text:
What incentives do researchers have for applying for NSF grants?
I do not understand NSF grants.
Does the researcher make any money from them?  I mean, if they spend 10 hours a week working on the project, are they compensated? Can they be compensated directly from NSF funds? Not to sound greedy, but let's say I'm a tenured professor who's perfectly capable of doing outstanding research on my own.  What incentive would I have to try to get a NSF grant, if it's just for my department to distribute to other people to work with me?  I want some money.

There seem to be two questions here: one about incentive for applying for funding, and one about funding independent researchers. I've edited out the second one because we ask for one question per post and the existing answer mainly addresses the first.

Your second question seems to be, "Would the NSF support the research of someone who is in a purely teaching role?" and is better asked as a separate question in its own post. Can you ask it in a new post?  If you don't agree, please engage in comments and explain why, or bring the issue to [meta] rather than just rolling back the edit.

Not to sound greedy, but [...] I want some money. Hmmmmmm...

Under NSF rules, principal investigators (PIs) who supervise a grant are eligible for up to one month of support per grant, and two months per year total across all of their NSF-sponsored grants. Other US grant programs have similar rules: they're willing to provide some support for the PI's, but they want the majority of the funding to go to the people carrying out the research.

From a purely monetary standpoint, Principal Investigators benefit from grants in multiple ways: grants can be used to pay the PI's summer paychecks (faculty contracts usually mention that the salary is for 9 or rarely 10 months), grants can be used to travel to conferences, grants can be used to pay for hardware, including laptops, and so on.
Without grants, a faculty would have to pay for those things out of their own pocket (which, in the case of the summer paychecks, just means "do not get paid").
About the part of your question about the NSF "pitching in", here is a quote from the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (Part I, Chapter 1, E) :"Unaffiliated individuals in the US and US citizens rarely receive direct funding support from NSF".

And they can pay RAs and Postdocs!

yay for Summer pay!

@Thomas: Yes! It seemed that that part was clear to the OP though =)

The other major incentive for trying to get NSF grants, is that generally at a major research university, bringing in external funding is required for tenure + promotion.

(The thing about an unaffiliated individual doesn't seem to be relevant here, since the OP does have an academic affiliation - the OP is in a role that is primarily teaching and does not support research, though.)

This question keeps changing. They were picturing a different scenario in an earlier version of the question....

In the first version the OP says "I teach at a university... My university does not reward my research with extra pay", i.e. the OP has affiliation but is in a teaching role. (I edited out that part of the question because of the one question per post rule, I made it focus on the first part of the question because that's what you primarily answered.)

What incentives do researchers have for applying for NSF grants?

Some or all of the following may incentives may apply, depending on the field, institution, and individual:

Summer salary.
Support for professional travel.
Money to pay for lab equipment and supplies, without which it may not be possible to do one's research.
Support in various forms (salary, tuition, travel) for students and postdocs.
Better chances of promotion/tenure. In some cases it may be a requirement to have gotten grants, in some cases it may only be required to have applied, in some cases neither is required but they are nevertheless a plus.
In some departments, "research-active" faculty get lighter teaching loads.  Having a grant is usually sufficient to be counted as research-active.  (This is different from buying out teaching, which NSF doesn't normally do.)
A warm, fuzzy feeling from helping support your institution via overhead.


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Does a degree in economics/corporate finance from an Italian university prepare me for a PhD in economics?
i am a master of corporate finance student in Bocconi. i have a bachelor degree in economics and wanted to continue on it but decided to switch to finance due to some restraints (my scholarship from European Union only allows me to register in one year programs; and as you know msc in econ programs are 2 year)
i do not hate finance but i do not love it as much as economics. besides, i beleive that that business life is not suitable for me. i have a great interest in economics which -unfortunately- revealed in my last years in bachelor degree. therefore, i do not have a high gpa.
so i have some concerns about for pursuing a phd degree. i will be very happy if you can help me.
although i have taken some math courses (calculus, statistics, linear algebra, econometrics), i am not sure that it is sufficient for a phd in economics. plus, i do not have very shiny grades on math (because i was not studying at all, i mostly entered the exams mostly 1-2 hours of study and survived with my previous high school math knowledge. as i mentioned above, i was not a hardworking student in my first years do to my lack of interest in economics).
calculus101: c+ calculus102:c+ statistics1: c statistics2: c econometrics: c linear algebra: b+
so do you recommend me to get a phd? can i survive a phd program (especially the math part)?
thank you for your answers which will help me to shape next 50 years of my life

You can flag your post and ask for it to be disassociated (so it will show as having been asked by an anonymous user), and you can edit your post to remove unnecessary details that you don't want there but that don't invalidate the answers. But once you contribute a question to Stack Exchange and others contribute helpful answers, you can't delete it. See How does deleting work? What can cause a post to be deleted, and what does that actually mean? What are the criteria for deletion?

I'm in the same situation, so maybe I can help. The first thing many people don't realize is that many fields of advanced level economics are almost entirely math. Thus an undergraduate degree in econ may not be the best preparation for a doctorate if the degree is not very mathy. My university has a special doctoral prep program for econ majors for exactly this reason. You can see the degree requirements here to get a sense of how much math my economics department thinks you need to get a doctorate.
http://www.american.edu/cas/degrees/bs-mathematics-economics.cfm
My personal opinion is that depending on the field of economics you want to study (and how much math is involved), as well as the rigor of the doctoral program, you may want to take more math classes. Also while those are great core courses which you have taken, if I was an admissions officer, I'd be concerned about the grades. Take some higher math and show you've improved.
To quote from one of my econ professors (a former central banker) "IF you come in with the math, graduate schools will have no problem teaching you the econ."
Courses you need:

Multivariate Calculus, Differential Equations, Real Analysis
More Statistics, especially time series analysis.

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Journal unsatisfied with revisions after acceptance, author proofs and copyright
We recently had a c.s. theory / networks paper accepted at a special issue after addressing a major revision.  After we got the letter of acceptance, author proofs, signed the copyright release, etc., we got a letter saying

the paper was inadvertently marked as "Accepted" which was not the decision of the guest editors of the special issue. Apologies for the confusion.

They then ask us to strengthen our revisions to the same reports we responded to before:

Please understand that although we believe that you made a considerable effort in revising your manuscript, we think that reviewers' comments 5, 8, 9, and 11 require further attention.

But they misinterpret what the referees want in those points.  One example is that the referee originally asks

Why not use testbed experiment to evaluate it?

(we have given reasons in our paper why testbed experiments are not necessary) but the editor writes

the reviewers ask to perform testbed experiments

They close with

If the paper is successfully revised and the reviews are positive, then it could be accepted and appear in a later addendum to the special issue.

In short, the editors claim to have accidentally pressed "accept" and then forgotten about our paper for 2 months while it went through the editorial and publishing process, and that we have not met the reviewer's demands, which the editor has clearly misinterpreted.
How do we proceed in a way that ensures our fair treatment and, ultimately, the publication of our paper at this journal?

A fun thing to do would be asking the journal to officially sign back the copyright to you.

Unfortunately, these things do happen sometimes, and there's not much you can do about it.  If the journal does not want to publish your paper yet, there's not much you can do to get it to publish your paper without carrying out the revisions that they request.  At least they caught their mistake before it was actually published, unlike in this case at PLOS ONE, so you don't have a retraction on your record.
I would suggest you treat this just as any other request for revision: improve the paper and hope that the next revision is sufficient for publication.

I should emphasise that this new letter is not one of rejection.  The paper is still "conditionally accepted", but they are setting the bar higher (by misinterpreting the original referee reports.  edit: I have edited the question to clarify this.

@AlejandroErickson I've adjusted my answer accordingly --- basically the advice is the same: just ignore the mistake and move forward as though you got their intended statement originally.

No one here can tell you what will insure the publication of your article beyond satisfactorily making the changes that the reviewer wants.
On the other hand, I have had at least one successful case writing a strongly worded, polite, and well-reasoned rebuttal letter to the editor explaining why the reviewer is wrong. You might be able to convince the editor that the article is fine as is so that it can be published without additional changes. This route probably has lower odds of success since you have to convince the editor that they were wrong and that their hand-picked reviewer is wrong, but if what the reviewer wants is impossible or nonsensical, you might have to try this approach.
You might try writing the letter and not sending it. Get a couple of close colleagues who are not co-authors to read the paper, the reviewer report, and the letter, and tell you how they feel. You don't have to send it. If you can't convince a friend, maybe you shouldn't try to convince the editor.
Edited to add: This is a strategy that you should only undertake with the help and complete assent of your current co-authors. When I did it, my PhD supervisor and I were the only authors. He agreed, strongly, that the editor was wrong to agree with the reviewer, and we worked on a nice rebuttal letter that was convincing. We sent it under our joint names, but it would have appeared to have come from me more since I was first author and we listed my name first in the letter.

