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What is the difference between a taught and research MSc and a research MPhil degree?
I'm in my senior year of Bsc Civil Engineering, in which I've started applying towards my grad studies in the  U.K.
In searching for the courses I've seen an MSc of Engineering Science by Research (2 years long) and MPhil of Engineering (1 year long). The first is a kind of taught and research degree while the second is only a research degree.
What are the differences between these kinds of degrees, academically? Which of them is a more prestigious degree?

The Cambridge MPhils are taught courses. It's the MRes that's a pure research course.

@PeterTaylor thank you ,
I meant this in my speech , it's mentioned in a research degree .
http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/graduates/prospective-graduate-students/research-courses

Are the "Engineering Science" degrees accredited?  "Engineering Technology" and "Engineering Science" are frequently used in the US to name a less mathematical track that fails to meet the requirements for being called "Engineering".  (Of course, accreditation is more common at the BS level, so if such a difference exists, it may not be so easy to identify as "unaccredited", and I don't know if the UK follows the same pattern in the first place)

What do you expect from the prestige connected with a certain courses? What is your primary goal when thinking about approaching an heightened scientific degree?

Many take an Mres with no plans to go onwards to a Phd whilst an MPhil tends to be the precursor to a Phd programme (both tend to have some taught component, but sometimes both can be just pure research, there is no one size fits all as each programme is unique).
When joining a Phd programme you will always be put on an MPhil first whilst the same is not true for an Mres.  That is not to say though that you cannot extend your Mres project to a Phd if suitable funding and supervision is available.
As an engineer the only reason to do either of these research programmes is if you actually wish to do research.  If you just want an advanced accredited degree its better you look at Msc or MEng programmes.
Neither degree is more "prestigious".  They are both designed to teach you how to become a researcher.  If you want to do research in engineering though you will need to do a Phd or spend your career with an Mres working under the supervision of Phds.


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What is the benefit of writing lecture notes for an introductory course vs using a textbook?
Background: I am a junior university staff member, and I will teach an introductory course in linear algebra for the first time in a few months.
I see that many teachers devote time to writing lecture notes. To me, this looks odd. Whatever I can write will not be half as good as a well-written textbook. so my first choice would be looking for a good book, recommend it to the students, and stick with it as much as possible for my lectures. "Everyone writes their own notes" looks like a model in which there is a lot of needless duplication of work.
Why do people write detailed lecture notes for basic courses? What is the advantage with respect to following closely a textbook?
Are the two approaches really alternative, or am I misunderstanding the role of lecture notes? Should I do both?

Lecture notes can be an opportunity for the instructor to organize and clarify the material in his or her own mind.

Whatever I can write will not be half as good as a well-written textbook. — [citation needed]

If a teacher were to teach nothing more than what is in a textbook, why would anyone bother taking the class? it would be much cheaper to just buy the book.

@user2813274 I don't see how this remark applies to my question. A student can read the notes as well as the book. We are discussing books vs notes as a written media, not (learning from written media) vs (oral lectures).

@JeffE That statement must hold true at least for the majority of the lecturers, by definition of "well-written textbook" (and since I am teaching this course for the first time, I rate to be in the lower half, when it comes to teaching skills). Of course, though, Dunning–Kruger applies.

@FedericoPoloni Are you implying that the content of the lectures is different than that of the lecture notes? granted some may prefer to listen than to read, but that's a minor change compared to the content, and then it could be a recording or audiobook in comparison instead. Why would a student read both the lecture notes AND the book if the content is the same? or if the content is not the same, doesn't that answer your question of the benefits of lecture notes?

That statement must hold true at least for the majority of the lecturers, by definition of "well-written textbook" — Only if you assume a universal ground-truth linear ordering of textbooks by quality of writing and you assume that you are chosen uniformly at random from the set of possible authors.  Neither of those assumptions is even remotely reasonable.

Of course, though, Dunning–Kruger applies. — So does Impostor Syndrome.

FWIW, I find that lectures given by my professors who write out their notes tend to be more organized and more enjoyable to listen to.

@Lohoris Notes seem a little overkill for this task, when a simple "list of covered sections" will do.

One advantage is to avoid the embarrassment of being asked to explain something in the textbook and having to admit not to have read it. :)

As someone who's tried to do both, there are some very valid reasons to prepare "formal" lecture notes.
The primary reason why you'd want to create your own notes is that for many courses, a single good text is not available, and as a result, the instructor has to cobble together material from a number of different sources to produce a coherent set of lecture notes—or recommend that students work with multiple source texts. (Given the out-of-control nature of textbook prices, the latter alternative is unlikely to work out well.)
If you have a single-text class, it may not be necessary to provide students an additional set of notes, provided your lectures stick to the main text material. However, if you bring in alternative or additional topics into your lectures, you may want to include notes for those topics, and refer students to the textbook for places where you follow the "standard" outline.

I would imagine that you can benefit from the lecture notes. When teaching the same class over the years all you need to do to prepare for a lecture is to read your notes.

@afaust That is a good point, but preparing quick notes for my own use is very different from putting together release-quality material that I can give to the students.

@FedericoPoloni For some people there might not be that much of a difference though. Especially after many years of teaching a class and tweaking/adding relevant material to the notes. That's probably how the first drafts of a lot of textbooks started.

As you are teaching linear algebra, I will use it as an example. Gilbert Strang teaches/taught linear algebra at MIT. He also wrote the textbook Introduction to Linear Algebra. You might expect the course to follow along perfectly with the textbook. If you look at the syllabus from when Strang was teaching the course or now what you will see is there are significant deviations. It goes section: 3.6, 8.2, 4.1-4.4, 8.5, 5.2-5.3, 6.1-6.2, 6.6, 8.3, 6.3.
If the author of the textbook cannot even happily follow his own ordering of the topic, it is not surprising that many teachers feel the need to create their own notes that go in the order and cover the material in the depth that they want.

I have taken a closer look at Strang's ILA and this answer, and I must say I now disagree with your example. If you check your list of numbers, you'll see that the only significant deviation is the position of the sections of Chapter 8, which are interspersed with the rest of the material, essentially in the same order as the book. Chapter 8 contains applications of linear algebra, so essentially motivated examples. So it seems to me that the structure of the course stayed basically the same, apart from these examples.

@FedericoPoloni but chapter 8 is not inserted in a ordered way. Further, even removing the chapter 8 insertions, chapter 6 is taught out of order (6.2, 6.6, 6.3), and at the end of the course chapter 10 is taught before chapter 9. I also think the fact that he chose to write the book with an applications chapter, bought taught it interspersed is the issue that people face when choosing textbooks and designing a syllabus.

I have written lecture notes for a couple of courses, and in one of those cases I assigned a textbook as well.  Here are some of my reasons.

For a course in which I have some flexibility as to the content, I may find that no single textbook includes all the material I want to teach.  Asking students to buy three or four books is rather obnoxious, especially if for some of them I will only be referring to a few pages.  When I write lecture notes, I can include exactly the material that I want to include in the course.
Even when I am generally following a textbook, I often find places where I want to go off on a tangent, or discuss additional related material, or maybe just cover the same material with a different treatment.  I feel like me teaching a class should add value beyond the student reading the textbook, and one way to do that is to tell students how I personally think about and understand the material in question.  It can be helpful for the student to have that in writing.  In part this is probably arrogance, but I really do feel I have insights to offer that are not contained, or not as well expressed, in even the most "well-written" textbook.
If I am going to need fairly detailed and precise notes to lecture, I might as well type them - they'll be neater, easier to read, and I can refer to them next time I teach the course.  If I'm going to that trouble, I might as well make them available to the students.
I find that writing lecture notes for an audience other than myself is a really effective way to teach myself material, and understand it at a deeper level.  It very often leads me to new insights on something that I thought I understood.
Written lecture notes that are posted on a website can be helpful to anyone in the world, not just the students in my course.  I've been able to answer questions on MathOverflow and Math.SE by pointing people at my lecture notes.
For high-level courses (especially graduate topics courses), there may not be any textbook on the relevant material - I am assembling it from the research literature.  But in order to use material from a research paper in a course, I usually have to rewrite a lot of it - filling in background and omitted details, and so on.  So it becomes lecture notes.

Indeed, and especially points 3 and 4.  I would be very nervous of teaching anything, at any level, where I hadn't done point 4; and having done that, I might as well do point 3, too.

