text:
I forgot to tell a journal that the submitted article is actually a condensed version of my MA thesis!
I had asked a journal (let's call it X) if they accept master's thesis for publication, they replied by saying that they don't and I'd have to reformat it as an article to be considered for publication.
I then reformatted my MA thesis and submitted it to journal X. For context, my MA thesis was 100+ pages, whereas the article is half that. After a few days I got a reply saying that it would be better to submit my article to journal Y. So, I just sent the document (article) to journal Y simply texting them for submission. It has been over a month and last week I got a reply from them saying that it is now in blind PR, which, obviously being elated on the progress, I responded with excitement.
Today, talking to my supervisor, who also was happy for me, asked me if I mentioned it to the journal that the article is a condensed version of my thesis. Am I doomed!?
I'm quite anxious now as to what might happen, I feel like a fraud. It is a prestigious humanities journal and I feel like I just really messed up my chance to get published.
Am I overthinking or underthinking this? I'm worried that I might be flagged as a bad academic or something, maybe I'll never be able to publish, or how the journal's editors might react when they find out. Or should I tell them right now, or later, or never, or am I technically plagiarising my own work?

Is your thesis itself published via your university?

My country does have an all-in-one website where thesis and dissertations of students and scholars are available. I searched there for mine, it wasn't there.

Did you cite your previous thesis in the condensed article?

Don't panic. It's probably fine, and in the worst case you won't be blacklisted - you'd just have your paper rejected.
In most fields that I'm aware of, it's quite OK to publish from your thesis - after all, if you have found out something new and interesting then it is good to have it in the published record. (whether it is sufficiently new and interesting is another matter - but that's about what the reviewers say, not whether it was OK to submit it) You do need to write it in the format of a journal article, not just submit the thesis, as you have found out. And fifty pages sounds long, but this does vary by field.
So. I think that ideally you would have mentioned in the cover letter that it was your MA. It's probably fine anyway, but if you want to be clear you could write to the editor of the journal and briefly and concisely explain that it is, that you forgot to say so in the cover letter, and that you hope it is OK.
Honestly I'm not sure that is necessary; I'll be interested to hear others' views there.
Note that it being OK to have submitted does not mean that your work will be accepted; but that's a fact of academic life for all of us! The fact that it has gone to peer review suggests that (a) the editor thought it was worth reviewing, and (b) if it is rejected, you have a good chance of useful feedback.

Thanks! I've drafted a brief and concise email, just in case I have to send it. Waiting to hear more thoughts on the matter :)

@nightcat you probably shouldn't be thinking in terms of "have to send it" but just in terms of "oops, I forgot to mention something I probably should have done, better let them know just in case." It's not worth agonising over the decision - there's an obvious right thing to do and it's unlikely to be a big deal anyway.

@N.Virgo Indeed. Strictly necessary or not, you can never go wrong by telling the truth.

Relax, this is a perfectly solvable problem.  Since your paper it a cut-down version of your Masters thesis, it is appropriate that it should cite that work and state what it is up-front.  That is unlikely to affect peer review of the article.  I recommend that you write to the editor noting that your paper is based on your Masters thesis and you intend to add a citation to your Masters thesis prior to publication.  The editor might decide to pass this information on to the referees, or might just ignore it and let you make this revision later in the process.

Masters theses and dissertations are usually not considered publications per se, even if they are publicly visible. They, for example, do not typically count as a "peer-reviewed publication" in an application, and that despite having gone through a form of peer review (i.e. marking).
You should be fine, but it might be good to check with your supervisor. Sure, reformatting or rewriting it to suit the journal might be necessary, as theses (when well written) are usually in a more didactic or free-flow form than journal articles.

Since it’s a journal in the humanities, it’s probably more likely an MA thesis than an MSc thesis.

@JanusBahsJacquet Changed, thank you!

I'm working on a paper right now that's essentially a write-up of my undergrad thesis, and put this snippet at the front:

\section{Foreword}
The majority of this work was carried out under the auspices of the
primary authors' undergraduate thesis \cite{MyThesisCitation}. This thesis
has never been published and has not been made available publicly by
any institution. The intent is for this paper to distill that work into
a form suitable for publication and should be considered novel despite
the existence of the unpublished thesis. Should the reader wish to
receive a copy of the full thesis, we will happily provide it on
request. It contains significantly more detail as to the construction
and testing of the device than is contained herein.

I wouldn't worry too much, my supervisor said this is probably unnecessary but I wanted belt and braces. If you're really concerned, just email the editor an FYI.


text:
I do not have a degree certificate, does a final transcript count as a proof of degree completion?
For both my MA and BA degrees, the universities have not yet had a convocation to confer the degree. I'm confused as to what I should put in my grad applications for PhD; that I have earned my degree (since I have passed all my courses and have a final transcript at hand, with the final CGPA) and use the final transcript as proof, or say that I have not earned the degree yet? Should I select "Degree Conferred" or "Degree Expected"? Some universities that I'm applying to have a section to upload the 'diploma' alongside the transcript, albeit most don't -- really confused as to what I should do.

This is somewhat country dependent. In what country did you earn your degrees, and in what country are the schools where you are applying?

Some universities put the degree on each transcript. Look at your transcript carefully to see if your degree is entered there. It is likely to be very small and abbreviated, ed, AB or MS or PhD.

In my experience, the physical degree certificate is just a nice thing to hang on the wall.  Anyone who cares about whether or not you have the degree is going to want to see transcripts which show that you have earned that degree.

(My assumption, in the above comment, is that "final transcript" means a transcript which shows that the degree has been earned.  If that assumption is in error, then you may want to edit the question to explain what, exactly, you mean by a "final transcript".)

@XanderHenderson in Romania for example, we got: a fancy but legally useless piece of paper to hang on the wall, the "real" diploma which is ugly but full of personal information regarding the student and the results from their graduation exam, a piece of paper as temporary proof  instead of the diploma, with the same info (the diploma did not arrive yet), and Transcripts of Records which contains information about every subject taught during University, as well as some extra info. ToR would be needed only if some Uni would have specific requirements regarding grades, diploma might suffice.

When I was in grad school, I had to apply to graduate (which was accepted), so my graduation had already been accepted months before I went to the convocation. (I finished my thesis at the end of summer and didn't go to the ceremony until December). Did you apply to graduate already and have the application accepted?

@NateEldredge I'm from India, applying to the US for a doctoral program in the humanities.

@DavidSmith The transcripts mention "Date of Result", a "Grade" as pass/fail and or First Class etc. Would that count as date of degree?

@XanderHenderson By final transcript (in my case) means where it clearly states the final CGPA of my bachelor's degree, and the grade such as in my case it is "First Division with Distinction" (i.e., First Class). For my master's degree, the final transcript states the overall grade as "A" and result as "Pass".

@EJoshuaS-StandwithUkraine I applied and completed my MA, by getting a provisional degree certificate from my Bachelor's university.

At the moment it is "degree expected". The university has to make it official before it is "conferred". You can explain the situation there as you do here, of course.
If all requirements have been completed and accepted formally, then you can say that.
Most (can't guarantee all) will take it as a "provisional" proof of completion and let you move forward.
Make sure you update them when it does become official.

This thing happened to me last month: admissions for PhD positions at my University were before the final exam for MD degree.
In my case (and this is what I'd also suggest you to do) I got in touch with the secretary for PhD admissions, explained my current status, and they told me exactly what was needed. I was requested to provide a proof that said that I'm going to have the MD graduation exam the following week and state my average grade during University (in accordance to local rules). The day after MD exam, I was required to provide another proof that I passed the exam, and two weeks later, I was required to submit the complete temporary proof of me finishing my MD (the official diploma takes up to one year to arrive, and when it will arrive eventually, I'll be required to submit that also).
I want to stress again to get in touch with someone from each University you're planning to send your resume to! Some universities might have specific requirements (in my case, average grades) and as such any alternative proof you submit should contain that info.

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text:
Should I write or extract my writing sample for PhD applications?
The prompt for the writing sample limits the words at "7000 maximum". The best piece of scholarly writing (which the program demands) is my MA thesis, which however, is 20,000 words. It includes a few chapters, of differing word counts and concerns. I really want to submit it, since it clearly relates my future research interests and my past research.
I wanted to know if I can mix and match i.e., for example, I take chapter 1 and chapter 4 and submit these two, or some other combination, so I'm under 7k words. Or should I further reduce the word count, take certain sections out and skip some paragraphs. Essentially, I'm finding it hard to figure what could count as a valid writing sample; an extract, a full text, a mix-match sample and if I'm allowed to edit the work to make it 'better' etc.
Additionally, my appendices and bibliography are more than 40 pages on their own, which I think I might have to alter if I'm to cut certain sections out.
Would love some thoughts on this.
Thanks!

Do your field publish their MA thesis? Often science thesis and dissertations get chop-shopped into papers. Personally, I would pick your "best" chapter and share that.

