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What is expected in my academic CV as a new PhD student?
I just started my PhD a few months back after completing a MSc. I've been asked for a CV but I don't know what to put in it, and various templates are hard to use because:

I don't have any papers nor have I reviewed anything
I haven't been to any conferences
I haven't received any competitive awards or research grants
I haven't been on academic visits

In other words, I'm in the early stages of my academic career, I've done well enough to get where I am, but I haven't yet done anything that I can drop into a standard format academic CV (except for my education).
How can I write my academic CV when a standard format for those with a more advanced career looks, well, skeletal?
What would be expected on an academic CV for someone just starting a PhD? Is literally just handful of lines acceptable?

Mine only had an "Education" section, listing the degrees I held and for each, the thesis title and who my supervisor was. IIRC I also included the one summer research internship I did in my first MSc year. I padded it a bit by adding a "skills" section listing the programming languages I mainly use and which foreign languages I speak. That fills one page quite nicely with an airy template.

Who is the CV for?

If you're a new PhD student, why would you need a CV? You already have a position.

@padawan I can see many reasons to have a CV, even if you're a new PhD student. 1) To store in one place all the significant information about yourself (=memory helper). 2) To have one in hand when you'll be asked one (it's not a question of if, but of when). 3) To set-up a basis that will be easy to update for when you'll be require to give one for a job application. 4) To populate your website, if you have one. 5) To give minimal information to anyone reaching you (for a review, for instance) if this one is public / on-line. 6) To have your mail address copy-and-pastable 7) …

@padawan I can assure you, I have been asked for it already, in fact twice. Once for a scholarship application and once for an academic visit (bureaucracy so I can have a desk to work at)

to the close voters - I've removed some of the things specific to me to make it more generic, but I'm still not sure I understand why you're voting to close. Surely I'm not the first PhD student faced with the request "just send me your CV" when you don't have one already?

@Clément Then the question should be "what should be in an academic CV?" instead of a new PhD student's CV. Which has the answer depends on different fields.

@padawan I'm not sure I understand the connection between what you wrote and my comment. But there's a difference between "what should be in an academic CV?" and the question OP asked: he doesn't have any of the "usual" material one put in a academic CV. So his question is about "making up information", filling the blanks. And that's a particular question that isn't answered generically by "What goes in a CV".

First, here's a useful guide as to the order and contents of an academic CV.
For someone new to doctoral study:
I would say start with education and list both your current program and your previous one - include GPA from the previous program if above, say, a 3.0.
You can be pretty liberal in terms of what you include under awards - any merit based grants or fellowships you were awarded in this program, any merit based awards you got in undergrad (you can remove the undergrad ones once you're further along, but for now you can leave them in).  Don't include need-based awards unless there was a merit component.
You can include any research experience you had in undergrad - you might remove this later - but for now I would put this in - research internships, working in a lab, that sort of thing.
You can include professional skills if they are a requirement for your field - like being familiar with a statistics package or other software that folks need to know.  You'll probably remove these later, but for now this would be good since professors looking for a TA or research assistant will look at your CV and want to know that you know how to do what they will need you to do.
Languages - if you know a language other than the one expected for your program, include this here.
And then professional affiliations - I would join an organization or two in your field and then list your membership on there.  Maybe talk to a professor and ask for a suggestion as to what they would recommend joining.
It also really is okay if you have a short CV when you're just starting a doctorate.  They obviously chose you based on your aptitude for the program, but most people come in with fairly short CVs, and that's totally expected.

Write your CV as-if you hadn't started your PhD. As such, list the educational institutes you've attended, e.g.,

2015 -- 2017 Distinction, Master of science, University II
2010 -- 2015 Grade, Bachelor of science, University I
2002 -- 2010 High School qualification, School

And list what subjects you studied underneath at least the first two. (It's  probably no longer relevant what you studied at school.)
Mention your current position too. E.g.,

2017 -- present Doctor of philosophy, University III

And give a compressed summary of your research objectives underneath. (It should appear above the other institutes.)

what about online courses?

I'd only include substantial online courses. I'd also include any course that resulted in a qualification. In general, to determine what should be included, consider what the reader wants to know. I don't think readers are particularly interested in a minor online course, they are interested in major online courses and any qualifications obtained from such courses. Similarly, the reader isn't interested that you read a textbook, they are interested if you studied a substantial body of the textbooks on a particular topic (especially if you published,formally or informally,a review on the topic)

Something liek coursera, EdX, Linda and similar?

@SSimon I've never heard of any of them. Presumably you can make a judgement on the basis of my previous comment.


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Are good writers are good theoreticans?
I am Ph.D student works in theoretical computer science (algebra). I will be graduating next year. I have been able to publish 2 paper currently writing a paper. Idea's are comming into my mind these days, and also I start writing as soon as possible. I try to write the things as early as possible. The problem from which I am suffering most is "writing skill", as the feedback I have from my collegue I have good idea's but writing is not that much good even after two months of writing ( I have written many drafts). Note that in those two months in which I were writing the draft of the paper, I was also working on some other problems.
I know that my writing is not great, but I have heard that good writers are good theoreticians. I may have very good idea but I may not be that much good writer and due to this thing I may not be much successful, Please help
Question : Are good writers are good theoreticians?

I just can’t see correlation much less causation here...

I see no reason to believe that good writers are good theoreticians, or the other way around. But it is probably true that most successful good theoreticians are also good writers because writing well is necessary to ensure that others want to read your publications.

Every university I know of has a writing center. Have you tried to use their services?

There's probably a relationship between clear thinking and clear writing (mostly in that direction), but clear writing can still be dry and dull, and clear thinking doesn't necessarily produce original insights.

I can't opine on whether this is true, but I am wondering where you heard it.

Since you started studying computer science, has anyone spent significant time teaching you how to write? Of your whole time learning, what proportion was spent learning computer science, and what proportion spent learning writing skills?
If your answers to these questions are what I expect them to be, then you need to put time into learning to write. It is a skill, not a gift. It can be taught, and it can be learnt. (I should know. I spent five years studying pure mathematics at undergraduate and postgraduate level without ever writing more than about three consecutive words. When I first attempted to enter my chosen profession, which required a written examination, I failed.) I subsequently put a lot of effort into learning how to write. People in my profession, which is very much based on use of words, tell me that my writing is very good.
For me, the career enhancing book was Barbara Minto's "The Pyramid Principle" that makes the case that clarity of thought leads to clarity of thinking. The logical approach she takes appealed to me as a mathematician, and maybe that might appeal to you as a computer scientist. But there are lots of books.
I suggest it is not helpful to comfort yourself with such thoughts as 'good theoreticians are never good writers, and vice versa'. If you are bright enough to be good at computer science then you are bright enough to learn how to be a competent writer.

Not necessarily.
Case in point: JK Rowling is a world-renowned writer, but I don't know anyone who has called her a good theoretician.

This is called being too literal-minded.

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Should I invest more time on old problems or new problems?
I am PhD works in theory of computational maths. I am currently after my mid stage. I have written and submitted two papers ( one paper per year) and currently working on one and these days I am full of ideas, but the problem is to publish a high quality research. Please note that I don't work in a team due lack of people which I am the only who is working most of the time. Here are few questions

If the submitted paper gets rejected, should I work on them more or should just publish them in some low tier journal? Now I am more mature to picking new research problem which seems to me more significant then previous one, so to me it appears that I should invest more time in new problems
If I publish ( low tier) the submitted paper with one more than I can claim my PhD, but that work seems to me less significant. So I will get my PhD early but less quality research. I am not even sure with a longer PhD I will be surely able to publish in top conferences.

The one more problem is I have now problems as well as ideas but energy is low and also workforce is not there. What to do?

If you say you don't work in a team, then what workforce are you referring to?

@ Solar Mike I mean to say that I am only in the workforce there is no one.

My Bayesian advice is to go with the lower prestige journals and move on. Quantity has a quality of its own.  Plus you learn more as you go on.  Don't get snarled up in reviewer, editor debates.  Keep publishing, keep producing.  The quality will come.
BUT also, I would work on your clarity in written communication (using this question as evidence).  That often holds back a borderline paper or allows one to move through.

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Advice on writing a research paper in a less time
I am a PhD student works in theory of computer science. I am worried about the timing, I have taken in writing a one paper.In last semester, I have few ideas, I told those idea to my supervisor then he suggested me to write the paper. I have spent almost six months on writing this paper which involves correcting the solutions, idea's etc multiple times. In short I have spent one year on a problem( including identification and solving ). I am worried about the time it take to write a paper. I am wondering, Is it possible to write a research paper in a less time or it comes with experience. Please suggest some idea in order to save the time in the writing phase. I have asked my supervisor about this, he told me to be organised and plan the things in a better way. He also suggested me to write the things in flow means whenever start writing a paper write a page at one time.
I have tried few things on my own, whenever I write I keep a top researcher's paper infront of me and see how they phrase the sentence's.
Note that this was my first time, when i have written a paper completely.
Question : Advice on writing a research paper in a less time

Hmmm. You have just learned to swim and are wondering why you aren't swimming like an Olympic athlete yet. Relax. Practice. OTOH, some things just take time - especially the research behind the paper.