Here are some other advantages from my point of view:

Writing lecture notes enables you to communicate to the students exactly what is examinable. Most textbooks are bloated with irrelevant material. See any first year textbook in economics or statistics, for example. That thing doesn't need to have 500 pages and colour pictures and a $150 price tag.
Writing lecture notes gives you valuable practice at academic writing and presenting your thoughts in a coherent manner. When you first try to write papers, it is tempting to try to intimidate the reader. Writing lecture notes helps to break this habit.
Good lecture notes might be used or cited by others if you put them on your website. This can be a good way of advertising yourself.
If you happen to teach the course again, going through the pain of writing lecture notes the first time you teach it will make it much easier to teach it in subsequent years, because you will be teaching from your own notes and you know exactly what you are doing.
Students will be very happy if they find a mistake in your notes! So you get an army of free proofreaders.
In an ideal world, your notes might be so good that you can one day publish them in book form. This has never happened to me.

Students often prefer lecture notes, for several reasons. They don't have to pay the cost of a textbook, and they don't have to worry about keeping a textbook in good condition for resale. This means that they are much more likely to be willing to make notes, highlights, underlinings etc on the notes themselves during the lectures. Providing printed lecture notes and letting them make notes on them creates a good balance: students are not frantically copying down everything without having time to think; nor are they likely to slip into a passive listening mode.
Furthermore, having a PDF of the notes available for download is useful for those students (and lecturers) who prefer notes in electronic format for searching etc.

I have no experience with preparing a whole course, so I will leave this aspect to others.
The vast majority, if not all, textbooks originated from lecture notes, usually from professors who held that course repeatedly and refined their notes over the years (often this is stated in the introduction of the textbook). Now, you might argue that these textbooks already exist¹ and there is no point in repeating this process as somebody already has done the work.
However, if everybody acted this way, there would not be any didactical improvement or adaption to current needs – which is very important for the future of science, as otherwise each new generation of scientists would take longer to reach the ever progressing forefront of knowledge. Just take a look at very old linear-algebra books: They are much more focussed on calculating stuff (which has become less important nowadays), have a more clumsy notation and leave out certain concepts that are considered relevant today. If some people in the past had not chosen to create their own lecture notes, which eventually turned into textbooks, you would probably have been learning linear algebra as taught in these books.
On the other hand, if everybody wrote textbooks, we would drown in them.
So, going only from this point of view: If you have a textbook you are perfectly happy with, stick to it. If, however, you have a didactical style and approach different from all existing textbooks, you might as well try it – and perhaps write a new textbook one day and advance the didactics of linear algebra.

¹ and in the case of linear algebra: tons of them

I think many people write their own lecture notes because they want to present the subject as it is living in their own mind, not as someone else presents it.  You can really only ever try to convey your own perspective, and even in mathematics, this can be significantly different from anyone else's.
As a very small example, if you look at most linear algebra texts at how the formula for multiplying matrices is presented, you will find one of two tactics:

It is just a definition, and you had better get used to it
Matrix multiplication is defined the way it is so it corresponds to composition of linear functions.  The proof of this is a computation which may involve a few too many summation signs for beginning students to follow fully.

My own perspective on the issue is the following:
a.  I introduce matrices as record keeping devices for linear maps:  the columns tell you where the basis vectors go
b.  I spend time thinking about covectors, (i.e. a matrix which is just a row), and how applying a row vector to a vector is the same as taking a dot product with the transpose of the covector.
c.  Realize that for a matrix M, M_{ij} = e_j^\top M e_i, since by definition Me_i is the i^{th} row, and e_j^\top of a vector just selects the j^{th} column.
d.  So to find the (AB)_{ij} we just need to compute e_j^\top AB e_i =  (e_j^\top A)(B e_i), which is the j^{th} row of A dotted with the i^{th} column of B.  This is the standard formula, but it has been "chunked" in such a way that it makes it understandable (at least to me!).
This sequence a - d really represents thinking about a matrix as representing a bilinear form, and it is through this lens that the formula for matrix multiplication makes the most sense to me.  You do not have to mention this to the students at this stage to make the sequence a-d understandable and memorable.
I find that this kind of thing occurs constantly.  When I read a textbook, I usually find that I have no idea what is going on, and I have to develop some sort of narrative structure which makes sense of it.  This becomes my understanding of the material.  If I am teaching something, I must teach my perspective.  So I often end up writing lecture notes.

Can someone knowledgable edit my response so the LaTeX renders correctly, if this is possible?

MathJax is not currently installed for AC.SE: http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/740/mathjax-on-academia/743#743.

When I was a student, I hated professors not choosing a textbook and only giving (very  often badly written) lecture notes. I think following a single  textbook, suggesting optionally one or two more, plus some extra material here and there, is very convenient for the students since a good book is coherent, tested, well written and edited, with useful pictures, and often evolved through several years of lectures. You might lose some diversity, but you gain simplicity and coherence (and a more pleasant formatting). The best students will anyway look for additional texts on their own, either during the course or afterwards. Of course additional or very specific or innovative material can require lecture notes.
In my experience, lecture notes are often good for the teacher; not always for the student.

You'd probably hate professors choosing bad textbooks even more. (And that happens rather often, as lecturers tend to choose textbooks for their readability to them, rater than for their readability to the student; I think there are certain books which are taught from chiefly for their table-of-contents.)

I want to address just one point from the question. You write

Whatever I can write will not be half as good as a well-written textbook.

and I have to say that while I can't write a better presentation than the text on everything or even many thing, its a rare semester course where there isn't some sections of the course for which I can prepare a better presentation for the students in front of me than the writer has.
If I use Halliday and Resnick, I can present a terser and more insightful version of one section here and another one there. If instead I use Feynman, I may have to address some sections in more detail for the students at my small state school than the great man used for his at CalTech.

And as the other have said the exercise of preparing notes refreshes and clarifies the material.
I'm a lazy man, and whenever the presentation in the book seems to be appropriate to my students (or nearly so), I simple re-express the books methods with only minor changes in emphasis, and adjustment to agree with the demos that I am actually going to do rather than the ones that I would want if I had the prep-room of my dreams.

I've taught many segments of the basic business curriculum. I did not write up lectures in advance. I used the textbook as an outline, and I delivered an extemporaneous interactive discussion of the entire material in the text. This involved lots of definitions, examples, and diagrams of relationships (all of which I would require the students to recall and/or recreate on exams). I merely kept track of each section's progress, and informed them that they were responsible for everything in the book (as much as I tried to ensure I would cover all exam material, I didn't want to guarantee it, and I did want them to read the books they had paid so much for.)
This style worked well for me, but it seems not to be the tack most professors take.
There would have been benefits to writing up notes for lectures. It would

force me to review all of the material more carefully prior to the lecture
provide an outline for material I knew would be justifiably testable

The downsides were that it would :

increase time required for preparation of materials
likely reduce the material covered, because it was my goal to cover the entire text (which we did successfully)

I actually even did find time to cover extra material outside the text. For example, we covered Michael Porter's Five Forces in the Marketing course (which I expected them to recreate for the final, having reviewed it nearly half a dozen times in class).
Perhaps you could do the same. It may depend on the materials you have to teach with (especially the textbook.) But you need to review your expectations with your department chair. It may be that they require a textbook that is impossible to follow as the order for your class, for whatever reason. It may be that you'll need to take notes to ensure that you cover any prerequisite materials, and in the correct order, because you'll be teaching linear algebra.

Why "likely reduce the material covered"?

Unless I outline the entire text, the text will be more complete than my outline.

This answer only involves the field of Computer Science, so other fields may not have the same benefits.
I wrote my own beginning C.S. course (programming) lecture notes (link). The benefits that I found are:

Not requiring a textbook. The textbooks in C.S. are very large and there are quite a few of them, so students/readers may not know which one to pick.
Not requiring a computer. Students/readers may not have current access to a computer (or any access), so they need to be viable for them too.
Plenty of examples. Success in programming is possible only through many examples, and not much of the theoretical aspects of programming. Therefore, my notes have many examples to get the concept across.
Learning the material from a different perspective than the one you originally had.

As a student I loved lecturers who made formal notes.

It contained everything we needed to know
No buying expensive books or waiting for the library
No flipping chapters between multiple text books

And it was easier to understand, since it matched his teaching style and you could ask him to explain (since he wrote it).

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Are graduate school applications processed before the submission deadline?
I will be applying for PhD positions starting in fall 2016. Most of the application deadlines are in January. If I send my application now, will it be processed immediately? Or are the recruiters waiting until the deadline has passed? This probably varies somewhat per geographic region (and university, and department) but I would be mostly interested in UK institutions in the STEM fields.

At least in the US, I do not believe there is any such thing as "recruiters" for graduate admissions in STEM fields.

In my experience (in a large public American computer science department), review of applications begins as soon as they are submitted, but no decisions are announced until well after the posted deadline.  Reviewing graduate applications actually takes significant time, and admissions decisions are based at least in part on comparisons with the rest of the applicant pool.
My university actually forbids announcing admissions decisions before the application deadline.  Other universities/countries may have more relaxed policies.

This doesn't really answer the question. The decisions may not be announced, but that doesn't mean that they (or at least some of them) haven't been made. Could you elaborate?

