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Proof for seemingly obvious statements in thesis?
I'm currently writing a bachelor thesis in which there is a section that deals with the pros and cons of different data serialization formats. Since this is not the main focus of the thesis, I would like to limit the comparisons to include 2-3 of the most widely used formats - for instance; JSON and XML.
I know from experience that JSON and XML are two of the most widely used formats for serializing data on the web, but how can I prove a statement like that? Does it need proof to be included as a boundary/limitation of the thesis?

This question brings up an interesting point regarding the difference between justification and proof.  I would contend that your claim is nearly impossible to prove, but it might be possible to justify.

I know from experience that JSON and XML are two of the most widely used formats for serializing data on the web, but how can I prove a statement like that?

You can't*. That's why you typically do not matter-of-fact-ly state that this is the case. You argue why you have chosen that you have selected those two formats, without claiming anything you are not sure about. For instance, it would be ok to claim that you have selected XML because it is used in many open standards, or that you have selected JSON because of its high compatibility to JavaScript, or that you have any of those because it is used in framework XY, which is of high significance to your work.
Loosely-related-story time:
I did my PhD in services computing. In my research circles, everybody "knew" that, while SOAP (a protocol for Web services) supports any number of protocol bindings (HTTP, TCP, JMS, even SMTP), the only binding that is really used is HTTP. We "knew" this because basically all tutorials and books really only talked about HTTP, and it seemed like a logical thing to do (you know, "Web" services and all). That was until I talked to a practitioner from IBM about this, who then informed me that more 70% of their's and their customer's SOAP services are actually consumed over JMS, because, even though this is much more annoying to set up, JMS is what most companies used for integration before Web services, and changing it would be way to intrusive.
End of story time
Especially for young software-developers-turned-computer-scientists, separating what you think is true (e.g., because many books or blogs claim it is, or because it seems logical) from what you know is true (e.g., because there are reliable studies, or because it can indeed be proven) is a hard, but valuable, lesson, and your undergraduate thesis is the perfect place to learn it. While writing your thesis, reflect what you really know and what is just the kind of "community common knowledge" that any community of enthusiastic practitioners tends to build up. Most of the time, the common knowledge will be correct, but you will be surprised about the times it isn't.

*And I am not 100% sure the statement is true. I would not be surprised if binary serialization (e.g., protocol buffers) is used more often than either, especially if the same entity controls both sides of the communication.

I would probably phrase it something like "XML and JSON are among the most widely used formats". That way, it's not an absolute statement, but it does say something about the popularity.

How would you even quantify "most widely used"? Most companies? Most products? Most bytes? As it stands, it's not a sufficiently precise statement to even have a truth value.

As the OP wrote "two of the most widely used formats" I think the statement is in fact true, because it does no claim they are the two most used formats. In each category Nate mentioned here I would say the statement holds true, so although it is quite unspecific I would not say it isn't correct. I am more troubled by "on the web", because this can basically mean anything.

@dirkk I could have sworn that the OP wrote "the most widely used formats". I guess that's what I get from answering on an airport shortly before boarding.

Words like "most" are real problems in scientific writing because you often want to make a strong statement about how important your work is, but to do so would be claiming something that you don't actually have evidence for.
Generally, however, it doesn't actually have anything to do with the argument for importance.  The significance of your work depends on the fact that it affects many things, not whether the people it affects are a majority, a plurality, or a minority.
Thus, if you modify your example from:

JSON and XML are two of the most widely used formats

to:

JSON and XML are two widely used formats

then you have an unimpeachably true statement that is actually no weaker than your original.

If you use statements like "the most common", then it needs a proof (either citation or some of your own finding). If popularity is non-essential, try writing things like "two popular formats are JSON and XML" - this way it sounds as a common knowledge and it won't need justification.
Source: once I wrote a paper on a party game and there were many aspects being "common knowledge", but for which there was no actual data. I was advised to remove all statements like "the most popular variant of the game" and to change them into describing particular variants without making factual claims on their popularity.

As anecdotal evidence, I occasionally try to actually get data on random assertions that are 'common knowledge' in student thesis I review (for many topics you actually can get some reasonably solid data in 5-10 minutes of searching academic papers), and very often (30%+?) that assumption turned out to be false, even if I also believed it to be common knowledge.

You should explain why you've chosen XML and JSON in the context of your larger thesis.  Something like

Because technology X, Y, and Z (that the thesis is about) support both XML and JSON serialization, it is worth studying these serialization schemes in more detail.

As I am not an expert in your field I can only give a general answer.
A statement does not need proof if it is considered common knowledge, either generally or in the field. Proof absolutely does not mean getting data, but getting a relevant referene

However, be prepared to defend every statement you make if it's questioned during a presentation.


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How to write an email to an academic asking for a summer research project?
Summer research projects sound like a good way to find out about a university before applying to do  PhD there. Hopefully, it would also advertise ones research abilities, making it easier to obtain a PhD position there.
I know how to obtain a summer project within my own university. One can simply go to a professors office in their office hours and making tentative enquiries. Obviously this is only possible because I am already working there.
I would like to email some professors from other institutions (in other countries) to find out if there would be a possibility of doing a summer research project with them (in their university). How should this email be phrased to maximise the chances of it getting a reply?
If it is relevant, I am a theoretical physics student, who is in the penultimate year of a degree with integrated masters.

Do you want to get paid for this project? Because I do not think there are many paying positions in universities in other countries that pay students for internships.

@Alexandros no, I don't need it to pay. Although, in my own university its not unusual that there would be a grant for this sort of work.

I recommend that your advisor make such inquiries on your behalf.

Google is a good start (that's how I heard of and got the AAO student fellowship, which pays you to do research in Australia for 3 months -- it's astrophysics, but still physics if you are interested).

If I remember correctly, IAESTE internships include positions at universities.

Just wondering - is summer the only acceptable season (based on your own schefule) of the year? Otherwise, it shouldn't really matter when to conduct such a project in order to apply for a PhD position right after that.

Taking on an undergraduate for a short-term research project is, especially in theoretical and computational fields, essentially an act of service on the part of the professor.  By that I mean that usually the professor will put in much more than they get out of it.  This is because the student will usually need a significant amount of one-on-one tutoring, or at least time, to understand what needs to be done and learn the tools that will be used to do it.  That leaves little time (in a summer) for actually producing research results, and since it is likely the student's first project, progress is likely to be slow.
If the professor is at your own university and you have already established a connection and a good impression, then they may be willing to do it based on that.  The next best situation is to have a professor who knows you well recommend you to the professor at the other university.  But if you're cold contacting a professor who knows nothing about you, you need to demonstrate that

You're in a good program and have excellent grades;
you have familiarized yourself with some part of their research (as well as you can with your current level of preparation);
You have good communication skills; and
You have some tools that are useful in the indicated field (e.g. substantial programming experience, experience with particular methods or techniques).

All this needs to be in a short email (a long email probably won't get read at all).  Even the above quite often be enough.  Of course, if you are exceptional in some way then make sure to highlight that.  For instance:

You have some published research already
You won a major award (e.g. you placed in the top few worldwide in the IMO)
You did something else that shows you have aptitude for the field and includes a tangible, demonstrable result

The last one might be something like "I implemented computational method X in C and used it to solve this interesting problem; here is the code on Github and the results."

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Taking suggestions for grading rubric for multiple answers test
We're being encouraged to use multiple answer tests at my school.  In case you're not familiar with the concept, each question may have multiple correct answers; students are encouraged to mark all valid answers.
There's at least one correct each for each question.  Each question has either 4 or 5 answers to select from.  It is possible that all answers are correct.
I would like to grade this so that, even when there are multiple correct answers, if the student only selected one answer and it is correct, they receive partial credit.
What I'm not sure about is how to grade problems in which:

all answers have been selected, but not all answers are correct.
some of the selected answers are correct and others are incorrect.

We've been given no guidelines beyond what I've mentioned above.  When asked about how we should grade these tests, we've been told no more than to try to award partial credit if at least one correct answer has been selected.
Does anyone out there have experience grading tests like this?  If so, how might you design a grading rubric.

One simple way to design a grading rubric for this situation is to consider the question as though it were a set of true-false questions.  So if there are 5 answer and the question is worth five points, then there is 1 point for marking each true, and 1 for not marking each false answer.
Thus, for example, consider the following question:

Which of these are mammals? (5 points)

Cat
Turtle
Lizard
Fish
Dog

If the student marked "Cat, Turtle", then they would receive 3 points: they lose 1 point for marking "Turtle" and 1 point for failing to mark "Dog."