Are you talking about the time to write the paper or the time to get the research results you want to put in the paper? How long did it take you after the one year identification and solving to actually write the paper?

I think this question is highly dependent on your personal writing and working style. I can give some suggestions, but some of them will not be a good fit for some people, and I may not list many suggestions that work well for others simply because they do not work for me (or have not occured to me).

You may not need to write one paper faster if you can work on multiple papers concurrently. If you start four projects and it takes you a year to write a paper for each project, then you are releasing a paper on average every three months even if in practice all four papers took a year. This works especially well when you have coauthors since there can be a lot of time spent waiting for feedback or work to be done by others, which you can spend working on another paper.
One of the smartest and most prolific people I know has been rumored to tell his graduate students "just write it". I take this to mean "get a rough draft on paper quickly even if it is an ugly rough draft." Even if you have a lot of editing to do, things will become easier going from a draft rather than a blank page.
Time off can be just as important as time on. The mind is a truly remarkable thing, and in my experience, it works on a multitude of problems subconsciously. After I write an outline or a rough draft of a section or a paper, I don't try to edit and polish it immediately. Instead, it can be better to set the project down for a few weeks and work on other things or get caught up in your every day life. If one returns to a paper with fresh eyes, they are going to do a lot more quality work in less time than if they try to think, write, and edit all in a short time span.
Find a place to work that works for you. Everyone is different here. Some people need absolute silence to the point where they wear earplugs in a quiet space. Personally, I thrive in relatively loud, chaotic places such as busy coffee shops. I can get into the groove much easier there than say a library or my office, so I use this when I am trying to write.

These are the only tips I can think of right now. If I think of any other tips, I may add to this list later.

This may or may not be helpful, but I apply #2 as my software development technique and it's super effective. Can well imagine it would work for writing prose.

I think  there is a strategy here:

Please suggest some idea in order to save the time in the writing
  phase. I have asked my supervisor about this, he told me to be
  organised and plan the things in a better way. He also suggested me to
  write the things in flow means whenever start writing a paper write a
  page at one time.

Don't divide  the project  into a "do the work" phase and a "writing phase". While you are solving your  problem, write about it a little bit every day. That will both clarify the work and provide a draft of the final paper.
Consider  looking at the book Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day. It discusses that writing strategy and others and  may help you figure out what works best for you.
(I know I'm not supposed to use this forum to advertise my wife's book, and this answer may be deleted by the moderators, but the book is inexpensive and it might be just what you need so I will take the chance.)

Plus, it is a good book with solid advice, so on topic.

Use your inbuilt and forgotten ability to explain your topic
Most of us find it very easy to tell our colleagues about our work, if it is in an informal short-notice environment. Bump into someone getting coffee, and if they say,
"What are you up to?", and you will likely instantly respond with, "Oh, you know that X happens? Well, we've found out why. It's because Y!".
If they enquire, "What makes you so sure?", you will say, "We got some Z, and did A, B and C, and found D. This means E. So then we did ... etc."
Typically they will say, "OK I suppose I believe it, but couldn't it still be P or Q?" And you would reply, "Yes, but P isn't likely because ..., and Q probably contributes only in a small way because of ...".
I am a Professor of Cardiology, so this is how it goes in Medicine, but it is likely to be similar in all academic writing.
Somehow, though, when we come to writing it down we are paralysed
Beat this paralysis by actually doing the interaction described above. Or even just imagining it. That's the main thrust of the paper. Once you have that in your head, set about the paper like this:
1. Write the Abstract first
In fact write the last line of the Abstract's Conclusion first
In situation W, X is largely caused by Y. Then precede this with whatever else your paper concludes.
Then write the Abstract's Intro
X, commonly found in W, is important because .... Its cause has been unclear. In this study we tested whether X is caused by Y, Y2, Y3 ..., using ....methods.
Then write the rest of the Abstract
All the key methods and results. Within the word limit (e.g. 250 words total for Abstract). You will come up with lots of stuff that doesn't fit. Don't worry: push them down to the end of the document because they will go into the main Results section.
2. Write the Results, and any associated Figures/Tables, next
Go through the Abstract's Results, and each statement you wrote there, write in fuller detail here, bringing in all the things that you didn't have space for.
3. Now write the Intro/Background of the paper
Only start writing it now, not before, otherwise you will fill it with general stuff about your topic. If you only write it now, you will focus it much better on "Why we are bothering to do this research." You don't have to review the whole topic. Only talk about the problems that you will solve in this paper.
4. Now write the Discussion of the paper
Keep it short. It won't end up short, but if you always try to keep it short, you will help prevent bloat.
In this study we found 1, 2, 3.
Then a section on finding 1. If you differ from other workers in your results, speculate on why. Ditto for 2 and 3.
Then discuss any implications for practical use.
Next, the Study Limitations section of the Discussion
What would people (puny ignorant fools!) immediately think was wrong with your reasoning? Put those ideas here, and then say why those doubts are unfounded. Then include any genuine weaknesses you can think of.
Finally, the Discussion's Conclusion
Reiterate the Abstract's conclusion, perhaps allowing yourself more words. In the Abstract, your conclusion had to seem like a valid conclusion from the information you presented in the Abstract itself. In the Discussion Conclusion, you can now draw upon all the results and all the reasoning in the Discussion, so you might be able to be more specific.
Congratulations!
You now have your first draft.
Refine
Find someone who has 10 minutes to spare. I suggest reading out the paper to them, watching their expression on their face. When they look puzzled, make a note on the paper. Do not give an on-the-spot explanation. You won't be there to do that when Reviewers or ultimate Readers of the paper are going through this experience.
If they become totally confused and disinterested at any stage, abandon the reading at that point. Otherwise continue reading to the bitter end.
Now go away and edit the paper to avoid that person being puzzled at those points.
Come back and try on the same person or different people. You need to (start with!) a lot of friends. Don't worry, you can do the same favour for them in return.
When you have got the paper to a stage which allows it to be read without causing bemusement/crying on behalf of the listener, try giving it on paper to people. Again, don't ask them to send written comments back. Watch them while they read it.
Check their understanding by taking the paper away from them and asking them to describe what it said. Don't give them hints.
Success
Once people seem to be able to read it and understand it, you are done! Time to submit, and let the Journal's Reviewers read it and send their thoughts.

In addition to the other advice offered, as far as organization, your advisor may have been talking about creating an annotated bibliography and outlining.
For each of your sources and studies, list the citation reference at the top, a 1-2 sentence evaluation of whether the source is valuable or not and why, then, list all the quotes which you found relevant. (Quotes are not required, but they make copying, pasting, and citing source information very easy.)
From that, (after you have created your general idea for a thesis) you can create an outline based on your evidence and fill in opening, closing, and evaluative sentences around each of your findings/points/evidence.

First, check how your fellow phd students are performing. Writing one paper per year is likely a decent pace. Second, don't work in isolation, share intermediate results. With your supervisor obviously, but also to people you work with or could potentially work with. Not everyone will give you feedback immediately, but research drafts don't go straight to the bin either. Third, you need to come up with some deadline, when you should send your paper for publication. If you're not sure how to do this yourself, your supervisor will help you, just let them know that you have something that you want to publish.


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What is the point of listing 1000 authors for a single scientific paper?
I arrived at the printer room this afternoon to collect my printing and I happened to notice that someone was yet to collect a printout of the gravitational waves paper that has been all over the scientific news the last few days/weeks. Of course, I was curious, so I had a peek.
It struck me that there was only one author... until I saw the asterisk indicating a full list of authors could be found at the end of the article.
There I found three full pages of authors. I have no intention of counting the exact number, but a quick estimate by word count suggests there are over 1000 authors from 133 institutions.
You always need to give credit where credit is due, that is a given. But to put it in context, there are at most 7 words of article per author. In fact, I can think of a number of problems coming from so many authors (like who do you contact if you have a question - the list is alphabetical and there doesn't appear to be a designated contact person).
What is the value of listing so many authors and why should (or shouldn't) it happen?
Update:
Thanks everyone for the thoughtful answers. As much as I want to choose an answer, I honestly cannot decide between the two most upvoted, so I'm going to abstain from choosing one.

Usually PRL requires the manuscript to identify a "corresponding author."  That is who you contact.  Large collaborations have a spokesperson (or several) who is responsible for handling enquiries.

Maybe a better question: which author(s) would you remove, and why? My point being, the collaboration decided each of these people made enough of a contribution to be on the author list. The collaboration did the work, so it should be their decision as to who's "in".

It may be 7 words/person on average but consider the amount of work that people have put in one way or another. Also what co-authoring means varies across fields. There are some questions here that explored that subject.

Maybe adding someone’s name to a paper is a lot cheaper than paying for 3 years of computer programming…..

@Ian: Exactly.  I've been listed as a co-author on papers that I never saw until they were finished, because I did important parts of the work.  And others where my only contribution to the writing was to proofread the result.

"a quick estimate by word count suggests there are over 1000 authors from 133 institutions" Teach me your "word counting" ways!