@zelanix Oh, sure, some committee members make up their minds earlier, and the committee may even vote earlier.  But formally, until the official offers of admission are sent out, all such decisions are both tentative and confidential.  You aren't supposed to hear earlier, and even if you do, what you hear might change.  For all practical purposes, no decisions are made until they're announced.

It varies. Last year I applied early, and one (top 20) US school that doesn't do rolling admissions contacted me before the posted deadline to admit me. Then again, other schools explicitly wrote on their website that they don't look at applications until the deadline. Others said they "encouraged" early submission but didn't elaborate what that meant.
I don't think someone would be at a disadvantage for applying late. However, there may be some benefit to applying early. Maybe.

I don't understand, you think applying early might be beneficial, but applying won't be detrimental? That seems self-contradictory.

Yup, it does seem self-contradictory, but I mostly stand by it. When I said it may be beneficial, I mean it may be beneficial for your sanity. You may hear that you get in earlier, for instance. Still, if you submitted your application the night before, maybe you'll hear back later. It doesn't mean you have a worse chance of getting it, necessarily. Could have worded my original post better, but really the true answer is "it depends".

"Deadline" is a guide and is definitely not set in stone. They could admit you immediately or almost before the deadline to signup for classes. I doubt they'd do it immediately because it takes quite some time, people are lazy, holidays, weekends etc... They'd even do it after the deadline if you're extremely talented. There is no telling.... Good luck!

I downvoted this answer because it seems very disconnected from the realities of graduate admissions.

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Keywords in a paper: to include or not to include?
Are there some reasons to include them besides a historical tradion? Let's assume that it's not a requirement by the publisher.
There are some answers (such as this) which claim that keywords basically do not matter. However, I wonder if there are some empirical results or conflicting opinions on this. Perhaps they help with search engines?
My field is computer science, publishing mostly in IEEE conferences. Feel free to share experiences from other fields.

One is space that can be used for something else: consider a 6 page conference paper - sometimes we need to apply various tricks to ft everything there. Another is that they may be distracting or annoying for the reader ("Gosh, yet another bunch of buzzwords!").

@DSVA This is perhaps an extreme example, with two types of keywords  that in total takes approx. as much space as 10 % of the body text of the publication: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.186.3039&rep=rep1&type=pdf

@DSVA I don't think the authors of that particular paper tried to save space; hence, the large number of keywords they use.

Many journals online systems won't even let you submit the paper if you don't give keywords. Btw., before your paper is very well read, search engines will have problems extracting key words from the text. Doesn't hurt to help google a bit, there.

Here's one reason to include them:
In some fields, like biology, naming convention are lacking. You might use a specific word for a process, while other groups use another. By stating this other word in your keywords, researchers using that word will find your article/conference.

The answer you linked to actually lists two reasons, why keywords DO make sense (esp. number two) ;)
I always assumed that the keywords you specify in the webinterface during submission are the important ones, that will be used to catalog your submission. I do not think that the ones you specify on the title page are of any relevance nowadays. Thus, if you are asking about the keywords on the tile page, in order to shorten your publication by removing them, I guess this is reasonable, unless the formatting guidlines of the conference explicitly states them as needed.


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Proper "notice period" for resigning a tenure track position?
My apologies in advance if this is a duplicate. I did search a bit about this before posting here.
This is related to my previous posts so, briefly: I want to leave my current position and I have another offer that I will eventually accept (not finished negotiating). I won't be able to "officially" drop the hammer for at least 1-2 weeks (negotiating, getting the offer, signing it, etc.). I teach one absolutely essential course in the fall (a core course in a graduate program) and no one else is qualified to teach it but me.
My question: In a tenure track position, what is the minimal notice period for leaving? This is not a question about "what my department would like" or how to optimize my standing with the department after leaving. This is a question about professionalism-- specifically what is the minimal notice period where the department members couldn't justifiably go around calling my conduct unprofessional. (I couldn't create a "professionalism" tag, so I tagged this with "etiquette")
Clearly, leaving one week before the semester is too late. Giving 2 years notice is probably more than enough. The answer must be somewhere in between. In my own case, I am contemplating delivering the news in around two weeks (so, over three months before classes begin).
Edit: (1) This is related to a previous question I asked
I want to leave my tenure track position before fall. I have great prospects but no new position "locked up": when should I break the news?
But I think it is still distinct. That question raised the issue of whether to inform my department before having a definite offer, in the interest of giving them enough time to plan. This question is about the standards of professionalism in resignation notice (analogous to the conventional two weeks in many non-academic jobs).
(2) Our contracts are year-to-year (August through April) with guaranteed renewal before tenure review. There are no specific terms written there about resignation periods. I could just fail to renew my contract (this issue would arise in about two months) but, still, the question is whether this is meets the standards of professionalism in academia, not whether it's "legal".

It might be good to link to your prior question on this subject.

What you are thinking seems reasonable.  If you want something official, you should check the faculty handbook or your contract.

I'm not sure there will be a universal rule of thumb.  You might consider, based on prevailing hiring practices in your institution / field / country, how easy it will be for them to find a replacement (either tenure track or not) given various amounts of time.  For instance, in my field / country, at this time of year, it would be essentially impossible to make a tenure-track hire for fall, and somewhat difficult to make a non-tenure-track hire.  The easier you make it for them, the happier they will be with you.

You might also consider whether it would work for you and your new employer if you were to offer to stay on in your current job for another semester or year, and defer the start of your new position.  In that case they would certainly have no cause to question your professionalism.

@NateEldredge, My potential future employer has offered the option of deferral. Ideally, I would not exercise this option, but I would consider it if my reputation as a professional were at stake. I am not sure how long it would take to get someone to cover the course. It seems to be it could be difficult, but definitely not impossible (if a non tenure track instructor was hired).

I'm not in an academic department, so maybe I don't get it, but I can't see how this one course is holding you back. Is your department really made of such specializations that a core course, which I have to assume is relatively early, is only teachable by one faculty member?

@Bill, imagine an interdisciplinary program with a more technical class as a prerequisite for later, applied classes. Generally, I'm just proposing a situation where the old department would have to hire an adjunct or make some other unexpected arrangements (e.g. getting someone from a different department) to get the class covered.

When you get your contract for the next year, does it come with a time limit by which you must respond, accepting the contract for the next year?  If so, that's your deadline.

@Brian: What is this "contract" thing of which you speak? :-)

Hiring an adjunct or borrowing someone from another department for one course is about the least bad thing that can happen in this world. Giving the kind of notice (9 months?) that would have allowed them to do a full candidate search is impossible for folks who move laterally out of a department. This is pretty common and departments simply have to manage it. Everyone knows that offers are being locked in during the April-May time frame, and sometimes you lose someone key. It would not be unprofessional if you chose to avoid delaying your career by staying for an extra semester in order to make your current department's process painless.
Nobody wants to see you go, but you're working within the system to the best of your abilities. You're not screwing them, and it's not unprofessional to wait to give notice until the new offer is accepted.

I believe the word "not" was left out of this sentence: "It's not unprofessional NOT to delay your career by staying an extra semester to make your current department's process painless."

I would suggest changing the sentence "It's not unprofessional to not delay your career by staying an extra semester to make your current department's process painless" to "If you were to delay your career by staying an extra semester to make your current department's process painless, that would not be unprofessional." I find the meaning of your original sentence quite difficult to parse.

@ILiketoCode Even simpler: "Staying an extra semester to make your current department's replacement process less painful would be professional." — Replacing faculty is never painless.

@JeffE Indeed, your suggested sentence is even better!

@ILiketoCode: Unfortunately, it's the opposite sense that the current text carries.  Current version can be clarified as: "It would not be unprofessional if you chose to avoid delaying your career; you should not feel obliged to stay for an extra semester in order to make your current department's process painless."

The American Association of University Professors has established ethical guidelines for hiring faculty from one institution to another.  Perhaps the most relevant clause in their 1993 policy document "The Ethics of Faculty Recruitment and Appointment" is the following:

An offer of appointment to a faculty member serving at another institution should be made no later than May 1, consistent with the faculty member’s obligation to resign, in order to accept other employment, no later than May 15. It is recognized that, in special cases, it might be appropriate to make an offer after May 1, but in such cases there should be an agreement by all concerned parties.

The American Association of Universities adopts a slightly stronger stance:

We believe that a responsible approach for both institutions and the faculty members would be to consider offers made or pending on May 1, or thereafter, to be effective normally only after the intervention of an academic year.