This is almost what I've come up with (I'm not happy with my system hence the posting here).  That problem I have with it is that if students leave the question blank, I'm not sure I would want to say (as in your example) they get a score of 3/5.  It seems that there should be some kind of penalty for leaving question blank.  Similarly, it seems there should be some kind of penalty for excessively marking all answers.  Any ideas there?

@A.Ellett It depends if you are grading on a curve... and is it really worse to have them leave a question blank than assert an incorrect answer?

It isn't really worse.  I've taken a bit of the philosophy that it's the fault of the author of the exam were it possible for a student to score well with such strategies.  Nevertheless,.... I was just wondering what feed back others might provide.

Make sure (and tell them) overall exactly half of the answers are correct, and scale so 50% doesn't pass?

If exactly half of the answers are correct, leaving everything blank gains just as many points on average as marking answers at random. Since students don't need any knowledge to use these strategies, I think this is a good property of the grading system.

@A.Ellett I think that the problem is in fact with the very nature of this kind of supposedly "factual" question in that it lets the goal going without saying. But I can see at least two, namely ascertain if the student: 1. knows what a mammal is as opposed to non-mammals, 2. can tell a mammal when s/he sees/visualizes one. With either one, I would then use a multiple choice question with behaviors/procedures purportedly resolving the desired issue with only one correct. (But then I am fortunate that my school does not "encourage" me to do anything. At least not yet.)

@A,Ellett I should have also said: When the multiple answers are of the essence, they can be turned into multiple choices as in, e.g. a 1, 2, 3,     b 2, 3, 5    c All    d  None   e None of the preceding.

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Ethics of using knowledge gained from reviewing submissions available as preprints
There seems to be a notion that, when reviewing a paper, you are not supposed to use the knowledge acquired from that paper in your own research. In particular, you shouldn't build upon the paper's result, contact the authors to start a collaboration, etc. As spelled out in this answer, for instance: "once I finish reviewing a paper, I'm supposed to pretend that I don't know the paper exists".
I understand the justification for this when the work under review is not publicly available. But nowadays, in my community (theoretical CS), it is more and more common that authors will post their work as a publicly available preprint when submitting it to a conference. So the work that you review is publicly available -- in fact you may already know about it beforehand, or you can easily find this out.
In this case, the reviewer's "advance knowledge" of the paper is simply what anyone could get by reading the public preprint. Still, it seems that you are not supposed, for instance, to get in touch with the authors to start a collaboration with them on an improved result. So what is the remaining moral imperative for reviewers (if any) when reviewing papers that are publicly available? For instance, I would definitely cite the preprint if the work I'm doing happens to be connected to it. But I'm not sure, for instance, if it is a good idea to contact the authors to discuss possible improvements -- possibly without telling them explicitly that I know of their paper because I reviewed it.
(Note that this question is not about the importance of being impartial in your review, which is a different topic. For instance, it would still be an ethical violation to reject a paper because you are working on the same problem and want your own work to be accepted first.)

Related questions: Research motivated by referee assignment, Spot a possible improvement when reviewing a paper, How to use results/ideas from a paper I reviewed?, During review, I found a superior solution. What now?, What to do when I can prove a conjecture of a paper I'm peer reviewing

"There seems to be a notion that, when reviewing a paper, you are not supposed to use the knowledge acquired from that paper in your own research. In particular, you shouldn't build upon the paper's result, contact the authors to start a collaboration, etc. " I'm violating all these principles every time I review. We are advancing knowledge, not playing the childish games of etiquette. So far no one complained and some authors were very happy. Of course, one shouldn't be a pig and use some common sense in how to contact authors, etc But the fear of ethical violation is totally misplaced here

The situation is very complex in CS these days, I tried to find a few articles available as preprints and it seems like some (many?) of them were never properly published, all while preprints have already accumulated dozens if not hundreds of citations. Then there is important work never making it into the scientific playfield in the first place, so that a lot of people (scientists included) use it, but it was never formally peer-reviewed. This practice has always existed, but now it is almost the norm in some fields.

Your first paragraph is too strong. While it is improper to use private or early versions to "scoop" the original authors (plagiarism), it isn't improper to extend their work with proper citation. Immediately offering collaboration is possibly also improper and if done frequently could destroy trust in the review system.
Reviewers should maintain a higher standard, but if a reviewer is working on something and gets an overlapping paper to review their proper action is to refuse the review since they have a conflict of interest. But they don't need to stop their own work and may need to revise any current writings in light of the "in-process" paper.
But if authors publish their work, the ideas in it are free to be discussed, criticized, extended, etc. Just not "poached". Give due credit to avoid plagiarism.

"it isn't improper to extend their work with proper citation": if the original submitted work is not publicly available, I think it would be unethical, for instance, to start working on an improvement, and release it with citation immediately when the submitted work is published. There is something similar discussed there: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/186571/what-are-the-ethics-of-reviewing-a-paper-spotting-issues-not-raising-them-in-t

In general, but it's still tricky for me to understand what is the logic. For instance, immediately offering collaboration is improper, but I'm not sure why? How long should one wait? Which trust is being destroyed if authors get contacted by someone who read their paper, and that person happens to have done so because they were reviewing it? Still, thanks for the answer!

On coauthorship: I would suggest contacting the editor of the journal as to when it might be appropriate to reach out to an author. The appropriate time, in my mind is (at least) after it has been fully accepted and your role as reviewer has been discharged.   Only the editor will know this.   The editor may have other ideas, and it strikes me as appropriate to defer to the most conservative interpretation of what is appropriate.

@RegressForward, actually, you probably already have a conflict of interest if you review the article intending to offer collaboration afterwards. It would be hard to suggest you had a neutral attitude. No editor should accept such a review.

I don't disagree - all the more reason the editor would like to know a reviewer's thoughts. I see above you mention offering collaboration is "possibly improper", I encourage anyone considering anything "possibly improper" to confirm with their editor who has their journal reputation on the line.

@A3nm I think one reason is to avoid a situation when the reviewer requests collaboration, gets denied, and then rejects the paper for ill reasons.

@Yanko: Another reason is to avoid a situation where the reviewer requests collaboration, gets accepted, and then recommends acceptance of the paper for ill reasons.

@Buffy, agreed, if you already know before accepting that you would want to contact the authors, it is probably a good idea to decline the review.

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Why are computer science conference steering committees generally not elected by the community?
The main publishing venue in computer science are conferences with formal proceedings. Typically, each edition of the conference (every year, or every other year) is organized by a different team of local organizers together with a program committee. In addition, there is a steering committee that provides continuity from one year to the next. The steering committee's tasks include choosing the next local organizers and program committee chairs, and making long-term decisions on the future of the conference.
These steering committees often have some sort of legal existence as the board of a non-profit dedicated to the organization of the conference, or as the board of a smaller group within a large scholarly society, e.g., the ACM SIGs.
My question is: in which cases are these steering committee members chosen by election among community members? Indeed, in many cases, it looks like the steering committee is just chosen by co-optation, e.g., it consisted initially of the original founders of the conference, and then of conference organizers and people chosen by them.
By contrast, in most non-academic nonprofits that I know, there is usually an assembly general meeting every year, featuring an election to elect the board. (In practice, of course, there may be only one set of candidates; but the result is that alternative candidates are allowed to apply for board membership, and the current set of leaders get their "power" from the fact that the community has chosen them, not from seniority.)
Investigating, it looks like the ACM SIGs are elected (see SIGPLAN); but for unaffiliated conferences it seems that there is no such election, and information is difficult to find. Why isn't it standard policy that the steering committees of conferences are elected, like for other non-profits?

Don't confuse the elected officers of an ACM SIG with the conference chairs. There may be overlap, in people, but they aren't elected to a program committee but, rather, to SIG direction.

Ah, you are right, I assumed that the steering committee of a SIG also served as the steering committee of the conferences of that SIG, but actually it does not seem to be the case, e.g., the POPL steering committee https://www.sigplan.org/Conferences/POPL/ only partly overlaps with the SIGPLAN steering commitee. And it is, apparently, elected at least partly https://www.sigplan.org/Conferences/POPL/Principles/. (And yes, I am aware that this has nothing to do with the conference chairs and program committee...)

SIGPLAN and SIGCSE both have lots of conferences. It would be impossible for them to have the same committees. Those folks also have careers. And if you want to be on a committee just volunteer.

Frame challenge: Maybe the concept of "non profit" is the problem.

@BobaFit: thanks, but what do you mean? How is it a problem?