@RichardErickson No, MA thesis are not published. Although I have condensed it into an article and submitted that for publishing, it is currently under blind-PR. Actually, picking a chapter, since they're so interconnected it's difficult to pick one without it missing some context. Would it be okay if I use a part of the article-version as the writing sample, I'd be able to include more context that way, since its much more condensed?

I would not spend time editing your master's thesis. While it would conceptually remain your work (after all, you're submitting a sample of your writing), it's probably not where your time is best spent.
Likewise, I would not spend inordinate amount of times removing paragraphs, etc. Pick the best contiguous part of your work that keeps you under 7,000 words. The committee will understand they are reading an extract, and not something meant to stand on its own.

I have condensed my MA thesis into an article, and its under blind-PR currently. Would it be fine to use a part of it as the writing sample and mention in its first page that it is an extract of an article-version of my MA thesis?

@nightcat Yeah.

Based upon a clarifying comment from the authors, I would use the draft manuscript from the MA thesis. Or, if the draft is longer than 7,0000 words, the "best" 7,000 words (possibly by editing out the abstract, and references).
Although it is under blind peer review, and it is possible one of the reviewers may be at the target PhD programs, the reviewers would likely figure out it was you from part of the thesis as well or your CV and application.

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


text:
Applying for a PhD in English with a Low GPA – Any Hope for Acceptance?
Both my graduate and postgraduate degrees have been in English Language and Literature. My MA thesis was on AI and its integration in the humanities. Now, I'm looking to apply to the US, because a) better funding than most countries b) cutting-edge AI research c) best digital humanities schools/faculty apart from the UK/Europe.
My thesis grade was A+, GPA 3.15 in MA and 3.23 in BA. 1 peer-review paper published and another currently under blind-PR at UCBerkeley. For my PhD, I am focusing on AI, computational literary studies and digital humanities.
Would really appreciate some feedback on my chances of getting into a university in the US, given the following places that I'm applying to:
Dream:
Stanford, Cornell, UPenn, Princeton.
Others:
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, WashU St. Louis, UC Santa Barbara, UConn, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Arizona, University of Texas at Austin, and Northwestern.
Thanks!

"Better funding" in English PhDs? Citation needed...


text:
Princeton's writing sample limit for PhD applications is "approximately 25 pages" -- Am I okay if I go over or under that?
Probably a dumb question, but I didn't want to piss of admissions committee with a writing sample that does not fit their expected requirement. Since the program I'm applying to asks for the writing sample to be related to the specific field of interest I've mentioned in my application, I only have my master's thesis, to an excerpt from. However, the combination of chapters I can choose, it either undershoots to 19 pages or overshoots to 33 pages. I'm confused as to which option I should go for.
Thoughts?

Does it have to be verbatim something you've already written or can you abridge/condense you thesis?

@Eds They don't mention anything specific. Although I've been told by peers to stay clear from condensing thesis for submission since the original is what has been graded and looked over by the supervisor, which would make it more credible.

Including or excluding references?

@AzorAhai-him- Including references. There are about 3 pages of references/bibliography.

If you think the 33-page one is better (at 30 pages of text), I would use it.

Many years ago, I had a colleague who submitted a paper to a journal, only to have it sent back unreviewed for exceeding a page limit.  He sent it back, decreasing the margin sizes and the space between lines a bit, but otherwise unchanged, and it was accepted without revision.   I think 33 pages is a good deal more than "approximately 25".  If the overage is largely references, I think that's OK.  I caution you to make sure your sample, whatever it is, is properly referenced.

My best guess is that either will do. Since it isn't a "hard" limit, I expect anyone who gets a longer sample will find what they need to know about you and your work within the first 25 pages and ignore the rest. But the long version does seem a bit beyond "approximately 25 pages".
The purpose of a writing sample can vary from just knowing your proficiency with English to knowing something about how you attack and resolve research questions. Lots of combined and in-between possibilities.
If you send the long version, and they object, offer to send the short one. Or, if the quality of work in the short one is up to your standards, avoid the question and send it. I'd guess that "too short" is probably worse than "too long", though 19 pages may be enough for their purposes.
Consider both the writing itself, and the content. If you send excerpts, make that clear.


text:
Can a thesis professor take my masters thesis and develop a new course?
Can my thesis professor develop a new course completely based on my thesis including the exact name of my thesis without my permission? It seems wrong that they were going to retire but now will start this course next year based on my own entire thesis

Do they cite you?

Something about this seems a bit odd; a master's thesis seems like an incredibly narrow focus for a course. What makes you think this would happen? Or, is this thesis just a summary of existing work rather than novel research?

What field are you from? I know masters in mathematics tends to be a literature review, while in most other sciences it is a (often minor) contribution to human knowledge.

I have not been cited. It is from women and gender studies. The prof who oversaw the thesis 2 years ago called me and told me she created the course from my thesis. The name of my thesis is the name of the course.

If a professor uses my doctoral thesis to develop a course, I'd be super happy and honored, as long as this professor mentioned this course is based on my thesis or did the proper citation. I seriously know nobody would be really interested in reading my thesis, even if the professors who served as my thesis committee members.

A thesis is a contribution to knowledge. Anyone can use the knowledge.  This applies to a course or future research or another publication, eg, a book that includes this topic. Presumably your thesis will attract the attention and interest of other scholars in the field. They will offer commentary or evaluation, talk about it informally, extend the research, or decide to ignore it altogether.
No permission is needed to extend your research or discuss or teach about the topic of your research.
Others cannot use the copyrighted language of your thesis, except in limited ways that means citing you as the source.
It is proper to cite your thesis in the course materials. Failure to do so might be plagiarism and a violation of institutional policies.
A single thesis would not ordinarily be the only basis for a new course. Is that all there is to it?

Other than the fact that a typical course covers the material developed in hundreds of theses over decades, there's this point:
You published the thesis. It's now part of the world's knowledge, for all to use freely. That someone wants to use your work should make you proud, not jealous.

Upvoted. I was wondering a bit about the first sentence though in your answer, though. I guess that by saying "completely based on my thesis" OP just means that the course focusses on the topic and results from the thesis. Presumably, the course will also teach many preliminaries that were developed long before the thesis, so I don't think there's a contradiction here.

The thesis was handed into the university almost 2 years ago. The professor that oversaw the thesis called me last week and told me she created a new course completely based on my thesis. There were no preliminaries done prior. The course name is the name of my thesis exactly.

I still don't get what upsets you about this. In fact, all I think the professor was trying to do is "hey, that was good work, so good that we're going to teach it now".

I'm not "upset" but I also want to ensure that there's no issues in the future for copyrights. She's a very difficult person and She's already in trouble with the Dean for copyright infringement. I don't want surprises when it comes to that

@AylaRBikerMCOldLady You have the copyright of the text of your thesis. You don't own the ideas any more. If owning the ideas was your goal, publishing them was the right direction.

This was my 3rd masters so I've never had any prof use exactly what I submitted before. Others have taken ideas and excerpts from my previous ones but never copied word from word like this time. The course name will be my thesis title exactly and it was very unique and specific. It just seems odd that she had to use specific titles and when I heard her last year is next year because of her issues with the dean, due to copyright infringement made me want to ensure my work is "safe". I don't care about the course itself tho

@AylaRBikerMCOldLady I just don't get what it is you want. What does it mean for your work to be "safe"?


text:
Is it safe/a good idea to give a talk about one's independent research (in math) to people in academia?
I'm an independent reasearcher in mathematics. I do have a professional background, a master degree, but I'm not longer affiliated with an university. I have now proven something, that seems to me as a result, that could be appreciated by professional mathematicians. If that is true, I would like to publish it or even become an independent phd student. I think the best way to go about it would be to show it to interested professionals resp. give a talk, in order to get opinions, assessing my own work better, and in the best case become an independent phd student. What do you think? My main concern is that my result/my ideas might be stolen, if I'm an outsider and only show it to few people, that I don't know. I know it might be a bit paranoid, yet what would be the best way to be "safe", without already writing and publishing a complete preprint?

maybe @DustyDimensions meant self-funded PhD student? A PhD is awarded by a university, so one cannot be independent in the sense of not being affiliated with a university.

It's a thing at least in Germany. There you either do your phd while working at the university, or you work somewhere else and you're connection with the university is only through your advisor, with whom you'd meet up from time to time.

Yes that exists in Germany, but it is not that popular anymore among potential advisors. And you have to be really careful about advisors who are willing to take you. It is basically self-funded on steroids: you have no contact with a department, your only point of contact is the advisor. This has resulted in some failures in quality control, i.e. theses of substandard quality (=plagiarized) passing. It also makes the student extremely susceptible to abuse, as there is no one else in the department who can keep an eye on you.

For advisors a big problem is that very few finish. Doing a PhD is hard enough. Trying to do so without support and structure provided by a department is even harder. So most of the advisor's effort will be wasted on a non-finished PhD project. Advisors don't like to waste their effort, and many thus won't take such students.

A case where this might work is people working in a non-university research organization. It is that organization the support and safety structure normally provided by a (well functioning) department.

Thanks for your perspective! What kind of non-university research organizations are you talking about? How does one find something like that?