In my experience, US universities that follow these policies do so as follows.  Suppose university X wants to hire someone on the faculty of University Y, to start the following fall (typically August 15).  If the offer is made after May 1, the appropriate dean at University X first officially requests permission from the appropriate dean at University Y to extend an offer.  The dean at University Y will usually agree, especially if the request is made early in the summer, but for late requests or other special circumstances, the dean at University Y may request (or "demand") a deferral.
There is no legal force to these policies, but following them is widely considered good professional practice — bluntly, the protocol is enforced by peer pressure.  Deans that don't agree to reasonable hiring requests may find their own faculty hired away without their agreement later.  Also, these agreements bind institutional behavior, not the behavior of individual faculty; under normal circumstances, you do not need your dean's permission to resign.  (There are some exceptions; for example, my university requires faculty on sabbatical leave to either return to campus for one year after the sabbatical ends or repay their sabbatical salary.)
So if you were in the US, your current dean, and therefore your department chair, would already be aware of your offer.  Even if they don't, the AAUP guidelines strongly suggest that three months notice (May 15 to August 15) meets any professional obligation to your current university.


text:
Page numbering of introduction in a thesis
In English literature, it is common to use roman page numbering for the preface and then the Arabic for the actual content of a given book. Then, should the introduction belong to the preface or not? My impression is that, in case of books, the introduction is usually paginated roman, while in theses, it has usually already the Arabic numbers. I am aware this may not be so important. Although, I suppose this rule has some reason; therefore I am wondering, what exactly is this reason?
(I am finishing my thesis now. That's why I ask. Our university does not have any rules regarding this.)

What does your supervisor say?

I doubt that it matters at all.

It depends what you mean by introduction.
If your introduction is similar to introductions found in research manuscripts, then the introduction is part of the main body and should use Arabic numbering. On the other hand, if your introduction is metadata, then the introduction is part of the front matter. (Metadata introductions are common in textbooks.)
That said, first and foremost, you should follow your institutes required style.

I am not entirely sure, what you mean by the types of introductions. I think usually the introduction includes (1) informal introduction to the topic (in all paper, thesis, book) (2) summary of the main results (in paper and thesis) (3) remarks on the structure and notation (in thesis, book and maybe longer papers). In books, the introduction, as a separate chapter, is often missing with (1) being incorporated to some ordinary chapter(s) and (3) contained in the preface.

@Daniel Looking at two books: One has a preface in the front matter, the other has an introduction, both use roman numerals and serve the same purpose-to briefly describe what the book is about, explain structure, conventions, refer to online material, etc. There's no main body content in either and both can be skipped. By comparison, introductions in research papers are more important, they contain material that rightly belongs in the main body and can be crucial.

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


text:
OpenCourseWare but for Example Questions?
Part of my job is creating learning materials (such as example questions) mostly for first year undergraduate students in engineering. I find it difficult to believe that there are not free online resources for example questions based on topics. It is crazy to think that every time an institute wants example questions they have to make them from scratch, instead of having an online place for people to post.
MIT OpenCourseWare has some assignment materials, however you cant search by topic (e.g., search for "eigenvalues"). Also, there aren't many assignments per topic (and some require you to have the book which defeats the purpose).
Is there anything similar out there I could use to get examples from and even put my own examples out there for others to use?
(Keep in mind it has to be official, I know there are some places where students can upload materials from their courses, but those are usually not done with permission.)

I have to write mine for my quizzes : takes time and effort... But those questions are tailored around the material I teach and the way I teach it...

Not engineering related, but the WeBWorK Open Problems Library is a collection of mathematics problems for use with the WeBWorK system for computer-based homework.

Dont you need to be faculty in an institute that uses WeBWorK in order to have a user to be able to access it? (im in Canada ON)

The WeBWorK server software is open source, so anyone should be able to build it and setup their own server.  I agree that you wouldn't really want to access the problems without using a server, but you could download the library of problems from github if you want.

The obvious disadvantage of a central repository of questions is that there will soon be a central repository of answers that the students use.


text:
Pursued PhD under an advisor who did not know what to do. Now am stuck with future prospects
I made a mistake 5 years ago. I changed my field from materials science to civil engineering. I did a PhD under a professor whose research expertise was not in my research topic. I had to independently work on my knowledge and skill set to become productive and produce research. But, due to lack of technical guidance, I produced mediocre research. My research is very novel and rigorous for my field of research, but the scope of getting a future position in the field seems bleak.
I want to diversify to other area of research, but I don't possess the experience or knowledge to carry out the projects. I am getting rejections from all postdoc positions as I don't meet their requirements.
I don't know what I should be doing now? My adviser doesn't have any connections in my research area. She just says to keep trying, and to not lose heart.

I don't understand how it can be both "mediocre" and also "very novel and rigorous for your field".

You need a different advisor, who does have an understanding of what you're doing, and does have suitable name-recognition in that field so that they can both write an insightful letter of recommendation for you, and have it taken seriously.

@Buffy It’d be possible to write papers that are both novel and rigorous, but fail to get citations or a sufficiently high impact factor or whatever other performance indicators that his institution uses to measure research quality.

First of all note that your experience has probably made you a lot more independent than many of your peers. This is a desirable quality for a post-doc, and you should sell it. If you have produced any a single author  publications (which sounds likely in your scenario), this is again something you should emphasize.
As a second piece of advice, consider applying for a suitable post-doc fellowship. Advertised post-doc positions are often bound to specific funded projects, therefore a PI will be more inclined to hire somebody with proven expertise to work on that project, putting somebody switching (sub)fields after their PhD at disadvantage.
Postdoctoral fellowship applications allow you to put more emphasis on your individual qualities and allow you to tailor a research proposal to your combination of expertise. You would (in most cases) still need to find a suitable host for your fellowship, but this may be easier than getting them to hire you as a postdoc (it is relatively low risk for the host). Of course, you should be warned that many fellowships have a very low acceptance rate. (10% acceptance rate is not uncommon for many grants, although some have rates as high as 30%) So, you need to submit a very strong application.

arbitt, you have a strong track history of working independently and persisting despite the lack of supervision and structure that others have had. Unfortunately changing fields is tough and you would be unlikely to land a post-doc or scholarship in the new area as mmeent has said.
You would need to build your reputation and scholarship in the new field independently. Aim to collaborate and network with the new field that you are interested in. Attend important conferences and organize to meet the important scholars in the questions that you are able to develop independently. Hopefully, you are able to develop the skills in the new area and be able to land the post-docs in the future.
Edit: I may have misread your question. I thought you were only applying in the new field that you were interested in rather than in your current field that your PhD is on. If you are not landing a postdoc in your current field, then that is a very different question and issue to address.

I’m not sure how helpful an answer “do a postdoc in your current field” is when their question is about how they can’t find a postdoc position in their field.

You are right, "all postdoc" was the question, for some reason I read it as all postdocs in the new field that they are interested in rather than in their original field.


text:
Is it possible to download nature as a magazine?
As i just want to skim over the latest articles in nature photonics, I was wondering if there is anyway to download all of the current issue as a single file (just as when one downloads Scientific American, even though these are very different publications). Still, there should be a way to download all of the current issue at once. Does anyone know if it's possible; if so, how?

The question is: how much money (US$ or € or Indian  ₹) can you afford paying for that?

My university has a suscription so I can download the articles, I was just wondering if everything could be download in a single click, like a magazine

A possibility is to use a recursive command-line downloader. Both GNU wget and curl (or Qt, with a few more source code of your own) come to mind, an both are open source software

Don't go that way. Site is authenticated and has antibot features

Using the website, you can easily browse different issues using the following link:
https://www.nature.com/nphoton/volumes/14/issues/6
There is a menu like this on top:
<< Previous Issue | Volume 14 | Next Issue >>

which allows you to skim through issues and articles easily.
All articles will show a short abstract, and if you click on the titles, you can instantly see full-text and an option to download the PDF files.
To get an overview over the different volumes (years), use the following entry point:
https://www.nature.com/nphoton/volumes

And yet you have to download each separately, and put them togheter manually, there is nothing like a PDF version of the paper issue that Is delivered to home.

Scientific American is a very different type of journal, in fact it more a "magazine" than a peer-reviewed academic journal like Nature.
Nature (and almost all other paid-subscription academic journals) does not want people downloading large numbers of articles at a time, even if they are doing it legally (with a paid subscription, such as yourself). This is because people who download so many articles at a time, are usually trying to do it for some reason that goes against the goals of the company printing the journal (in this case Nature Publishing Group). For example, people who download 100s of academic journal articles in one day, might be trying to create a repository of articles online for free access somewhere else on the internet or on PirateBay, or to sell the articles for $3 each instead of the $30 that nature usually charges.
On this question you have put a bounty containing the message:

I really need to find a way to download it

Which begs the question: Why is it that you need to download an entire issue of a journal all at once? I do not know anyone that has such a wide breadth of scientific knowledge, that they can understand every article in one issue of Nature. I think the reason why 8 months have passed without any answer to this question, is that Nature also does not see any good reason why someone would want to do this, that would not go against the goals of the company, which are to make a profit.
If you are not planning to do anything illegal, the best solution for you is probably to use an automation software such as AutoIT (if using Windows), or to use command-line tools like curl or wget (if using Linux), and then combine the PDFs by dragging and dropping them into a PDF merging software like the one offered with Small PDF.

