses, usually between $15,000-25,000 per year).  This is normally some combination of:

Teaching assistantship: requires that you teach.  Often this starts with discussion sections for calculus and other introductory courses, and can progress to more specialized courses.
Research assistantship: requires that working on research (usually your own thesis research, but sometimes a different project).  This often comes from your advisor's grant funds.
Fellowship: doesn't require you to do any extra work, just your usual coursework or research.

In my experience, the word "scholarship" is not usually used when talking about funding for graduate study.
Note that the above only applies to Ph.D. programs.  Masters students generally have to pay their own tuition and living expenses (perhaps via loans), though sometimes a limited number of teaching assistantships, etc, are available.

In other words, mathematics PhD programs in the US are not really funded much differently from any other basic science.

Willie- I think that's a mischaracterization.  Especially outside the very best schools, there is a big mismatch between the amount of external funding available to graduate students in math and other basic sciences.  Math students are much more likely to spend almost every semester teaching than in lab sciences.

Certainly the biologists at Berkeley had much larger stipends and much less teaching than most math grad students.


text:
How much depth should I have into a topic before I can claim it to be one of my research interests?
I have been applying to Ph.D. programs in bioinformatics and have already gotten interview invitations from a few of them. My background is mainly on the computational side but I am interested in applying that knowledge to biological problems.
In my application I mention that one of my research interests is modelling physiological systems (e.g. the cardiovascular system). However, I have not done substantial reading on the topic other than from a few websites and Wikipedia (mainly because of the little free time that I currently have as an undergraduate). From what I have read, I find the field to be very appealing and something that I would like to do research on. Nevertheless, my knowledge is basic at best and I am wondering if I can claim it to be one of my research interests.

You'll end up reading a lot of papers, and your interests will undoubtedly change quite a bit as time progresses. IMO you have a disparity between a topic and the current research on the topic that elementary readings can't inform you about. You may find that while the topic interests you, the practical research and application bores you, or vice versa! You could viably get a head start on the process by reading primary literature to your liking, but the answer below basically sums it up: an interest is simply that!

You can be interested in Japanese even if you don't know more than 3 words in Japanese.
You can say it is your interest.
If they ask about your research experience - then usually a publication is a good indicator that you have some knowledge of the topic.

While this is true, it can be embarrassing to be asked or otherwise invited to talk about a self-proclaimed interest, only to have little to say. I have certainly made the mistake (?) of being too literal with the word myself.

Incidentally, some linguists do research on Japanese without knowing the language.


text:
Can one hire an illustrator to make drawings for a paper?
I am curious if one is allowed to hire an illustrator to draw images for a paper (e.g. a cartoon of some chemical reaction). Should this person be included as an author or in the acknowledgements? Or is this outright not allowed?

The nature of authorship varies by field. What field are you in? And have you asked your advisor?

I don't see how this would remotely qualify for authorship, but then again I know the sciences grant authorship for practically everything these days lol. In the humanities, you would just give them an acknowledgement, but you need to be sure that you get them to agree to give you the copyright or a perpetual license so that you won't have trouble getting your work published.

Some (wealthy) universities have staff graphic artists who do this.

@guifa: "included as an author in the acknowledgements" presumably means being acknowledged as the author of the image only, not listed as an author of the paper.

@nengel the OP says "included as an author or in the acknowledgements*

@guifa: oops! I totally misread that. My apologies, I agree completely that just drawing an image shouldn't make you an author.

See this possible duplicate : https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/105513/72855

Yes, there are several examples for hiring designers, illustrators and their contribution is non-scientific, so generally not acknowledged or co-authored (but paid in cash :) ). If you google it, actually you can find several professional services.

It is entirely reasonable to hire a graphics designer or similar artist to make illustrations for scientific manuscripts, and I do in fact know people who have done so. For example, many journals now invite one to submit a "striking image" to be the splash graphic for the paper online, and this is a great place to get an artist involved.
An artist working on graphics for a paper would typically be given credit in acknowledgements but not be a co-author, since they have not made a contribution to the scientific work. There might be cases where "graphic design" might expand to become "visualization and analysis of data" worthy of an authorship, but those would likely be rare and relatively easy to distinguish.
The primary complication that this can add is one of copyright, as some journals require you to note images that need to have their copyright handled separately from the body as a whole. If you make an arrangement where the artist transfers the copyright to you, however, you can likely transfer it onwards to the journal without problem.

In the old days before computers and everyone thinking they were graphic artists, universities and research labs had artists on staff to produce graphs, diagrams, and whatnot. That was their job, and they were paid to do it, but were not authors of the resulting paper. (See any paper published until, say, the early 1980s, and I can guarantee that the graphics were not done by the researchers).