The benefit of getting feedback from experts on the topic far outweighs any danger of that your ideas might be stolen, which is in my opinion entirely minimal (in the parts of Western academia that I am familiar with). Unless you settled some major open problem, realistically no-one is going to bother to steal a random run-of-the-mill result. While your result is no doubt very precious to you (because it presumably is your first result!), to other people it is most likely not going to be such a big deal that they would go so far as to steal it from you.

It is actually a good idea to write your idea up first. Not so much because it offers some protection against stealing of the idea, but more because ideas usually sound great in your head or when preparing a presentation, but when writing it down you find that one pesky detail, that you could ignore during the presentation with some strategic hand waving, that will bring down your entire argument. (I speak from experience)
Other than that, if you want to get back into academia, you will have to talk with academics. If you get invited to give such a talk, then that is a great place to start.

And if you do end up giving a talk, having written up the proof carefully should greatly improve the quality of the talk.

Thanks! I do write up my ideas, it's just that I find the process of writing up a completely rigorous paper with all the uninteresting special cases etc. quite arduous, especially when I don't know at all yet how it will be received.

It is all the uninteresting special cases that often house that one pesky detail that brings down your analysis. We are not rigorous because we are masochists (well, at least most of us), but because that rigor prevents us from making a fool of ourselves.


text:
Ethical arguments against cheating on an exam when everyone else is cheating and the class is curved?
Let's start with an extreme thought experiment. The professor announces there is an online, unproctored exam. Let's assume everyone in the class is cheating on an exam except for you. And you know that there is a zero percent chance that there will be consequences for any of them, as the course staff are irresponsible. You know that the professor won't do anything even if you reach out to them or higher-ups. You need to do well on the class in order to get a job to fund your aging parents' healthcare. The class is curved, so your classmates doing better makes you do worse in comparison and jeopardizes your chances at receiving this job. Should one be allowed to cheat in this situation?
I'm interested in the ethical arguments in particular. Two arguments out of the scope of this discussion are the potential consequences of getting caught (let's assume there are none here), and the potential impact of your long-term decision making (let's assume there are no future decisions of such importance).
I believe we can frame this problem as a prisoner dilemma set-up, where the other parties (i.e the classmates) are defecting - if everyone cheats, they are all worse off since they learned less. But if you don't cheat here, then you are worse off individually due to the class being curved and the reality that everyone else is cheating.
I am interested in the implications here for real-life situations. We can modify some parameters of the thought experiment depending on the environment. In environments that I'm familiar with, the chance that cheaters get caught are non-zero, but very low. The proportion of cheaters can range up to even 50% or higher in competitive/toxic departments, especially during COVID.
Why is it unethical for a student to cheat here, when the alternative would be at their own expense?

What do you even consider cheating in this case? We had exams in which you were literally allowed to bring as much material as you could carry, including all learning material and practice sheets/exams. The exam was setup like this on purpose because "cheating" wouldn’t give any advantage over just being good enough to write down the answer.

I downvoted ... but NOT because I consider discussions about cheating without remorse to be out of bounds (see  https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/196909/104266 ). Rather, I downvoted you because I think your question is poorly constructed and attempts (with a modicum of success) to force the reader into a particular response. As a result, responses are unlikely to be able to engage properly with issues such as the variety of descriptions/definitions of ethical behaviour, utilitarianism, etc.

Or, perhaps, you learn the material well enough that you don't have any need to cheat?

The mental gymnastics and scheming I have seen my students put themselves through during the virtual experiment during and immediately post Covid was hilarious. When in reality just learning the course material, and using the provided resources would have taken less time/effort. Unrelated to your question, but those students are now matriculating to graduate school and they are the most clueless/helpless cohort I have ever had to deal with.

I do not intend to force the reader to a particular response. This is the framework in which I'm thinking about the problem, and I genuinely do not understand why it would be unethical for a student to be cheat in this case. That is why I am asking the question, and the question has been downvoted yet no one has given a genuine reply.

@9j09jf02jsd I am still waiting for clarification on my comment. The situation described is incredibly vague and right now requires answerers to fill in the blanks by guessing.

Your question feels equivalent to "if a person is subjected to a "highly unjust" (whatever that means) system of rules, is it unethical to disobey those rules?". This question is a famous classical philosophical question which I'm not interested in answering because there's a whole other stackexchange for that sort of thing.
When we realize that we have subjected our students to a highly unjust system of rules[1], whether or not individual actors choose to follow our unjust system of rules or not should become irrelevant. Instead, the sole focus of our energies should be on addressing the inequities of that system of rules.
[1] Where by "rules" I mean the rules of the exam, the grading, how it is monitored, how breaking the rules is not incentivized, and how these rules are enforced.

Interesting points, though I think the premise of the question is that OP is a student who does not have control over the professor's actions.

If everyone is cheating and there is very little chance of being caught, one would think why not cheat?
However, what would I really have learnt due to cheatong?
My goal would be to learn whether I fail because I didn't cheat. At least I learnt something. Rather than learning nothing in order to pass with the cool group.

I don’t see why cheating and learning would be  at odds. There are also veritable downsides to failing an exam that go well beyond having one’s knowledge checked. Can you perhaps clarify why you consider cheating versus learning to be a strict choice?

I tend to agree with you there after a period of thought. You could still learn even of you cheated. I have done plenty of of examinations that were open book. You just needed to know where to look for the answers. I supposed if you cheated, no one could say you were not learning. I can't say that cheating versus learning to be a strict choice no longer. Perhaps the end does justify the means. It depends on your objective. I have taken short cuts before, however I had to learn retrospectively. I achieved my objective of getting passed a stage.


text:
Does an ORCID alone convey any information?
Do the digits of an ORCID convey any information?
In particular, given two ORCIDs, can I infer anything about the order in which they were created? For example, if two ORCIDs had prefixes 0000-0001-6000 and 0000-0001-9000, respectively, would this imply that first was created before the second?

No, according to ORCID:

Initially ORCID iDs will be randomly assigned by the ORCID Registry from a block of numbers that will not conflict with ISNI-formatted numbers assigned in other ways. ORCID iDs always require all 16 digits of the identifier; they can not be shortened to remove leading zeros if they exist.
No information about a person is encoded in the ORCID iD. The identifiers were designed to be usable in situations where personally-identifiable information should/can not be shared. Also, since the ORCID iD is designed to be a career-long identifier, no information that can change over a person's career is embedded in the iD, e.g., country, institution, field of study.
Only the ORCID Registry can assign ORCID iDs. ORCID iDs are intended to be assigned to individuals and may be secured at no charge. ORCID iDs are assigned randomly from a block of numbers reserved for this purpose. Typically, the 16-digit identifiers are assigned between 0000-0001-5000-0007 and 0000-0003-5000-0001, or between 0009-0000-0000-0000 and 0009-0010-0000-0000.

According to a 24 February, 2023 update here
(see also this page):

Because we have over 16 million records, we required a new block of identifiers. ISNI, the organization ORCID coordinates with to release the 16-digit unique identifiers, has released a new range reserved for ORCID defined between 0009-0000-0000-0000 and 0009-0010-0000-0000.

So presumably an ORCID identifier between 0009-0000-0000-0000 and 0009-0010-0000-0000 implies a creation date after February 2023.
However you can also find the precise creation date in every ORCID profile.

Thanks! In late 2022 that page didn't mention the 0009-... range so maybe that signals a relatively new ORCID assignment?

Yes it seems so, according to 24 Feb 2023 update here: https://info.orcid.org/feature-friday/


text:
How to deal with overlapping research?
Two years ago, I started a Master's degree in Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Europe. I suggested my own topic to my supervisor, who was not really an expert in that specific topic (or, at least, to its application to NLP), but they were still excited about the project.
I successfully graduated a few months ago and in September I started a PhD with that same advisor. The PhD is supposed to be a continuation of my Master's work.
However, as you may be aware, the field of NLP is moving incredibly fast, and while my topic was quite niche when I started two years ago, it just recently started to gain traction. I have not published any articles yet: this is not expected during the Master's, and I wanted to publish results from my Master's thesis for a workshop but I wasn't able to (it got accepted but I couldn't go because of unexpected surgery and I'm still kicking myself because of that). However, other people have published a few articles in the last couple of months related to my topic. A team of researchers in particular has interests very close to mine, and I have this weird mixed feeling of excitement and fear. Excitement because I am happy to see peers working on a topic that I like very much. And fear because I realized that I am not "alone" in the field anymore and that there is now some kind of competition (I hate to see things like that but I can't help myself think about it this way).
More precisely, I'm afraid that I won't be able to publish articles because the ideas overlap too much and because I wasn't able to publish first. I'm also afraid that by the time I finish my PhD, other people will have undertaken similar work, probably even with better methodology or results, making my work useless.
I've read a few things online related to that and many were saying that one will always contribute something even if research has already been made because the methodology and results are different. Still, I believe that there is some point where the overlap limit will be crossed and where your work won't necessarily have much impact compared to the first-published work.
I'd like to ask for pieces of advice on how to deal with this situation. I don't want to stop my PhD but I guess I have to make it clear what my next steps should be for the next couple of years.