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Is it appropriate to include benchmarks in a CS research paper?
I am planning to write a CS research paper on a new data structure I've discovered. Is it appropriate to include benchmarks comparing its performance for certain operations against that of a similar data structure, and include that in the paper? Thanks.

You should certainly evaluate your data structure in some way, and that is one way to do it.
Look at what other papers introducing data structures use as benchmarks to get a feeling for what is expected. Using the same benchmarks as commonly used in the field helps with comparability between different papers.


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Is copying numbers from published scientific articles considered plagiarism/copyright infringement?
Considering that proper reference is provided (journal, author name, date etc.), is copying exact numbers from published scientific articles could be considered plagiarism or copyright infringement?
For example, there is a research called "Dancing can reverse the signs of aging in the brain". I need to cite in my own research some data from it, including how many there were participants, their gender (how many men/women), age and BMI. There are some tables as well, from which I intend to take some baseline numbers. As a result, I'm making my own conclusions (words or sentences are not copied, only numbers).
Thanks.

No, it's neither:

It's not plagiarism because you cite the original source and you don't try to put others' results as your own.
It's not a copyright infringement because there's no copyright on data.

As long as you cite appropriately you are fine. Scientific articles are supposed to interact with one another, and in the process we often refer to results by others. If it is convenient to repeat key findings, or aspects of the sample, you can repeat those. It becomes plagiarism when the reader may reasonably think that you are the author of those numbers. That is why we cite, to give credit where credit is due.

You are doing "comparative" research. You are publishing your own results. Then you are comparing your results with those of Mr. X or Journal Y, in which case you need to present the other party's results.
As long as you make it clear which results are whose, you're fine.


text:
How to cite a conference paper similar to thesis topic published during research?
I have been working on a topic for my PhD thesis, since mid-2017. I have found a recent article published in 2019, focusing on the similar topic. Since my research started earlier - I also have published papers on the topic as well -, how can I cite this article? Should I simply tell that these guys also worked on this topic in 2019 as well?
So far, I did not cite my own papers in my own thesis (this is what my professor told me). Now, it is not clear when I started doing my research. And of course, I would like my research to be considered novel in the thesis.

I would probably follow roughly the following steps:

Read the conference paper thoroughly, and decide how it relates to your paper. This part is regardless of the details of who published first; it is just a matter of knowing the facts, and clearly figuring out what their work is about, how it overlaps with yours, and to what extent the results are the same or different.
For results that overlap significantly, determine who published first. You state in your post that you have been working "since mid-2017" and "my research started earlier". To be clear, those details are not really relevant here. The only thing that is relevant is who published first. Fortunately, you are hopefully OK here as it sounds like you have publications in this topic as well.
If the authors of the conference paper could have cited you, but didn't, consider reaching out to them directly. From your post it sounds like they didn't cite you, even though you had already published? In this case, you can send a polite email saying you saw their work, it looked interesting, and asking them if they are aware of your earlier work. You should assume good faith; it is likely that you both completed similar work in parallel.
Write a section on the paper in your related work (to your thesis), explaining how the research differs. How much you say mainly depends on how related the work is, not when it was published. If it happens that the works have some of the same ideas and solutions, you can explain this in a number of ways, depending on the results of (1), (2), and (3):

"[X et al, 2019] also developed a similar solution in parallel to our work."
"[X et al, 2019] have a different idea on how to solve problem P, based on QRST, however, they did not compare with [your name et al, 2018]."
"Some aspects of our solution, including ___, were originally developed in [X et al, 2019]."

While the above are useful phrases to cover yourself from criticism, these should not be the only thing you write, and you should only say these as a last resort. It is much better if the work differs in some way, and you can explain clearly how it differs. Even if only part of it differs, explaining which parts differ will be much more helpful to future readers.

Some other comments:

So far, I did not cite my own papers in my own thesis (this is what my professor told me).

This is really strange to me. If I were reading your thesis, I would really want to know what papers of yours you are building on. But the culture may be different between my field and yours (I am in Computer Science). Your advisor of course knows best.

Now, it is not clear when I started doing my research.

As I said above, this isn't super relevant; it's more important who published first, and whether the work was done in parallel.

And of course, I would like my research to be considered novel in the thesis.

We all would like this :) This is the best reason to have a thorough comparison, so you know how your work differs, in case anyone asks. If it doesn't differ at all, but you did the work in parallel, that may be fine as well. And if you published certain results first, don't be afraid to highlight that in your thesis or if anyone asks you about it.

Thanks a lot for the comments. I will contact them directly.

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text:
Would using an application fee waiver affect my admission result in a negative way?
I am applying to an Ivy League university in the US as an international student for a Ph.D. program. They have application fee waivers for students with financial hardship.
Would using it (or even asking for it) have negative effects on the result of application?
They also have a GRE waiver for these type of students too. I believe this one does affect the result. Am I right?

I would expect that the applications are processed in such a way that the committee who makes the decisions doesn't know whether or not the fee was waived, though I don't know for sure.  Maybe someone with firsthand knowledge can confirm.  Of course, if the GRE was waived then the committee will certainly see that you don't have a GRE score.  How this would affect their decision is hard to judge, since different departments may weigh GRE  scores in very different ways.

I'm pretty sure that the application fee at an Ivy League school isn't seen as a revenue generator. It is more so that they get only thousands of applications rather than millions each year. People in the US with no chance whatever of admission are less likely to apply and tie up the system if there is a fee. It also helps fund the admissions system itself.
The barriers for international students are higher in any case due to travel, immigration rules, economic differences, etc. The fee waver is there to encourage more foreign students so that they get hundreds of applications, rather than tens. There would be no reason for them to prejudice an application asking for fee waver if they actually want to encourage foreign students. The same is possibly true of GRE wavers - encourage foreign applications. Most US schools and all top level schools want to encourage a diverse student body.
The GRE may also be harder to take (and relatively more expensive) for some foreign students, but without it the admissions people will need other evidence that they can predict success for a student.

The people in the program will evaluate and score your application.
They won't know whether the fee was waived, nor are they likely to care.
They will know if there is no GRE score. For some programs the GRE score is important, for others it is not.
You will need to ask the programs that you are considering what there policy is. GRE waivers are usually in lieu of other evidence (such as a strong work history, previous graduate degree, performance on some other graduate test (MCAT, GMAT, etc)).

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How to ask for more details from a US university professor without being rude if he says I should apply through the university?
I'm a BSc holder looking for grad. studies. I contacted a professor from a good US university (not Ivy League) about his work and publications which I liked very much. I told him about my research background etc, his answer included the following points:
1- Telling me that I have "a very good background".
2- That I must first be admitted to the university and he can't directly take students.
3- The fact that 1st year is not so research-oriented and he can't say if he will be able to take a new student.
4- Telling me that I should apply.
This I think, isn't a specific case just for me so I'm going to ask here.
Funding is very important for me, I cannot fund my study even for a semester. Where should I go from here and what to ask to make sure of funding my Ph.D. study from the begining? Can I make sure I'll have a RA position before even applying?

Have you looked at the departmental admissions page for PhD students and see what they say about availability of funding?

The person to contact with funding availability questions is probably a departmental or university administrator, not this professor. Have you looked at the website to see who is listed as the admissions contact for the department?

Check with the department. But rest assured most US PhD programs are fully funded.

@Dawn I'm not sure, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the departmental funding provide only the tuition fees and to cover living expanses one has to secure RA-ship position in a research group?

@xuq01 Does a program being fully funded means it will cover living expenses as well? Or one has to find a job position such as RA or TA for that?

@Alireza They will fund your expenses, but probably through offering you a place as a RA/TA. After all, there are no free lunches!

@xuq01 Of course. The RA/TA is what I'm looking for exactly. But should I ask the professor about it or the department?

@Alireza Department. Incoming graduate students are usually funded through the department in the US.