@a3nm  Non-profits are a way to get the worst of both the market and govt involvement. It retains the moral hazard and incentives to cheat from both sides, while ditching the punishments for cheating from both sides.  Non-profits filter the participants for willingness to participate in the process, thus producing a propensity for cozying up to the bureaucracy to get favors, thus tending to corrupt both sides.

Why would they be? Would it result in better decisions if they were?
Conference organization committees do technical work, unlike professional organizations that also do "political work" in the sense that they are also advocacy groups. For the latter, it makes sense to have elections among the members because they represent my community. But I see no particularly good reason why the committee that assigns rooms to specific sessions at a conference needs to be elected. I also don't see a need why the group that selects which talks to accept should be elected -- for the same reason why I don't think that it's a problem that NSF panels are not elected, or the reviewers for journals.
In is worth remembering that elections do not necessarily lead to better outcomes. You'd first have to define who the electorate would be (organizing committees have to stood up long before anyone knows whether they will go to a conference, so conference participants cannot be the electors), and who can stand for election. There is also the issue that in elections, you will find that the ones elected are largely senior people in the field, simply because they are the most well-known in the area. But these are not necessarily the ones you want to comprise the committee -- you want to have a diversity of perspectives, some junior people, possibly geographic diversity, some local folks who know the venue, etc. None of this is what you will get from elections.

Isn't the work described in the answer (assigning rooms, selecting talks, knowing the venue) something the Organizing/Program Committee would do, instead of the Steering Committee? (I don't have any experience on this, so I may be completely wrong).

Thanks for your answer, but I do not think most of it matches my question. "I see no particularly good reason why the committee that assigns rooms to specific sessions at a conference needs to be elected": this is not what the steering committee of a computer science conference does, that part would befall to the local organizers (or maybe to the program committee for the part where you organize the papers into sessions). Same thing for selecting the program (this is the program committee's job.)

About elections leading to better outcomes: I am not purporting that they do, indeed in practice the outcomes may be quite similar in most cases (and indeed it can be hard to say which conference does what!), but I find it makes a significant difference in terms of practice. About the question of diversity: interesting point, I hadn't thought about that, but I am not under the impression that the typical steering committee is particularly diverse. That said, you can of course have elections but impose quotas on the result.

@a3nm There is only one committee for each conference, the "organizing committee" (though it may have other names in different communities). The "rooms committee", the "talks selection committee", etc., are all sub-committees of the same 10-20 people.

@a3nm About diversity: Here is the committee for the recent SIAM CSE conference, the largest conference in Computational Science and Engineering: https://www.siam.org/conferences/cm/conference/cse23 (scroll down a page or so). The committee is about 50% women, about 50% European, about 30% junior scientists, with people from industry, academia, and the national labs. There is no election system that would produce such an outcome, unless you want to let people vote on a dozen different lists.

I think we are still not talking about the same thing. I am talking about steering committees, e.g., the POPL steering committee https://www.sigplan.org/Conferences/POPL/. This is not the organizing committee of a specific POPL edition, e.g., https://popl23.sigplan.org/committee/POPL-2023-organizing-committee. My question is about steering committees, not organizing committees.

I see. So that sounds like the committee that is in charge of figuring out where the next conference is going to be, and who is going to organize it. The same question applies, though: Why would it be advantageous to elect such a committee? You will note that half of the members are past organizers -- because that is the expertise required here.

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How to cite musical score in Turabian given the following options?
I am trying to cite a hard copy of a musical score, using Microsoft Word's References feature.
Word gives me several options. I have narrowed it down to a few but none of them explicitly say "Musical score".

Book
Book Section
Journal Article
Report
Art
Sound Recording
Performance
Film

There's also a "miscellaneous", but I'm not sure if I should categorize musical score under that.
Any ideas?

A musical score is cited like a book in this style.
Here's an example from Depauw University Libraries -
The footnote is in the form

Composer First Name Last, Name of Musical Work
  (City, State: Publisher, Year).

e.g.,

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Eine kleine Nachthmusik, K. 525
  (Bryn Mawr, PA:  Theodore Presser, 1960).

The bibliography is in the form

Composer Last Name, First.  Name of Musical Work.
                  City, State (if city isn't well known): Publisher, Year.

e.g.,

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus.  Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525.
                  Bryn Mawr, PA:  Theodore Presser, 1960.

(The Depauw site has additional information on various special cases.)

Caveat: This applies if the work being cited is the only item published in the book in question. If it's a shorter score in a collection, then Book Section should be used instead.

@aeismail that's covered in the link mentioned at the end :)

Yeah, it was a musical score on its own. Thanks!


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Does the number of references influence reviewers decision?
For journal article, does the number of references one has for an original research work have an influence on the reviewer? Like if I have say 11 references, in such a case, will the reviewer take it for granted that my work is incorrect?

I think this will depend greatly on field (down to the subfield) and journal to the point of being ungeneralizable. For instance in my field (philosophy), history of philosophy journals will want far more citations than contemporary analytic journals.

Influence, yes --- like everything else that is written in your paper. Take for granted that your work is incorrect, that's an entirely different thing.

Keep in mind the years of the references as well. I always expect to see a fair number of very recent references (last 2, 3 years max). It is not sine qua non, but  its a factor.

It depends on the topic.  If it is in my area, I really don't need the references to tell me whether your hypothesis/problem is new.  Otherwise, I might Google base on keywords and do a cursory reading.  If you miss the most relevant or seminal papers, then my confidence in your work drops.

There won't be any hard minimum or maximum number of references that a reviewer will be looking for.  In my particular field (engineering/robotics) and in my experience, 20 - 40 references seem to be common, though twice or half that will not necessarily raise any eyebrows. The most important factors are that the author is covering previous work sufficiently (covering keystone papers in their area of research, as well as recent similar work) while well establishing their current contribution, and that any included citations are relevant. Too many or too few papers beyond a reviewer's general expectation in their field will probably prompt a closer examination that these are upheld, but won't necessarily lead them to immediately conclude the work is incorrect. The correctness of your paper is an almost completely separate issue that should be recognizable by a reviewer who works in your field based on your paper content.
As a reviewer, rejections I've given due to lack references were because of specific missing references that, if considered, effectively invalidated the author's claim of novelty or reduced their stated contribution significantly.

"Number" is not an issue, it's "currency", for sure, and possibly (in my world, math) recognition of prior art/history. Certainly there's no algorithm that rejects an ms based on number of references. Rather, when I am asked to referee/review/offer-an-opinion-on an essay, if it expresses (explicitly or implicitly) ignorance of standard background, and/or ignorance of current events, then I have serious doubts, from the outset, about whether-or-not the author has done anything useful.

This will, as other people have mentioned, vary wildly by both field and the purpose of the paper itself. I will however convey a number of experiences I've had as both a reviewer and an author:

I did once have a reviewer comment on a paper that I was submitting outside my field that my references section was "sparse". Which does indeed suggest that some reviewers come into a review with an expectation of a certain (and unknown) number of citations. It was not their only, or indeed their most substantial criticism, so I don't know how much impact it had on the final decision.
I have docked papers I have been reading for not having enough references, but that is usually because they have made either an unsupported argument, or one where there is a sweeping assertion followed by very limited references. In these cases though, it's not as if I came in with this idea that they needed between 25 and 50 references or it's a rejection.

Note there are also some journal-level requirements - in my field (epidemiology) I mostly encounter this as a limit to the number of references outside review papers.


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My advisor delays a lot of time in checking my paper before communicating. What should I do?
I am in my 3rd year of PhD. After I have written the paper, there is a minimum of 10 times check and correction cycle going on between me and my advisor. He checks grammar and english errors, but never have I seen him give any technical input for improvement of the paper. Instead, after I have completed my part and given it to him for checking, he would say things like, "yes will check it", "very busy now", and by doing this 2 months passes by. Now he does this everytime the checking phase comes. So nearly 5 6 months minimum is wasted in just the checking process. Again he wants me to give 7 journal paper for PhD and I will be paid for a maximum of 3 more years. Right now, 1 paper has been communicated and 1 I am about to communicate. Its just too much of pressure. Please tell me what to do. Please help...

Hmm.  Is this an advisor or an extremely slow proofreading service?

Advisor , professor.. god knows how

There are a lot of questions here about unsatisfactory relationships with the advisor.  Take a look.  Generally they boil down to considering the alternatives.