I copy-pasted the author list into word, and for reasons unknown to me it put each author over two lines (at least for the pages I checked). Then, 27 authors on each of 38 pages makes 1026 :)

If this bothers you, then consider the Nobel Prize, which can only be awarded to at most 3 people, regardless of how many people collaborated on the discovery in question.

@MaxWilliams The Nobel Prize is a different form of credit than authorship in physics.  It goes to the people who really were the driving force behind the project from beginning to end, the P.I.s or equivalent.  In this case, I believe it will go to: Ray Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Ron Drever.

I understand that it's not the same as authorship:  my point (which possibly wasn't very clear) was that it can often be a fairly arbitrary decision which avoids giving credit to many people who deserve it, in some cases who deserve it as much as the people who actually get the award.  Choosing one person as the "driving force" behind a discovery which involved thousands of scientists is inherently unfair, or at least at risk of being unfair.  I guess that was my point.

Don't count the words per author, but the citations per author. :) This paper will probably receive more citations than hundreds of other papers combined in the same field, so the per capita distribution is similar.

You seem to think the ultimate product of research is the paper.

Should change my last name to Aardvarkerson.

@NickT, the ATLAS experiment at CERN already has Georges Aad, so that still wouldn't get you to the front of the list.

It really would be best if you picked an answer to accept, otherwise this question will appear as "unresolved" for the rest of time.

Only three pages of authors? ;) I found a 10 page paper where the date appeared on page 5.

The "point" of 1000 authors is to recognize that 1000 people contributed to the paper at a level sufficient to be considered authors, according to the standards of that particular field.
In some fields (including high-energy physics), large numbers of authors are not unusual. See e.g. the 2015 paper estimating the mass of the Higgs boson with 5,154 authors. This kind of research often involves very large teams spanning multiple institutions. Typically papers published as a result of a collaboration are credited to all members of the team.
For more information see Report by the Working Group on Authorship in Large Scientific Collaborations in Experimental High Energy Physics.

Exactly. LIGO was founded in 1992, and its operation requires compensate for geological distortions, weather... and also careful calibrations, signal processing, theoretical modelling of the events, design of the suspended mirrors, very stable lasers, reliable CCDs... The moment you have a few people working on each topic for such a long period of time, you hit the thousands easily.

@Davidmh Of course, each of those aspects of experimental design is worth several papers in its own right, and clearly the high-level paper can never hope to describe experimental design in sufficient detail necessary to reproduce.  So it would be quite possible for a couple of thousand authors to write a couple of hundred papers together, which are then all cited in the high level paper.  That's not the approach in fundamental physics, but it could be.

It is also maybe relevant to mention that not all the authors contribute with actual text in the article. Many of them are doing measurements, building/designing equipment, analyzing data etc. So there is maybe just a handful of people, maybe even just one, that actually writes the paper.

It makes sense that the kinds of questions that stump the brightest minds for nearly century take teams of 1,000s of people to solve.

Also, "building/designing equipment" in HEP is a HUGE endeavor.

It's a high-profile example for something that various people on this Stack Exchange have been preaching for a a long time - authorship norms differ from field to field. This is essentially just a specific case of the Academia.SE mantra of "academia varies more than you think it does".
Your interpretation of "author" seems to be mostly in the strict word sense, as in "a person that co-wrote the paper". This is indeed the norm in many fields, but as you say, in high-energy physics, authorship really has little to do with "authoring the manuscript", and is more related to "involvement with the research that led to the paper". I would speculate that in an research attempt such as the LIGO one, the effort of writing the actual paper seems miniscule in contrast to the work that went into the research, so the question whether somebody contributed words to the manuscript or not will not seem like a particularly relevant one for acknowledging hers or his contribution.
Note that high-energy physics is not the only field with authorship norms that may seem strange to outsiders. In many experimental fields, the lab head / PI is customary the last author on any paper from her/his lab, whether (s)he is involved with the work or not. In some fields, authors are ordered by perceived contribution, in others more or less by seniority, while others don't order at all or do so alphabetically.

why should (or shouldn't) it happen?

The important thing to keep in mind is that it is after all just a norm. Having a long list of co-authors with one or a few designated PIs, project leaders, or contact authors really is not different in practice than having a short list of authors and a long section "Contributions by: A, B, C", as long as everybody has the same understanding. Coming from the outside and telling the physicists that they "are doing it wrong" because their notion of co-authorship isn't the same as in your field seems misguided to me. If it's working for them, let them continue doing it like that.

Looks like they did all sign off on the MS, at least in some capacity: "Then came writing the paper. This involved getting 1,000 researchers to agree on every detail, and took some 5,000 e-mails, says LIGO’s chief detector scientist..." http://www.nature.com/news/gravitational-waves-how-ligo-forged-the-path-to-victory-1.19382

@Andrew My experience has been the same: I sent email to an awful lot of people and teams and got an awful lot of emails back.

@Andrew Physicist friends told me similar stories, but I guess there is still a difference between 1000 people agreeing with something and/or suggesting small textual improvements and 1000 people actually writing something together, as indicated by the OP's 7 words/person on average.

"In an research attempt such as the LIGO one, the effort of writing the actual paper seems miniscule in contrast to the work that went into the research"  That is exactly right.

I believe the previous record-holder for most authors on a paper, before CERN, was the Human Genome Project. Another big long - term project, in a different field.

It may be important to differentiate between the academics and the technicians as well. The academic folk work on the research with the hope that their name will be on the paper (i.e. - not for profit). The technicians work on the project as their job (they're paid). So, presumably, the ~1000 authors all worked on the project expecting their work would be recompensed with recognition in this way since they weren't monetarily compensated.

I am fully aware that "authorship norms differ from field to field", however I am not aware of any field where authors would only be the people who "co-wrote the paper" as opposed to who was "involve[d] with the research that led to the paper". There are fields where collaborations of 1000 people simply never arise; e.g. pure math. But are there fields where people who were crucially involved in collecting experimental data or building experimental apparatus are not included in the author list? If not, then I don't see how it's relevant that authorship norms differ between fields.

"acknowledging hers or his contribution" -> "acknowledging her or his contribution"

Another article on the publication process, which is quite an interesting read: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/24/how-ligo-and-physical-review-letters-worked-together-publish-paper-lifetime

In addition to @ff524's good answer, I can speak to this from personal experience.  I have a paper coming out shortly on which I have more than 600 co-authors.  The reason that there are so many is because of the nature of the experiment that we conducted---in this case, determining the reproducibility of some critical measurements of cellular behavior.
As such, there were essentially three tiers of authors:

The key organizers who did the bulk of the work running the study and analyzing the data
Secondary contributors to the study organization, execution, and analysis
People from more than 100 teams around the world who actually gathered all of the data

The first two tiers of authors are typical of any paper; for the third tier, in the customs of biology publications, it would generally be quite inappropriate to exclude any person who actually gathered experimental data for a paper.  Thus, we have an enormous number of authors on the paper.  Many modern scientific experiments have similar scope, in which the contributions of hundreds or thousands of people are required by the simple scale of the project.
Critically, however, if you read the "Author Contributions" section of the paper, which more and more journals are including now, it will tell you these facts about who contributed what.  There is some ongoing advocacy for such explanations of contributions eventually simply replacing author lists, since author lists are not very explanatory, essentially giving movie credits for scientific papers.  Personally, I think that such an idea is a very good direction to go, though I think that making the transition will not be fast or simple.

"Personally, I think that such an idea is a very good direction to go, though I think that making the transition will not be fast or simple." Nor painless. I suspect many senior people will have a miserable time fairly assessing their actual contributions to some papers carrying their name :D

Many modern scientific experiments have similar scope, in which the contributions of hundreds or thousands of people are required by the simple scale of the project. - Indeed. One of my professors was involved in a research using GPU to sequence DNA, with several teams all over the globe.

@xLeitix Actually, I think it there is are quite straightforward imports from movies, such as "producer" and "director," that would describe the roles of many senior people very well.  "Producer" is an important and valuable role, and the current system often pushes people in this type of role to pretend they have a more technical role, rather than honestly acknowledging the value of finance and management.

@jakebeal I agree, but quite some cultural change needs to happen before this will become a reality.

The metadata challenge to citation management in a more-robust, role-aware authorship/attribution system is likely tremendous.

@jakebeal: "Producer" is an important and valuable role, and the current system ... rather than honestly acknowledging the value of finance and management. Well, one could say that such acknowledgements best belong to the Acknowledgements section. As a matter of fact, many funding agencies are quite explicit about "finance" and "management" not justifying scientific authorship.

As a member of the LIGO collaboration I will say that I am proud to be an author on this paper.  Everyone on the author list contributed significantly to the incredibly difficult task of building an instrument capable of detecting length fluctuations at the level of 10-19 meters.
You mention 7 words per author, but you are forgetting about the 100's of other papers put out by our collaboration.  Among them are some of the biggest advances in the science of precision measurement in the last few decades (understanding and demonstrating squeezed quantum states is probably the biggest).  All of our big achievements took large teams of people working for many years, and all of those people deserve to be recognized.