@JonCuster ... or if the graphics were done by the researchers, one can certainly tell it is non-professional. :-)

My first involvement in a research publication was preparing figures for a faculty member’s paper. I got an acknowledgement and a few bucks for my efforts.

Seems entirely reasonable to hire an illustrator.  In an ideal world, professionals who specialize in illustration would do the illustrations, freeing up researchers to do their research.
Authorship and acknowledgement seem like fundamentally cultural issues.  So, it's probably best to contact the journal that you'd like to submit the paper to to ask them for guidance before hiring an illustrator.
Once you know what the journal'd require, then you might make compliance with those requirements part of the contractual terms when hiring an illustrator.
Anecdotally, I don't think that the journals I've submitted to before cared about where the illustrations came from; or, at least, they never asked.  And when submitting patent applications, patent attorneys seem to have people on-staff who redraw the figures you provide them in the stereotypical rustic style that I guess the patent office expects, even when the provided figures would seem clearer and more professional.

To be fair about patent applications, I suspect that they're intentionally trying to meet-but-not-exceed the legally required disclosure necessary for protecting intellectual property.  I mean, if you're writing up a patent, the idea's to get legal protection for the ideas by complying with the requirement to publish them; I suppose more fiscally minded folks see there to be no reason to go beyond that in providing additional information or ease in the public disclosure.


text:
How should I phrase a résumé if I have an uncertain degree plan?
I have been working towards a degree in mathematics and in computer science for the last two and a half years. That corresponds to the following bit in my résumé:

Education
  B.A. in Mathematics (2012 - 2016 expected)
  B.S. in Computer Science (2012 - 2016 expected)

However, I recently found out that I can graduate next semester with a major in mathematics and a minor in computer science. If that was my plan, I would write this:

Education
  B.A. in Mathematics (2012 - 2015 expected)
  Minor: Computer Science

However, at the moment I am undecided about which path I plan to take.
Which should I include in the résumé? I am considering just writing down whichever one would seem more impressive, but I don't want to be deceitful.

Facing an uncertain graduate date is a common issue, particularly for many Ph.D. students who aren't sure exactly when they are going to defend.  The thing that you want in your C.V. is to communicate as clearly as possible what are your skills and time of availability to the people considering taking you on for your next career stage after graduation.  Thus, put your current best estimate in; if you want to indicate an option to join a position earlier, put that in as well as an option.

The best way I worded my resume was
Stating the school you when to, the city,state
Bachelors of Some Thing
Additional Fields of Study: Minor in Computer Science and Engineering
In terms of your resume, I would start out stating your revelant course work in a list but make it into a table (hide the borders when your done) that you can hide in MS Word.
After that put your volunteer and work history
after putting that put all the skills and qualifications.
I added something a bit extra which was I speak Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese), Spanish, Japanese, and English (my second language was English)
Math majors are much needed in CS and in biology. That's a very good path.


text:
How should I credit co-authors of a paper in conference proceedings I prepared myself?
Suppose I've done some research as part of a (small) group, and this research has been published as a paper with all group members listed as co-authors. Then I go to give a presentation on this research at a conference, but I prepare the presentation and the writeup for the conference proceedings mostly on my own. Is it normal to list all the co-authors of the original paper as authors of the conference proceedings? If not, is there a particular way I should credit them in the proceedings, e.g. a footnote, or in the acknowledgments section?
I know the obvious answer is probably going to be that I should ask my co-authors how to credit them, and I will do that, but what I would really like to know is the most common practice, if there is one. (My field is particle physics)

The practice I'm most familiar with is that a coauthor is a coauthor is a coauthor.  Anyone listed as a coauthor on the title page of the paper should be listed on the title slide of any talk about the paper, and explicitly acknowledged ("This is joint work with...") when the talk begins.  Whether any of your coauthors helped you prepare your slides or the proceedings abstract is none of the audience's business.
But this attitude is clearly specific to my field, where papers only rarely have more than three authors.  It might not scale so well in fields (like particle physics?) where a "small" group may have 100 members.

Ah, you make a good point ;-) In my case, I do phenomenology, not experimental particle physics, so small actually does mean small, like 3 people.

@JeffE +1 to you. Good point.

Most common practise, I think, is to add them as co-authors in the write-up for proceedings, while in the presentation, mention them in the acknowledgements slide at the end of presentation. The title slide may include your name alone and  mentioning your group's name is a better practise. Some also highlight PI's name in the title slide of the presentation.
The proceedings write-up, probably will get expanded later and takes the form of a journal article. So giving credits to all those worked in the problem should be properly attributed.