I had a similar issue.  I found that the major problem was that I was a "drafter" and my advisor was a "planner" in terms of writing style - my style was to write a draft, get the technical points correct, and then wordsmith the exact meaning and clarify my points.  My advisor, on the other hand, wanted me to carefully plan each of my arguments before even starting to write so that it was absolutely clear what my contribution was, why it was important, why it was novel, and why my work was sufficient to support it.
It was quite frustrating, to be honest.  I strongly recommend meeting with your advisor to clarify how exactly he wants you to work on each paper.  One of the purposes of a PhD education is to turn you into a researcher who is independent, so eventually you'll have to learn to edit your own papers anyway.  If the issues are typically minor, like English and grammar, don't wait on your advisor.  Send it off to an editor and get that part out of the way.  If there are common issues on things like clarity and whether your arguments are sufficient, spend more time planning out how you are arguing each point, how you are backing up each claim, and why it's valid, before even writing the paper.  This will give you a much stronger paper anyway.
Now, I don't know your field, but 7 journal papers out of 1 PhD seems excessive to me.  I've heard from top researchers that they expect 3 from a PhD, and I myself graduated with only 1 in a great journal, plus two more in a smaller journal.  I think that expectation is also something to discuss with your advisor.  What do other grad students in your group say?  Are they having the same problem, or is it just you?  if it's just you, what are they doing differently?

All of the other members are facing the same problem of delayed checking. It is so annoying specially when you do not expect anything from apart apart from grammar check. My advisor tells me nothing previously regarding what work he wants from me or how the paper should be structured. He gives no comments on results, or methodology. Just does grammar check. And delays even that....

I think that if there are enough of you who have an issue, then it's clearly the advisor's problem.  I suggest talking to the advisor about this, and explaining that you can't possibly meet your target if he doesn't work with you quickly enough.  If it doesn't go well, the entire research group should talk to him together.  If that doesn't go well, then yes, it's important to think about alternatives and other avenues.

Alternative other avenues meaning ? Does it mean I leave PhD or change advisor ?

Not necessarily.  You could get the dean or the grad supervisor involved to see if there is a problem that can be more easily resolved first.  In fact, I'd suggest that option first, since you are already 3 years in.  I'm not sure how your school works, but I feel that it must have some grad studies office.  most do


text:
Using my email and webpage screenshots in my thesis
My research is about data-driven marketing methods and applying those methods in education. In my PhD thesis, I use some screenshots of commercial emails in my email box from companies such as Amazon, Les Mills, etc. An example:
I also used some screenshots from part of a webpage from companies such as Mailchimp. An example:
I have a copyright question: Do I need to seek permission for using these images?
P.S. I study at the University of South Australia

You're probably better off asking at https://law.stackexchange.com/

Related: Legality of screenshot of another website,  Using a software screenshot in a paper, How does copyright work on screen captures?.

Does this answer your question? How does copyright work on screen captures?


text:
Citing one paper in consecutive paragraphs in a thesis
I dedicated one subsection of my thesis to a very new topic from a 2020 paper so I had only one reference. I wrote the subsection in this way:

paragraph 1: Introduction to the concept of X and the framework
containing five dimensions
paragraph 2: dimension 1
paragraph 3: dimension 2
paragraph 4: dimension 3
paragraph 5: dimension 4
paragraph 6: dimension 5
paragraph 7: Wrap up and conclusion

Everything has been summarised (not copied) from one 2020 paper. My question is: what is the best way to cite that paper? Does it make sense to add one sentence to paragraph 1 and say that contents of this subsection is a summary of [reference]?
P.S. this new topic is not the core topic of my thesis

At first glance, this seems completely uncontroversial. What is the source of your concern?

Just open with:

This section summarises research by A et al. [1].


text:
Copyright in academic software in the UK
I work on statistical data analysis in neuroscience at a university, and to that end regularly develop small pieces of software. Most of that software I also publish on GitHub under the GNU General Public License. This implies that I claim and retain copyright.
I used to work in Germany, where in my (possibly mistaken?) understanding of "Wissenschaftsfreiheit" (academic freedom) this was a correct procedure. I now started to work at a UK university and stumbled across a passage in their Intellectual Property Policy:

Scholarly Works
a) The University waives its rights in the copyright
  in scholarly works produced solely in the furtherance of an academic
  career. This includes books, articles in journals, papers for
  conferences, study notes, original literary, dramatic, musical or
  artistic works, sound recordings, films, broadcasts, and typographical
  arrangements, multimedia works, photographs, and drawings, provided
  the material does not form part of a course or teaching materials for
  the University, and has not been commissioned by the University.
b) The University does not waive its rights in the intellectual property
  in any underlying materials on which the scholarly work is based,
  including software, data, databases, designs and patentable
  inventions.

(emphasis mine)
If I understand paragraph (b) correctly, I cannot continue to publish code under the GPL, because the copyright of the software isn't mine to begin with. The same holds for data from neuroscience experiments, and one might argue that it holds for experimental designs. This does not just seem to prohibit my personal practice, but also to stand in the way of current efforts towards Open Science (open source, open data).
My questions:
1) Is this policy (b) correct under UK intellectual property law as it pertains to academia?
2) Is such a policy usual at UK universities? If yes, how do academics publishing software usually deal with it?
3) Are there organisations in the UK which could help to convince the university to change the policy? (Open Science advocacy groups)

That is a (possibly common) misconception. The GPL is a license, stating what others may do with the code. In order to be able to enforce this license (there have been court cases), it is necessary to retain copyright. "Copyleft" is meant to signify that one is using copyright law in a way that preserves others' rights instead of constraining them.

@Time4Tea, see e.g. "Copyleft type licenses are a novel use of existing copyright law to ensure a work remains freely available." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft Not claiming copyright would make a work fall into the public domain, which would allow others to appropriate the work and restrict its use.

Personally, I would describe that as retaining ownership under copyright law, rather than asserting copyright. But I think this is going off on a semantic tangent, so I will delete my other comment.

Many academics in CS publish their software and sometimes even their data, blissfully ignoring whether they are allowed to do so in their institution or not. It's unlikely to cause any trouble because institutions usually don't care too much: nobody will ever check, unless there's a potential commercial opportunity at play.
However my understanding is that IP rights for any outcome produced in the course of academic work [edited] might be shared between the institution and the author, depending on the institution/country (but IANAL of course). This doesn't mean that the institution forbids academics to publish their software/data, actually it's even very unlikely that the institution would oppose publishing open-source software, but the proper way to do this would be to ask the IP/innovation office for permission (afaik most institutions have one nowadays).
In my research centre there is an official process that we are supposed to follow whenever we want to make something publicly available. It's a simple software disclosure form where the author indicates what the software does and what kind of license they want to apply to it. The form is supposed to be reviewed by an IP officer who in my experience always validates the request.  I've done it a few times myself: this additional administrative step is a bit annoying but it's not such a big effort.

@DanRomik I didn't say that researchers must contact the IP/innovation every time: institutions often have standard policies in place, like the waiver for papers that OP mentions in the question. I would guess that many institutions also waive their IP rights on open-source software. However if the institution policy is not available anywhere else, it is the role of the IP office to answer queries about what researchers can or cannot publish.

In the few universities I've been (in Europe) there was such a process in place for publishing software or data. But since most researchers don't know about it and institutions don't care, I'm probably the only idiot who bothers filling these forms ;)

@DanRomik I edited the answer. I said "depending on the institution/country" since I haven't been to every country in Europe, and this might even be university-specific.

Thanks, this is a useful answer and I therefore upvoted it. However, I was specifically asking about the UK, and you covered only part of the three parts of my question, therefore I'm not going to accept your answer.

"It's unlikely to cause any trouble": you're probably right, but then what's the point of selecting a license for code if nobody cares about the legal framework anyway?

"official process": interesting, I'll see whether there is something similar here.

@A.Donda I don't mean that nobody cares about the legal framework, I mean that universities don't punish or sue their own academics for publishing something on their own accord, even if in theory they should have asked for permission first. your question seems to assume that if the university doesn't automatically waive its IP rights, then it prevents academics from publishing under an open license. This is a misinterpretation, since the institution can still allow publication on a case by case basis.

For the record I'm in Ireland where the academic system is virtually identical to the UK's, but I don't know whether this kind of policy depends on the country or is specific to the institution.


text:
Acknowledge the proofreader of the thesis
For the proofreading of my thesis I've used the help of a paid lector.
My question is, if it's normal practice to include this person into the acknowledgements of the thesis?

I acknowledged my two volunteer proofreaders, but probably would not acknowledge a paid lector unless he went above and beyond what the fee covered.
In the case of acknowledgments, I think a safe rule is if you're not sure, put it in.  After all, you could type, "Thanks to Jane Doe for proofreading," faster than asking this question.

If you're happy with the lectors work, you should also be happy to give him this reference.
The only thing in your thesis that will likely ever be read again are abstract and acknowledgements.