How to talk about it with my supervisor? As a reminder, they are not an expert for this specific topic. Right now, we worked on the assumption that I should focus on my PhD thesis, but given the recent events in terms of publications related to my domain, and given that I have not yet published, perhaps I should focus on that first to let other academics working on that topic know that I am a part of it too. How to convince my advisor that it should be my top priority?
Should I contact other, new academics working on that topic so that they are aware that I am interested in the topic as well? How should I formulate that exactly? It seems odd to me to just send an email out of the blue to say "Hey! I exist!"
Should I drastically change the methodology of my PhD so as to avoid any potential overlap in the near future? If so, what would be the best way to proceed?

Please ask one question per question

I can think of four strategies for dealing with this. "Hot" areas are a difficult issue, as you note.
The first is to work on something that few others are likely to work on. This is very difficult to judge, of course.
The second is to work on smaller questions, rather than larger ones, where results come quickly. There are no guarantees and you face the additional problem that publishers prefer significant results.
Both of the above are risky.
The third is to work on several, more or less, independent threads simultaneously, so that if you get scooped on one, you don't need to start from scratch. This one can be very intense, but with good note taking might be do-able. Many professionals keep a notebook of potential future work and update it as thoughts occur. Some people Actually prefer to work this way.
The last is to enter into collaborations with people likely to have similar interests so that you get joint publications rather than being closed out. This is easier to do for an established academic, of course, harder for a doctoral student. And, the advisor can have a say about whether this is appropriate for you. In many areas of CS, conference attendance is a good way to find such people. Talk to a lot of people between sessions and explore common interest.
The orthogonal solution is to work on something else, that isn't so hot and that doesn't have so much parallel activity. This might be the shorter path to academic success and less frustrating, but not very satisfying for some. If you choose this path, perhaps it should be something more aligned with your advisor's interests and knowledge.
But, in general, as you note, "hot" areas get a lot of parallel activity and whoever crosses the finish line first is likely to get the prize.
One can also question how well "hotness" correlates with "significance" in actuality rather than just appearance. Tough call.


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How should I summarize a YouTube video of an integral that motivated my research paper without plagiarizing or being accused of plagiarism?
I conduct independent mathematics research in my spare time, and two years ago I stumbled upon a video evaluating an integral with relatively standard techniques (i.e. very straightforward and nonbiased). About 75% of the way through the video, the uploader's method produced an equation that intrigued me; I investigated it further, and it has now grown into a research paper that is already 17 pages long.
Since a part of the video played such a pivotal role in my research paper, I cited it in its introduction; however, I'm having trouble finding a proper balance between summarizing the video and building enough foundation for such a deep analysis. If I do the former, then I usually skip over everything except the aforementioned equation when the step beforehand is what motivated me to investigate deeper in the first place. However, if I do the latter, then I end up listing almost every step bar-for-bar and feel like I'm stepping over the uploader's toes by writing out most of the video's contents, depriving them of potential revenue if the stars align and I ever publish the paper.
The uploader doesn't claim copyright in the video, its description, or their channel page, but the video is not attributed with a Creative Commons license and I'm very wary of intellectual property in academia. What would be the best way to approach this?

Note that in most places, it is not necessary to “claim” copyright: the very act of producing something creates a copyright to it (barring a few exceptions e.g. around work-for-hire)—what you would need would be a clear statement relinquishing copyright. Absent that, it must be assumed that the creator retains copyright and reserves all rights. (Also, some jurisdictions make relinquishing copyright awkward and difficult, so even that isn’t always useful; see e.g. the “Creative Commons 0” license and its rationale for discussions of that.)

Frankly, I don't think you have any moral or academic obligation to protect a YouTuber's ad revenue here.

You're not going to decrease anyone's ad revenue by summarising their YouTube video in a paper. Nobody's going to read your paper and then later see the video pop up in their feed and think "oh, I remember reading about this video in a paper, I guess I don't need to click on it." On the other hand, if your paper is successful, a few people might seek out the video who might not have seen it otherwise.

I am very interested in evaluating integrals. I would be curious to see your preprint once it is available.

You don't need to summarize sources you cite, you need to credit them for what you use them for. If it's just an equation, you should note that. If you use it for more, you have to note that, too.
Copyright is moot here; academic ethics require you to cite whatever the license might be.

I do that with all of my other sources, I'm not sure what it is about an integral video that made me hesitate so much. Regardless, thank you for setting me straight.

Also: Owning copyright to a work is not dependent on registering, or giving notice of that copyright according to the Berne Convention.

+1 for the core answer — but just adding, to guard against overinterpretation, that it is also fine to sometimes summarise the cited sources, if that’s what the exposition of your own paper requires.  The key principle is cite clearly and generously — whether you’re just pointing to the work or also summarising/paraphrasing some material from it, you must make the extent of the relationship clear to the reader.

One concern is that the video might be taken down for any number of reasons. Would it be worth creating a summary that can be included as well anyway?

I would strongly consider including a complete derivation of the formula in your paper, so the academic record is complete: a YouTube video is not peer-reviewed and could become unavailable at any moment. By making your paper self-contained you ensure that it will remain readable even if the video becomes unavailable, and it ensures that all aspects of your results are peer-reviewed. Your paper should contain enough details of the video to be independently readable.
It's not a plagiarism issue if you properly attribute it.
It's probably not a copyright issue. Copyright covers the "creative work" that is the presentation of the formula in the video, but it doesn't cover the "idea" that is the formula itself. It's extremely unlikely that summarizing a line of mathematical reasoning from a YouTube video would violate copyright.
I do not think a 17 page math research paper has any chance of significantly affecting the revenue of a youtube video. It's probably more likely that you'll drive views to the video rather than detracting from it. Even then, most people would consider scientific progress more important than a YouTuber's revenue.

Copyright protects the "expression" of an idea, not the idea. The latter is protected by patents (if that's at all relevant, since mathematical derivations are not typically patentable). So summary of the video (the "expression" of the idea) does not violate the copyright if it is sufficiently differently expressed. Only citation is needed.

Even if copyright might have been at issue, most jurisdictions have a fair use/fair dealing exception that explicitly covers excerpts and summarization for the purposes of review and analysis, particularly in academic contexts.

I agree (and upvoted) but I'd argue that showing how the formula was derived is not always really necessary or relevant. For example, a paper about the Drake Equation would not typically need to explain basically anything about the Drake Equation beyond defining the terms, even if Drake's 1865 paper became somehow unavailable.
In a paper about, or building on, the derivation, it'd be necessary; otherwise, possibly unnecessary unless it's relevant to using the formula.

Note that plagiarism requires one to present another’s work as your own (or in rare instances self-plagiarise). Therefore to answer the question in the title, you avoid plagiarism by correctly attributing your source, e.g.
I am indebted to John Smith of the YouTube channel “Maths is awesome” for introducing me to this problem in his video “how to solve this cool integral”. The following paragraph contains a brief summary of the video…

I think that's perfectly fine if the video played an extremely pivotal role in asking/answering the question, but otherwise it might be over the top, especially in the main text (vs. acknowledgements). For a run-of-the-mill contribution, you could just cite it normally: "The integral can be solved using standard (Smith, 2023), which are briefly summarized here."

+1 one for an explicit statement how to handle the situation.


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How to Contact a Professor on Sabbatical for a Letter of Recommendation?
I’m applying to grad school, and my application deadline is in late January. A few days ago, I emailed my recommenders to request letters of recommendation. However, one of my professors replied with an automated message stating they are on sabbatical until Fall 2025. Unfortunately, I don’t have an alternate email address or phone number for them since we’ve only communicated through their university email.
I left a polite inquiry on their personal website to see if that might reach them, but I’m unsure if it’s an appropriate method or whether they’ll see it in time.
In their automated email, they provided contact information for other professors in the department—one for advising and another for general questions. Would it be acceptable to contact the general questions professor and ask if they could assist in reaching out to my recommender?
This professor’s recommendation would be a key part of my application, so I want to explore every option to get in touch without overstepping.

This is a US suggestion.  I would suggest you go in person to the department office for their department and ask them for advice.  They are likely to personally know the professor and his or her sabbatical arrangements and whether he or she is likely to want to write a recommendation letter for a student while on sabbatical.

Agree with @AlexanderWoo - professors on sabbatical don't disappear off the face of the Earth - the department will have contact info. At worst they will contact on your behalf.

The professor received your email. Automated responses do not mean your email did not get through, nor do they mean the professor has dropped off the face of the earth. Their university email still works. If they are willing to write a letter for you, they will respond. At most I would send another email requesting the letter. Trying to find them via other means is pointless. If they feel like they are unwilling to engage with any university work during their sabbatical, which includes your letter, then they can just do that. In which case, find another letter writer.

@R1NaNo I don't think that's a good assumption to make.