Do you see the 100s of other papers as major parts of the recent one? I'm curious where/how you draw the line between contributing to previously published work and and contributing the recent LIGO paper. (Thanks so much for your work and answering the question!)

@Ric We have a few strict rules about what type of papers need to have the full author list which were voted on by voting members of the collaboration and are amended from time to time.  The biggest one is that any analysis which uses a significant amount of the dark port signal (where the GWs show up) must have the full author list.

@Ric As for the 100's of other papers being part of the recent one, I'll say this:  Any team trying to replicate what we accomplished from scratch would need to understand most of what is in those other papers.

@ChrisMueller Firstly I apologise if my question was a bit discourteous - I didn't mean to diminish anyone's contribution - but I've never seen an author this quite like it (until I saw the links in ff524's answer). Secondly, I'd be very interested to know how on earth you managed coordinate that many people! When talking about groups of scientists I've come across the phrase "herding cats". I think I'll follow this up with another question.

@Phil I didn't take any offense from your question; I would have wondered the same thing if I hadn't been part of a large collaboration. Management in LIGO can be a bit chaotic at times because, as you suggest, it is like herding cats.  The most important part of organization almost happens naturally though; the huge goal is broken down into manageable (and interesting in their own right) goals, and then a group or individual interested in the smaller goal steps forward and runs with it.

In my field, when there are large collaborations that produce many papers, each researcher would expect to be an author only on those few papers for which they took a leading role. It is true that none of the papers would have been possible without the work of every team member, but that doesn't mean that every team member should be an author on every paper. Rather, we do our best to make sure that every member has a chance to be an author of a paper focusing on their particular part, if possible.

There's books, and there's movies.  A book can be written by one guy in complete isolation.  A movie--even if it's just a movie based on a book that one guy wrote--generally requires the collaboration of hundreds.
There are some things in academia that are really just worked out by one person, and some things that take large scale collaboration.  In each case, an honest attempt should be made to give credit where credit is due.

This paper is unusually important and comes from an unusual project.  Wikipedia reports LIGO is the largest and most ambitious project ever funded by the NSF (see references there).
Seeking the Higgs particle at CERN, for example, allowed many side experiments finding other kinds of results.  The LIGO project really had just one goal since 1992.  Chris Mueller mentions many papers on progress in designing instruments, and that is true,  but they were not exactly partial results.  The desired result was to observe gravity waves,and that took over 30 years to do.
So when the thrilling result did come in, it is natural they wanted to credit a lot of people who had invested time and effort in a project which many skeptics had doubted would find anything.

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I accidentally had a reference request sent to a professor without having asked him first. Can I still ask him to recommend me?
I am an undergraduate studying engineering in the USA.
I took classes with a professor, 3 undergraduate, and got A in all of them.   I applied for graduate studies last Summer for September admission and used him as a reference for 3 schools and was admitted to one of them.  Unfortunately, the one I was admitted to lost the funding for my attendance due to the pandemic and I could not attend.
I would like to apply again this year as the pandemic situation has stabilized.   I applied to a program, which I did not complete the application for and they sent reference requests anyways due to computer error and he denied it.  I did not get a chance to email him about it beforehand.
Do you have any advice on how to ask, explain, write an email or how to handle this situation?  Should I ask another professor?  I did not take 3 courses with any other professor however.
I did take 3 courses with him so he is very familiar with my work.  But I do not not want to seem unprofessional here.

Ask him again.  Remember that writing the first reference letter is complicated and time consuming.  Writing the second is much easier and takes minimal time.
Thus, unless the person needs to start all over again because your circumstances have changed a lot, it generates less work overall to ask him again than to ask someone to do an entirely new one.

Sorry, I added some more information that I did not before.  My apologies for bad cut and paste.

@user4434 my comment stands.  Ask him again.

Yes, ask him again.

Shouldn't I apologize first ?  I mean he declined the last request.

You should clarify the situation yes.  He may not agree but still he’s the person you should ask first.

Okay, apology email first, then I will ask for a reference in another email.  How's that ?

could be the same email but you do it the way you are the most comfortable with.

You should ask him again. There is nothing but upside here:

if he agrees, then that's great
if he doesn't agree, then no matter, things will continue largely as they are now.

Do you have any advice on how to ask, explain, write an email or how to handle this situation?

Concisely and clearly. No need to grovel. Just tell him the three things: (1) you are aware that he received a recommendation request for you "out of the blue", but this was a technical error, you had not intended for this request to be sent without explanation, (2) but indeed, your funding fell through and so you need to reapply to graduate school, and so (3) you are writing to ask if he would be willing to provide you a letter of recommendation once again.
I recommend doing this in one e-mail; this will simplify things. Actually, if you can do this in person, that's even better....but you don't want to get into a strange situation where you're trying to schedule an appointment without disclosing why, even though you both know why...so, if there's no natural way to do this, you're probably better off with e-mail.


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Including a future conference presentation in graduate school applications?
I am a physics student currently applying to PhD programs, having had two years of full time post-bac research since graduating undergrad. Unfortunately, by the time most of my applications were due I had not produced a publication, although one was in preparation. Recently however I had an abstract accepted for a large conference in my field, so I will be giving a presentation at that conference in a few months.
Most graduate school applications ask for any publications or presentations having to do with your research. I have two questions:

Would it be appropriate to include this presentation given that it has not happened yet? The review process for these applications will likely be over by the time of the conference, so waiting until then to include it isn’t really and option.
Would it be worthwhile to email the director of graduate studies at institutions where I have already submitted my applications and ask them to update my application portfolio with this new information?

I know that research factors heavily into admissions decisions, and while I focus quite a bit on my experience in my application already, it might be good/important to also show some deliverables from 1.5ish years of research. I also don’t want to commit a faux pas by including things that perhaps shouldn’t be. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

If it has been accepted then yes, include it, but mark it somehow (... abstract to be presented at ...). If it has been submitted, but not yet accepted, then you can include it under the heading of "work in progress".
But there is no reason not to include such things. As you say, deliverables are important. But so is showing some continuity in your research trajectory.

What are you thoughts on retroactively including it by contacting admissions committees?

It probably isn't essential. If it is, you have deeper problems. But you can bring it up in any interview or further correspondence.

Ok, I probably won’t then. I felt the weakest part of my research history was the lack of deliverables, and I lean somewhat heavily on my experience in the statements of purpose. However, you are right that it’s something to bring up later. I don’t think it’s exclusion will be the deciding factor on whether I get interviews, for example.

You’re applying for a graduate program in physics.  Not that many applicants have publications as undergraduates.  I would think your resume is enough.


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Stay at university for summer or apply for other research programs?
I am currently a 3rd year undergrad who assists with research at my current university. I have been working on a project since September 2019, and the PI says it is possible to get a publication with further work (though I know the project is still relatively new now). Should I assist with research in this lab for the summer, or apply to other programs like REUs?
I received the opportunity to attend a REU last summer but chose an internship instead. For reference, I am hoping to attend a medical school in the future - I hope it's ok for me to post on this academia stack exchange since it is research-related. Thank you for reading!

What do you think you would gain by doing work in another lab over the summer? Not trying to sound accusatory, curious

Think about what you want for a career. Don't try to nail it down too firmly yet, but think about the options. Do you want an academic career? If so, you will want a research doctorate at some point (beyond a medical doctorate, perhaps). In that case, having a publication and some research done early will be a boost. Your current situation is more likely to result in a publication than a short term REU, I think. Also, if your relationship with the PI is a good one, it is less risky to stay where you are.
But if medicine is you real goal then research publications are probably less important and getting a broad outlook will probably serve you well.
The trade off is specialization vs generalization. Having a broad view of all that is possible in the world is a good thing, but academics at some point need to specialize in quite small areas. Your call, of course.


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Should I mention the reason I changed labs so often on my C.V. and/or cover letter? (Due to lack of funding)
I have changed labs 5 times in the past 13 years as a research lab technician. Every time the reason was only because a lab ran out of funding. Unless the recruiter contacts my references, they might think it is due to a personal problem.
So should I mention that the reason was due to a lack of funding on my C.V. and/or cover letter? If so, which one(s)?  If not, why not?
These are molecular biology and biochemistry nationally-recognized labs in the U.S.

I am not in molecular biology myself, so I may miss some subject-specific details. In general, though, spending 2 - 2.5 years in each postdoc-type position is not uncommon or particularly strange. Most of the postdoc positions I ever see are advertised for 1, 2, or 3 years; and longer postdoc positions are quite uncommon. On the contrary, I believe, if someone spends 5 to 7 years in the same place, the questions may arise as to why they did not progress and move to a better post somewhere else?

If you have spent at least one year in every lab, I believe, that is fine and you do not have to explain anything (until you desperately want to do so).
If you spent less than a year in some of the labs, this may look strange and this deserves an explanation. The cover letter is the best place to address such questions.

On the other hand, spending 13 years as a post-doc would itself be something that would need explaining. Also, I'd wonder at what point you should be partly responsible for bringing in the funding yourself.

Clarification: I'm not a post-doc, I'm a lab technician.