Oh...ouch!  That's gonna leave a nasty bruise! :)


text:
How do I get mathematics recommenders out of undergrad?
I am a few years out of undergrad, graduated with a CompE BS with math minor, but was wanting to head into graduate school for mathematics and/or mathematical physics (particle or high energy theory). How do I get back into the mathematics/physics community to the point where I would have good recommendations for the next round of applications (currently I have none)?
Thanks in advance.

Can you not get recommendations from, e.g., the faculty who taught you the  courses you took in order to do a minor in mathematics?

I really don't have much of a relationship with any of them beyond simply taking the course that they taught. However, if that is the way to go then I could certainly do that. Would those be more valuable when applying to math programs than people at work (PhD engineers) as my recommenders?

For math programs: I recommend that you get at least one of your letters from a math faculty member who taught you undergrad, yes.  It is not necessary to have any relationship beyond having taken the courses in order to get a good letter. It depends rather how strong an impression you made on them during the courses.  If for instance you were consistently at or near the top of classes full of strong, capable students, then great.

All graduate schools want to admit candidates who will succeed in their program, which is why most require an undergraduate degree.
Here is a quote about a Physics Master's Admission from the University of Tennessee.

A student who enrolls in graduate study with the intention of attaining an advanced degree in physics will have completed an undergraduate major in physics or its equivalent.

Nevertheless since there is such a high overlap in math, physics, and computer science/engineering; you will likely be able to find a graduate program that will accept you -- especially if you are willing to take a year of prerequisite classes. Here is another quote about a master's degree in Applied Math

The following prerequisites must be satisfied in our program or in course work passed elsewhere and judged equivalent by the
  department

Numerical Analysis, Numerical Algebra, or Numerical Algorithms
Methods in Applied Mathematics or both Differential Eqns. II and Partial Differential Eqs.
Advanced Calculus
Matrix Algebra II

Hmm.  I find it interesting that despite having a PhD in mathematics (plus 12 more years in academia...) I have knowledge or coursework in only one of the four prerequisites.  Or possibly two: I don't know exactly what "matrix algebra II" means, but I have spent some years studying matrix algebras.

While I have a PhD in computational atomic physics, I haven't taken a class in Quantum Field Theory, General Relativity, or Particle Physics.

What sort of merit is there in self study towards topics listed on admissions pages? I have been working through textbooks on material that I did not take during undergrad but don't really know how do display this knowledge to an admissions committee other than having a recommender vouch for me (and I suppose the GRE...).

Self-study will be good for many reasons: it will make graduate school easier, it can focus your interests, and it can prepare you for the subject GRE which is often required for admission. Consider attending weekly departmental seminars of a local university. If you make friends with a professor and become interested in his research, you will most likely get accepted into the program (provided you fulfill any prerequisites).


text:
How free are graduate students to choose research topics given their department?
I'm sort of foggy in general about how this works. If you are, say a a computer science graduate student, what kind of freedom do you have to pick a research topic that focuses more on something like cellular biology, swarms, or string theory? Do you need to change departments? Do you need to illustrate some connection back to CS techniques? Do you just have to pursuade your advisor to issue a blessing?

Every department is different.

This will vary based on your adviser, your level of study (i.e. what degree you're going for), your committee and your department.  In almost all cases for computer science, you will be required to demonstrate mastery of the subject.  Incorporating outside knowledge from another subject area, say, cell biology, where you re-implemented or improved a gene matching algorithm, for example, would probably be allowed.
Simply doing an experiment from cell-biology with no tie-in to CS would almost certainly not be approved--but, this is where your adviser, et. al. come in.  If you've got a smashing idea, a good adviser/committee will help you try and find a way to tie it into your degree and PhD students are typically given more leeway here than Masters students.
Though, be prepared, in some cases, an adviser will play a big role in determining what your thesis will be.  Also, if you are being funded by a particular grant under a PI (principal investigator--typically a research professor), it is traditional (at least at my University) to pursue research related to what the PI is doing.  Though it's definitely easy just to ask to be exempt from this tradition.
So, basically, the answer to your question is it depends.  Almost certainly you will be required to do something Computer Science-y for a CS degree, but there can be a lot of leeway in determining what Computer Science-y means.

If you are funded by a grant, that may be tied to the particular project that the grant was awarded to fund.  Using it for another project would probably require a special request to the funding agency; doing so without permission may (in the case of government funding agencies) actually be illegal.

If you're funded by a grant, then you have a job.  But that job does not prevent you from also working on research unrelated to the grant, on your own time and with your own equipment.

Yes, what JeffE was saying is what I was trying to say.  Thanks for clarifying!

However, your academic advisor might not be willing to advise you on a project unrelated to the grant that is paying your stipend.

There are a lot of factors.  Generally, your research topic is whatever you and your advisor agree on.  In principle, you often have a dissertation committee that must also agree, but typically that is mostly a formality unless someone is totally off the rails.
So if you want to do something unusual, the hard part would be getting your advisor to agree.  In deciding whether a topic is appropriate for a PhD dissertation, they should generally consider:

Is it significant? Is this a project that will be a genuine contribution to the field?  Is it in an area that is generally recognized as important?  Is it difficult enough to be worth a PhD?  A project in a fringe area, or one that would advance the state of the art only infinitesimally even if successful, or one that is at too low a level, would likely not fly.
Is it original?  The project should not primarily duplicate something that has already been done (unless you are trying to reproduce previous results, which in some situations would be considered valuable).  Your advisor will have to be convinced that your literature search is thorough enough that you fully understand the context of your project and how it will extend previous work.
Is it feasible? Your advisor needs to be convinced that you have the necessary knowledge, expertise, resources, and funding, and that the project is of an appropriate difficulty and scale that you have a good chance of completing it within a reasonable period of time (some departments have firm limits on how long you can take to finish a PhD).
Are they qualified to advise you?  Does the advisor have the necessary expertise to accurately evaluate the significance, originality and feasibility of the proposed project?  Will they be able to help teach you some of the things you need to learn?  Will they be able to judge your progress along the way?  Will they be able to provide you with, or help you acquire, resources you may need?

So in most cases, if you have a particular area in mind, in order to pass the fourth test you will need to choose an advisor who is an expert in that area or something closely related.  If nobody in the department qualifies, or none of them are willing to be your advisor, then you probably cannot work on that project in that department.  Sometimes it is possible to take on a co-advisor from another department who does have the appropriate expertise.  Otherwise, you either need to change departments (often tantamount to reapplying), change institutions (which means actually reapplying) or work on something else.
In many cases, the easiest way to meet all four criteria is to work on a project suggested by your advisor, even if it is something that you hadn't previously been interested in.  This is particularly true in fields that are highly specialized, and where a beginning graduate student would not be expected to easily recognize interesting problems to study.

For students in the physical sciences and engineering, a major issue is getting funding to pay for required research equipment and supplies.  This nearly always comes from a grant that has been awarded to the academic advisor.  Thus students working in these disciplines are very constrained in their choice of projects- it has to be something that fits with the available funding.
Even if the student's research doesn't require expensive equipment and supplies, if the student is working on a research assistantship then the student will normally be expected to do a thesis or disseration that is part of the research project that funds the assistantship.
Some students work in areas where there isn't any need for expensive equipment or supplies and some students also have funding (a fellowship or a teaching assistantship) that isn't tied to a particular research grant.  In such cases students can have a much greater say in what their thesis project will be.  However, the project still must be acceptable to the advisor and the thesis or dissertation committee.  It is not uncommon for advisors to simply say "no" to a student request to supervise a project that the advisor doesn't think is worthwhile.   Even if the advisor says "yes", there are often other levels at which the project must be approved (e.g. by the thesis or dissertation committee, the department chair, or even a graduate dean.)


text:
Where to publish (recreational) mathematics without a PhD?
I have been out of undergrad for some time now but was interested in publishing a few things I have been working on. Are there any good "beginner" journals where someone without a mathematics PhD might have a chance at publishing something?
It might be important to note that most of the material would likely just be more on the recreational side of things.
Thanks in advance.

American Mathematical Monthly comes to mind; also The Mathematical Intelligencer.

A word of caution:  Beware of predatory author-pay journals that will try to exploit you!

Intending to contribute an obvious answer here, I googled the "Journal of Recreational Mathematics" (which I remember seeing in our university library), and I learned that it stopped publishing last year.  Oh, well.

@Dirk The Monthly is definitely not a "beginner" journal.

@jeffe My comment was more triggered by the word "recreational" than by "beginner".