In the physical and natural sciences in the U.S., it is almost always the case that Ph.D. students are funded, meaning not just having tuition paid for, but also having a stipend / salary sufficient to live on. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I haven't heard of any, and I will guess that they are rare. Also, importantly, this stipend is tied to work of some sort, typically either teaching assistantships or grant-supported research positions, with the general idea being to transition from the former to the latter in a year or two. There are various details -- e.g. making adequate progress to degree, actually finding a research advisor who will take you and who is likely to have grant funding, etc. -- but in brief, when applying you should not be worried about the things you're worried about.
To directly answer your question, though: don't pester the professor you wrote to with funding questions. (His response is very similar to the one I usually send!) Check departmental web pages or administrative / admissions contacts if you have specific questions about this. Though it does matter whether your potential advisor has a track record of funding, and how likely he/she is to take on students, you won't get a clear answer about this, especially because it is quite difficult to predict what will be the case ~2 years in the future.

Right, the specifics are typically department-specific but should not be a concern as long as you see the words “fully-funded” somewhere. For instance, in our department, the first year has no work requirement to earn the stipend. Then students transition to a TA/ RA position which is guaranteed by the department (still competition for the best profs/courses, but you were guaranteed to get something to cover your stipend).


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How to overcome the need to know everything about a topic?
I seek advice from mathematicians.
Sometimes I come across a topic I partially understand in my research, but I understand enough to get my work done. Yet I want to know everything about the topic, even if it isn't beneficial to my work. I can not get rid of universalism. For example, I think I do not know a lot of about my research field without reading all the grad texts.
But at the time of doctoral education teachers always advise you to look at the research and stop reading too many books.
How is it possible to get rid of universalism?

I'm afraid I don't find your question very clear.  First of all you don't say who you are: are you a mathematics graduate student?  At what stage -- are you working on your thesis?  Second, I think that by "universalism" you mean that you are having a hard time getting away from the need to fully understand every result you're using.  (I don't think "universalism" is a good word for that, by the way.)  But whether, how, how much and in what way you should stop doing that depends so much on your particular situation that a general answer could be useless or worse.  What does your advisor say?

As is often the case, XKCD has a relevant comic: https://xkcd.com/761/ - you need to figure out what is important to know for your research, and learn that. Don't learn everything and then find out what you need to know for your corner of math.

"I think I do not know a lot of about my research field without reading all the grad texts" I hate to break the bad news to you, but when you really start looking deep into a particular topic, you'll find that quite a bit (often over 95% of the total) never makes it into the santitized and streamlined textbooks, such as for example the results involving the nowhere differentiability properties of most continuous functions in my answer to this question.

How did you overcome the need to fly, or to turn invisible, or to have X-ray vision?

Take a look at https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/78073/32436.  I can't tell from your question whether you experience a compulsive need to read all the grad texts on a certain topic.  After you read the answer I linked to, could you come back here and let me know if you think there is some compulsive quality to your urge to understand everything about a topic?  I really wasn't sure from your post.

Possible duplicate of How to stop hopping the learning chain and actually begin somewhere?

I cannot comment on the question being a duplicate, but the glorious answer by @problemofficer below is a sign that this question is 1) understandable 2) important

@CoderInNetwork Interesting.  I wonder if there is some lesson hidden in there.

I propose that your behavior is not caused by flawed methodology but stems from certain acquired beliefs about your self worth, that you should try to address to solve this "problem".
Reason for Behaviour
The need to

read everything stems from the need
know everything which stems from the need to
not miss anything important/useful which in turn stems from the need to
submit the perfect paper or thesis which stems stems from the need to
get appraisal from your advisor or peers which is a
source of happiness

Thus, unconsciously you are afraid that, if you miss some information your work will be less than perfect and you will not get the approval that you are used to get. People will be disappointed, saying something like "This is not the quality of work we are used to get from you".
Recommendation
It is usually hard to change these core beliefs about ourselves, but you could

realize that even with a non perfect paper you will be much better than other researchers (if the need to be the best is not something you can change)
realize that your advisor values it more, if you finish your research in time than making the best work possible ("Better done than perfect"). Therefore you will get more appraisal for finishing quickly.
look for other sources of happiness and validation in life that will make imperfections in your work seem less important

friends that value your company
spouse that loves and values you as a person
children
teaching, where the amount of knowledge you need to acquire is much lower and the reward (admiration from students) is easier to achieve

(Disclaimer: I am not a mathematician)

Not a mathematician, but my field gives rise to many many of those moments. Just note the areas of interest in a text file or table. You need to focus. You can also set aside a fixed hour or two each week, to allow yourself to cover those additional areas of interest. But mostly you'll just have to accept that you'll never ever know everything in the world... It's like wanting to eat everything on the buffet table.


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What is the best way to approach a PhD advisor to give them advice on how to improve their supervision?
I am a PhD student in biosciences the U.K. and I am almost about to finish. I have a great relationship with my supervisor and overall they have supported me very well.
However, there are some things I think that he could have done which would have improved the experience; for example, going to a conference with them and introducing me to other experts in the field. Most of them are small points, but I think they would help any future students they have.
Given I am only a PhD student, I am hesitant to go to them with a checklist of improvements they need to make as a supervisor. Therefore, my question is, what is the best way to approach an advisor to offer advice on how they could improve their supervision without making myself sound too arrogant, or without giving unasked advice? Is there a way that would come off as being helpful rather than critical?

I agree that going to a conference with your advisor is a great thing - as far as you know, did they go with other students in the past? The whole Covid thing pretty much guaranteed that it could not happen for you in a timely fashion to introduce you to potential post-doc places, but that might not be their fault or desire in the first place.

You can openly talk about your experience, but dont expect that your advisor would care.

@looktook or they may care, but while being willing to do these things, and already knowing, somehow it always slips and nothing happens.  Or of course they may disagree

Try to avoid criticism, be polite...

@Chris H in my opinion, PhD students are regarded only as a cheap labor.

@looktook it seems very variable. Here that's not really the case - teaching duties aren't on behalf of the PI, and the funding for the research works differently to e.g. the US. While there are international differences, there are also differences between groups within countries.

I think most of how to approach this depends far too much on your individual relationship, which no one here can know as well as you.
However, one general rule to keep in mind would be to stick to talking about things that would/could have helped you rather than things they did wrong/"need" to change.
You can even keep quite distant from their actions by simply talking about things you wish you had without mentioning their role at all.
For example, you could express that you wish you had been able to interact with more experts at other institutions through conferences earlier in your PhD career. You could ask them for advice now, or for retrospective advice ("what should I have done to have these opportunities?"). This makes it less of an accusative conversation and more of a collaborative one. Maybe your advisor will on their own offer suggestions of ways they could have helped with this, and it'll keep it in their mind for future students. Depending on your relationship, you may be able to state more directly how they could have helped, but I'd start the conversation first so it is about you and your goals rather than about them.
In general, and I've said this on other Q&As here as well, people in general don't like being told what to do, but they do like helping other people with their goals. "I need help meeting potential future post doc advisors" is a very similar ask to "introduce me to other professors", but they come off completely differently. Sometimes people may surprise you by not helping you the way you thought they might, but getting you to your goal in a different way. If that's your true goal, rather than getting them to behave a certain way, you still get what you wanted.

Another reason for taking this perspective: every student will have different needs. It is great (maybe even essential) to communicate your needs with your advisor. On the other hand, you don't want to prescribe your needs for all students. Your advisor will decide if those needs are relevant for their other students.

+1 for the last paragraph. Maybe your advisor really doesn't like socializing at conferences but can find another way to help you.

Since you are (I guess) not an expert on supervision you may not offer advice on supervision. However, you are an expert on getting supervised by your advisor, so you are the best qualified person to give feedback about how the supervision went.
So my advice about this would be: Ask your advisor if they would appreciate some feedback about the process of supervision. Moreover, I totally agree with what Bryan Krause wrote: Focus on your experience.

I'm not disagreeing with any part of this answer, but would like to note: with their first PhD students/postdocs, most advisors are also not experts on supervision, and only have the experience on getting supervised by their past advisor(s). And the "supervision training" provided is often not very extensive.

Fully agree! That's a good point and shows that feedback from "advisees" is important!

Yes, and the key part is "Ask your advisor if they would appreciate some feedback". Letting them decide if (and when) they want it makes all the difference in the world.