@BryanKrause I think for the sake of practicality, trying to track down a faculty on sabbatical as we get into the holidays for a January deadline is not practical for the applicant. They need to get letters secured ASAP. I hate to say it, but writing letters for random undergrads is typically not the highest priority, especially as I will assume this was not a student working in their group/under their supervision, otherwise they would have known about the sabbatical. I am trying to be practical, so I would send another email (titled - PLEASE RESPOND) so they open it, if no response, move on

Normally, department staff and/or the head of the department has a way to contact people on sabbatical. In a few situations, such as someone doing field work off the grid it might not be possible, but it usually is. Ask the department, preferably in person, to relay a request to the professor and for someone to reply to you soon whether it is possible for a recommendation to be sent.
The department will also know if the person is unreachable, in which case, look elsewhere for a letter.
Even HR has a forwarding address most likely, but may not be able to pass it on directly, though might through the department.
And the above is also likely to be true even when a faculty member leaves permanently.


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Is it possible to get a second chance at college?
I graduated highschool in 2009. I started community college right out of highschool. I got 4.0 my first semester. After that my grades began to drop over time as well as "withdraw" from a few classes. Maybe 3? I strung college along with me through my substance abuse. On and off for probably 10 years. Needless to say, my grades sucked. Also, I was working on a couple different things in college. One was obtaining an AA in American sign language (which I am about 2 semesters away from completing) and I was taking the prereq's for transferring to an UC to go into veterinary medicine. I even completed the honors transfer program (but didn't transfer.) So...now that I am in recovery and I'm in a new phase of my life, I want to go back to school. Not for either of my past endeavors though. I am very interested in Cognitive Science and Human-Computer Interaction. A lot of these old classes that lower my GPA don't even pertain to my new major. I'm worried about my past interfering with potential to succeed. I'm also concerned about my situation with financial aid due to multiple (w)s. Has anybody been/know somebody in a situation like mine? What was the outcome? I'm lost on where to begin. Can I get classes just removed like they never happened?

Best of luck on a fresh start in 2025. What does life look like, as best you can imagine at the moment, following your Cognitive Science or Human-Computer Interaction studies?

Undergraduate admissions is off topic here, see https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300

But, yes, many schools explicitly encourage ’non-traditional’ or ‘adult learner’ students. (My nearby state university is actually majority ‘non-traditional’, begging the question of just what traditional is).

Basically, you select an institution that you are interested in and fill out an admission form, just as you would have done when you first went to college. Most institutions have admission paths for students who (i) are not straight out of high-school, or (ii) have undertaken some other educational path such as a trade, or (iii) did not successfully complete a previously-attempted college/university education.
After that, it's very much up to the individual institution how they will view your particular combination of high-school results, abandoned or flunked-out prior college education, and life experience.
Don't be deterred. You have very little to lose except time in applying.

This is dead on. I would encourage you to apply to community colleges now; maybe it's not too late for you to start taking classes in Spring 2025. Sooner is better; later often turns into never. And then you can apply to the institutions of your choice in Fall 2025 or Spring 2026.


text:
Existing Platforms and (AI) Solutions for Remote Research Support (Grant Management, ...)
Background:
I'm part of an organization that provides support to remote researchers through a fellowship program. Our current model includes:

Providing management feedback and guidance to researchers
Connecting researchers with technical experts for paper review and feedback
Assisting with grant identification and application processes
Supporting researchers in developing independence in their research careers
Operating on a non-profit basis, primarily through grant funding

Question:
I'm interested in learning about existing solutions or platforms that might serve similar purposes:

Are there established platforms that:

Connect remote researchers working on specific research topics?
Facilitate grant discovery and application processes?
Provide technical review and feedback mechanisms?

Has anyone implemented AI-driven solutions in this space, particularly for:

Automated grant matching?
Research feedback or review processes?
Research community building?

If such platforms exist, what has been your experience with them? What works well and what could be improved?

I'm particularly interested in solutions that support the transition of researchers toward independence and sustainable research careers.

By "remote" do you actually mean "unaffiliated"? Why do you think "AI" is a good solution for this? What do you even mean by "AI"? You've tagged "generative AI" which is entirely unsuited for that. Did you mean to use the [tag:ai] tag?

Before they close your question, can you provide the link to your company, please?

@IvanNepomnyashchikh definitely not that would make this spam and deletable


text:
PhD math interview advice
I am asking for advice on PhD math interviews. I have a good academic background, strong letters of recommendation and previous research experience which has led to publications. However, I am woefully bad at interviews. I get super anxious and just freeze up, often getting mind blanks and being completely unable to articulate my thoughts. Usually I am good at explaining things but under interview pressure I perform dreadfully.
With this in mind, I was wondering if anyone could give some advice about this, together with the things prospective supervisors will be looking for, so that I don't slip up too much (if I know what they're looking for, I will be more confident!)

When I was in charge of admissions to my (mathematics) deepartment's Ph.D. program (late 1990's),  no interviews were required. As far as I know, that's still the case (at least for pure math), and I believe the same is true at many other universities.

Your question appears to ask about two different things. The first, and in my view more minor issue, is what you might expect in an interview for a PhD in mathematics ("the things prospective supervisors will be looking for"). The second issue, namely how to deal with the problem that you "... get super anxious and just freeze up" is more significant. It's worth addressing them separately.
Other contributors have answered the first question here, and I think you should read both that answer and consider searching for appropriate combinations of the tags "[phd] [mathematics] [graduate-admissions] [interview]".
I believe, however, that in the long term, the problem  --- of getting super anxious and freezing up  --- is more serious in that it is something that will come back to bite you in many different contexts in your future life (post PhD admissions interview) unless you are able to overcome it. One could imagine this affecting you even if you have ideas about what to expect in an interview ... and then something different happens!
You might not know that the general term among health professionals for the problem you describe is "performance anxiety". Depending on the severity and generality of your problem, there are different solutions, ranging from self-help (in the form of reading, etc.) to professional assistance from a psychologist with expertise in treating anxiety disorders.
You might find it helpful to do a web-search for "performance anxiety", and then to decide on the best course for you in overcoming the freezing problem.
Best of luck with your interview!


text:
A better name for a reading list around a mathematician
I would like to create a reading list around the life and works of a mathematician. But I need to choose the name to use as the title.
Take as an example the Bibliography of N. Bourbaki by L. Beaulieu
"This document attempts to be an up to date commented bibliography of works pertaining to the history of the Bourbaki group of mathematicians and their mathematical production.
The bibliography is not mainly concerned with any other "Bourbakis", for example the eponymous military man, except as they may figure in a discussion of the group of mathematicians. "Bibliography" is to be understood here in the large sense of publications of all sorts including books, articles, web-sites, ephemereals and audio-visual materials. The sections on homonymous and eponymous entities mainly show how the name « Bourbaki » has a life of its own outside the history of our group.
My overriding concern is to make the bibliography as comprehensive as possible. At the same time it has been necessary to make some exclusions and restrictions in order to avoid irrelevance or redundancy. With some exceptions, I have ignored works which discuss the Bourbaki enterprise mainly in relation to reforms in the teaching of mathematics. Also excluded are the many articles or works on or by Bourbaki members when the focus is not explicitly and substantially on the activities of the group."
This description fits perfectly for what I want to do but with another mathematician. What does not feel good is the title. I often use the name Bibliography in a more serious academic context, like the references in an article or so.
So here we are

I need alternative names for "Bibliography" that fits the description above.

I just thought about "Inventory" or "Reading list", something that reflects that in some sense it is informal. Let me know what you think.

The word bibliography is entirely appropriate here. Just because you are used to thinking of a bibliography as the reference section of a paper does not mean that this is the only meaning of the term (cf. meanings 2a and 3 here, or 1 and 2 here).

My question is not whether "Bibliography" is good or wrong, but if you can give me alternatives.

I would also say that bibliography is entirely fine, the key is in the preposition.
You titled the document you linked to as "Bibliography of Bourbaki". To me this indeed feels wrong, as I think it would imply works by Bourbaki. But note that this title is found nowhere in the actual file. Indeed your quote speaks about "bibliography of works pertaining to ...", which is something entirely different and in my opinion a very clear way of formulating it.
Maybe if that is to long for a title you could shorten it to "bibliography about Bourbaki" or "bibliography regarding Bourbaki" or something similar.


text:
A colleague has found that all the Google Scholar citations for a book of hers are erroneously attached to a book chapter she co-authored
My colleague has written several editions of a book which we know is very highly cited. However, the book does not appear on her Google Scholar profile - instead all the citations for it have been added to a separate book chapter (with a similar name) that she has co-authored. These do not appear as 'merged', with the asterix next to the citation count, so she can't just click on that and unmerge them. It seems that GS is simply treating all editions of her book as 'versions' of the book chapter. What, if anything, can she do to correct this?