Of the journals of the Mathematical Association of America, you can choose between The American Mathematical Monthly, the Mathematical Magazine, and The College Mathematics Journal. The three have (perhaps subtly) different scopes1, and short of you telling us exactly what your results are about we cannot tell you which journal is the best choice. (On the other hand, you can easily write to the editors of one of those three journals to see where your manuscript would best fit.)
As Dirk mentioned, The Mathematical Intelligencer is also an obvious choice (again, caveats about not knowing whether your paper fit in their scope).
If you aim the material at the mathematical maturity level between secondary (high school) education and first years of a college education, two good publications are Pi in the Sky which is published by the Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and Parabola which is backed by the University of New South Wales in Australia.
Another general mathematics magazine you can try is Plus Magazine based at Cambridge; the editors specifically asks you to contact them in advance if you want to write for the publication.

1 A very rough guide is that in terms of "mathematical maturity", the "age" of the readers are such that CMJ < MM < AMM.

I was also going to recommend the magazine Quantum, from which I derived great benefit when I was in high school. Unfortunately it seems to have ceased publication in 2001.

Willie's answers provides a good list of math journals aimed a general audience from undergrads to PhDs, but I'd like to give a different kind of answer.  You question seems to assume that most math journals are specifically for people with PhDs to publish in but this is just false.  While it's certainly true that most papers published in most journals are written by people who already have PhDs, many of them are written by grad students, some by undergrads, and even a few by high school students (I don't know any articles by preschoolers or middle schoolers, but maybe someone else can enlighten me.)
The main question you should ask is: what journals publish the kind of papers I am writing?  Since you say it's primarily recreational mathematics, then the kind of publications that Willie mentions may well be most appropriate (though beware the Monthly has rather high standards in terms of quality and exposition--I don't know much about the others).  But, depending on the kind of mathematics, it might be appropriate for, say, one of the many journals with a focus on combinatoric or number theory.  The ideal thing would be to see if one of your former professors, could give you some guidance--both feedback on a draft, and suggestions for suitable places for publication.  In fact, the feedback on a draft is likely to be more valuable than journal suggestions.  If this is not possible, you could also consider contacting a mathematician who you think may be interested in your work, and briefly explain your situation and ask if they would be willing to take a look at your draft.

"You question seems to assume that most math journals are specifically for people with PhDs to publish in but this is just false. " I had to read this a couple of times to understand why it's true.  I think you mean that the credential of a PhD is not required to publish in any math journal.  However I think it is true that most papers published in most math journals exhibit a PhD level of mastery and accomplishment.  In other words, I know of very few "beginner" journals, and as you say the MAA-type journals that one thinks of when people ask about this are not easy to publish in.

@PeteL.Clark Sorry if this was unclear.  Yes I meant that journals are for (both for reading and publishing) people interested in that research, not specifically for PhDs.  Of course, people with PhDs tend be more interested than people without PhDs.

Try for Recreational Mathematics Magazine. LINK
url : rmm.ludus-opuscula.org
As noted here, the Journal of Recreational Mathematics has ceased publication. Maybe this new journal will help fill the gap.
See the 4 issues published so far at that address.  And more information about the journal.

Can you please expand your recommendation a bit, to say some more about this venue and why you recommend it?


text:
What are the disadvantages of having postdocs or visitor in the lab?
I have seen professors clearly stating that they do not accept visitor students or postdocs.
So, what are the disadvantages of having such positions?

Did they explicitly state that they do not and never will accept them or might it be the case that this is temporary?

Interesting question, but I don't know. Here is one example: http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/

This can vary a lot from professor to professor or even school to school. Some ideas:

Cost. This varies heavily from school to school. At some schools, tuition is waived for graduate students but not for visiting students, and the professor would have to pay tuition for a visiting student. If tuition is waived and the professor only has to pay the research stipend, the graduate student stipend is typically cheaper than the postdoctoral stipend. If visiting students come from abroad, there can also be immigration costs and living stipend requirements that the professor must provide for.
Training time vs. research produced How long it takes to train someone varies from field to field. In my field, it's probably about a year of training before you can really pull your own weight. If you're a visiting student who will only be here for one year, you might be a net-drain on the research production in the group: we spend a lot of time training you, and then you immediately leave. What do we get for that sunk time?
Fear of being scooped. Less so for a postdoc, but with a visiting student present for a short time, some professors in highly competitive fields might be concerned that the visiting student will go back to their "main" lab and work on very similar projects, potentially scooping the group that hosted them.
Desire to focus on graduate students. Some professors especially later in their career, enjoy mentoring and working to develop new scientists. Often you see the most progress and development from graduate students, who are with you longer and have had less training. For some professors, this can be very gratifying.
Minimizing group turnover and recruiting. Some professors might prefer to have students for longer periods of time, to allow them to focus more on research and less on the periphery of recruiting and training new members, especially if professors are retired or near retirement. Graduate students are typically around for 4-7 years, whereas visiting students may be around for as little as 8-10weeks, or postdocs only 1.5-3 years.
Transitioning into retirement. Some professors when they are considering retirement will try to focus exclusively on getting their last few graduate students finished with the program. (On the other hand, some professors might prefer postdocs who could more easily be pushed off into a job whenever they decide to retire.)

Edit: If you're seeing this on a website, the professor may not have a standing rule against visitors or postdocs, but may simply not have room or funding for them right now.

Many professors receive a lot of unsolicited emails from people asking to come to their lab/department for a summer internship, sabbatical, collaboration visit of several days/weeks/months/years, etc. The professor to whose web page you linked seems to have gotten tired of these requests and therefore declared that he will not be taking on any visitors. I doubt his strategy has much effect, but that's why he's doing it. It has nothing to do with a disadvantage of having visitors, and everything to do with the disadvantage of receiving many tedious requests from people you don't know or have any interest in working with.

Good point. Another example: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~golbeck/note.shtml


text:
"Web of science" as search provider in chrome?
Is it possible to use Web of Science from the Chrome Omni-Bar (aka address-bar)?
Chrome supports adding custom searches by mapping a string to a search expression, e.g.
i    https://www.google.at/search?tbm=isch&q=%s
doi  https://dx.doi.org/%s

which then allows entering doi XXXX.XXXX to lookup a doi, or i academia to do a google image search for "academia".
apps.webofknowledge.com however, has session-based urls where the current query isn't included in any readable form, so this method won't work. They do provide a description of how to add web of science as search provider but it seems to be outdated by years – Chrome isn't even mentioned and it doesn't work in Internet Explorer 11 either.

Could this Chrome extension be of use to you:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-of-science-quick-sear/nemobobcigeaigadamdpegpjkklkoeae?hl=en
Just click Add to Chrome and you should be jamming.

I noticed that the extension is provided by Clarivate Analytics, the owner of Web of Science, so it should be compatible for now and the future.

I have that one installed already. Since it doesn't integrate with the Omni bar, it gives no big advantage over navigating to the website. Better than nothing, but still inferior to Omni bar integration.


text:
Gre sub math score is low...Should I send to schools that strongly recommend ?
I got pretty bad Gre sub score,which is 51%. I am applying a couple of graduate programs in math, but most of them are masters. So should I send my Gre sub score to those who strongly recommend it ?(but not required) My other information:I come from a pretty good public schools, but not famous for math, GPA is 3.67, two REUs, and I guess my three letters are good.
Thanks !

Hi and welcome to Academia.SE! I believe the linked question is the same as yours. If it isn't, please [edit] your post to clarify the difference and it may be reopened.

Note: someone just added a new answer to the duplicate question, you will probably want to read it. Just wanted to let you know!


text:
Opting out of Scopus Author ID
The Scopus Author Identifier is an identifier that Elsevier attributes to researchers in order to create a public profile for them on its Scopus platform.
My question is whether researchers have successfully requested Elsevier to delete their identifier or profile on Scopus. Namely:

Is Elsevier known to accept deletion requests? (I saw no documentation about this on their website.)
Has there been any discussion of the status of such profiles relative to the EU GDPR? (One could argue in defense of Elsevier that the profile is compiled from public bibilographic metadata. That said, it contains personal identifiers (e.g., names), and it is not clear that publicly available personal data under GDPR can be freely reused, see e.g. here.)
Are there known cases of researchers who do not have a Scopus ID?