Some departments do exit interviews with graduating students. This is another venue where you can give feedback about your experience (with your advisor and elsewhere) via a 3rd party (sometimes it's the chair, or another professor doing the exit interview). Going to conferences with your advisor is a great point, and something that all the students in your department might benefit from not just those under the same advisor.

For that exit interview, or if you don't get one, there's also likely to be someone in the department with the role of improving supervision - a director of graduate studies or similar.  They can help you - they'll have a good idea of expectations in your field/department, but you'll also be helping them

This a tough situation to be in. During my Ph.D studies I was lucky with my supervisor who actively engaged with me in my research. A friend of mine was unfortunate with his supervisor. About half way through the supervisor became heavily involved in a new discovery in his field and all but forgot his student. He was very difficult to engage with and my friend struggled for a while.
Personally, trying to give them 'advice' is not the way to approach this; you are of course the underling. First off I would try and work out why you don't get the support you require? Are you prepared when you meet him/her, is the research going well, are you approachable. You need to definitely make the right approach here and appeal to their vanity and ego. The most important thing to realise is that you don't know everything, you are keen to learn from their experience and any time you can get you should be grateful, take on board what they have to say and make sure that the supervisor knows this. Going to them saying, 'ahh can I give you some advice, you need to pay more attention to me....' can only make things worse.

Other answers focus on giving feedback on what would have helped you, and this is great advice. Additionally, you could frame the feedback to help junior members of the group. This is gives actionable advice that can be put to use now, which is more likely to have an impact.

Student X would benefit from attending conference Y with you.  I would have benefited from meeting scholar Z earlier in my studies, and I bet they would too.

Often junior researchers have better relationships with each other than their senior collaborators.  Through talking to other students you might know of things that would have helped you, and will help others.  Or you might notice a junior student who has different needs than you, and you could offer advice on how to help them succeed.

I was very independent, but I don't think the other students work as well in isolation.  They could make better progress, if you met with them once or twice per week.


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Digital media rights for online courses (US)
I've been trying to research how digital media can be lawfully utilized for online, distance-learning courses.  The specific use case here would not be a MOOC or anything massive, but an online course offered to homeschooled students that probably would have less than 20-30 signups per semester.  The sourced videos would include items such as this one:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/scottsboro/
Current American guidelines suggest that it is perfectly OK to offer this video in-person in a physical classroom:

Classroom Use of Videos
  Public performances of a video/DVD in the face-to-face classroom is an exception to the public performance right §110 (1) and therefore lawful. The following conditions apply:

The teaching activities are conducted by a non-profit education institution
The performance is in connection with face-to-face teaching activities.
The performance takes place in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction.
The person responsible for the performance has no reason to believe that the videotape was unlawfully made.

Source:  http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet07
However, I am unable to find current and accurate guidelines that would apply to online courses in a similar manner.  At the current time this means that we are restricting our course videos to items that can be obtained reasonably on Amazon, Netflix, iTunes and so forth - however, this is so piecemeal that it becomes a real pain to attempt to track and maintain locations, prices, availability, and so on for the relevant videos.
Is there any legal path for a purchased educational  DVD such as the above to be made available online for a strictly limited educational audience in a distance learning context?

There's a brief here that may be of interest to you.

Thanks! I'm reviewing that now.  At first glance, it looks like it is most relevant to a course with online presence - the students are gathered synchronously and the media is being streamed in real time.  For reference to others, I'd be interested as well in situations such as:  discovering a copy of a video on YouTube that may not be licenses, and linking to it, as well as asychronous (non-realtime) viewing, such as embedding a video in a Canvas course.  Thanks!

Have you asked your academic librarian? I think this is a pretty common situation, and they are likely to know how to handle it.

This isn't a college course; this is a homeschool education course for home education.  but you're right, my wife who's offering the course does have a PhD in education and has alumni resources we should probably tap here.

Per brief linked by @ff524 in the comments (updated location here - PDF), there seems to be a reasonable argument that anything you could do in a face-to-face classroom is reasonable to do in an online learning situation as well, as long as similar barriers to entry apply.
The classroom exemption basically says that what you're doing isn't really a "public" performance per se, it's use in a small-group instructional setting.  Hundreds of thousands of people can't just drop in, like they can for a publicly posted resource on the internet.
As such, it seems that if you use technology to shift that small group around in space (e.g., via online streaming) or in time (e.g., via asynchronous viewing), then it's still instructing a small group.  The legal details might or might not be resolved, but the argument would be strong and there's clearly no moral or ethical issue.
If you just post something publicly, however, then you've removed the barrier to entry, and the number of people who can potentially be using that resource is unbounded.  Maybe there will never be more than just your students, but what if for some strange reason the lecture went viral? While that probably won't happen, there is a moral and ethical (and likely legal) line being crossed when you decide to make something that is otherwise restricted freely available to the entire internet.
In between the two cases, I believe, is a grey area of MOOCs, in which there is a barrier to entry, but the technology is used to greatly scale up the number of students that are being served by a lecture.  Since it sounds like you're planning to stay small, however, that's not something you would need to worry about for now.


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In publications section of application, I'm asked what database the journal is indexed in. Where can I find that information?
I am applying to a university for a PhD and in the application it asks for information on journal publications. And under that it asks for journal's Impact factor and database the journal is indexed in.
What is meant by database the journal is indexed in? How can I find it?
I have my journal submitted to BMC systems biology and I found the 2015 impact factor to be 2.213. What is the database the journal is indexed in?

Wow, that's a weird thing for them to ask. Is there space for exactly one entry? What about journals that are indexed by more than one database?

@ff524 It's a PDF form, so I can write more than one entry,I guess.

Well, then, here you go: About BMC systems biology. Scroll down to "Indexing Services". There are about 20 on the list :)

@ff524  Thank you. But I can't include all that in the application. As it says "You can also access all articles published by BioMed Central on SpringerLink." Can I use SpringerLink as the database the journal is indexed in?

I would answer "Google". (And then I would not get the job.)

Just write SCI-E, SCOPUS. that's enough.

It sounds like a poorly worded question.
However, if I were to guess their intentions, they might be interested in whether the journal appears in the "Science Citation Index - Expanded" or "Social Sciences Citation Index". Or another influential one is whether it is in the Proquest index.
The reason I say this, is that inclusion in these indices are sometimes used as a minimal criteria for legitimacy as a journal for inclusion in world rankings.
E.g., The Shanghai rankings use:

ARWU uses six objective indicators to rank world universities,
  including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and
  Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Thomson
  Reuters, number of articles published in journals of Nature and
  Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index -
  Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita
  performance of a university. More than 1200 universities are actually
  ranked by ARWU every year and the best 500 are published.

You can search for inclusion in Science and Social Science Citation Index here.

BMC Systems Biology is in SCIENCE CITATION INDEX EXPANDED. So would SCIENCE CITATION INDEX EXPANDED work as the database the journal is indexed in


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Is it good idea to put a slide about "National Teacher Appreciation Day" at the end of presentation slides at my masters defense?
Tomorrow I have my master's project defense. So, I will be presenting and defending on my project "Course Advising System".
I just noticed that tomorrow is a National Teacher Appreciation Day. Is it a good idea to put one slide after "Questions and Comments" section in the presentation?
I want to put this slide but I don't want to ruin anything either.

Among other factors, this will depend on whether anyone in the audience considers themselves to be linked to the profession of a "teacher" (which may be seen differently by culture) in any way.

I would like to tell you that the date on which Teachers' Day is celebrated varies from country to country. This slide may work in your location, but it's meaningless to many others.

@scaaahu So what? Do you think it's likely that the asker will present in multiple different countries on the given day?

I doubt that you showing or not showing the slide will make much of a difference one way or the other, but as a general rule, if I were one of the professors at your defense, I would not expect or want you to say or display anything that makes it seem like you are trying to ingratiate yourself with me in any way other than by performing well and conducting yourself professionally. I don't need to be thanked profusely, and don't need to be "appreciated" in any special way for doing my job.
Moreover, if you think about it, the reason something like National Teacher Appreciation Day was conceived is probably because in many countries being a schoolteacher is a very ungrateful, poorly appreciated job. For example in the U.S., teachers get paid very little, are commensurately not respected by much of society, and sometimes are outright hated by certain people for purely political reasons. All of this does not apply to university professors, who are generally treated quite well and held in pretty high regard by most people, and consequently aren't in great need for a "professor appreciation day".