@Melissa Sorry, I do not really now much about lab technicians. It may be the same, may be quite different. Consider asking on chemistry.SE: http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/

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What category in my C.V. should I put papers where I've contributed but was not listed as an author, nor in acknowledgments?
I performed a small set of experiments for a few published papers. The authors of these papers decided that my work was not significant enough to warrant my name on the papers. I am not mentioned in the acknowledgement section either, so my name isn't anywhere on the papers. (I left the group due to a lack of funding before they published the papers.)
I'm currently updating my CV and I'm wondering what category I should include these papers under. It should probably be separate from the "Publications" section where I am authors of those papers.
The field is in Biology and Biochemistry. Everything is done in the U.S., in a nationally-recognized lab.
Update: Thanks for all the answers and discussion. I am planning to just describe the experiments I did under "Work Experience" and add an author of the papers as a reference, in case there is a need for verification.

Did they at least acknowledge your work?

Not in the acknowledgement section. So my name isn't anywhere on the paper. I left the group before they published the paper, so they decided it's easy to leave me out. :)

Hmm... questionable ethics on their part. Anyway, my opinion is that you can't really put these papers in your CV. What you can do is probably to list your participation  to that project in a list of past research activities. How much these "undocumented" participations count in an application strongly depends on the country and on the application committee (in my country they count next to nothing).

@MassimoOrtolanomy probably worth a separate question, but I am not sure I view not acknowledging someone as unethical.

Related: Should I include a publication where I'm only acknowledged (and not one of the authors) in my CV?. (I have edited the information from comments, indicating that you were not listed in acknowledgments, into the post.)

@MassimoOrtolano I agree with @StrongBad; not every type of inconsiderate behavior under the sun can be classified as unethical. IMO the credit given in the acknowledgements section of a paper (aside from contractually required statements of funding support) is a purely discretional courtesy on the part of the authors. (A little bit like leaving a tip - hope that's not an offensive comparison.) If they don't want to acknowledge someone, that could reasonably be seen as very inconsiderate, but I would still argue it is their right.

@DanRomik There are plenty of time where acknowledgments are optional, such as the vague "helpful conversations" one often sees mentioned. However, this doesn't extend to reporting the results of experiments someone else carried out without giving any credit. That sounds clearly unethical to me, on the same level as plagiarism (say, copying part of a progress report by a student without mentioning the student). The contribution might legitimately be too small to deserve authorship, but any experiments worth mentioning in the paper deserve some credit, at least a mention in the acknowledgments.

(Of course if these experiments never made it into the final paper and didn't play any significant role in shaping the paper behind the scenes, then omitting the acknowledgment would be unkind but ethical.)

About the (non)ethics of failing to acknowledge someone who deserves to be acknowledged: Such a failure is rude, but whether it's unethical depends, in my opinion, on the status of the "victim". If I'm the victim, then I haven't really lost anything of value, so, though I might feel badly treated, I wouldn't claim it's unethical. But if the victim is a student or postdoc, with few or no publications yet, then an acknowledgement is of some value, and denying them a deserved acknowledgement is, in my opinion, unethical.

The answers below seem to cover most issues, but it is worth mentioning that you can always talk about these experiments in a separate project section on your CV, if they are large enough experiments to warrant the title of a "project." Just leave out the paper situation.

@StrongBad and Dan: Sorry for the late reply. Meanwhile, both Anonymous Mathematician and Andreas Blass have summarized pretty well my thoughts on this. Indeed, given that we don't know the whole story, a word of caution is in order.

Then how would anyone be able to verify your facts? If the claim is not verifiable then in my opinion there is no point of adding them.

@SalvadorDali I've updated my question. I think the verification can come from a reference, who was an author of the papers.

I don't think there's any good way to include these papers on your CV.
It's not conventional to list anyone else's papers on your CV, so by default everyone will assume you are one of the authors of each paper you list.  If you aren't exceptionally clear, so clear that nobody could possibly misunderstand even if they are just skimming and not reading carefully, then you could easily upset people and give the impression that you are misleadingly inflating your publication record.
I think you could probably write it clearly enough (e.g., a section called "Papers in which I am acknowledged but not an author" or something equally explicit, in a substantially different location in the CV from your own papers).  However, drawing too much attention to this unconventional choice would itself be a problem.  You want the most attention-getting part of your CV to be your own accomplishments.  If readers get distracted by something strange, then it will work against the primary purpose of the CV.
These papers would count for almost nothing on your CV anyway, so I see no purpose to including them.  In fact, including something like this could look bad, by suggested a desperation to list as much as possible, regardless of how meaningful or important it was.  The one case I can think of in which it might be a good idea is a student applying to grad school, with no publications yet but with acknowledgments in a paper or two.  Then highlighting these contributions would at least be better than saying nothing.  (But it's not worth it if you are an author on other papers.)
As I was finishing this answer, I noticed the comment that no mention is made of this contribution in the acknowledgments.  In this case, the CV is absolutely the wrong place to deal with this issue, since it doesn't give an opportunity to clarify.  Intentionally omitting someone who carried out experiments from the acknowledgments is unethical, and doing is accidentally is a serious oversight, but your CV is not a good place to accuse someone of poor ethics or sloppiness.  (Without an explanation, nobody would have any idea what to make of this section of your CV.)

Thanks for your insight. "Intentionally omitting someone who carried out experiments from the acknowledgments is unethical, and doing is accidentally is a serious oversight". These are papers from 2012-2014. What can I do about them now, if anything?

@Melissa I am not aware of any formal guidelines that suggest who should be listed in the acknolwedgements. Many funders make it a condition of the  funding, and you could have discussed this prior to doing the work/pubication, but to label it unethical seems harsh.

@Melissa sorry to sound dismissive of your concerns, but I think it'd be a waste of your time to try to do anything about this. Getting credit in the acknowledgements of a paper is not really worth anything except your own good feeling of being thanked for helping out. At most, it is like gaining a few reputation points on StackExchange. My advice is to be grateful for the experience you gained working on those experiments, and focus your energies on future projects where you can use that experience in productive ways.

@Melissa That would make a good question. If you want some more advice about what to do, can you please make another thread so we can discuss this sepearate issue there?

It reads rather strangely to have a whole paragraph suggesting that you could have a "Papers I'm acknowledged in" section, and then another paragraph saying that, actually, that'd be a pretty bad idea.

Crediting yourself for a published work for which your name appears nowhere creates a verifiability problem: how can the interested reader of your CV confirm that you did what you wrote you did?  I also think that putting this work on your CV could create an awkward dissonance between your claim that the work that you did was significant and the lack of external acknowledgement of it.
I would suggest leaving this material off of your CV entirely -- except of course to mention the lab you worked in -- and then get a letter of recommendation from your lab supervisor.  If this letter talks about your contributions to the lab, it will be much more convincing than if you mention it yourself.  If you cannot persuade the appropriate party to acknowledge your work in a letter then you have a problem, for which the only easy solution is to drop the matter and not try to get "credit" in this way.
When you stop working on an academic project but still want to get credit for it, you should have a discussion there and then.  For people who have continued to work on a project for months or years after you have dropped out of it, it is psychologically natural for them to regard you as "no longer interested".  This does not mean that it is the right thing to do for them to forget about all your past contributions, but there is a risk of that happening unless you work to counteract it.
You should also understand it from their perspective: there is a world of difference between contributing something to a project and seeing a project through to its successful completion.  To do a little bit of work on something, leave without showing any interest in the project's completion, and then insist on being credited with what you did no matter how much long, hard work the others have done in the meantime: that's not being a great team player.  Even if you leave a lab and move away halfway across the world, it would be more professional to continue to signal interest in the successful completion of the project, including volunteering to contribute to routine writing and editing tasks. Doing this will probably result in much warmer endorsements from your former supervisors.

Another point of view:  I'm a tripartite faculty and part of my duties involve consulting in statistics (I also do a small amount of chemistry research, but I'm primarily a statistician).  I help with about 100 projects a year, sometimes as little as a half hour for help with a statistical analysis to very substantial work with researchers.  In the latter case, I often get co-authorship, but not for the vast majority of these projects (I don't think I could ethically claim authorship when my contribution is relatively small).  Where does this all go?  Under consulting.  It devolves from my research expertise and is part of my job.  It would be silly to say that I can't put consulting on my CV because my contribution didn't rise to coauthorship.
How would it be verified?  The same as any technical or consulting work... it they want, they can talk to the people I assisted, or else talk with the people who paid me.

This is "I have the same problem" comment, not an answer.

To repeat myself:  I put this in my CV under Consulting.  Which can go either under teaching or research, your pick.  I DON'T have the same problem, because for me, it isn't a problem.

Okay. I mis-read your answer. My bad. But, very substantial work with researchers.aside, how would people verify "100 projects a year, sometimes as little as a half hour for help"?

For the original poster, the list of consulting work will be short (and somewhat substantial) so that the head of the research group could be contacted.  That would be the same for me, for projects where my assistance was substantial (I'd also possibly have co-authorships, named in the grant proposals, etc.) while general consulting would be verified via my supervisor ('open door' consulting is part of my workload).