Your colleague can visit her Google Scholar profile

click on the book edition(s)
edit the entry (with the appropriate bibliography metrics within the limitations of GS)

-- keep as as (the edit)
-- remove the book edition
-- unmerge the edit and keep as a separate entry on Google Scholar

[Edit] just in case, might be helpful for your colleague to maintain an ORCID profile which might also track variations of her name.


text:
What can be the status of my postdoc position application?
I applied for a postdoc position in the US, the position is not entirely related to my work but there is significant overlap with my experience and expertise. I heard back from the PI with in a week and they asked me to make a 30 minute presentation for their lab. I did well and they were indirectly offering me the position during a brief meeting.
This was more than a month back, the PI is replying to my mails and enquiries and I was also asked to submit the letter of recommendation from my mentors. I thought the process will pickup pace from there, but I have not been offered the post officially. I even proposed a research plan to work on if I can get the position, they were appreciative of it. Recently, I had to give another interview with a senior collaborator of the PI and the discussion was about generic stuff like my interest in the university, the country and nothing about my work experience or aspirations. They told they will get back to me in a week's time but I am feeling very disheartened with the way things are progressing.
What can be the possible status of my application? I feel that I might not be their first choice and I am scared I will be rejected after all these weeks. I had to let go off another potential postdoc position anticipating this will work out. I feel stuck and helpless.

Related, possible duplicate: How long does it usually take to hear back for academic positions? Why haven't I heard back and when should I follow up? Even if the question isn't an exact match, the answer (particularly about the futility of trying to guess what's really happening) is directly applicable.

If they knew they were not going to offer you the job, they would tell you this and stop wasting their own time (and yours) on various interview steps.
If they knew they were going to offer you the job, they would tell you this and stop wasting their own time (and yours) on various interview steps.
The status of your application is "unknown". Worrying about it will not help the status. Because you don't have a job secured, you should continue to apply to other positions. Once you have accepted an offer, you can mostly stop applying to other positions, but may still want to continue the search process for another job after the next one ends.


text:
How far an Internship is helpful for Graduate School Admissions?
I am an undergraduate student currently enrolled in a 3 year Bachelor of Science Mathematics Course. I am a non-US citizen and student.
I have an ambition to study in Ivy Leagues and other prestigious universities in my Master's Course in Mathematics at the  USA. However, due to my financial constratints, I will be unable to do it, unless a financial aid is provided which will include my tuition fees, boarding cost  and  medical insurance.
I have heard a lot that how doing a lot of research and internships boosts one's profile. But being a "noob", in all these stuffs, I don't know where to start. Is it mandatory to do these stuffs to be in the competition or just focussing on college courses suffiecient for the purpose ?
My friends already set up a LinkedIn account and suggests me to do the same. Unfortunately/Fortunately, I created a disposable account in LinkedIn, and then I got confused and had no idea how to "use it" and was forced to delete it.
I live in India and I come from a middle-class family. Our annual family income is, $487.34(approx). This is all I can say about my financial condition. So, without a scholarship it is next to impossible to fulfil my dream.
I have heard, that obtaining scholarships are really very competitive. So, will internships help me in here as well?
Seniors have adviced me to do some projects under Professors, or internships is somewhat helpful in here and honestly it depends upon the university I am applying to.
The problem is, I dont know where to begin! Any suggestion regarding these will be really helpful.
Thanks in advance.

Study at the masters level is seldom funded in US. Doctoral level study is usually funded through a Teaching Assistantship. You might look into that. Also, the Ivys are very selective.

@Buffy Oh, so do you suggest going to the US for a phd?

If you qualify, then it is a better option. You don't need a masters to begin doctoral study here. But look much more broadly at research (R1) universities. See: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/176909/75368


text:
How to tell my advisor that I would probably search for a job?
A bit of background: I'm a non-european phd student in europe doing a phd in a computational field. Recently I've applied and obtained a grant. The grant came with a unfortunate pay cut of 15% and I was barely scraping by with my pre-grant salary (paid from my advisor's project). I've accepted the grant as it was more secure (I was assured funding for a certain amount of years). I've asked my advisor if I could teach for the difference in my salary, which I was declined due to language restrictions. I was offered an alternative to that, a software developer position. But my advisor keeps postponing the signing of the contract for that stating issues like accounting trouble at university administration. Its been six months I've been on this reduced salary, to a point that I have to borrow to survive. I've applied for a two jobs and got interviewed for one. The results are still unknown. I'm not sure if it will impact our professional relationship if I mention to him that I'm going to search of a second job. How would i approach this?

I think the only way to approach this is directly, saying to them that you are unable to live at the level of funding you are currently getting and need to supplement it somehow. Say that a job is one possibility if they can't provide any additional funding relatively soon, but you need a resolution. Say you are flexible, but the current situation is untenable.
If they say there is no resolution possible then you have to make hard decisions about leaving for something better. It might delay your career a bit but the long term might be better. Hard decisions.
If you have family obligations, as many do, it can be an additional incentive both for you and your advisor to find a solution.


text:
First-person perspective in master's thesis acknowledgements
In my institution, the acknowledgements section of a master's thesis may be quite personal so I thought I'd thank my fiancée who is (very) pregnant now, thanking her for carrying the burden of pregnancy.
However, the thesis is written by me and my colleague. The problem is obvious, how do I write a first-person perspective in the acknowledgements section where everything else is written as "we"?
Is "I, (My Name), would like to extend my gratitude and love towards (Fiancée's name), who during these months of writing has been carrying our child." peculiar and or inappropriate?

There are too many unknown factors here, such as the cultural norms in place. I'd personally leave out the pregnancy part (opinion), but it is common to thank a family member. or even a fiancée, for there continuing support.

I find it strange that a master's thesis has two authors, as opposed to each writing their own thesis focusing on their contributions to the project(s).

@JonCuster I agree with this.  In fact clear attribution in a thesis is essential so that nobody doubts the thesis is the work of the student.

@JonCuster Unusual, but perhaps not all that rare. I supervised one such Master's thesis, and I know of a joint doctoral thesis at the Harvard School of Education.

It's common to see two separate acknowledgment paragraphs in the introduction to a jointly authored work.

We owe much to many for help with ...
... professional thanks ...
Ethan: My wife, Joan's ongoing contribution began 56 years ago when she
asked me how I'd feel if I went to medical school and did no more
mathematics.   ...
Maura:  I owe a greater debt than I could ever express to my husband
Jack Reynolds. ...


text:
If the editor-in-chief does not consider plagiarism, is there any possibility of resorting to a new assessment in the scientific community?
The question is a complement for other post not completely answered yet (Plagiarism, intimidation and misuse of doctoral theses results in Brazil):
If the editor-in-chief does not consider plagiarism, is there any possibility of resorting to a new assessment in the scientific community? There any organisation for take a advice?
There is already a set of documents that prove the situation of plagiarism.

You can attempt to overrule the editor-in-chief by contacting the publisher. You will need very strong evidence, but if your complaint is successful, the publisher can fire the editor-in-chief and retract the plagiarized paper(s).

OP: indeed include any sort of evidence. Copy of your thesis, emails, etc.

Can I send the "suspicious" article of plagiarism to the editor-in-chief with annotations (sticknotes of pdf) for better readability? Will there not be a violation of laws with this? And the emails exchanged with the professor who authored the plagiarisms, could you also send them without problems?

@user78008 start by telling them there's plagiarism and presenting your evidence. I don't know what's in your emails with the authors, but if they are not directly relevant you could say "I've already tried to notify the authors [but ...]. Emails available if you want to see them." Also, are you trying to convince the editor-in-chief now or the publisher? The question makes it sound like you've already tried to convince the editor-in-chief.

How I mentioned in the other post, the professor that plagiated has political influence with local government in Brazil. There a afraid because in Brazil there are a high level of corruption, so if a student is too quick to demand a retraction or other of denuntiate, he can do a lot of harm for your life. Sadly, in Brazil even in prestigious universities is commom the academic perseguision and this prevalece above de razonable. There many cases that the occur a inversion of history and the student that even that pay for the process. The protecionism is terrible for here. See in a googled.


text:
How to find top authors with most papers in a particular journal
Is there a good way to find out authors and the number of papers published for each author in a particular journal? I was just wondering who are the top authors for a journal and how many papers they have published.

For computer science, this can to some extent* be easily achieved with a SPARQL query to Faceted DBLP. *because order of authors is not represented

@O.R.Mapper For my field, it works charm. Would there be a more global way to do this? For example using the Web of Science?

That depends on whether someone has converted the respective publication database into a format that can be queried that way, with SPARQL, or with some graph-based query language.

@FEQ Web of Science or Scopus should be able to do this easily, with the caveat that it won't correct for people sharing the same name.

@Andrew Can you please convert this comment into a full answer?

@jakebeal done!

Discipline-specific repositories or databases might work, depending on your field - if 95% of papers in a given journal end up in DBLP or PubMed, then working through those tools will give you a good answer. However, it won't work for multidisciplinary journals (where some papers are in the repository and some aren't), or ones which aren't in that field at all.
For best effect, you need something which indexes on a per-journal basis; in other words, the database includes all the papers (or 'all since a given date') if it includes any at all. The two major commercial databases (Scopus & Web of Science) both do this.
Web of Science:
The most popular bibliographic database but not the most powerful.