Depending on your locale

It is fine

Although I doubt it will make any impact on your defence per se, it might give a positive outlook. There doesn't seem to be anything negative about it.


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Appropriate attire for a graduate school interview in the US
I was invited to interview at several graduate schools this upcoming February. All of the programs are in the fields of biochemistry and biophysics. What is appropriate attire for graduate school interviews? One of the schools mentioned business casual. Does anyone have any good suggestions? I thought about wearing a sweater with an oxford underneath. However, I will also bring a sport coat just in case.

In general, you want to look neat enough to make it clear that you are taking things seriously, but not so formal that you give the impression that you are overly formal or don't understand the norms.  Typically slightly overdressed is better than slightly underdressed.  Your goal is to have people not particularly notice what you are wearing, and instead listen to what's coming out of your mouth.
Standards vary slightly from field to field: in my experience, mathematicians tend to be the most informal and chemists the most formal of the STEM world (business students and liberal arts exist in their own separate universes, which I am less familiar with).
In general, however, I would suggest that men wear a sharp-looking long-sleeved button-down shirt, long pants, no jacket or tie.  For women, the rules are more complex (and I am less familiar, but am incorporating advice shared from experiences of female scientists who I know), but something at that same level of "business casual" is probably good; long-sleeve button down, or a sweater; avoid cleavage or anything that can be taken as sexy.  Unfair though it may be, pants are probably better than even a long skirt or dress for that reason.  Heels can help for height, but don't wear sharp heels or heels that make noise. Low to no makeup, as there is often prejudice against that (again, not claiming any of this is fair).
Make sure your hair is clean and presentable too; if you have long hair, you will probably want to tie it back (men and women both).
Contrary to all this: if you have a strong sense of style and good personal visual taste, you can probably make all manner of things work.  But make sure you're confident you can pull it off---if you can, you probably already know it.  For the rest of us, I just recommend making the clothing unmemorable.

Skirts and dresses on women can be just as professional as pants. (Obviously, they should be professional-looking skirts and dresses.)

Also, I suspect that when you say "low to no makeup", you really mean "low to no obvious makeup". There's nothing wrong with women wearing subtle, natural-looking makeup to an interview. That "subtle" look can involve a lot more makeup than a casual observer might realize.

@ff524 Agreed on both counts.

This answer would be immeasurably improved by removing everything you wrote about women's clothing etc..  It doesn't sound positive, and the OP is clearly interested in men's clothes, so it would be fine to just take that whole section out.  You've got a big string of don'ts.  And an extremely restricted, conservative array of choices for the female job candidate....

One other note for women: wear comfortable shoes. On campus interviews, you might be asked to walk for considerable distances across campus (and up and down hills). You don't want to suffer through blisters.  p.s. I disagree about removing the info on women's clothing. I was actually pleased to see it even though it wasn't asked for. Helped counter the perception of male-bias / androcentrism that SE as a whole has.

Comments are not for extended discussion; conversation on how men vs. women are judged for their clothing choices has been moved to chat.

I had to look up oxford!
I'll focus my answer towards men's clothing, since that was the nature of the question.
Your proposal sounds fine for the shirt (I would call it a tailored shirt or a button-down shirt) and a sweater (I assume you mean a pullover).  A look I like is a V-neck sweater over a shirt with tie.  That is such a happy medium between formal and casual.  However, to some people, ties are anathema, so I'll reassure you that you don't need to wear a tie.
In general, overdressing a little bit is not as bad as underdressing a little bit.  So, don't go in a T-shirt.
Now, one thing you might want to take into account is that in February, temperatures are unpredictable.  Once in a while you find yourself in a place that's overheated, and in that case it's good to be wearing layers.  With that in mind, if you think you might get uncomfortable if there are nerves conspiring with a thermostat set too high, then perhaps shirt without tie, plus sport coat you can take off during the interview if necessary, would be more practical than the shirt plus sweater.  (But for some people, temperature variations are not a big deal.)
For someone who doesn't like to wear a sport coat, an alternative would be a nice fleece jacket or vest, not too thick so that it doesn't look like something you'd wear on a camping trip.
Now let's talk about the bottom half.  If you're going to Minnesota, you'll need long underwear and slacks that are roomy enough to accommodate.  I would avoid jeans, since jeans = casual.  Dress pants are okay, and something in between is okay too.  Unless you will be wearing boots, check that the pants are not too short.  Sit down and make sure you haven't got too much leg showing.
Avoid the socks that are so low-cut that it looks like you're not wearing socks.  We do not want to see any ankle skin in business casual.
You may wear dress shoes if you wish.  You may wear another type of shoe that doesn't look old or scuffed.  You may wear boots, and you should plan on that, if snow is likely where you are going.  (If this were a summer interview: sandals <> business casual.)
Accessory: you'll need some kind of bag.  Knapsack is fine if that's what you're comfortable with.  The guideline for a knapsack is the same as for the shoes -- nothing old or starting to wear out.
Coat: make sure it's clean and tidy.  A dirty coat, and too-low socks, are the most common faux pas I tend to see around campus.
Gloves/mittens, hat: make sure you dress for the weather.  It would not make a good impression to seem not to know how to take care of yourself!
Briefly, for women: choose something that wouldn't make you stick out in a crowd, avoid anything low-cut, and avoid showing anything that might be interpreted as an undergarment.  Other than that, just go for something comfortable, that you enjoy seeing when you look in the mirror, and you'll be fine.
Make-up: if you use make-up normally day to day, do that; if not, that's perfectly fine too.  But please don't use any perfume or anything scented.  (Same for men.)  You don't know who might be allergic.

+1 for scents. I get a migraine with many perfumes, aftershaves, and laundry softener smells. I'm not alone.

"Business casual" — which you've already been told explicitly — seems safe and corresponds to my experience with graduate student interviews.
Although there is no generally agreed upon definition of business casual, it is generally interpreted to mean:

Men: A collared shirt and slacks with a nice pair of shoes. A blazer or sweater would be typical. A t-shirt, jeans, a sweatshirt, tennis shoes, or any athletic-wear would all be too casual. A suits and/or tie would generally be considered too formal.
Women: Trousers or a knee-length skirt with a blouse or shirt with a collar although a dress that is comparably formal could also work. Jeans, tank tops, flip flops, or athletic wear would be too casual. A gown or a suit would be too formal.

The United States is weird when it comes to how to dress with regards to interviews. You say several school and I noticed that the answers thus far neglect to mention this as well: there are regional differences with regards to what is considered acceptable business casual. The East Coast tends to be much more formal than the West Coast and for the rest of the county the mores can be all over the place.
Generally a the major rule of thumb is that you want to dress at least as formal as the person interviewing you, if not more so. If one of the schools told you business casual, then assume business casual for all of the schools to make your life easier. If you have a smart sport coat or blazer and build you outfit around that then you should be fine. Males should generally avoid ties as they are rarely worn by Americans any more outside of business and finance. As others have noted, make sure you are wearing shores that are comfortable and broken in as well. Also, make sure they don't make much noise when walking since that can be a distraction when you are having a conversation with someone while walking with them.
Do a Google image search for people attending a poster session for a conference in your field. Most of the presenters are going to be dressed some variation of business casual and it will give you an idea of what is expected in your field.


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Given a journal policy that authors must share original data, am I free to use this data without granting original authors authorship?
There is a large database maintained by a group of scientists. This group of scientists have made a considerable effort to get many other scientists to contribute to this database, and make it available to other researchers, on the condition that to access some of the data, some data contributors may request authorship. This project has been very successful and many publications have resulted from this database.
Recently, some authors used the entire database in an analysis, and gave associated authorship to respective authors when requested. However, this analysis is published in a journal with a specific data sharing policy that reads,
"(Journal X) requires authors to ensure that data and materials integral to the paper are available to readers in a form which allows for verification and replication of the results in the paper. Where feasible, data should be included as part of the article or as supporting information, however if this is not possible, we expect authors to make use of public data repositories and include the appropriate links and identifiers within the article. It is the strict requirement of the journal that authors will agree to make their data and materials available to readers upon reasonable request, and corresponding authors will be reminded of this at acceptance stage. Please note that this policy also applies to any custom software described in the paper."
To me, this means that if I request this data, then the original authors can no longer require me to include them as authors in any subsequent analysis I generate and choose to publish. However, it only says they have to share the data with me. It says nothing about how I am allowed to use said shared data.
Question: if I request this data, am I somehow obligated to offer authorship to the original data generators?