@scaaahu, naive question: is there a principle that anything one lists on one's CV must be 100% verifiable? I'm not expressing an opinion by asking this, but I have a feeling even very respectable people put all sorts of things on their CVs that would be very difficult to verify, to say the least.

@DanRomik True, anyone can put anything on his/her CV. The problem, if someone else questions an item on the CV and it turns out to be false or unverifiable, the consequence could be serious. The whole CV becomes questionable.

@scaaahu the point is there is a big difference between false, and true but unverifiable. I don't see what negative consequence could come from claiming something that was true but unverifiable. At worst, the claim would be discounted or ignored, but I think I would feel comfortable making such a claim, certainly from an ethical point of view.


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Advisor's Negativity
How do you deal with the constant flow negativity from an advisor? Examples:

How worthless I am, how I am the worst student he ever had. Absolutely good for nothing.
Whatever I am doing is meaningless, trivial, or pointless.
I never did/can-do anything correct.
I just don't have the potential, and there is just no scope for growth. Maybe in some other universe, I might have excelled, but not in this one.
The fact that I chose the wrong career; instead, I should do something more simple and enjoy life for a change.
I should just quit my program.
He won't embarrass himself by writing a letter for me in the future.

What do you do when you start to believe in all of his statements, and they start to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Especially how worthless I am...

2 and 7 paraphrases, rest quotations.

How long has this negative feedback been going on? Does your course, or chosen career stimulate you? Are you still excited by it, despite your advisor's cynicism?

Do you agree with any of these? (Not a rhetorical question - if he hadn't said that and before you met him, would you have considered several of these to be a suitable description? Ignore the insults, just on the factual level)

Change your advisor as soon as possible and expose his name publicly

You find another advisor, you quit grad school entirely, or you finish grad school and then wind up leaving academia anyway. Professors are just people; some of them are terrible. You are, of course, not worthless.

Don’t walk. Run.

Are you an undergraduate or graduate student? Doctoral advisor or other, here?

Generally speaking no advisor should ever engage in negative reinforcement. It just does not work. However, before we start judging the advisor, please clarify which of these statements are the ones you inferred of felt and which ones were actually communicated by the advisor.

I can't judge whether the advisor is making a correct evaluation and being a jerk about it, or just being a jerk.
But, at a minimum, you need a different advisor. It should be someone who has some faith in you and encourages your best work. Staying where you are, under this advisor, is unlikely to result in success.
But you have to evaluate your own position and whether any of the statements have any validity. If they have some, then what can you do to improve the situation? If they have some validity, then what is the cause of it? Lack of preparation? Poor work process? Undiagnosed illness? There are lots of possibilities.
In the worst case, you may need to abandon your program, at least for a while, but no one here has the perspective to recommend that.
And, not that it helps, perhaps your advisor just doesn't belong in any advising situation. You probably have little chance of fixing that problem.

I would also go as far to say that your professor is participating in active workplace harassment and could require academic discipline. Because, here’s the thing, if he’s verbally abusing you and he’s your supervisor, there’s reason to believe that he would have acted this way towards others. There’s a huge difference between constructive criticism, “tough love”, and outright verbal abuse and harassment. I would take this conduct up with the Department Chair or somebody above that. You shouldn’t tolerate behaviour like that no matter who it comes from.

@GrayLiterature: Sure, but don't expect the department chair or similar figure to side with a PhD student or a professor, or even to care about them.

@anomaly I would not assume, but these systems are in place for a reason and can at least be pursued. It's always worth exhausting the institutional options available. It sounds like OP can gather evidence, and once evidence is in front of somebody, it becomes a lot harder to dismiss an accusation of abuse.

@GrayLiterature: Maybe, but trying to exercise those institutional options would come with a cost to both the OP and their eventual career, and my own experiences with an abusive advisor suggest that it would be a waste of time. If the OP does want to try, I hope things go better for them.

Firstly, on behalf of university academics, I'm very sorry you are being subjected to that kind of talk about your performance.  What you are describing is not constructive criticism, and it is not a good way to give feedback to a student (even if their work is actually terrible).  It sounds like your advisor is acting out of frustration, and has lost the perspective necessary to give constructive assessment and advice in the way he should.  Thus, at a minimum, you should find yourself a new advisor who can give constructive criticism on your work.  If you have trouble finding someone else to supervise you, you should speak to the Graduate Program Coordinator (and then possibly the Head of Department, if necessary) about the criticism you have been receiving, and ask to have someone else allocated to you.  Aside from any deficiency in your own work, that kind of interaction shows a deficiency in the supervisory abilities of your supervisor.
Now, while the feedback you are getting is certainly not how it should be framed, it is nonetheless indicative that your work is not of sufficient quality at the moment.  You should grit your teeth and take that feedback on board, and rationally assess its factual validity, setting aside the rude aspects of the way it was delivered.  You will need to assess whether or not you have the skills to continue your program effectively under another supervisor, or whether you need to do some bridging work first.  It would benefit you to get a second opinion on this from another academic in your area if possible, to identify any present deficiencies in your work.  I certainly disagree with the view that "there is no scope for growth" in your work --- that is essentially antithetic to the very notion that education is possible.
My advice in this situation would be to speak to your supervisor and Department Head to start the process of finding another supervisor, and see if you can get a second opinion on where you stand in your program, (e.g., are you behind, and if so, how much), the quality of your work, and how you can go about developing your skills to complete your program.  Higher-degree candidature has periodic formal performance reviews, so you will also be able to get some feedback at your next review, but you should not wait until then to act.  After considering how you are travelling, relative to requirements to complete your program, you will be able to make a decision about whether you should continue or not.
Finally, try not to let this kind of feedback negatively affect your own assessment of your own quality as a person, or shatter your confidence.  A person is not at all "worthless" or "good for nothing" merely because they are struggling ---or even totally unable--- to complete a higher-degree candidature at university.  Higher degree candidature is difficult, and it takes a lot of time and skill-development.  It is not suitable for everyone, and even for those that manage to do it, they always start off from a place of incompetence and progress gradually towards competence.  (That is the whole reason we have education programs over years and years.)  We all start off learning to colour with crayons at pre-school, and it is a long and arduous journey through to the upper-echelons of tertiary education.

I suppose it depends on the school but usually I would think you would talk to the chair/director of the graduate program not the department head. Although you might end up speaking to the department head later.

Well spotted --- I have amended the answer to suggest that the student talk to the Graduate Program Coordinator in the first instance.

This is not right! I don't see any underlying support in the advisor's attitude. Don't be afraid to take whatever action necessary to get yourself into a situation where your personal skills are given the opportunity to develop. It's your life and it's short. You can excel when you find the right way for yourself. Have some courage to not fit into anyone else's box. You are unique.


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PhD.-Application; How to deal with reference-letter requests when being out of academia for 2 years?
Two years ago I did a M.Sc. in cognitive Neuroscience and then started working as a DL / ML-Engineer up until now. Back then I got two positive reference letters for a specific graduate program from my supervisors.
I want to do a PhD now, but I wondering how I should deal with reference letter requests. In my current company there is no one with technical expertise in Data-Science or Machine-Learning whatsoever.
I see two options now:
a) Should I ask my old supervisors to update my reference letters?
b) Should I just send the old ones, maybe adding some short note why the reference letters are old and obviously for some other program?
Any recommendations on what to do?

Does the new program have more to do with what you studied earlier or with your current pursuits?

I suggest asking your old writers or others at the institution for new letters. Treat it as a chance to catch up with old professors which is a good thing to do for any prospective academic.
The old letters have less relevance and new ones, while still dealing mostly with what you were like two years ago can give some assurance that you've been active in the interim.
Two years isn't that long. But if the gap gets much wider people will start to forget you. This is a good time to renew old ties.


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Can I back out a tenure track faculty offer?
Summary: Signed a contract with school A while waiting for decisions from school B. Now got offer from B, and want to back out of the signed contract with A

What is the best strategy to back out a tenure track faculty offer and minimize its negative impact on both sides?
I am in an awkward situation. I interviewed two schools, A & B, this spring. School A made me an offer while B is still in the interview process. I contacted the B's committee chair about A's offer, the committee chair just said, everything is slow, no way to control it.
I asked around for suggestions. I was suggested by many people to take A's offer just to secure a faculty position. Yes, I did. After I signed A's offer and got ready to start this August, B suddenly notified me and is gonna make an offer.
B is a big top university and is very close to my family. A is a small teaching university and is very far away from my spouse. I visited A and their faculties are very nice. The chair is very supportive.
What should I do? I feel very guilty if I tell A, say - sorry, I cannot join you now.
Should I ask B to defer the starting date for 1 academic year, so that I can fulfill my duty at school A for my first year's contract so that A will not get mad at me? What shall I do if B will not agree to defer a year? Just back out A's offer brutally?
Any comments and suggestions are welcome and appreciated here.
Thank you!

i think Workplace is better suited for such question. E.g. see https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/5636/what-should-you-say-when-you-dont-want-to-go-back-for-a-2nd-interview-with-an-e

I mean of course you can. The police aren't going to come for you for backing out of a contract. The university won't waste its time going after you either. Just remember the longer you wait, the worse it gets. Deferring for a year seems like a reasonable compromise if you're willing to do it.