Thank you , I guess I didn't frame why I wanted to do it correctly , all i want it was to skim over the articles in a single file so I can see what people are up to, It seems like to much work to download them like that though , so now i just skim over the articles online

@GerardoSuarez Thanks for the clarification. Have you figured out how to skim through  the abstracts online?

I'm downloading all papers in the journal. I prefer they do not know what I'm interested in, until I submit a work.

You realize that Nature is also a "magazine", including editorials, news, opinion pieces and even book reviews, only with some research articles mixed in? There is even a surprisingly cheap print version including all the articles, ready to to be leafed through every week.


text:
Is there a tool to check citations over time across disciplines?
I'd like to see how a given paper has impacted its own discipline and then spilled over to others.
Let's take Nash's paper on Equilibrium points in n-person games as an example. This work has eventually yielded him a Nobel prize and has +6k citations on Google Scholar.
I'm assuming it must have been first cited primarily by other mathematics papers; but over time, scholars from other disciplines would increasingly cite it.
Are you familiar with any tool/method that would provide this kind of information? It would be the most useful if it's possible to visualize the data.

Seems related to https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14258/visualization-tool-for-paper-citations?rq=1 (and a few posts linked to there...) but I'm not sure whether any of the answers suggested would conclusively help here.

Thanks, I had seen this discussion, but it's not exactly what I have in mind. Producing a graph like this would still require data that accounts for 1) dates 2) disciplines

The date is part of the citation, the discipline is part of the journal. It is not convenient, but such coding of data is just part of doing research. Data doesn't fall from the sky like mana, collecting it is hard work.

You may try Microsoft Academic for that. They have an interesting semantic-web approach to finding answers to your queries and they also aggregate a lot of context information. This includes citations that can be filtered in various ways.
Have a look at this search regarding your questions's example: https://academic.microsoft.com/paper/2067050450/citedby/search?q=Equilibrium%20points%20in%20n-person%20games&qe=RId%3D2067050450&f=&eyl=Y%3C%3D1956&orderBy=0 (you were right: initially, most citations were from mathematics).

A second-best solution is LENS.ORG; it allows you to see such patterns (at least partly):

Search for the paper and click on its citations (example for Nash's Equilibrium Points here).
Click on "View items in Scholar Search" (example for Nash's paper here)
Click on "Analysis" (example for Nash's paper here)
Look at the graphs "Scholarly Works over Time" and "Top Fields of Study"

This may give you a vague (but not precise) idea about the inter-disciplinary spread of the paper's impact.

The better solution would be a bibliometric analysis which you'd have to code by your own, perhaps using a downloaded, machine-readable bibliography from Web of Science (Journal Citation Reports) or CrossRef. Tools like Bibliometrix for R could help you with that. The exact approach would require a much more complex answer.


text:
What are ways for graduate students to make additional money?
A friend of mine started a PhD program after finishing his diploma with the best possible grade.
Unfortunately the institute does not have a lot of resources so he is being paid from a project fund for 3 years for a part time job.
He needs the full time to work on his PhD thesis, however, so works half the time for free.
This and his friends starting to work in the industry for considerably more money made him feel left behind, questioning his choices and that he is being taken advantage of.
The project that is funding him is capped at 3 years, so he doesn't think he could work part time to supplement his income.
Are there any ways, scholarships for example, for these kinds of situations, or does my friend simply need to reconsider his choices and quit his PhD to go into industry as well.
The field is aero-space engineering.

I have been in a similar situation and have worked on the side for two startups during my PhD. The university needs to know about it, they can refuse to have you do it, but in my case those were funded by people from university so it was fine. Of course that does not make you big money and does take time.

Finish the PhD quickly.  People with PhDs are paid more than people without PhDs.  Becoming a PhD faster will get you to higher pay faster.  You will also keep that pay for longer, because you will work more years of your life if you finish your education sooner.  (note:  correlation between education and pay does not always imply causation; also in certain disciplines the pay is terrible both with and without a PhD)
Quitting the PhD to go into industry is a good choice if making money in the short term is the goal.
Switch to a university which provides decent funding.  This works best if you are early in your PhD.
Apply for outside fellowships.  However, keep in mind none of these pay that great.
Working a job unrelated to the PhD while enrolled will make the PhD take longer, delaying the time when you are paid more.  Do not do this if you can avoid it.

I think you've covered everything except for 6. Industry internships or part-time jobs related to the PhD topic. Not sure if that's common in aerospace, but it's certainly an option in some fields.

Could you explain in more detail, what outside fellowships are? Also: Is there a mechanism to switch universities, while keeping your PhD, or do you simply mean to start over somewhere else?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/85833/are-there-grants-and-fellowships-for-phd-students-past-the-first-year-but-befor

Minix, the answers to those questions depend on your individual situation.  Different countries have very different rules.

@AnonymousPhysicist I've added a country tag. I'm not too sure about the individual situation, since I am really just asking for a friend :)

@Anyon I can't speak for the whole industry, but in the little corner of aerospace I can influence (in the US), I search out many PhD interns for a semester or two at a time. Early on, the work may not be directly related to their thesis. But as they get closer to finishing, I will only take in people whose thesis is aligned with things I need done. I don't want to delay people from graduating (when I can then hire them full time).

Your friend could find freelance work. Here's an example. Cactus is a company that provides scholarly services (such as editing papers) and they promise clients that their editors have advanced degrees. Your friend will probably qualify. Warning: this kind of work isn't going to be trivial, and your friend is not going to get paid unless he puts in the work.
If your friend is questioning his life choices and envious of his peers who are earning more money in industry, quitting the PhD and joining them is the obvious option.

If your friend is in an industry oriented research lab, why not take summer internships? I paid my way through PhD by taking summer internships in industries related to my field, paid way more than academia (and had a host who tried to get me to question my academic life and join him on the dark side of industry...). Does the university offer teaching positions? This is a relatively easy way of making extra income while bolstering your academic CV.

Anon Phys had great ideas (especially 1).
I will add one tactical $$ idea: military reserve service (try for some quick officer program).  It is a pretty nominal time commitment.  The extra income will not replace a stipend but when added onto a stipend makes a big difference in disposable income.  It also interfaces pretty well with grad school in terms of time and flexibility (one weekend a month and 2 week stint some time during the year, usually summer).
In the US (and most countries), schools/employers "have to let you do it", so there is less possible conflict versus moonlighting.  It can also be a nice mind break (especially the 2 weeks) versus your school, lab group petty politics, etc. And probably some self esteem.

I just thought I'd mention: from a German perspective, this whole idea is absolutely ludicrous.

There's a pretty substantial initial training period (boot camp), is there not?  And of course, if there is a war or other reason for reserve callup, the time commitment will become ... less nominal.

You have to be OK with the callup possibility.  Some are, some aren't.

As I understand is, Reserveoffiziere are also not paid in the Bundeswehr. They're merely compensated for lost income. So besides being ridiculous, this idea is also counterproductive, especially when you're already under time constraints.

In fairness, I added the country tag, after this answer was provided. So the German perspective could not have been considered by @guest.


text:
If I use most of the references from a thesis but not the exact same sentences, is it plagiarism?
There is a PhD thesis which is inline with my MSc thesis topic.
The author has collected and classified a huge number of references for the background.
While I am writing the background section, if I use the references he used, but not the sentences and organization, is it still plagiarism?
I am talking about 50-60 references out of 250. They are very well classified and right-to-the-point.
I also cited his thesis. However, referring to one thesis for 40 references is silly.
What should I do?

What do you mean by "use the references"?  Are you saying you're going to use his summary of other works without actually looking at the works he cited?

It does not matter how you found the possibly relevant papers. Read them, and if you find them really relevant for your purposes, write about them and cite them.

@BrenBarn I will use most of the bibliography he has used, not his sentences or summary of his work.

I'm slightly concerned that your title talks about not using "the exact same sentences" as if using rather similar sentences might be OK, as long as they're not exaaaactly the same.

It is perfectly fine to use the bibliography items. Given how helpful the other author's background section is in this regard, maybe an acknowledgement to this effect is warranted?

Would this cause services such as Turnitin to report a large number of similarities with the original paper?

Working from a bibliography in another paper is not plagiarism.  It's actually a  good research technique.  As you read those papers, check their bibliographies, too, and so on.  Pretty soon you will have thorough coverage of the subject.
Do note that you cannot just plop those 50-60 or so references into your own bibliography but do nothing else, nor paraphrase what someone else has said about them, but without reading them.  That's called reference padding and is academic misconduct.  You have to actually read the papers.  When you do that, you may find that some of them don't fit your needs as well as you may have at first thought.  You will also find it easy to write your own thoughts about those papers, and so will not have to worry about paraphrasing another author.