On the general search, select 'publication name' and put in your journal title - it should suggest a matching entry from the index, or you can go through the index to pick one.
You may want to add a date filter at this point (if your journal is long-lived)
Run the search and glory in the thousands of results
In the left column, click the drop-down for filtering by authors, then 'refine'
Bingo - the top hundred authors, by number of records (though actual numbers are not shown)
You can download the data to play with it, but only in batches of 500 at a time

InCites:
InCites is an add-on package for Web of Science. I'm pretty sure you can get a more detailed report for a journal using this, but it's the weekend and I don't have my login details at home...
Scopus:
Never as popular as Web of Science, but more inclusive and you can do some very complex queries with it.

Select 'source title' in the standard search, and put in your title (no auto-suggestion here, but you can look through their index)
Again, add year filtering if appropriate
The left-hand column gives you a very quick summary of the top five authors with item counts, and if you click 'view more' in this box a couple of times you'll get a list of the top hundred with item counts. Like WoS, but better!
Alternatively, click 'analyse search results' and you'll get some pretty graphs; the same top hundred authors are available through this.
You can export up to 20,000 bibliographic records from a query through Scopus (as a flat CSV) if you want to do some further digging

Caveats
All of these tools are only as good as their author matching. If they think "Smith, J" and "Smith, J" are the same as a third "Smith, J" (or if they think that another is two different people because they publish in disparate journals) there's not much you can do. Author disambiguation is a work in process and some are better at it than others; generally speaking it's probably decent for recent papers and less good for records from the 1980s.

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text:
Teaching Loads by Field at Research Universities
For computer science tenure-track faculty, the standard teaching load at a major research university in the US is 1-1 (meaning 1 course each of the two semesters).  My understanding is that in math the standard teaching load is 2-1 (two courses one semester, one course the other).
What are the standard teaching loads in other fields (e.g. physics, history, etc.) at major research universities in the US?

even in CS the 1-1 formula varies by level (assistant/associate) and department.

Yeah, that's totally not Berkeley's standard. http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Policies/wrkload-frmla.shtml

1-1 is considered on the lighter side IMO.

I wonder, if your institution participates in the Delaware study http://www.udel.edu/IR/cost/brochure.html, if you could get the data from there?

I agree with Suresh.  1-1 is an approximate de facto standard for most top-20 CS departments (including Berkeley) but a lot of places are higher.  If I recall correctly, the default teaching load at UC Irvine is 1-2-2 (quarter system), but having a grant automatically buys you out of one course.  And even among 1-1 loads, there's a big difference between teaching two 10-student classes and teaching two 250-student classes.

Another issue is that "standard teaching load" can be ambiguous, since some departments have a higher standard on the books than they use in practice.  The idea is that being research active entitles you to a lower course load, but the existence of the higher standard gives added flexibility for chairs to deal with anyone whose research productivity slips.

I guess this question has no good answer.  I had the feeling that teaching loads were, on average, higher in some fields than in others, and I wanted to see if the differences were quantifiable.  Perhaps not.

You're right that they are higher in some fields than others, and that this should be quantifiable, but it would take some careful analysis to disentangle it from other factors.  I bet there have been studies on this, but I don't know a reference.  (The Delaware study Chris Caldwell mentioned may have this data, but I wasn't able to figure this out in a few minutes of looking at their website.)

There is no standard load; it depends widely on the department, the number of students enrolled, the available number of faculty, and so on.
Moreover, in some departments, it is possible to fundraise your way out of commitments. For instance, if you bring in X dollars in overhead, you can "buy" out of teaching a class for a semester.
In addition, stating that a load is "1-and-1" can mean different things. In the department where I did my graduate work, professors now co-teach one class per semester, and sometimes offer an elective course on top of that 1-and-1 load.

In addition to being able to "buy out" via grants, you may have 100% soft money positions mixed in with hard money positions within a dept., or folks brought on specifically to add a expertise to the course selection. "It depends" is the only viable answer I see.

In the largest national survey collecting this data is the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty. (http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/nsopf/design.asp) It was last conducted in 2003-4.  The average number of classroom hours for full-time faculty ranged from 7.9 in engineering to 11.0 in fine arts (as of 2003). See:
http://nces.ed.gov/das/library/tables_listings/showTable2005.asp?popup=true&tableID=2128&rt=p

It does depend on how popular the field is among undergrad majors, and whether or not their courses are often pre-requisites for courses in other majors.
In the fields I'm in (astronomy, earth/atmospheric science), there are so few undergrad majors, and so few majors that use their courses as requirements, that the professors generally tend to have much lighter teaching loads (often one course per year) than professors in other fields with more undergrad students.
And in some departments where there isn't even an undergraduate major in them, professors often have years without needing to teach at all (e.g. Pathology or Physiology/Biophysics at the University of Washington).

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What is the proper way to cite the usage of an API?
For a grant I am writing, I need to describe how I mined data from social media sites. I collected data from sites such as Twitter using each site's API and a Python wrapper. In writing my methods, I assume that I should mention which APIs I used, or at least that I used an API.
Do I need to provide a citation if I refer to using, say, the Python wrapper for Twitter's API. If so, how do I do that?

I don't think you'll find any documented correct way to do this. Personally, I would write a sentence saying that I did it, a sentence describing what an API is, and a link to the version-specific API documentation website (i.e., https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/ for the API Version 3 instead of https://developers.google.com/youtube/ the general Youtube API help website).
If you're including code in the submission, consider adding the API code in an appendix.

I don't think there is a standard way, some APIs have a notes sections that have things like citations, and things like that.
Sometimes, the API comes attached to some paper, in which case you should cite the paper.
I've mostly seen people citing the webpage itself if no other resource is available


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How do I abbreviate the titles after my name?
I just got my Ph.D and I'm trying to work out how to do the full series of abbreviations after my name.
My scholastic qualifications are:

Ph.D University of New South Wales, Philosophy
Masters of Science, Rochester Institute of Technology, Information Technology
Bachelors of Science, RIT, Information Technology

RIT Scholar (University Medal)
Highest Honors.

Given that I have both American and Australian degrees, what series of abbreviations is appropriate to put after my name?

Two things are for sure: The bachelors is irrelevant, and your "highest honours" is something you can be proud of, but that's it.

This varies between countries.  My impression is that listing titles after the name is more common in the UK and Australia, and there may be fixed conventions as to the ordering, but I can't address that.  What I can deal with is the U.S., and my advice in that context is simple: don't do it.  In the U.S., if you list one title ("John Smith, Ph.D."), you'll look a little pompous and like you are overemphasizing your degree (leading to questions like "Gee, is that Ph.D. still his proudest achievement?" or "Does he worry people will think he didn't get a Ph.D.?"), and if you list more than one it will look ridiculous.  In particular, don't list titles after your name in academic job applications, CVs, signatures for letters of recommendation, etc. that are being sent to the U.S.  Of course, conventions in other countries may be different.

This also varies between fields, apparently in direct correlation with how often people wear ties, or whether their students and assistants use their first names.  Almost none of my colleagues in computer science, in any country, in academia or industry, ever write their degrees after their names.  But  medical researchers always append their highest degrees to their last names, to distinguish the mere PhDs from the "real" doctors.

Thanks, that's a good point.  Medical schools, community colleges, and perhaps some other cases are environments where people may be legitimately worried about being perceived differently based on their degrees (MD vs. PhD vs. MD-PhD, PhD vs. MA, or whatever is the key distinction in a given context).  So I should have been less absolute: even in the US, if you're in an environment where degrees vary and these differences matter, then it's reasonable to highlight it.  But if you're not conveying information your target audience will care about, then degrees after the name should be avoided.

As an Australian, I've always thought the practise of putting letters after your name was an American thing! In Australia, he'd usually be "Dr Brian Ballsun-Stanton" on his business card and formal email signature, with no letters afterwards, and would introduce himself simply as "Brian" or "Brian Ballsun-Stanton". In the US, I've been told that it is more common to omit the "Dr" and instead list "PhD" after the name. I agree, though, that even then, you'd normally only list the highest degree and possibly fellowships.

Even in countries like Germany, where titles get stacked up, only your highest degree in a given field is listed. However, in your case, you have two different degrees in very different areas, so it might be helpful to list both the master's and the doctorate in your title. However, the bachelor's is superseded by the master's, so it doesn't appear in any case.
But beyond that, I think it's a function of context: whichever degree is most important for you in the situation should be right after your name, and then the other degree. If it's a IT-related issue, then the MSc is probably more important than the PhD; the PhD matters for philosophy-related stuff.

+1 for using only the title which is most applicable. The collection of all your titles can be found in your CV.

As far as I know, once you pursue a Ph.D. you are encouraged to put only that achievement right after your name, since it is more relevant that everything else. I maybe wrong, but it's what I've seen for years.

In my experience it would be more common to use the title Dr in appropriate contexts, rather than adding PhD. The obvious exception would be a medical doctor with a PhD, who can then use both.

@JessicaB It depends. For instance on a CV in the Czech Republic, I would list both my master and my PhD for the name. The same would appear on academics' business cards, door labels etc.

@yo' On a CV I would never put the letters - your degrees should show up in the education section. Putting them on business cards and door labels I would consider pretentious in many contexts (see the answer by Anonymous Mathematician).