Before getting to some of the specifics of your question, I think that one of your premises need to be addressed. The reason that the premise is important is that it has an effect on the potential legal implications for the Scopus Author Identifier (which I'll refer to simply as the SAID from here on).
You open by saying that the SAID exists "in order to create a public profile for them [authors] on its Scopus platform". That is not strictly correct.
This page at Elsevier explains that:

The Scopus Author Identifier distinguishes among similar names by assigning each author in Scopus a unique number and grouping all of the documents written by that author,

and while it is true that it can be used in conjunction with a public "author profile", it originates as an numerical index in Elsevier's database of authors, not all of which is necessarily public.  Indeed, it would be unusual these days for any relational database not to have a numerical primary key of some kind, irrespective of the database language being used.
On this website run by RMIT, I saw confirmation of what I had suspected, namely that,

Scopus Author ID is automatically generated if you have a paper in the database so registration for a Scopus Author ID is not required.

If there is a paper listed in the Scopus database, and the paper has authors, then each author will have a SAID. Of course, many authors have multiple different SAIDs. Why? Because in the case of those authors, Scopus does not have sufficient information to conclude that the different database entries all refer to the same individual.
Given that every author is necessarily associated with an identifier, one of your questions amounts to something along the lines of whether Scopus would agree to do either of the following:

Not show any identifier in conjunction with each appearance of your name on their public user interface; or alternatively
Agree deliberately to enter your name multiple times into their database so that each occurrence is associated with a unique identifier that is not linked to any of the other appearances of your name. In effect, this would be asking them to reverse what many authors do, which is to consolidate different author-database entries into a single entry that is, in turn, linked to all their publications.

I doubt that they would agree to doing this if they knew what your purpose was, but it is probably possible to mislead (!) them into believing that your name in association with "Paper 1" is not the same individual as the one referred to by the same name on "Paper 2". It sounds like a time-consuming process, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible.
Now to the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation of the EU. The GDPR recognizes various different kinds of identifiers and controls their use. Some of the strongest protection is in Article 87, where the use of national identifiers of a kind such as the Social Security Number (in the US) or Tax File Number (in Italy) can be severely restricted by member states. On the other hand, Article 89, which governs "Safeguards and derogations relating to processing for archiving
purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research
purposes or statistical purpose", would seem, on the face of it, not to prohibit the kind of activity in which Scopus is involved and for which it uses the SAID.
Lastly, it's worth considering Article 7, concerning "consent". If you had a paper published, and you put your name on it, and you did not (at the time) prohibit the journal from publishing your name, then one must assume that you consented to the use of your name in the contexts in which it you knew, or ought reasonably to have known, that it would be used. That doesn't necessarily extend to Scopus's use of the information (but see Article 89) but I can think of good arguments why it should (and, in any case, see Article 89).

Thanks for the detailed answer! I understand Elsevier wants to disambiguate authors, but they are still creating an identifier which they claim refers to me, and creating a public page based on that identifier. (I agree it would be different if this were not public, but it is.) Regarding consent, I don't think that publishing a paper means that I consented to have a page created for me with the list of papers I wrote along with various bibliometrics. In any case, thanks for your insights!

@user253751 I'm not sure, since I'm not the OP, but I think the OP's concern is about Scopus identifying multiple papers by himself/herself as being authored by the same individual. Clearly difficult to avoid the inevitable inferences (even without a unique numerical identifier) if your name is WeAreAllIndividuals LifeOfBrian. But if your name is John Smith, you might want to hide among the thousands of other John Smith(s) on Scopus

Well, my concern is also about having a public profile created for me without my consent -- be it by name or by ID number. I don't know of many platforms which will do this -- when looking for my name on the internet, what I find is essentially accounts that I chose to create.

Hm, I agree the line is blurry. I could understand that for a bibliographical database you could search by name, and that unavoidably there would be a page "Search results: papers by a3nm". My impression is that I perceive it differently when the page is called a profile, when it claims to have disambiguated (hence, authoritative) results, and when it is indexable by search engines. Note that Google Scholar, for instance, does things differently: you can of course search for papers by author name, but only authors who signed up for Google Scholar have a public profile listing their papers.


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Have some universities already tried to temporarily disable their journal subscriptions
Many universities pay a yearly subscription to journals so that their researchers (usually identified by IP address) can transparently access scientific papers from these journals. However, more and more papers are made available online in open access nowadays, so some universities have been tempted to cancel some of their subscriptions.
While some universities took the plunge, others have been hesitant. I can understand this to some extent: the university doesn't want to cancel, and then discover that their researchers are up in arms because they cannot access some papers, and the university has to come back to the table of negotiations with the publisher and subscribe again while being in a bad bargaining position. (This is important, because the subscription prices are often heavily negotiated and opaque.)
I was thinking that a tempting solution for a university could be to do a kind of experiment: while they are subscribed, temporarily "disable" their subscription for some set duration, and see whether their researchers are having any problems or not. This could be technically achieved, e.g., by routing their Internet traffic via some IP that is not subscribed, or something of the sort. And one could imagine it could give valuable insight to the university, without requiring any renegotiation with the publishers.
Do we know of any universities that made experiments of this kind? and of what the outcome was?

I think it unlikely and that there would be an uproar. But it is often librarians who have the subscriptions and if they see that a journal is never requested for a few years, it might be dropped. Especially since they can get a few needed articles from other libraries. But "some" and "any" are slippery terms.

Where I work we went through the process of dropping some subscriptions a decade or more ago. But, if we don’t have subscription access there is a streamlined way to request a given article, and the library pays the cost. That way they get direct feedback on missing journal access.

Usually they can get usage data in a less disruptive way.

The journal publishers do this by mistake from time to time.

Note that even after switching to an IP address not covered by the subscription the users may have cookies which grant them access, for instance to Springer. «okay, hypothesis anecdotally reproduced. Steps:  1. delete cookies 2. confirm no access (#paywall) 3. VPN into @MaastrichtU   4. accept cookies 5. stop VPN 6. confirm still access  So, all you need is a cookies?? Can I share them? Copyright infringement? DRM violation?» https://twitter.com/egonwillighagen/status/1253256928354013188

Disabling a neglected service "temporarily" to see how long it takes before someone complains is a typical BOFH move. If nobody complains for several days or even weeks, this is then taken as evidence that the service is not needed and can be disbanded (although that's often questionable).

This has certainly happened, at large scale to boot. For example in 2014 60+ German institutions all let their contracts with Elsevier expire while they negotiated a new contract. Elsevier went ahead and gave them free access while negotiations were ongoing. In 2018-2019, Norway and Sweden did the same thing at national level, and so did the University of California.
If you want to know more about how this impacted usage, I'm sure you can ask your institution librarian for details. I'm sure they can tell you a lot: how they decide which journals to subscribe to, what would happen (e.g. how many complaints) if they unsubscribed from a popular journal, how they can secure access even if they unsubscribed, and so on.

Project DEAL (https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/) (the negotiation platform for the German institutions) did already have some success recently.

Yes, see also https://sparcopen.org/our-work/big-deal-cancellation-tracking/ . Note however that Elsevier actually disabled access only many months after the expiry of the contract, and the permanent access clauses mean that they only lost access to what was published after the expiry of the contract, while OP's idea could test the loss of access on all content at once.

Yeah, I know about letting contracts expire, but since this is already a larger step, I was wondering if some universities had tested the waters first while at the middle of a subscription. Thanks nevertheless for the pointers!

@a3nm I don't understand. Why would anyone cancel a subscription while it's still in force? The subscription is already paid for, regardless of whether the university uses it or not. Or are you thinking of cancelling a contract? There must be an exit clause in the contract, and trying to worm one's way out of the contract without following the exit clause would have legal consequences.

No, the idea is to continue paying for the subscription, but just disable it, say, for 2 weeks, as an experiment, and see if your researchers complain about something. As these subscriptions typically run for multiple years, and cancelling and then renewing would take more time than 2 weeks, I was thinking some universities may want to do an experiment of the kind.

@a3nm I see what you mean. It still seems pretty unnecessary to me though. The librarians inevitably already get complaints from researchers trying to access articles they don't currently have access to (i.e. they don't subscribe to the journal), and librarians certainly track usage statistics so they can extrapolate fairly easily. If you want to know the details I again suggest talking to your institution's librarians.

@Allure Actually, after cancellations the libraries usually received very few complaints. There are several reports on the matter. The University of California had a poll recently, not sure if the results are published. https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/2020/01/elsevier-impact-poll/ https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/open-access-elsevier-poll-and-update/

@a3nm (since Nemo apparently pinged the wrong person)

It has just been reported on slashdot that MIT has ended negotiations with Elsevier on a contract when the company failed to come up with acceptable terms.


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Why is it called an "abstract" if it is 10 pages long?
A conference I have submitted to asks for an "extended abstract" of up to 10 pages, which amounts to pretty much a full paper. Why is it then called "abstract"?
The conference is in the crossing between computer science, biology, and mathematics, so it may be following any of their traditions.