Have you asked the editors of Journal X what they think about this situation?  They might feel that the conditions imposed by the people who gathered the data are still consistent with their journal's rules.

AFAIK "making data and material available" does not mean that they simply cannot point you to the freely available database. In other words the authors of those papers could simply give you the URL of the database and be done.

@Bakuriu its not freely available at a URL. A whole data request process is required, and you must agree to grant co-authorship to use certain subsets of the data, based on the preferences of the contributor of each data subset.

obligated is a tricky word. ① Do people think badly about you when you violated their expectations. ② Do you violate legal copyrights? ③ Will a journal publish your paper?

@user234105 So? The journal you mention doesn't state that you cannot put such restrictions. Note that the policy says reasonable request which, might well be interpreted as: I give you the data for free but if you use it I want to be co-author. They do not say any request for data. Also if the data is too big (as you mention: the whole database) the simple request for TBs of data may not be considered reasonable and they might just reply you: that's too much data for us to send you.

@user234105 Note that there were legal verdicts about similar situations. E.g. in EU you have the right of asking for the deletion of your account & related personal information in any service, however I know that there have been cases where such deletion would have required an unreasonable amount of work to the service due to how it was built and people have failed to sue companies in such situation.

@Bakuriu This seems like a conflict  of interest. Say my goal was to replicate their analysis, and I could not, so I publish a critical response to the paper. I am expected to have the people who I am criticizing included as co-authors?

@user234105 in that case they do not have any interest in claiming co-authorship. Keep in mind that they do not get automatic co-authorship, they only get the right to ask to be co-author. So if you are refuting their article it's not in their interest to have their name in it. Otherwise they'd have to retract their previous paper...

What have other authors done in this journal? Can you find authors that have "clearly" requested co-authorship for data sharing and evidently gotten it?

@BillBarth yes, for sure. Its conditional on them releasing the data. Its a formal part of requesting data from the database.

@Bakuriu or its in their interest to accept co-authorship, and then not agree to publication in order to tank the reply, without revisions that completely mitigate the criticism.

If I asked for data, I don't think I'd accept a request for co-authorship as reasonable, and then I'd have a conversation with the editor.

I'm not a fan of "mandatory authorship" on published information: I feel that once something is published, one should collect one's rewards by means of citation rather than by strong-arming people into giving you an authorship.  Mandatory authorship on already-published data feels to me too much like a form of salami-slicing on a dataset.
That said, the journal's policy does not appear to say anything at all regarding authorship.  Therefore, the default position would seem to be that the authors must share the data with you (as mandated by the journal), but are also free to require authorship as "payment" for sharing.
The journal, however, may feel that this goes against the spirit of their data sharing agreement, and if so, then you may be able to obtain the data without being coerced into authorship.  I would thus recommend, like @BrianBorchers notes in the comment, that you write to the chief editor(s) and ask for a ruling.

I think this is the best approach. A related question: say I am publishing a critical response to this paper, based on a re-analysis of the original data. Am I obligated to include the original authors since they are the "data-owners"? This seems like a conflict of interest, since the intent of the paper would be to criticize those very authors. Those authors would therefore have an incentive to tank the paper, or withhold the data.

Your argument here strikes me as incredibly flimsy.  As you point out, the data is in fact available, just with the restriction that it cannot be used in further papers without offering coauthorship, and that restriction in no way contradicts the journal's stated policies.
It's not clear whether it violates the intent of the policies.  One argument that it doesn't is that the journal specifically says this data must be available "in a form which allows for verification and replication of the results in the paper", which is different from allowing use in other work.  Furthermore, the policy says "reasonable request", which suggests that some requests could be considered unreasonable.  It's not 100% clear what the policy's authors had in mind (presumably requests for materials could more easily be considered unreasonable), but they certainly didn't say "everyone is entitled to the data and can do whatever they want with it, no questions asked".
So it seems to me that the written policy offers no support for your position.
I do not think it's fruitful to ask the journal editors for permission.  Even if they declare that these restrictions are not what they had in mind, they have no authority to impose this interpretation retroactively.
If you try to use the data without offering coauthorship, there's a real risk that the data generators could file a misconduct complaint against you with your university, a relevant professional society, or the journal you end up publishing in.  If I had to adjudicate such a complaint, I expect I would decide in their favor.
This is not to say that they are behaving reasonably, and I agree that jakebeal that this is a questionable practice.  However, you haven't found a loophole that justifies ignoring their request.

Also: there is a difference between sharing 1KB of data and 2TB of database. The former is probably a reasonable amount to make available, the latter not, because the simple act of sharing it may be non-trivial or costly for the authors.

@Bakuriu the journal statement says, "Where feasible, data should be included as part of the article or as supporting information, however if this is not possible, we expect authors to make use of public data repositories and include the appropriate links and identifiers within the article." Even if its 2TB, the burden is on the authors to make it public, either in the MS or online.

@user234105 Well, AFAICT the database you described in your question fits exactly in that description. Public data repositories doesn't imply that the data is freely available for anyone without any condition, it simply means that is not private/copyrighted.


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A frequent reviewer seems to have a grudge against me. What to do?
(Asking on behalf of a friend.)
I work in math, in a field where reviews are not double-blind: reviewers are anonymous, but review copies of papers include attribution.  I’ve received several reviews recently (on different submissions) which were similar in style, all negative, and rather light on substantive criticisms.  The other reviews for those submissions were generally positive.
I’m rather concerned that they’re from a single reviewer with a grudge against me — it’s a small field, so one can easily encounter the same reviewer/author repeatedly — and I have some suspicion of who this reviewer might be (though far from certain).
Is there any defensive action I can take on future submissions — anything I can say to the editor at some stage to avoid getting shot down by this same reviewer again?

Do the journals you submit to allow you to specify a list of individuals that you do not want to review your manuscript? This is an option with most journals I'm familiar with (but the journals may throw these lists in the garbage can for all I know).

@MadJack Actually if you ask that someone will not review the paper, there's a good chance the editor will accept your request.

I think this needs to be asked: Are you sure that following these "light criticisims" wouldn't improve the overall quality of your paper? Maybe the reviewer has no grudge against you personally, but against certain writing styles or habits (such as frequent parenthetical statements), and is therefore trying to be more helpful than negative. I'm not insisting that's the case, but it's not an outlandish possibility – your friend wouldn't be the first to confuse a constructive critique with negative criticism.

Not sure why a friend can not create an account and ask a question. It is free and not hard to create an "anonymous" account

@SalvadorDali - Actually, people who've been on SE for long enough are very well familiar with these "friends". Happens on all SE sites AFAIK.

@J.R. They said "all negative, and light on substantive criticisms", not 'the reviews only provide light criticisms' or whatever.

@TheDarkSide: Means it is practice on SE pages to ask for a friend, since one can later deny it is him self who he was refering to? Or did I get that wrong?

@Zaibis - Exactly. Even on adopting anonymous usernames, there does happen to be a reluctance in writing "I", and "my friend" is chosen as a safer option in most cases. It doesn't matter, OP gets his/her answer anyways. Oh sorry,  OP's "friend" gets it. :P

@TheDarkSide: hah; in this case though it really is a friend (hence why I’m not able to engage with comments much).  Friend discussed the problem with me; I suggested they asked here; they sounded slightly shy of doing so; I suggested I could ask if they preferred (since I’m much more familiar with SE); they said “yes please do”.  So I did :-)

@underscore_d - Yes, exactly. A lot of people regard any kind of criticism as negative, whether it was intended that way or not.