Using references that someone else used is not plagiarism.
That said, if you made significant use of the thesis text itself (not just its bibliography) in understanding what the references were and how they might be relevant, it's worth citing the thesis as a source for more information.  For instance, if you got some ideas by looking at a chapter in the thesis titled "Cake-baking", reading its summary of different cake-baking techniques, and then looking up the references in the bibliography to get more detail, then you didn't just use the bibliography, you used the textual explication/summary of the cited material.  It's common in articles to see a discussion of previous research with various citations, and then something like "See Jones (2000) for an overview of relevant research in this area."

+1 for ... if you made significant use of the thesis text itself (not just its bibliography) in understanding what the references were and how they might be relevant, it's worth citing the thesis as a source for more information ...

No. Taking someone else's bibliography, reading those papers, and writing some words of your own about those papers is not plagiarism.
Don't restrict yourself to just those papers, though. In all likelihood, the thesis writer won't have cited every resource that is useful or relevant to your work. If there has been a recent review published on the topic, that's usually the best place to start your own literature survey.

The author have collected and classified huge number of references for background. While I am writing the background section, if I use the references he used, but not the sentences and organization, is it still plagiarism?

It's not clear to me what you mean.  If you just mean you learned a lot of references from the thesis and then cited those references when they seemed appropriate in your own writing, then there's nothing wrong with it.  On the other hand, it's less appropriate if you are repeatedly imitating someone else's nontrivial choices about which papers to cite.  I'm not sure where to draw the line between plagiarism and other inappropriate behavior, but you should avoid it in any case.
For example, suppose someone has carefully chosen ten representative references for each of six topics and made these citations when introducing these topics.  If your background section includes different paragraphs describing the topics (so there's no copying of text) but offers exactly the same citations, then you're taking unfair advantage of that person's work by giving the impression that you chose and organized these references yourself.  It's arguably not as bad as copying chunks of text, but it at least doesn't seem like good manners.  (I'd be annoyed if I noticed that someone else's background section cited the exact same sixty papers as mine without giving me any credit.)
If this is the sort of thing you're talking about, then you should give credit by explaining the source.  For example, you could write something like "For further background material, see [that thesis], from which I took many of the citations in this section."


text:
Can the future career damage associated with staying in the same lab between PhD. and postdoc be offset by massive high-impact productivity?
I am going to be finishing my PhD at a top-10 ranked US institution in the next 6 months in a biosciences related discipline. My advisor (and the lab in general) is extremely well known and well respected. I have been very productive in my current lab (10-15 papers in high-impact journals, many additional manuscripts in preparation, invitations to present at 5-10 conferences, and I am well known in the broader research community).
Upon graduation I may be geographically limited to stay in the same city. If I were not geographically limited I would, largely, be able to postdoc anywhere I wanted. This is not intended to sound arrogant, but I want to paint a picture (I have investigated the possibility with a few best case choices and all have responded favorably).
If I stay in the city, I am considering whether to remain with my current advisor or switch labs.
I have many reasons to stay in my current lab: I believe I will be very productive, the research direction is very appealing to me, I have a great relationship with my advisor, I have a lot of autonomy already and my advisor will help me move into a more independent position, and I have had and will continue to have opportunities to spend time at other labs around the world.
There is no one else in this city with whom I'm as excited about working.
However, I'm concerned that if I stay:

I would largely be perceived as a mini-version of my PI. This would hurt funding options in the short and long term (e.g. F32 awards, K-99 awards). Unclear how badly it would hurt them.
My work might all be perceived as my advisors work (though to be fair he is extremely good at explicitly crediting people)
I would not experience a new lab environment
It could be looked on as lazy/unimaginative
It might (would) hurt my ability to get a faculty position later

Is it possible for me to offset the future career damage associated with staying in the same lab between PhD. and postdoc by massive high-impact productivity? Or would my record still be "damaged" by staying in the same place, even if I was extremely productive there?

Massive productivity trumps essentially all considerations. If you're at one of the best universities around, then nobody can be mad at you for not wanting to step down on the ladder either. In other words, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
What I would worry about, both if I were in your place and if I were your PhD/postdoc adviser, is to make sure you develop a profile of your own over time, distinct from that of your adviser. That will mean starting to collaborate with others, writing papers with others and without your adviser, and/or applying for funding under your own name. As long as you make sure that it is clearly visible by the end of your postdoc that you're an independent researcher with your own ideas and identity, you will be fine.

Agree. 'Massive high impact productivity' trumps (we need a new word for 'trumps') pretty much everything. If it's clear you're independent you're gold.

Especially: publish at least some papers where you are the lead author and your advisor is not a coauthor.

I might emphasize the second paragraph, and go even further - you and your advisor have had specific roles (PhD student, advisor) for the last however many years. Now you need to switch, as quickly as possible, in to new roles (post-doc, mentor). That shift can be hard if you stay at the same institution, much less with the same advisor. If you stay, be very conscious and active in changing your roles.

I believe that @WolfgangBangerth's answer adequately covers this regarding the perceptions of others.  But there is another potential damage to your career, which is the lack of broadened horizons that you would get from working with a different person at a different institution.  Sticking to just the perspectives and tools that your current advisor can teach you may have even more significant consequences than the external perception-related issues.  Maybe there is some great problem that you will go on to solve -- IF you take the leap now of finding a new position where you will acquire the additional tools needed to address that problem.
In short, a new position almost always means a reduction in productivity for a time, but it often means a more impactful and satisfying career in the long term.  When you get your first faculty position, you may feel obligated to stay in your niche for a few years in order to get tenure.  It's often smarter to take advantage of the relative freedom you have now (with no tenure clock ticking) and pick up some new ideas by seeking a new position.


text:
How can I share my research ideas for others to develop, in exchange for authorship?
I have some research ideas and concepts. But I have no time to  proceed with them. So I would like to share them with relevant research institutions for further developments.
I don't expect any financial benefit. But if they include my name in publications it will helpful for my career path. That's all I expect by sharing them.
Let me know, if my it is possible, if it is possible how could I contact them. Most of my concepts are based on renewable energy technologies,power,energy storing and power balancing.

Usually researchers have more ideas than they have time to work on them. I would recommend starting a website and posting your ideas on there for the entire world to see.

Related (possible duplicate): What to do with spare research topics?

Are you a PHD student, professor or postdoc? Seeking cooperation is something that depends highly on your research work and your scientific "impact".

Is this what getting your own graduate students and lab is for? :-)

It's practically impossible for the following reason:
Ideas have very little value by themselves. The chances that they are original is very low and it's the rigorous test of their validity along with informed discussion about why they work that is worth publishing. Hence, you will struggle to find someone willing to do all the work but share credit.

I don't expect any financial benefit.

Good, because you won't get any, for reasons similar to the ones given above.
Note that it's also unethical because "sharing an idea" is not enough to claim authorship of a paper.

Not unethical to share the idea, or to credit the idea's source, but arguably unethical to credit that ax "authorship" unless the idea's exceptional.  Note that this is different from how patents are handled, where the idea often is given as much credit as its development.

Thanks for your answer sir.So let me know if I can publish my concept in a     journal as a concept pointing out it's potentials. Although they are concepts I know they are really working and easily understandable.

@keshlam authorship implies active participation to the study and the writing of the paper. So just an idea, however exceptional it might be, still does not warrant authorship. Patents (at least in Europe) also require a formal demonstration of how the idea works.

Granted, but patents issued to companies (at least in the US) often give equal credit to everyone who contributed substantially to the disclosure, whether they originated the concept, helped enlarge upon it, helped prove it practical, wordsmithed the patent application, or some combination of the above. (Speaking from experience.)

I think many of the points in this answer are broadly reasonable but are stated way too strongly.  For instance: "Ideas have very little value by themselves."  If by that you mean that the average value of an idea is low: yes.  But if you mean that the maximum possible value is low: this is ridiculously false; some ideas have changed the world and/or revolutionized entire academic fields.  "'Sharing an idea' is not enough to claim authorship of a paper."  Also way too strong: the kind of idea that makes a breakthrough paper possible seems to me to be definitively worth coauthorship.

If you could freely use someone else's ideas without including them as a coauthor, then academic integrity would be strained to the breaking point.  I wonder why several people here seem so insistent on the low value of ideas.  My own opinion is as follows: suppose I have a friend or colleague that I want to support.  Suppose that every year I give them one idea, the one that I have reason to believe is my best one, though (say) I have not written anything down to support that thought.

My feeling is that by doing this I would be giving my friend a mighty gift, perhaps larger than the (sometimes substantial) support that I actually give to my students and postdocs.  My friend would have to be very capable and have skills very close to my own to suitably develop these ideas, but if that were the case the amount of support given this way would in fact be ethically problematic: one academic should not be able to entirely appropriate another's ideas in this way.