I think the key distinction is whether the conference presentation and writeup are viewed as a presentation of new results or as an exposition of work published elsewhere.
When you are publishing a research paper, the criterion for coauthorship is making an important intellectual contribution to the research.  Everyone in this category must be listed, regardless of their role in the actual writing, unless they specifically decline coauthorship.
On the other hand, there is no need to include these coauthors on further expositions: if you go on to write a survey or review article on this topic, then the authorship should reflect who actually worked on the article, rather than who did the original research.  (The same way if you wrote an exposition of some of Einstein's work, that wouldn't make him a posthumous coauthor.)  Of course, the exposition needs to give clear credit for the original research.
The border between these cases can get a little blurry.  If something could be viewed as a research announcement (where experts would be learning of the work for the first time), then I'd say that puts it in the research category, rather than exposition, even if the primary publication appears elsewhere.  The basic issue is whether you could cause confusion.  If your writeup may be cited as a research contribution, then you should list your coauthors.
If you are in a field like CS, where conferences are a primary venue for announcing research results, then you definitely need to list your collaborators as coauthors on the presentation and writeup.  In math, things are a little different: some conferences publish refereed research papers in their proceedings, but there are also other possibilities.  Some places, like Oberwolfach, ask speakers to write up an account of their talk, but this is not considered a research publication at all.  In a case like that, there's probably no need to have formal coauthors, as long as the text itself is perfectly clear about referring to the research publication and author list.  (When collaborators of mine have written things like this, I've been happy not to be listed as a coauthor on the resulting document, since that way I don't have to worry about the writing.)
However, the most important rule is not to offend your collaborators.  Leaving out someone who feels they should be included is worse than including someone you don't think is necessary, so it's always best to ask.

OP: "... published as a paper with all group members listed as co-authors"; your answer: "If you are in a field like CS, where conferences are a primary venue for announcing research results, then you definitely need to list your collaborators as coauthors on the presentation and writeup." - more precisely, in (some subfields of?) CS, the "writeup" that goes into the conference proceedings is the paper.


text:
What are the trade-offs of working in the office versus elsewhere (as a professor)?
I find that when I'm working on research in the office, at least with the door open, I often get interrupted and am generally less productive.  On the other hand, I often have students ask to meet with me outside of office hours on days when I don't plan to be in my office, and they're unhappy when I mention that I won't be available that day.  I suspect this hurts my student evaluation scores (which are the primary basis for the evaluation of our teaching in our tenure process).
Additionally, as junior faculty, I'm aware that getting tenure is partly about "fitting in" with your department.  In mine, many (most?) folks are in their offices for something closer to 9-5 five days a week, perhaps leaving early on Friday.  When I am in the office, I make a point to stop in and say hi to colleagues, but I'm sure that I'm less visible around the department than many others.
So rather than a specific answer, I guess I'm looking for guidelines in how you approach this type of decision.

I think it's important to set boundaries with students, with colleagues, and with yourself about when and where you're available for meetings.  It's also important to find environments that most effectively support different types of work, and give yourself permission to use them.
Like you, when I'm in my office, I expect to be interrupted; so when I'm working at my desk, I can only productively work on tasks that survive interruption.  Put bluntly, the office is where I have meetings; if I need to think, I find a whiteboard in an empty conference room; if I need to write, I go to a coffee shop.  (Suresh is correct; I am in a coffee shop right now.)  As Daniel says, all three places allow for productive work, but of very different types.  Even in the computer science building, for small meetings where I don't want to be interrupted, I prefer to go to the other person's office.  And because my undergraduate office hours are occasionally very popular (especially right before exams), I don't hold them in my actual office, but in a larger room down the hall with couches and whiteboards.
You express two points of concern, which I'll exaggerate:

My students won't like me if I'm not available on their schedule.  I agree with DQdlM and Nate.  Spread out your office hours to fit as many students' schedules as possible, be in your office (or "office") for every minute of office hours even if nobody shows up, and be willing to offer occasional off-schedule meetings.  It might help to announce in your syllabus times that you're willing to schedule sporadic meetings.  ("I'm also available for occasional meetings Tuesday or Thursday afternoons; send me email to set up an appointment!")  Consider moving (not adding) your office hours if student demand doesn't match your announced schedule.  But then stick to your guns.  Yes, some students will be unhappy, but that's inevitable; don't take it personally.  Your availability outside regular office hours will not be the most significant bit in your student evaluations.
My colleagues won't like me if they don't see me in my office.  I agree with DQdlM and Suresh here.  Yes, it's important to be visible and active citizen of your department; that's not the same thing as being constantly on call.  The amount of time you spend at your desk will not be the most significant bit in your tenure evaluation.  The danger is not that nobody sees you in your office, but that nobody knows what you're doing.  Give regular talks to your colleagues and their PhD students showing off the results of your out-of-office effort.  Go to faculty meetings, and occasionally offer an opinion.  (Careful, that gun is loaded.)  Attend seminars, especially for faculty candidates, and ask questions.  If there is a regular departmental social event ("Tea" in many math departments), be there.  And so on.