@SE-throwaway - Please don't take it personally if you are an exception to this. I was pointing towards a more common general behavior that I've seen many times on SE. Cheers :)

I've had a similar experience, but on the other side of the table.  I was the reviewer (the journal was JAES, the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society).
There was an author who published a boat-load of papers on a subject where I have published just one.  But my paper dealt with some very fundamental issues (I called the paper "Wavetable Synthesis 101, A Fundamental Approach" or similar).  The AES Editor did not send any of this author's papers in my direction and when enough of these papers that made only incremental advancements did get published in the Journal, I finally wrote a Letter to the Editor (that was published) that was a little critical, because this author consistently ignored a mathematical issue (phase) that my 101 paper did not.
Anyway, after about the 10th or 15th new Wavetable paper to come from this author, the JAES editor did finally send a manuscript to me to review.  I was not nasty, but I did continue to point out what this author was obstinately choosing to side step (offering no mathematical justification).
I am sure the author knew who that reviewer was, even though I was supposed to be anonymous.
So, if the reviewer with a grudge is picking on you for just anything, maybe the reviewer just doesn't like you and there could be any number of bad reasons.  Maybe he/she thinks you're encroaching on his/her turf and/or hadn't paid your dues yet.  Maybe this reviewer wants to be cited by you where he isn't.  Who knows?
But if this reviewer is picking on you for about the same reason, on these multiple submitted manuscripts, I might, if I were you, think about what that particular reason is and answer it one way or another.  One might be a consistent technical omission.  Or maybe, just like the "bad reviewer" above, this reviewer thinks you're missing critical citations and his/her work is among the missed citations.
Whether the reviewer has a grudge or not, he/she is not the only reviewer.  But you still are obligated to take seriously every criticism and suggestion for improvement offered by the reviewers.  It doesn't mean that you will agree with every one, but then be prepared to respond to each critique or suggestion that you disagree with.  Persuade the reviewer, the other co-reviewer (who is not picking on you) and the editor, that the critique is mistaken.
Finally, if, after all this, you feel that this reviewer is useless, find some way of asking the journal's editor or assistant editor (whoever has dispatched your submission to whoever appropriate reviewers) to consider getting a third or fourth opinion.  Even suggest a couple of persons in the field that you respect but make sure they are not in the same institution you are in nor have ever co-authored a paper with you.

Quick and dirty solution:
Since you know (or at least have strong indication about) who this "unfriendly" reviewer is, you can do as following.
Upload the paper to the arXiv, then send the paper to this unfriendly colleague before submitting to the journal, asking for criticism/comments. After that put the name of this colleague in the acknowledgement section.
Usually editors do not send a paper to a guy who has been named in that section.
PS: You may, or may not, consider the criticism of this unfriendly colleague in the revised version of your paper.
PS: It could be a good idea to discuss personally with this colleague, in a conference, or even by inviting them at your research institution (if you can). In this way you can have a thorough and deep discussion about your work. Perhaps you will discover that their criticism is not a grudge, but it is based on serious issues. In any case you will learn from that criticism and improve your work.

I think it's a bad idea to ask people you don't really know to read and provide feedback on an arXiv preprint.  For all we know, the person asking this question is a student and the reviewer a well-known person in the field.  It could be inappropriate to send such a request.

@PålGD I partially agree, but it depends anyway. If the field of research is small, then it could be reasonable to ask for a feedback. Also, notice that not always referees are people well-known in the field.

You cannot put the name of the reviewer in the acknowledgement section unless the reviewer agrees to be acknowledged.

@shadow The proposal is to send the draft to the person who is suspected of being the negative reviewer, and acknowledge them as somebody who provided feedback, not in the role of a reviewer. Obviously, "outing" an anonymous reviewer would be wrong but that's not the situation being suggested. I'm not aware of any obligation to obtain permission before acknowledging somebody.

This is unlikely to work because, ethically speaking, it requires the person to give sufficiently substantive comments to be worth acknowledging. In my experience the usual response to being sent an unsolicited draft is that the recevier makes some bland comment such as, "Thanks -- looks interesting. I'll be sure to read it." and then either never gets around to reading it or doesn't have anything substantive to say.

@DavidRicherby I have had better luck with such requests. But I doubt I would if the person already had some grudge against me.

In my experience, having my name mentioned in the acknowledgements is quite often the reason an editor sends a particular paper to me to referee. (The most common reason is that the subject matter is related to my work or in an area where I am an expert, just as it should be. But among the papers that are further from my work, a disproportionate number are those where I'm mentioned in the acknowledgements.)

Further to the comment by @Michael, you should feel free to write to the editor to ask that any additional submissions you make do not go to the reviewer who is causing trouble. Some comments on this:
Peer review is how we give confidence to the wider community of scientists, and the world at large, that our work is of a high quality. Negative reviews have to be faced and addressed. Sometimes the comments are oblique and insubstantial. Sometimes they are incisive. Weigh up the danger of dismissing this reviewer in future and the positive service he or she could provide, against not having to answer their questions in peer review. This person could throw you their tricky questions via a review of your paper, or, as a question to you after a talk you give at a big international conference. In which manner would you prefer to address such a question?
That said, if the quality of the reviewer's comments have been poor -- as you've suggested in your post -- then you perhaps feel more confident that you -- and, importantly, the journal editor -- aren't getting a good service from the reviewer. If you come to this conclusion, then, by all means, request the editor refrains from sending your future work to this reviewer.

Suggest in the covering letter to editor to exclude that particular reviewer from the possible candidates due conflict of interest.
This is a common practice, not to avoid negative reviews but mostly in cases when another group of researchers is working on the same or closely related topic, to prevent conflict of interest. If they are approaching a publication themselves, it is very tempting to delay a publication of the competitor and the neutrality may suffer.
Editors normally pay attention to this and will select an alternative reviewer from (usually) a wide list of other candidates available.

But this doesn't sound like a conflict of interest, just somebody with a low opinion of the asker's work.

I still see this as a conflict of interest, if the reviewer has any (reasonable or not) motivations to provide biased review.  Or, if there are problems with the article, another reviewer will also see.

You seem to be claiming that any consistent evaluation that somebody's work is of low quality is bias. That is not the case: it may simply be that the work really is of low quality. I agree that what's lacking in this case is the reasoning and justification for the low-scoring reviews and the consistent contradiction with the other referees is a worry. But merely having a low opinion of somebody's work is not, in and of itself, a conflict of interest.

If the work is really low quality, another reviewer will say this as well so should be no problem. How this could be known by us?


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How much the previous university's prestige matters for a phd enrollment?
I'd like to apply for a PhD in Ancient History at Oxford in the future.
Currently I'm planning to apply for a ResMa in Ancient History at Leiden university, in the Netherlands, which is thaught in English.
Is it a recognised uni for classics in UK or the US or should I do a British university instead, such as Durham, Mancester, UCL, St Andrews and so on to have better possibilities to be taken at Oxford?
Thank you all!

Spelling, punctuation, and proper grammar matters tremendously -- especially in the humanities. In that regard, you might find yourself at a disadvantage.

Crazy question. It's far better to attend the #1 university in your country.

I think you should factor in that at Leiden you would be doing a research masters. I am unaware of these existing in the UK. Consequently, going to Leiden may get you a publication and that would be a significant factor into where and whether you are accepted for a PhD. It's not the only factor of course, I'm not qualified to say whether Leiden would be a good place (that's something you should research).

@ThomasKing MRes certainly do exist in the UK, much more so in the humanities than the sciences afaik.

All of the universities you have mentioned are top-league universities with high prestige. As for whether you have a better chance of getting into Durham, UCL etc versus Oxford is debatable. They are internationally renowned and the competition very high. Of course, Oxford is Oxford, but there's little point in going to Oxford just because it's Oxford, which it sounds like you want to do, because you don't seem to know what it's like for your specialist subject area.
The most important thing about any university is the staff in the departments, not necessarily the university itself. These are the supervisors who you will be learning from and have constant contact with. Their tuition can be either inspiring or a hindrance to positive learning.
All of the universities you mention are good. Take some time to visit their websites, look at the department members, their publications and what feel you get from the institution and the department. Do you get the impression that you really like the place? Does it look inspiring? Does it make you want to find out more, do you think you that when the course gets difficult [not if] you would be able to overcome the obstacles with the staff's support?
At the end of the day, finding out the answers to these questions is far more important that going to Institution A or B based on some arbitrary popular notion of league places. A slightly lower-league university may get a lot more out of you than one a few more places up depending on how well you gel with the department. If, after your research, you still want to go to Oxford and it looks right to you, by all means go for it, but don't get hung up on it. The amount that an institution inspires you will govern how much 'better' the 'possibilities' are for your entry.

I think your university's prestige matters very little. What is more important is the quality of work you do, your grades, possible publications, awards etc, and the strong reference letters which naturally follow on from those things.