Does this answer your question? What is the recommended option for a faculty applicant after accepting an offer and getting another better offer?

Deferring for a year just means the place you don't want to work for pumps even more resources into you.

The situation you are in should have been avoided. You received bad advice, and you may want to not listen to those people who gave you the advice that got you here!

The penalties for the behavior you engage in depend on your field. In mine (economics), the penalties in terms of reputation destroyed tend to be rather significant. I was once the hiring officer at a place and experienced a case quite similar to yours: A guy who had already accepted our offer but, several weeks later, called to inform me that he had kept up the job search and had now accepted another offer. The fall-out for him was enormous: His advisers disavowed him, his co-authors disavowed him, his academic career prospects were shattered, and he left academia within a couple of years.

"B suddenly notified me and is gonna make an offer." Are they going to, or did they actually make you an offer? If you have no offer on the table from them, you have nothing when you back out from A.

Cross-site duplicate: Is it ok to turn down an already accepted job offer?

@EJoshuaS-ReinstateMonica - The other posting was made more than four years ago, and it deals with a slightly different scenario. Hardly what one calls a cross-site duplicate, is it?

There's no way to do this gracefully. You call school A and tell them that you will not be joining them after all. Afterwards you deal with the fallout.
Before doing so you may want to estimate exactly how bad the fallout will be and whether it might affect your ability to do your job at school B.

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I would tread very lightly here, and perhaps consult a lawyer.
If this is in the US then many states have “At Will” employment clauses - you can’t be forced to take a job you don’t want, and an employer cannot be forced to employ you. There may be exceptions to this, like no competition clauses, but it’s not likely you had one. You could, once you have signed and secured the offer from B, go ahead and apply
That being said, job offers, once signed, are legal contracts, and you are bound to whatever it is you signed under the prevailing laws of whatever country/state you’re in. For example, it’s entirely possible that you leaving immediately means that you failed to give a proper 30 days notice to A before quitting your job, which may make you liable to a lawsuit. A lawyer would give you far better advice than Internet strangers, and would ensure that your interests are protected.
I agree that it is likely that you are not doing anything legally wrong, or that the university will go into the hassle of suing you if you are, being sued by a university (which has a ton of money and lawyers, at least in comparison to the average budding academic) can be a lengthy, expensive and painful process that may permanently damage your career.
In terms of other costs, the biggest one may be to your reputation. Dropping offers is frowned upon and could burn bridges you cannot afford to burn. However, if you explain the situation and position it right (say, you would love to go to A, but your wife cannot bear living away from her family so B is a better option) you may be able to not make people too angry.
As @EthanBolker says, act quickly before the hiring season ends, and A can figure it out.

+1 Best answer, gotta be careful with contracts and pro legal advice is the safe play.

Consulting an employment lawyer is really good advice.

That said, "what you can get away with legally" doesn't really assess impact on career and reputation, as you say, so a lawyer is one part of this, and not the whole picture.

I agree with @user2705196 that there is no good way to do this. If  you do I would tell A   that you suddenly and surprisingly have an offer that will let you live with your spouse (and near family, but that's less weighty a reason).
Do say you'd be willing to defer B for a year in order not to leave A stuck.
Act soon. Hiring is still happening and A likely has a second choice who may still be available.

"Do say you'd be willing to defer B for a year in order not to leave A stuck." Only do this if you're actually willing to do this, and only after B has agreed to this in writing.

@nick012000 Indeed. I should have made that explicit.

If the OP has significant family obligations, or even pets, moving twice in less than two years seems very difficult.   So, I wouldn't recommend that, in that case.  If you are totally on your own, then moving twice won't be as bad, for most people.  I never wanted to move much, but wound up doing it quite a bit.

This situation happens quite often and although other posters have already suggested all the best things you can do, here's my "do this and that" summary:

Do not drop the ball on A under any circumstances: academia is a very
small pool and you don't want to acquire this kind of reputation.
Nothing prevents you from applying for jobs after a year of so in A.
You made a sub-optimal choice, but life doesn't end there.
Check with B, if they would be willing to wait for a year. If so, get
that in writing. If not, forget B and move on with your life. If A
doesn't suit you, keep applying for jobs: something will come your
way sooner or later.
If B is willing to take you a year later, then you should eventually
inform A that you'd be leaving just after one year. This is not
uncommon and shouldn't cause much damage to anyone. You should do
this before the next hiring season starts so that A is prepared. The
chance that if you tell A right now, they would let you off the hook
and happily pick the next candidate in line are very slim. Their
"next best" choices have probably already been hired elsewhere. So I
wouldn't recommend stirring the pot this way.

In the one-year deferral case you’re better off letting them know immediately.  There’s a significant chance that their reaction will be to release you to take the other job without deferral.

Maybe, I have my doubts about that however. It's very late in the hiring season, e.g., our department has long finished the process. Moreover by now, selecting a new candidate would mean that lots of internal gears have to start moving yet again, after the semester is finished (in most places) which won't make anyone happy...

In my dept, we'd rather have someone reneg that leave after a year - it's far more cost/effort to bring in a faculty member who leaves (and do another search) than restart a search.

I guess it depends a lot on the size of the department. At a big school, such as where I am, the search goes every year and hiring one more or less candidate makes no difference, while making another offer this late in the semester (today would be the last day here) is nigh impossible. @Etyan mentioned, however, that A is a small teaching college, so perhaps talking to them asap about the possibility of leaving in a year would indeed be sensible...

Talk to your union.
If you're a university professor, there's a pretty good chance you're represented by a relevant employee union. Yes, even in the US. Hopefully, they have some experience with these situations and will be able to better advise you based on cases they've handled before. They might also offer legal representation, or at the very least - references to lawyers with experience with academic staff member clients.

I think that you'll find that school A will be very understanding.  They'll be disappointed, but in the end, they're wise enough to know that they really don't want a faculty member who won't be happy living apart from his spouse.  I don't think you have to worry about any fallout.  I'm pretty sure most departments in most schools have had this happen at least once.


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Admitted to a masters in Cambridge - no scholarship!
I was admitted to the MPhil masters program in "Advanced Computer Science" at Cambridge, UK, but unfortunately I wasn't offered a scholarship. I browsed the internet a bit, but as I'm not from England (though from the EU) I couldn't find any possibility of loans or studentships, that would cover the whopping 20000£ needed to cover fees and living costs for the 9 months the program takes.
Does anyone here have any experience what possibility for funding exist ? Cambridge, as it seems, of at most grant me a bursary which does not nearly cover theses costs.
Would it be a good idea at all to take a loan (supposing that that's possible) ?

@Roboticist The thing is that in my country there is no such thing as an MPhil. And the great advantage, for me, is, that this program takes only one year, as opposed to the M.Sc. program in my country that takes two years. REGARDLESS, Cambridge has a world-wide reputation, so not trying to use this opportunity would not be a good idea.

@Roboticist Man, that sounds like you rather want to talk me out pursuing Cambridge. But I didn't ask to be talked out of it, I asked about what I can do to get in.

I think this is a very good question, of potential interest to many people - but unfortunately, it technically breaks an A@SO rule (which I personally disagree with, but rules are rules). I think it would be best if the question was not closed or buried under down votes - perhaps you can rewrite to ask for advice on how to locate funding sources in UK, using your situation as an example, instead of asking only about your case specifically?

@Roboticist I don't necessarily agree with this. Yes it's more likely to get a funded international PhD in the UK, but it is by no means common or easy. Most of the scholarships for international PhD students are extremely competitive and difficult to obtain. I wrote a pretty extensive answer about this. I think OP would have a better chance paying out of pocket for her/his MPhil via loans, and once obtaining a strong background experience, s/he might be more competitive for international PhD scholarships in the UK.

@lafemmecosmique Bear in mind that the asker is from the EU so they are not really an international student. There are many opportunities for PhD funding for EU residents.

@MJeffryes somehow I missed that! you are totally correct

Here is the actual list of funding sources that may be available to you.
http://www.graduate.study.cam.ac.uk/finance/funding
But you should give their financial aid office a call. They're the definitive source for this kind of information, and they should be able to give you advice that is not listed on their web site.
Since you're in an EU country, your tuition should be comparable to what the British people pay. And because you're coming from an EU country, funds may be available to you solely because of that reason. And yes, loans can be a good investment, especially for what you'll be studying.
Obviously, if you were studying something like Archeology or Art History, I would try to steer you away from taking loans.

"your own country should be able to fund you as well". Some countries may pay their citizens to study abroad; most, I suspect, do not.

@ShaneORourke And afaik, the countries which give scholarsips to study abroad, do that for a limited amount of time, e.g, 6 months, for a thesis, an internship or for a course semester.

Ok, I've corrected myself, but still, I believe there is a very big difference between "studying abroad" for an exchange program and "going from an EU country to another EU country to study abroad".  And I don't doubt for a minute that exchange programs have more limited funding sources available to them, but an exchange program is not what we're talking about here.