Finally, I strongly encourage you to raise these concerns with your department chair or your senior faculty mentors.  (You do have a senior faculty mentor, don't you?  If not, find one!)  They can help you navigate your department culture far better than Some Guy On The Intertubes.

Your answers to both questions are helpful.

I find that when I'm working on research in the office, at least with the door open, I often get interrupted and am generally less productive.

You need to redefine productive. Having your door open will increase the time it takes to get a manuscript out, but that is not the only thing that defines productivity. Time spent improving your teaching evals (e.g., by meeting with students) and being visible to your colleagues IS time well spent.

Agreed, but up to a point.  One needs to find balance, and for some people (like me), meeting with students and chatting with colleagues, while valuable, could take up all my time if I let it.

You may be able to mollify your students a bit by paying attention to your wording.  Saying "I can't meet with you on Tuesday because that's my day for research" makes the student feel like a low priority.  Saying "I'm afraid I can't meet on Tuesday, but how about Wednesday?" helps convey that the student is important to you and you would like to meet with them when you can.  I think accessibility is as much about perception as reality.

This is a great point, Nate.  I need to remember that a large part of working with any "client" (in this case students) is managing their perception.

There are a few issues here: one is dealing with students, and one is general "visibility".
For the first, I can understand student unhappiness if you give them office hours but wish to meet outside the allotted time. They have constraints as well and probably don't have a lot of free time to meet with you :). Maybe, since you're concerned about distractons, you can pack all "distracting" activities into a single day and do your office hours on that day ? Alternately, do you prefer to work at home or at a cafe ? If the latter, you could always do your office hours and then disappear.
For the second, I think the issue is a little overrated. As dQdM points out, the issue is whether you're perceived as being active and a "good citizen". The former can be achieved by responding to email promptly and the latter by your usual service responsibilities.
A bit of perspective: I came to academia from a research lab. In a lab, people are usually around all the time, and I was shocked when I came to academia to see how few faculty were around in the office at any given time. So I don't think your absence might even be noticed that much :)

Just to clarify, I'm always in my office during office hours.  It's the students who ask to meet outside of those hours.

I think the basic guideline is the perception that you give.  The actual time you spend in and out of your office is less important than whether your colleagues feel like you are an active member of the department and your students feel like you are accessible.

For your colleagues, I would be conscious of the times and events that seem to build cohesion in your department and make sure you are present for those.  This can be informal things like having lunch together.  Or more formal things like departmental seminars.
For your students, I would set consistent and clearly defined office hours and always be available during those times (even if you don't have a student scheduled).  You will need to make sure that these office hours are distributed such that most of your students can utilize some of them and be prepared to be somewhat flexible for students that have consistent conflicts.

When you announce your office hours to the class at the beginning of the term display a chart that includes all reasonable hours but no marks. Point to a particular time and ask, "If I choose this hour how many people will not be able to come to this office hour?" If lots of students raise their hands, say "That's not one of my office hours." If a lot of students indicate they can go mark it as an office hour. Repeat this process, perhaps rearranging previously chosen hours until every student can go to at least one office hour. If you are also available by appointment at other times It should solve a lot of problems. Also at the beginning of the the first day of class you will create a favorable impression. Before you do this you should have a very good idea of time when you do not want office hours.


text:
should your CV include unfunded grant applications?
It seems that more and more schools are encouraging their faculty to apply for (and secure) external funding.  I have not yet been awarded any research grants.  If I'm applying for jobs at research schools, should I include on my CV my unfunded grant applications?  The obvious argument against this is that these applications were unfunded, and will be viewed as failures.  The obvious argument for this is that many administrations are eager to have their faculty applying for grants and reward them (very modestly) even for unsuccessful applications.  Which view carries more weight?

No.
Definitely list pending grant proposals.  But rejected grant proposals should fall into the memory hole.
Also, do not list your rejected journal submissions, the awards you applied for but did not win, or the graduate schools that did not admit you.