@PeteL.Clark I admit I have a tendency to see things with a statistical/economical perspective. In that sense, there is no shortage of ideas, including very good ones. What I mean is an idea like 'We should build space elevators!' is not worth a lot compared to 'I have made these rigorous calculations/experiments about the strength of carbon nanotubes that could, maybe, constitutes wires going from Earth to Space'.

"We should build space elevators!" is not to me a clear example of a very good idea.  Since you mention economics, I would suggest instead Nash equilibrium, more specifically (i) the insight that it is a useful and important definition and (ii) the existence can be reduced to standard topological fixed point theorems.  The original paper contains no more than these two insights: it is a page long and contains no nontrivial implementations of any kind, e.g. calculations or experiments: http://www.pnas.org/content/36/1/48.full.pdf.

As an example in statistics, I would suggest the embryonic form of the law of large numbers given by Cardano.  No formalism or implementation was supplied, nor could it be at the time by Cardano (or anyone else), but he published his idea anyway and the influence that it had on later workers was enormous.  I cannot think of any reasonable sense in which there is "no shortage" of ideas of the Nash/Cardano quality, so I still don't really understand what you mean.


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I prepared a course, but cancelled it due to lack of participants. How to describe in CV?
I prepared a course (more specifically, I created some material for the kick-off meeting and an outline for the contents that would have been addressed if the course would have taken place), but there were too few students participating in the kick-off meeting, so I cancelled the course.
How should I deal with this fact in my CV? Since I prepared the kick-off meeting and the outline, and was willing to give the course, it would be nice to receive some credit. Still, would I have to mention that the course was cancelled?

@LeonMeier Voting to leave open. Academic CVs are rather different than commercial CVs and preparing courses isn't something that happens much at all outside academia.

@LeonMeier If you're going to argue that "Academia is a kind of business" then pretty much nothing is specific to academia and we should shut this site down and transfer everything to [workplace.se]. I mean, people in companies give talks and do research, and teach stuff to their colleagues, and have mentorship relationships with trainees and...

@jwg - I'm intrigued. In what sense is academia not a business?

@DavidRicherby "I mean, people in companies give talks ... etc" That is true, but doing all those things is not the principal reason why a company exists. They may be the only reason why an academic institution exists. Big difference!

Comments should be used to clarify the question at hand. Off-topic discussion should move to [chat] or be addressed in a new question.

I'm pretty sure this isn't the answer you want, but I don't think you should mention it in your CV. You have no proof of the quality of the materials you prepared (since they were never used or assessed and you got no feedback on them), or even that they exist (unless you have uploaded them to a public repository or something; even then you are unlikely to get much credit for them).
Where they might come in handy is during an interview: if teaching is a significant part of the job (particularly teaching in a similar field), you may be asked 'how would you prepare a course' or something, in which case you can describe your experiences - although this relies pretty heavily on you being asked the right question at interview, and evidence of practical experience of actual teaching, and positive feedback from participants, will be viewed more highly if you have it from other projects.

My CV includes my qualifications (which were awarded by a university), grants I've won (which were therefore more successful than the ones that weren't funded), papers I've published (which were accepted by reputable journals), students I've supervised (with the outcomes of their courses), etc. I can't think of anything on there without some sort of independent assessment of quality, really (the closest is my external teaching, ironically, although I suppose I can demonstrate that they keep inviting me back). I don't mention unsuccessful grants, rejected papers or courses I failed to complete.

You could compare it to mentioning a publication that never got published. You wrote it, but for some reason, it was never submitted (and for sure never will be), even though you originally planned to. I guess you would not mention that on your CV?

Other points during the interview when you could mention it: "Which courses (beyond the basics) would you teach?" or "What teaching experience do you have?" -> "I have taught this and that, and I also have a course on xyz prepared, which I haven't taught yet." Also, if it's a course on a research topic you're interested in, you can bring it up when they ask you about your research areas. "I'm really interested in xyz because ... and by the way, I also have a course on xyz prepared which I haven't taught, yet, so it's not on my CV". And then just see if they want to know more about that course.

I dont speak for all mathematicians, but for me, almost all candidates in math have been tasked to teach courses that already exist (in some form). So if a candidate had to maneuver the admin hurdles to get a course through to the kick-off meeting, it is an experience that I would find valuable and make the candidate stand out. I agree that the preparation itself is not a big deal, but there is some value in having been exposed to the bureaucracy that unfortunately exists at almost every (US) institution.

@Sumyrda "I also have a course on xyz prepared, which I haven't taught yet." But it's not a course that's been prepared. All they have is an outline and one class: that's maybe three or four hours' work. Actually preparing the course -- writing all the lectures, making problem sheets, exams, model answers, etc. -- takes at least twice as long as actually delivering the lectures. What the asker has done is a very small fraction of "preparing a course".

@skymningen No, it's not comparable to an unpublished paper. An unpublished paper is a complete object, probably the result of at least several weeks' work. What the asker has done is write the outline of a course and prepare for a meeting. That's a few hours' work and a tiny fraction of the total effort of actually preparing a course.

@DavidRicherby I actually wanted to get at exactly that point, that you would not even put something "comparable" on your CV you probably spend more time with. Which makes it clear that a not taught course would not be there either. Comparing something is supposed to make you see what the difference is (and how that makes your course stand in a CV), not necessarily to make them totally equal.

@skymningen OK. That wasn't clear to me from the way you phrased your original comment. Normally, "You could compare it to X" means "It's broadly similar to X"

@DavidRicherby Well I might have misunderstood the situation. Of course they should say what they actually did - in this case maybe "I also have prepared an outline for a course on XYZ so that is one of the electives I could teach."

@DavidRicherby Coming from computer science "comparable" only means there is some definition on what means that two things are equal or not. So I can compare apples to oranges (both are fruit), but the result would be they are rather different from each other.

I agree with this. The course was a failure. Don't mention it.

@skymningen That is not what it means to say that two things are "comparable" in everyday English. By your definition, any two things are comparable, since one could say "I can compare an apple to a steam locomotive. The comparison is, 'They're completely different and have no similarities whatsoever.'" This is not a useful concept.

@arboviral hopefully you have something on your CV about most parenthesis in a single sentence.

@DeanMacGregor I do now! :)

Don't put this on your CV. It suggests that you think preparing for a single meeting and writing a course outline is some kind of big deal that is worthy of praise; it isn't. If you'd prepared a significant amount of the teaching material, that might be different. It also draws attention to a failure: the natural interpretation is that you thought that your course would be interesting to the students and at an appropriate level for them, whereas they disagreed.

In my career I have spent hundreds or thousands of hours working on various projects that never amounted to a deliverable product such as a paper, awarded grant, course, talk etc.; any other academic would say the same. I don't list any of this work on my CV, and neither should you. That doesn't mean that I don't think working on such projects has given me valuable experience -- it absolutely has, and it is that experience that has helped me achieve actual, demonstrable successes, which I do list on my CV.
Your CV is the advertising space where you get to use the limited attention you are likely to get from potential employers and colleagues to draw attention to your talent and successes. Using that limited attention to point out something you did that first of all (as David Richerby observed in his answer) isn't that big of a deal, and second of all did not end up having any impact, is counterproductive. Tout your actual successes, and quietly use the experience you gained from preparing the course "behind the scenes" to improve your skills and abilities and make those actual successes greater and more numerous.


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What is the difference between a research paper and a Master's thesis?
I checked several answers online to this question, but they are all extremely vague. If my understanding is correct, both a research paper and a Master's thesis require to have original contribution to the field, but in what precise ways are they different? More clearly, since they both seem to be very similar documents and contain original research and contributions to the field, why do they differ in the following points:

Usually, you can't publish a Master's thesis to a scientific journal?
Why does a Master's thesis earn you a Master's degree and not a Phd, even though you have contributed something to the field?

Please ask one question per post - [edit] to specify exactly one question. The title of this post does not match either (1) or (2). (Question 2 is more like "what is the difference between a masters thesis and a PhD thesis?") Re (1), who said that you can't?

I started to post this an answer: for the moment, I leave it as comment. A Master's thesis should usually contain some original work, but the level of originality might not be enough for the work to be publishable on a decent journal. And the level of originality required for a Master's thesis can vary across countries, institutions and advisors (there can be advisors that can be much more demanding than what would be strictly required by the university regulations). Who says you can't publish? This is certainly not true, and many people has published papers based on their Master's thesis.

"Why does a Master's thesis earn you a Master's degree and not a Phd, even though you have contributed something to the field?": A PhD somehow certifies that you are able to conduct research with a level of independence which is not expected by a Master's graduate.