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Cheaper alternative citation managers for Mendeley
I am using Mendeley for paper and citation manager. Mendeley have 2 thing I need:

index, searchable in all paper (title, author, content, ...)
auto-lookup all information (title, author, conf, ...). If Mendeley get incorrectly, I can manually input the DOI number, then it correct itself.
sync (including highlighter and note). Basicly, it work like you note, highlight the pdf and save on Dropbox.

However, my free space is going to fill up. Mendeley paid option is too much for me. I would rather pay for dropbox, but dropbox alone does not index, look up all useful info from my paper.
I am looking for alternative. It does not have to be one software do all thing, but combination of some software is good for me.
For example: I would like a software that index, info-lookup all paper (pdf file) in my local folder. Then I sync the folder with Dropbox (for cheaper storage price).

Zotero plus webdav comes to mind.

You may want to check F1000.

You also have the option to turn off sync in Mendeley for specific folders, so you stop saving attached files to their service. You can then still use the local Organize feature of mendeley to keep the files together, and then just add the folder that Mendeley uses to store your attached files to dropbox/drive/etc. You can also check to make sure you haven't saved very large PDFs you don't actually need (one big scanned book can really eat up file space). These don't answer your question, but are work-arounds that might help anyway.


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Should I suggest a time when professor want to schedule an interview, or just say I always available ?
I applied to a lab and a professor want to set up an interview (for the first time). In the reply email, he said that:

"Please let me know when you are available. I am available on
  Monday-Friday, after XX:XX."

I would say when I am available:

"I would available everyday from XX to XX".

Should I also suggest a timeblock or not ?

"I would suggest that we meet on Friday at XX:XX."

In this situation, pick a preferred time within the professor's constraints, and suggest it.  To be safe, propose a back-up (perhaps the following day) in case anything goes wrong.
Additional tip: Suppose the professor said he's available after 10 am.  Then to give him a little margin for error, I advise choosing a slightly later time, such as 10:30 am.

Yep.  The annoying thing here would be to endure 7 or 8 back-and-forth e-mails trying to nail down a time.  Those things drive me crazy.  By trying to knock yourself out to be accommodating, you can be wearing out the person you're trying to impress.

@B.Goddard - exactly.


text:
How to find original conference of the paper on arXiv?
I found some paper on arXiv that I cannot find the conference. Google show arXiv version first. The paper can't even find on Google Scholar.
For the specific case, this paper:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.02774
Search Google for keyword "Crowd Transformer Network" lead to arXiv site above.
Search Google Scholar for keyword "Crowd Transformer Network" does not result in that paper, not to the arXiv copy above either.
If I can't find a conference/journal where the paper come from, does it mean the work is not credible ?
How should I handle this case ?

Since your specific paper doesn't appear on the first author's DBLP page or the last author's list of publications, it probably hasn't been published anywhere yet.

In short: arXiv is a repository for scholarly research articles (in certain scientific disciplines) that allows them to be recorded and distributed widely without paywalls. The articles should be genuine attempts to produce scientific contributions, and be "refereeable" - which means that it should be in a state that it would be suitable for submission to a peer-reviewed venue, but it need not actually have been submitted to one, nor does it need to have been accepted by one.
Papers on arXiv are not required to be published anywhere (conference, journal, or otherwise) - some are submitted before even being sent to a venue for review at all, some are in review progress, some may have been rejected by peer review and may or may not be in the process of revision for sending to a new venue, etc.
You may want to read about arXiv a bit more, such as here https://arxiv.org/help/general (see the disclaimer):

Disclaimer: Papers will be entered in the listings in order of receipt
  on an impartial basis and appearance of a paper is not intended in any
  way to convey tacit approval of its assumptions, methods, or
  conclusions by any agent (electronic, mechanical, or other). We
  reserve the right to reject any inappropriate submissions.

And you may wish to read the primer: https://arxiv.org/help/primer
In practice, papers found on the arXiv are in every state of the process, from before-submission, to accepted-but-not-yet-appearing, to being the home for the pre-print or even final version of the article appearing in some peer-reviewed venue (see How many arXiv papers are uploaded in their final (refereed) versions? for more on that). And you'll even find some "submitted but rejected" papers, too - it's not a bug, it's a feature.
It is ultimately up to you as a scholar to decide how to interpret the credibility or usefulness of any given paper. Appearing on arXiv is proof of availability of a paper, which allows you to read it and judge for yourself.

There's even the category of "not submitted and no plans to submit", featuring particularly people who aren't currently in academia for whom the cost/benefit tradeoff of submission weighs more heavily on the cost side.


text:
Leaving PhD program with a masters (for a job). Can continue PhD later?
Suppose a couple of years into a PhD program one gets a job offer he/she is quite happy with and decides to take it. This could be for one or several reasons such as:

You are at a point in your life where you need some money and its financially more secure to work rather than being a graduate student.
It's a good idea to experience what the work force/industry/"real world" is like for a bit.
You may not be satisfied with your research topic/advisor at your PhD institute.

Assume also that during this couple of years one has acquired enough credits to get a masters before leaving.
My question is after working a couple of years, how would it be viewed by graduate committees if I decide to reapply for PhD programs in case I decide I really want to finish the PhD now that I am financially at a better place and have a good first hand experience of what its like being at both sides of academia.

Is this about those combined master-PhD-programs? At which point would you leave? I think it would be highly unlikely to be offered a PhD position again after leaving for those kind of reasons, especially by the same professor. If you do a new PhD somewhere else you would have to start from scratch and won't be able to continue where you left off. Though that might depend on your field.

Most PhD programs in my area give you a masters if you decide fo leave after acquiring enough credits/requirements. Yes by "continue" I mean either resume at my previous institute (could be possible if I leave on good terms with my advisor and informing them about my situation) or restarting at another place.

Caveat: I've not yet done admissions, so be skeptical of my answer and use your own judgement.
My impression is that admissions committees are really only concerned about a two things:

Is an applicant capable of handling the technical work and coursework necessary for obtaining a PhD?
Is an applicant likely to stay through the program and finish?

Leaving a PhD program and then coming back later really only influences their analysis of that second question. As long as you can appropriately explain why your current PhD program wasn't working out, why switching to industry was a good thing at the time you did so, and most importantly describe why you're committed to following through on a new PhD program, then I don't think that leaving with a master's will be much of a disadvantage.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the attitude you describe does not sound surprising at all in my field (computer science). If a prospective student told me some variation of this story it wouldn't dissuade me one bit:
"I didn't understand how my work was valuable or would fit into industrial practice, so I left academics for a few years to gain that experience. Having seen how things are actually done in the real world, I'm really eager to come back and make specific contributions with that knowledge in mind."

Through the computer science point of view, all three reasons you've listed above tells me that you are better off in the industry.

You are at a point in your life where you need some money and its
  financially more secure to work rather than being a graduate student.

Indeed. But the point of doing research as a grad student is having less money for more time. Even though most of the PhD comics disagree with me, I find conducting research at a good university gives you a lot of time to spend for yourself.
You will have the deadlines, not the working hours. Thus, either working at your office, or at home in the night, is completely up to you.
Also, not to disagree every single thing, but you have way more financial security as a researcher compared to the industry. Unless you behave very unethical, it is an extreme case that a university cuts out your funds.

It's a good idea to experience what the work force/industry/"real
  world" is like for a bit.

This reason speaks for itself. If you're thinking the industry is the real world and conducting research is imaginary(?) world, then your choice must be very clear by now.

You may not be satisfied with your research topic/advisor at your PhD
  institute.

The solution to this is simply changing your research topic and advisor. This is another point in academia, that you have all the freedom in the world to work whatever you want. Opposed to industry, where usually your boss tells you what to do and what not to do.
As I've discussed this topic earlier, I believe having a PhD degree cannot be measured by how much extra money you've missed, or is it really worth it.

If you leave with a master's you can't use the same material again for another degree. It is also likely that the state of the art will advance enough in the intervening time that the research would be out of date/already done by someone else. Thus, you can't "resume" a PhD.
However, if you graduate with a master's in hand now, it is quite possible to apply for a PhD after a few years working. But you will have to start again and spend the full study period producing enough new research to be worthy of the degree. (This might be shorter, e.g. in the UK-style system students with a research master's are expected to complete their PhD in 3 years compared to 4 years for students with a bachelor's or a taught master's.) This is quite normal and will not be viewed negatively (although the fact that you started a PhD and "bailed out early" by taking the master's might, depending on the circumstances - but this is only likely to be known if you reapply to the same institution).