@JessicaB That's why I said: "in the Czech Republic". I now see I wrote something wrong. I personally wouldn't put the degree on the CV, but some people would (and do). As for business cards: again, in the academic world here, the titles are inevitable, and you commonly see "Prof. Mgr. John Doe, PhD." (yes, someone with a full professorship still uses their masters title).

It depends on local custom. Around here (Chile) titles are rarely used at all. In neighbouring countries it is extremely rude not to address somebody by degree, including bachelor.

You absolutely list your credentials. ALWAYS! In the U.S., list the highest one in each field. In the EU, it's more common to list them all.

Welcome to StackExchange. Sorry to say that, but your answer is really bad. It does not quite address the question (how to list all titles properly). The answer is vague and missing details or reasoning. (And I don't speak about the fact that calling someone "an idiot" is not a way to communicate. This got you the highly negative score. Being wrong or not accustomed to the site's format is acceptable, being this much rude is not.)


text:
Positions at satellite campuses
I'm wondering what experiences people had who took up positions at satellite campuses, in particular of well-known and well-renowned universities. From what I see, satellite campuses are often the result of a merger with a small college and somewhat retain a focus on teaching and not so much research.
I'm particularly interested in to what extent positions at satellite campuses provide the benefits of working at the main campus in terms of working environment and research collaborations. Is the experience more like working at a completely separate institution, or merely in a different building at the same institution?
To give a concrete example: Often the satellite campuses don't have a graduate programme. Are the opportunities to (co-)supervise students at the main campus?
I'm looking mostly for experiences with faculty positions, but postdoc/graduate student experiences are also of interest.

Just to make sure we're agreed on terms, could you add a few examples of what you mean by satellite campuses? I suspect the answer is different for NYU Abu Dhabi vs Penn State Altoona.

I'm actually interested in both cases.

There is likely to be a wide spectrum of answers.  I would plan to research these questions separately for each position that interests you, and to ask about them specifically when you interview.

The question at the moment is more whether I should apply at all, that's why I'm asking for people's experiences. Finding out at the interview that you shouldn't have applied at all wouldn't be ideal.

Also worth noting: some of these departments will be in flux. I know some departments with very strong researchers even without PhD, and ambitions to add PhD program. But it can go the other way, too - small PhD programs can disappear. Both mostly out of your control. Before you apply, I'd decide if not having a PhD (even if there is still good research there) is a total dealbreaker. It doesn't have to be, but if it is, might rule out many satellite campuses.

I fear this question may be too general to be useful - because the answers will depend upon the university and the campus in question.

I haven't worked at these campuses, but know some people who do pretty well. These comments are more in reference to regional satellite campuses, e.g. Penn State Altoona, CSU-Pueblo, UNC Charlotte. These are not the flagships, but have varying levels of research activity - some departments might have masters programs, or PhDs created to focus on an area that faculty specialize in, but not the generic PhD for the area.
To first order, satellite campuses should be thought of as independent from the main campus. You share similar funding trends and chancellor edicts, and some programs (e.g. faculty teaching/research awards) cross borders. But it is not common to co-supervise students at the main campus. Maybe this could occur if you had a really unique research specialization, so you were a critical collaborator, or if you were in the same city, or had a strong personal connection. But I don't think it is that much more likely that you would co-supervise a grad student as a satellite prof than as a prof at any other geographically convenient location.
What might be more common is that, as a research-active member of a satellite campus without a PhD program, you could supervise and train a Masters or undergrad student who then goes to the main campus. You might then continue to collaborate with the student and his/her new adviser.
Even things you might not expect can be separated between campuses, like journal access - satellite campuses may not have all the same journals as the flagship.

My previous affiliation had two satellite campuses not particularly far away. I went by one once when I was in the suburb it's in and attempted to log in on a library computer with my campus ID only to be told that I needed to sign up for a new ID from there.

@trikeprof Ouch - I was about to suggest access to library resources as a benefit to satellite campuses vs. similarly sized and accomplished schools not affiliated with a larger sibling.

Yeah, the library resources thing sounded like it would be infuriating. Of course this is probably even more campus-dependent than other things. But from what I've heard I wouldn't take it for granted.


text:
How much should I worry about British spelling when submitting to a U.K. journal?
I'm in the U.S. and have always written in American English. I will be submitting a paper to a U.K. journal for the first time. To conform to British spelling, I've changed the Microsoft Word dictionary to U.K. English, which has caught most of the obvious differences . Even so, I'm worried that it will miss some of the differences listed here and here.  Is this even worth worrying about? Will being lazier about spelling hurt the chances for my paper's acceptance?

It depends on the journal. For what it's worth, I'm not a native English speaker, but I prefer the British spelling and have never had a problem publishing a paper that way. Although one of them got rewritten by the editorial staff using US spelling ;-)

The answer depends very much on the journal. Some expect UK spellings; others will permit either American or British spellings. You should check with the journal in question.
Of course, the other option that you have is the following. Since you know what the major differences between the two sets of spellings are, and you have a sense of which one's won't be caught by your spell checker, you could always do a final search-and-replace after you've completed work on the paper to make sure you've switched everything over. (Or at least, everything you know should be switched over.)
That should satisfy most journals, and as shan23 said, I don't think a journal will reject your paper for writing "meters" instead of "metres"; the most you'll get is a referee report telling you to switch spellings.

Almost no referees will tell you to change spellings. The spelling issue comes under editorial purview. What you may get is a request from the copyeditors to change the spelling to conform to journal standards. Some will even change them for you in proof and just ask you to approve them.

@WillieWong: I do make comments on spelling and grammar issues, if they appear to be significant enough to affect the quality of the paper, or runs significantly afoul of the journal guidelines. It's not a rejection criteria unless it's so atrocious that I spend more time trying to figure out what they're trying to say than evaluating the quality of the comments they make.

I also do comment on clearly incorrect spelling. But would you actually comment on 'color' versus 'colour', 'practice' versus 'practise', or 'connexion' versus 'connection'? For a fairly fluent English speaker, none of those should make it any harder to figure out what the author is saying. (Also, I only read the author guidelines for information on house styles when I am preparing a manuscript. I would never bother checking what the house styles are when refereeing, unless specifically asked to do so.)

I would make a catch-all comment: "Please use British (American) spellings," and cite an example or two.

fair enough. You are the counterexample to my anecdotal evidence then :-).

"Almost no referees will tell you to change spellings."  This is false.  I even had a referee who believed British English was incorrect, when submitted to a British Journal.  "The spelling issue comes under editorial purview. "  This is correct.

A lot of US spellings have come to become accepted internationally - at best, some of the reviewers might point out the words which they don't feel are spelled correctly in their review. But, I strongly believe it would not affect the chances for your paper's acceptance in the least - its the content/idea that matters most in journals.

Read your journal's guide for authors. That will usually tell you.
Anything that makes the paper look unlike the papers in recent issues, will hinder acceptance. It may be blatant, it may be subtle, but it's there.  Dialect of English is one of those things that may or may not matter. Skim through three or four recent issues: are there a mix of US English and UK English articles in there?
That's only a small part of the consistency-checking you should be doing before submission. Indeed, it's part of the checks you should be doing before you sit down to write. Along with: what sort of breakdown of sections do your target journal's papers have, typically? Do article titles include a colon (always, usually, rarely, never)? How many paragraphs per section, words per section, how any words in the title, and so on.
Editors are usually very very busy. Anything you can do to make their life easier, will help your article get published.

As long as you get your meaning across efficiently, it won't matter.
We 'Brits' (as the previous contributor so brashly refers to us) are a cosmopolitan lot and we are well used to reading materials in US spelling.
Why do people use the word 'Brit' anyway? It's derogatory and offensive.

Practice between publishers (and indeed, between individual journals put out by the same publisher) would be different. It is best to consult the Author Guidlines for the journal you will be submitting to. Occasionally there will also be certain idiosyncrasies that do not agree with the dictionary included in Microsoft Word.
For example, take a look at the publishing guidelines for Institute of Physics which is based in London. It stipulates that

ize endings should be used instead of ise endings. (I know a lot of spell checking software will tell you that 'colourise' is perfectly fine British English, so be careful there!)
British spelling is compulsory ... with the exception of a list of journals where both American and British spellings may be used. (So if you submit to one of the journals in the list of exceptions, you should just aim to be internally consistent with your choice of spelling.)

For the most part: if there is anything specifically listed in the author guidelines, make sure to follow them. For everything else, especially since "British English" is a bit of a moving target (as evidenced by the second link you provided in the question), that's what copy-editors are for. (And unless you have a very good reason, don't fight with them. House style almost always trump your personal preferences.)

It will matter. The brits will think you are misspelling if you don’t do it their way.
I use this to help me get it right.  I would look at the “don’ts section”. I think it applies.
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/lawre035/SocSci/Writing%20Journal%20Entries.pdf
Then again you can just browse through the many online dictionaries.  My favorite one is thefreedictionary.  It has so many ways to choose.
http://cognitiveanomalies.com/my-quest-for-the-best-online-dictionary/
Good luck