@ff524 It does match in that, since both a thesis and a paper are considered to be original research, 1) why can one of them be published in a journal while the other doesn't?Assuming that what you publish in a journal is original research. As for 2) Again, since both seem to be very similar in that they're both original research, why do you get a different degree for producing one document, and another for producing the other?

Still contains different questions, with distinct answers. The answer to "Usually, you can't publish a Master's thesis to a scientific journal?" is totally independent from the answer to "Why does a Master's thesis earn you a Master's degree and not a Phd, even though you have contributed something to the field?", and "What are the differences between a masters thesis and a research paper" has its own, different, answers. Please [edit] to include just one question, and I'll reopen. (You can ask the other questions in their own posts; they're good questions. Just different ones.)

One thing that might be expected in a  master's thesis is that you will prove you know something, whereas in a research paper the purpose is different.


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Copied Letter of Recommendation?
I asked one of my professors whom I've known for 2 years to write a recommendation for me now that I'm planning for graduate school— about 3 years later after he left to another university. He asked for my full name, and just copied a letter from the web and sent it to me via email. I expected to get an accurate letter that highlights my strong points and improve my chances of getting to a good school; instead, I got a banal letter that doesn't set me apart from your average student, and which its copy can easily be found online.
I'm  reluctant to add his name on the list of Referees in my application now, but I can't find a third professor other than him who is willing to write a letter for me.

Would his letter hurt my chances of getting accepted to a good school? Even if one of the other 2 letters was relatively stronger(slightly better) compared to this one?
Can I get a letter from a professor who didn't teach me? Or a professor from another university(a family friend)?

[...facepalm...]

Relevant: Is it acceptable to write a reference letter for yourself?

3 years passed since he left for another university and most probably he doesn't remember many details to point them out in your letter. So it would be better if you helped him with writing. Just ask politely and I am sure he will not reject.

@artalexan although I tend to agree that this is a reasonable request, the professor's first move was a dick one. Perhaps he's not so good willing if he's sent a generic letter in the first place.

A professor whose idea of a good or even appropriate letter of recommendation is to copy a letter off of the internet and send it to you is a knucklehead.  (That is a technical term: I am after all an academic professional.  I could have used stronger language...)  At least, he is in this respect: in the comments the OP mentions that he got a job at Waterloo, which is a university with a high international reputation.  So he must have some other good things going for him.  In the fullness of time, I have to believe that he will learn how to write a reasonable recommendation letter.
But that's not your problem.  I would advise you to look at the fact that the professor gave the letter directly to you -- which is itself irregular and, in certain circles, inappropriate -- as a real blessing.  He could have just sent this miserable excuse for a letter quietly to all the places you're applying to, and you would be the one (in the short term, at least) to suffer the consequences.  I strongly disagree that you should work further with this guy to write a better letter.  (In particular, I vehemently disagree that you should write the letter yourself.  As I have said before on this site, I find that "immoral and wrong" -- a recommendation letter is a commissioned expert opinion.  Looking over the opinion desired by the person you have been commissioned to evaluate and deciding whether or not it requires any modification is not how expert opinions work.  But I've made my feelings on this moral issue clear enough already.  Here let me push the practical side of this: as a student, you cannot write for yourself a good recommendation letter.  There are components of such a letter that require expertise and personal experience that you necessarily lack.)  It is time to start fresh and get a letter from a new person.
The part of your response that jumps out at me is "I can't find a third professor other than him who is willing to write a letter for me."  That's the real issue here, and I hope it will serve as a warning to other students in your position.  All undergraduates should be thinking -- from their first year -- about building good relationships with their instructors that will lead to multiple people being able to write them strong recommendation letters.  It is all too easy to go through an undergraduate program -- even, perhaps especially, to excel at it -- while having very little contact with the faculty outside of the classroom and regular coursework.  That is certainly a mistake.
Okay, though: what do you do?  You ask whether someone who has not taught you in a course can write you a letter.  The answer is certainly yes.  You want the letter writer to (i) have stature in the academic community and in the particular area you're applying to, and (ii) have something meaningful to say about your academic background, skills, work ethic, and prospects for success in graduate school.  Someone that you have done research with can speak to aspects of that as well or better as people who have taught you in a course in which you quietly got an A.  In a pinch -- as you seem to be -- I would advise you to try to make contacts with people who satisfy condition (i) and try to rapidly achieve (ii) with them.  Thus for instance if you've done any research at all in the field you're intending to study, you could send a paper (or code, or interesting data, or whatever) to an expert in that field and mention that you'd like a recommendation letter.  This is a bit irregular, but if your work is solid, why not?  I would do it.
I strongly recommend that you work harder to find the right person to write you a strong letter than to have further dealings with someone who has already proven to be hopelessly inept at the job.

+1 for the knucklehead comment. Any graduate student reading this: take note of how you would feel if this happened to you, store that feeling somewhere for a few years, and pull it back out when a future student asks you for a letter. Doing something like this is pathetic, unhelpful, mean-spirited, and simply wrong.

+1 for knucklehead, and another +1 for All undergraduates should be thinking -- from their first year -- about building good relationships with their instructors that will lead to multiple people being able to write them strong recommendation letters.

And also look for professor who are ethical.

"In the fullness of time, I have to believe that he will learn how to write a reasonable recommendation letter." You are a far, far more optimistic man than I.

tl,dr: work harder to find the right person to write you a strong letter than to have further dealings with someone who has already proven to be hopelessly inept at the job.

Look at it from his point of view: He most likely gets dozens of requests for recommendation letters.
I would suggest making his life easier for him by saving him writing time.  If he's the kind of guy that would copy & paste a letter from the internet, he's the kind of guy that would let you write your own recommendation and sign it for you.  You don't have to write the entire letter for him (although this is possible).  It's not immoral or "wrong" as the professor has to sign off on it and if the letter contains something he doesn't agree with he can just refuse.
The tactful way to approach this would be to reply to him and say that you appreciate his letter but wanted to make a strong case for your strengths in XYZ, and therefore would it be possible to add these paragraphs to the letter.
Also, yes, you can get recommendations from family/friends but I would suggest that you disclose your relationship.  I know someone that got into grad school with a recommendation written by a former classmate.

While I personally agree with you, many members who are much more experienced in the LoR circuit strongly recommend against writing your own letter.

I'd just add that it's ridiculous for someone to take a letter off the web and use it "because they get many requests". It's always possible to just say no.

I highly doubt that's the reason for copying a letter(numerous requests), because someone who gets a lot of requests would at least use a letter format THEY have previously written for another student. It's absurd to think that between his first produced letter—copied or not— and up to now, he's never written a single original letter that he could use for me.

@Valentin Are you located in Europe? I have certainly talked to european professors who have never written a letter, themselves or otherwise. The entire LoR thing is just not an established practice around here. (things seem to be changing, though)

@xLeitix: Things indeed seem to be changing a bit - however, my impression is that the more often it occurs that some organization requests a letter of recommendation, the more likely even those professors that did formerly take the time to write a letter of recommendation start thinking over their use of time and delegate the authoring of such letters back to the student (possibly with the help of one of their employees). Along the lines of "Writing such a letter once is ok, but if this becomes a frequent event, assign it to someone else."

@Valentin, Maybe the letter he used previously for another student IS the same one he copied from the internet! The fact is, he's done something lazy.  The most common factor behind that is laziness.  Otherwise, he might be very busy.  Either way, you can help him help you by saving him time.

@xLeitix I agree for PhD applications, but for postdoc it is a different matter, and a generic enough letter could probably be used for either (though hopefully most people applying for postdoc positions are able to obtain much less generic letters).

@xLeitix The university where he used to teach me is in the Middle East, but he is now at University of Waterloo(Canada). I don't understand how he's able to hold a teaching position at a place like Waterloo but not be able to write an effective letter.

@CaptainCodeman I'll write a paragraph or two myself and then ask him if he could include it or a variation of it in the letter.

He probably just has little to no recollection of you. I wouldn't ask for another one.

If I'm reading the question correctly, you knew him for two years, but it's been three years since he's seen you.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if he doesn't have a strong recollection of you without specific prompting.

Your resume, statement of purpose, and any work you submit in your application package are your part. Writing your own LoR would be redundant.
Letters of recommendation are other's contribution in support of your bid. They should be written by those who have confidence in your work. If you can't come up with another professor to support you, I recommend taking post-bacc classes, doing research, and doing your best work in the coming year. In your applications next year, hopefully you will have three professors to support you.
Incidentally, when submitting your application, you should elect not to review your letters of recommendation. This shows that you have confidence in your abilities, work, and reputation among your professors.

While it probably won't hurt your application, it doesn't really add much to it. If it's just one letter and the others are decent, then think of it as just filling the one requirement missing. Statement of purpose, CV, GRE and other components of your application are also important.

While it won't hurt your application — [citation needed]