If:

you have quite low debts currently, and
the evidence is that this degree would considerably increase your expected earnings (don't just assume it - tackle it like a research question: try to find the best evidence you can that's the opposite of what you currently believe, and assess it), and
the non-completion rate of the course (including drop-outs and exam failures) is not too low

then it may make sense to take on the debt.
Providing a list of possible sources of funding is out of scope for this site, but you will find such lists across the web: individual Cambridge colleges, charities, organisations to promote international study, and commercial sponsors may all be options.

Getting funding is usually the most difficult part.
There is some funding available available for MPhil programs (but not much - and they are very competitive). Most of it you would have needed to apply for with your course application (or before).
But check here and see if you qualify for anything.
Also check if your home country offers scholarships to study overseas.
I would strongly recommend not taking out a loan for it. It's not worth taking on the debt.


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Need suggestions on doing PhD or not
I am having a hard time deciding if I should go on for a PhD program after my current Master's program. I'm struggling with this a lot and hope to get some suggestions here.
So my situation: I'm doing a second Master's degree in mathematics after finishing my first Master's degree in Engineering. My current university doesn't have a very good ranking, so I'm considering a PhD offer from a university ranked around 160. I want to do research, but my biggest concern is that I'm 29 y/o, after finishing my PhD degree, I would be around 33-34. And I don't have a girlfriend. So by the time I finish my PhD degree, I would have no money, no girlfriend and not clear future, I might be single forever. This sounds so miserable. But the bright side is that I will have a PhD degree from a better university. And this might open more doors for me, I might even be able to go to Google with this PhD degree after graduation. And since I will work on hot CS topics, the professor said he is confident I will have many opportunities in both industry and academy after graduation. But of course there is no guarantee for anything. Though it's somewhat reasonable because I only have two years' background in computing, all my previous background is in civil engineering, I don't know how far I can go in computer science industry without a real degree in CS. On the other hand, if I decide to get a job instead, I can make some money first. And when I have money, I can secure myself and will have more chances to get a girlfriend, and financially easier to get married. Also since I will then have relevant working experience, it might even be easier for me to apply for many more top-tired American PhD programs? But of course this is only my imagination, I might end up losing this valuable PhD offer and not be able to get a better one by then?
Thanks a lot for your time and hope to get some kind advises!

If you have to ask then don't, at least not yet - you need to be sure and certain to do a PhD...

I would say that unless you are thinking of a career in academia, which it does not sound like you do, the benefits of a PhD are marginal, or even negative, compared to the same number of years of experience in industry. It is a bit unclear from your post why you want to do a PhD in the first place. Just because you have an offer from a better university than your current one is not a good reason. Actually, the only good reason for doing a PhD in mathematics that I can think of is that you really really want to do mathematics.

@AlexB. After finishing my PhD, I might be able to go to companies like Google and be a research scientist not a low level programmer, and I can also choose to be a professor wherever I want in the world as long as there is an open position. This sounds so cool. I will never be able to live like this in industry. And I kinda like research, I least I don't hate it.

@user The chance of that happening is very slim. Plus CS is way over-saturated right now. Finally not all CS degrees are equal, the CS degree you obtain after doing gruntwork (simulating, coding) for some professor will land you a better job than the CS degree you obtain by doing some creative math.

Ignore the age issue. It should have no bearing on any educational issue.

Also ignore the girlfriend issue. Plenty of people get married while pursuing PhD (I don't know what country you're in, but still hard to imagine that any culture requires their PhD students to be single).

Don't do it.
It sounds like you don't know why you want to do a PhD. You focus on things that aren't reasons, and where you do mention reasons they are very vague, e.g. in a comment you've said that:

But I will have also opportunities to intern at national labs during my PhD, would that be helpful for my post-graduate career? And their math program is top 50 in QS ranking, sounds so attractive. And I do love research, the main issue is I'm too old and have no money.

First sentence ends with a question mark indicating you aren't sure it's true. You clearly can't make decisions if you don't know if it's true, so you should find out first before even thinking about the question. Second sentence indicates you want to study at that university simply because it's in the top 50 in the QS ranking, which is fine (I suppose we all have different priorities), but are you sure it's worth it? There's a high cost to studying: you earn less (if you earn anything at all), you spend time, you have to relocate, and so on. The same goes for the third sentence. If you're too old and have no money, why are you considering a PhD?
My read of your question is that you're studying because you have no idea what to do next and / or want to avoid the job market, which is not a good place to be. You'll have to get a job eventually - even if you do a PhD, you'll eventually finish the PhD and have to find something else. Until you've figured out what a PhD allows you to do that you can't do now, you should not do it.

Thank you for your advice!

You should not.
There are only four types of people who do a Ph.D.:

(1%) People who are dead-set on becoming a professor. Even within this group, you will find many of them are influenced by their family member who are professors or have Ph.D. themselves.
(50%) People from third-world countries who need to spend an obscene amount of time within the country which they plan to immigrate to in order to obtain VISA/green card. A Ph.D. makes tactical sense in this case.
(9%) People who are financially secure enough to do a Ph.D. People who fall into this camp are either people who have already done couple years in industry, has a lot of money to live comfortable as graduate student, and knows what's good for expanding their experience. Many of these people are even sponsored by their company. Alternatively, many have rich or well-off parents, usually with Ph.D. themselves, see 1.
(40%) People who have no idea what to do after a Bachelor or Masters, has good enough grade as to being able to continue on, but not enough work experience to make it in industry. I have seen many of these people passing through Ph.D. and having a miserable time afterwards. I know people who are in their 40s and still jumping from internship to internship.

Which type are you?

Looks like I'm the 4th type? But I will have also opportunities to intern at national labs during my PhD, would that be helpful for my post-graduate career? And their math program is top 50 in QS ranking, sounds so attractive. And I do love research, the main issue is I'm too old and have no money.

people who love research


text:
How to reference the official oracle documentation?
I would like to reference some material from the official Oracle documentation for my bachelor thesis. The piece of documentation I want to include is giving information about data types. The problem I have is that I didn't find any information about the author, address, year, etc.
How do I reference that then? Or does anybody of you found some information about a specific author, year, etc. ?

Because that's webpage, I would do something like this: http://www.easybib.com/reference/guide/apa/website or if you think it is more of a technical manual, something like this https://penandthepad.com/do-cite-technical-manual-apa-6867383.html

Abstract concepts such as datetime or longs are generally not attributed to Oracle or similar companies, if anything you should cite an earlier work that discusses and introduces the concepts. The earliest mention that I know that introduces most of these concepts that are used in many (if not all) modern databases and programming languages derive from C, it even introduced us to the Hello World concept. Therefore a good reference would be:

Kernighan, B. W., & Ritchie, D. M. (1978). The C programming language.
  Prentice-Hall, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA (ISBN: 0-13-110163-3).

Co-incidentally, according to Google Scholar this work has been referenced 8000+ times as of the 4th of December, 2018.
PS: There may be earlier references of specific datatypes, but I argue that no other work has brought them all together in one place before the work of Kernighan and Ritchie.


text:
Can a college professor develop courses for an independent institution and be paid for it?
Can a college professor teach courses for an institution or a company that is independent of the university where he holds a faculty position?
An example: Say a professor teaches English courses at a university. Is that professor allowed to teach those same English courses at an independent institution or company? Is there a conflict of interest? Would such a situation need to be approved by the university?

As the existing answers have made clear, this is going to depend on your jurisdiction, since it's essentially a question of employment law. The question might be improved by stating where this is.

@origimbo more a matter of the terms of the specific contract, actually. Even in the same location and same university, the contract for tenure track faculty might not allow it while the contract for non-TT does, etc.

That would vary by country and by institution. In some situations you are explicitly prohibited from "competing" with your home institution. I've known people that were fired for serious violation.
But for some things, such as developing online courses, you might, on the contrary, even be encouraged to do so. But that assumes that your institution isn't part of that activity.
Somewhere your institution has a legal office that will let you know the parameters that you can work within. Or you may have a copy of your specific contract that spells it out.

Is the last paragraph missing a noun like "contract"?

@origimbo, thanks. fixed. Trying to type and also cook supper.

The answer might depend on your country, but at least in Germany this would be fully legal, as long as

it is declared to your university in advance
you are investing not more then 8h/week.

I would assume that those rules are different in other countries.

Yes, it would need approval, if it is permitted. In some institutions it would not be permitted.


text:
Can the authors grant the permission to reuse figures copyrighted by the publisher?
I'm preparing a article for possible publication on the journal “Progress in Aerospace Sciences” (published by Elsevier).
I plan to reuse some figures cited from articles published and copyrighted by AIAA.
I tried the Copyright Clearance Center, but to be honest, I may not accept the price.
Thus, I'm trying to contact directly with the authors
(the lead author if no correspondence author is noted).
Can the authors grant me the permission?

Think of it this way: the authors signed over copyright to the publisher when they sent the paper for publication

No.
If the copyright in the articles lies with AIAA, then it is they who must license it, or parts of it.
You may be able to recreate a similar diagram, acknowledging the original one.
(I am not a lawyer.)

You can use figures under fair reuse, there is no need to ask.

Note that fair use exemptions aren't unlimited, or universal. Depending on circumstances there may be need to ask.

@origimbo Yes, you're right