Organizing a lot of collaborators to submit a large grant is a feat in itself. — True, but in my experience, academia doesn't reward effort, but rather results.  But more importantly, it's impossible to verify that the proposal was actually submitted—unlike their funded projects, funding agencies do not reveal their rejections—and it's impossible to distinguish high-quality unfunded proposals from garbage.

After consulting with my mentors, I listed rejected grant proposals once.  This was on the CV included in my tenure file, and I listed two unsuccessful large group proposals that involved other, more senior members of my department.  That way my senior colleagues were reminded of my effort (which was partly on their behalf), but the unsuccessful results were mitigated by their own involvement.  But in all other situations (and in particular the OP's situation), I agree --- down the memory hole.

Exception - if you were a finalist for a prestigious award (especially if you are an ECR) that can go in a CV even if you didn't win - you can include some stats about the award to put in contest how big a deal being a finalist is.

I agree with @user24098 that it can be helpful to show experience with the application process, however, it is not customary to show this experience in a CV, so I suggest putting it somewhere else in your application.

The major exception to this rule is if this is an award (rather than a grant), to which you were shortlisted/a finalist

When applying to a TT position at a research intensive school, the search committee is going to want to know want your first research project is going to be and who would likely fund it. A failed grant application along with an explanation can go a ways towards providing that information. One line on a CV probably isn't helpful and I would not include failed applications on my CV for such a position. I would however mention one of the proposal in my cover letter. Being able to say that you have a proposal and have identified potential funders (which comes first is a little bit of a chicken and egg thing) is a good thing. Being able to say you applied to funding scheme X and while you didn't get funded got useful feedback and you are now revising the application for funding scheme Y is even better. Obviously tailor this if the funding scheme gave a scores/percentiles/stage and/or allows you to resubmit.

You should ask yourself, who will read my CV and what do I want to achieve by tailoring it.
In your case the CV is part of an application for a position in academia, it should make an impression on the people in the search committee. From my experience people usually list only funded proposals in their CV. So including unfunded proposals will be considered as something odd. I don't say this is strictly forbidden, but you should have an extremely good reason for doing this. And I can't think of any. An unfunded proposal will be (from my experience in committees) not considered as an achievement. On the contrary, if you have a lot of funded proposals you might want to include the unfunded, too show your "success rate". But I wouldn't even recommend this.
If you want to prove that you can write about prospective future research, you should write an excellent research statement. You could address your experiences in this place.
Again, their is no right or wrong. So this is my very personal opinion.

Success stand for itself, failure needs to be qualified. (A wise man)

Only, include failed applications if it tells a story about your research and where it is going. For example, saying that you failed 5 years ago but then hit the jackpot and proved all your detractors wrong.
Unless you have a very good reason, I think it only serve to confuse people. Most importantly it will may remind folks your area of research is undeserving and uninteresting.
That is the absolute worst message that you can send.

It depends on the nature of the grants you haven't received and the type of institution you are applying to.  For example, it is very, very difficult for young researchers to get NIH funding now, so it's no disgrace to fail there, but applications do show you are motivated, and might show you have good collaborators, plans etc.
Don't forget that CVs can have free text.  You might just put a line in such as "Further experience in applications to NIH, NSF.  Details available on request."  Particularly if you are proud of a grant proposal & are planning to resubmit it, or have a good story to tell about how it might be further developed, or might be more successful coming from the institution you are applying to.  If you can talk intelligently about the reviews you got and what you have learned from the experience, then give your potential employees a prompt to bring that up in the interview.

Unfortunately as you already mentioned there is no clear answer. One time I was at an AAG conference at a workshop about job hunting, applications, and CV building and the speakers were a mix of young and old academics. The majority I think agreed on not listing failures and avoid to list grants you were awarded but refused. The latter might be used when you don't have many grant application but might show a signs of bad planning. As far as your question perhaps it might be useful to list only if you applied to a very competitive grant. In alternative you could briefly talk about it in your cover letter but just highlight that you have already gone through the process. Even getting a small grant ($1000) is better than an unfunded application.

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text:
How are more sub-figures with letters usualy cited?
We are writing a book so we want to establish some guidelines, so I am looking for how this is most usualy done in scientific papers.
What would be the rules for citing more sub-figures with letters? What is more usualy used, without space, like this:

Fig. 33b,c

or with space, like this? :

Fig. 33b, c

Thank you!

Not worth a lot of fuss about. A publisher will have a style guide. In the meanwhile look at some books in your field and do what they do.

@EthanBolker I am the publisher!! :-) I am creating those style guides now. Not easy to find such example, that's why I'm asking...

If you're using LaTeX you can write a macro for this and postpone the formatting decision.

For IEEE, it is 33(b), 33(c)

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