Some fields do not traditionally have conference proceedings but only abstracts. It sounds like the conventions of biology (call anything presented in a conference an abstract) and computer science (ten-page short paper) have been mixed.

@mmh: "computer science (ten-page short paper)" - shouldn't that be "ten-page long/full paper"?

Darwin called "On the Origin of Species," hundreds of pages long, an abstract.

Some computer science conferences also ask for extended abstracts, but I don't know why they do that. Maybe the idea is the same as in Nature papers: you can discuss the background and the results within the page limit, but you don't have the room for the details.

@O.R.Mapper If a field calls ten-page articles "full papers", I pity them. At least in TCS, journal papers are usually longer.

Because it contains nothing concrete? :p

@Raphael not really. When you don't have formal proofs you can get your point across in much less space, and all the implementation details (exactly which dataset, code...) can go in the supplementary material. Sadly, still many papers handwave their way through the important details.

@Davidmh I think it's more about the publication culture. In CS, there is usually no supplementary material. All claims must be justified either in the paper or by referencing earlier work. Hence the full paper should include all the details that are necessary for justifying the results and replicating them.

@Davidmh In TCS papers are usually long, for example full versions of the last three works that received "best paper award" at FOCS had respectively 59, 108 and 64 pages.

@Raphael: In HCI-related subfields of CS, this is pretty much the standard. E.g., two of the top venues say "a Paper, or Note, depending on the length. It’s equivalent to a journal publication in other fields" and "Submission format: anonymized 10-page Paper or 4-page Note"; "Papers can be up to a maximum of ten (10) pages in length". Venue-specific terminology aside, "maximum length paper" is equivalent to "full paper".

I am guessing you are talking about RECOMB, one of the most important computational biology conferences. The story behind this is a little complicated and can show you some of the difficulties faced by a relatively new interdisciplinary field.
Since computational biology has both computer scientists and biologists, it needs to answer the needs of both cultures. For computer scientists, presentation and publication in the proceedings of an important conference is considered excellent. In biology, however, publication is mainly in journals. A second difference between cultures is that in computer science it is standard to publish extended versions of conference papers in journals. In biology, this is usually not acceptable unless it is a low-tier journal.
So what do you do if you want to get submissions of great work from computational biologists of both sides? This is a challenge that computational biologists have been dealing with not just in this conference but also in other conferences. There have been all kinds of proposed solutions - I will not list them here.
RECOMB organizers have tried different solutions and decided to call the accepted manuscripts "extended abstracts", and these are published only in the conference proceedings (which are not freely available). This way, computer scientists consider it published in the conference and biologists consider it unpublished so they can still submit it to a high-tier journal.
Actually they usually also have other "submission tracks" such as coordinated submission to a specific journal in parallel with the conference.

I guess the follow up question would be, do they have a DOI? I'm in a similar conundrum, conference abstracts (1-2 pages), usually do not have a DOI, which is what makes the "citable" and when they count for Tenure package or Grad school.
My guess would be that they do not?
Also, in my experience, CS conference acceptance rate is way lower then Biology or Planetary Sciences.

@Leonpalafox I am not sure about DOI, but if I am not mistaken they are not indexed in PubMed, which is the standard for a biology manuscript to be considered "published". And yes - normal biology conferences don't really have a rigorous review, they usually pick presentations based on a 1-page abstract. The top compbio conferences are more similar to CS conferences in that sense (I think RECOMB acceptance rate is ~20%).

The "extended abstract" is not unique to RECOMB; as explained in Arno's answer, this has been standard terminology in computer science conferences for decades.  See for example, the call for papers for FOCS (a top theory conference).

I disagree with Bitwise's conclusion that this terminology is primarily due to a unique situation between Biology and Computer Science. In my experience (mostly TCS), the term "extended abstract" is very common to denote the ~10page conference submissions.
While 10 pages will typically suffice to present the results of a (T)CS paper, e.g. proofs often have to be omitted to make the page limit. This leads to an extended abstract (with no/only sketched proofs) at a conference, and then a full paper including proofs on the arXiv and/or in a journal.

How long is a typical TCS paper? In my field rare are the papers significantly longer than 15 pages.

Thanks - I do not necessarily think this is mainly due to the compbio situation, but I do think that in the case of a compbio conference it may be more than just an arbitrary choice of terminology.

@Davidmh Most papers I've read/written seem to fall into 20-40 pages, shorter ones are more common than longer ones.

Any number of IEEE conferences do the same thing. The best get a request to submit a full paper to an IEEE journal after the conference. It does seem like a lot of work.


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Is there a repository for academic slides?
Open access repositories like arXiv make it easy to archive one's papers at a stable place where everyone can download them.
However, in my field (computer science), many publications are conference publications, and they are presented by giving a talk (in addition to the paper). The slides of the talk can often be very helpful to understand the paper (or refresh one's memory, when one attended the talk). In addition, keynotes, tutorials, invited talks, course material, etc., are also many other reasons why academic prepare slides about their research.
Academics sometimes put their slides on their professional webpages (or on the websites of conferences, workshops, etc.), but these are not stable and often go offline after some years (e.g., when academics change institutions). That's a pity: one would imagine that there should be a website like arXiv but to deposit slides, keeping information about when the talk was given, which paper the talk refers to, etc.
Does such a website exist?

A lot of people use slideshare, but I would argue it is nothing like arXiv.

@StrongBad: Yes, I know that there are general-purpose slide sharing websites, but as I have tried to point out, I would say that preserving slides of academic talks (and structured metadata about them) is especially important, so I'm looking for something else. Thanks for the suggestion though!

Are you sure you cannot put slides on arXiv?  I think I might have seen it.

You can put slides on sites like figshare or zenodo, which are specifically for academic materials. It's not clear what characteristics you are looking for in such a repository, though, so I'm not sure that answers your question.

@AnonymousPhysicist: I've never seen it, but maybe it exists, I'm not sure how I could look for it.

@ff524: I think the repository should keep track (in a structured way) of the paper the slides are referring to, when the presentation took place, etc., which you probably wouldn't get if the slides were just on Zenodo or figshare.

(I've bee an arXiv moderator since 2007.) ArXiv papers are expected to be scientific research papers. I don't think I've ever seen sometime try to submit a slide deck, but if someone tried, I would be very surprised if the administrators didn't reject it.

I once asked with Greg Kuperberg (chair of the arXiv math advisory committee) what he thought of the idea of posting talk slides on the arXiv.  He was very clear that he didn't think that would be an appropriate use of the site.

For computer science, the video lectures site is very helpful, VideoLectures
This site includes a bunch of videos from well-known researchers in the computer science world from the top conferences in this field like KDD, NIPS and many others. Along with the videos of the presentation, you can easily download the slides material of the presentation (although you can't download the video files from this site).
I recommend you to see this site.

Too bad that you can't download the videos. Their FAQ says that the policy should change in the near future http://videolectures.net/faq/ but has said so for the last 4 years at least https://web.archive.org/web/20120513074420/http://videolectures.net/faq/. Also, many videos require Adobe Flash even to be played. Further, I didn't see any information in the footer about who is behind this website (for-profit or not?), and their blog is dead http://blog.videolectures.net/. This doesn't look great...


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How to publish review of commercial software
I really like software product X and been using it for >6 years. I am unaffiliated and never have been linked to company or anyone involved with X.
I would like to publish a paper that explains why and how X can be useful to other people. How can I do that? Are there example of this?
"Application Note" seems like a possible format, but I am not part of the developers. To some degree, "how to use X to do Y" seems like a novel application of an existing technology and can be written as original research paper.

Software is Basecamp and really helps me with research and project management. I think it merits discussion, as we are barely starting to recognize the issue of project management in academic research labs.

There are popular magazines and some (semi) professional ones that might be appropriate for such things, but it is less likely that any scientific journal would be interested. For this reason, it is unlikely that such an article would do much for a scientific reputation. But for a person in industry, it might give them some visibility that might help in a job search.
Some people do such things on personal blogs, of course.

yeah, there are few blogs. I would like to leverage platform of a publication to help people in the field, even though it "would [not] do much for a scientific reputation"


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Papers on cost of (ir)reproducibility and data loss
I am looking for a study or conceptual/theoretical paper on monetary costs associated with bad data management practices in academia. As "bad" I mean not following FAIR principles, lack of archiving, backups, fast networks, and lack of tools to share data.
One and only example I've seen is a comment from DRYAD data system authors "Data archiving is a good investment":

As an example of how much research is typically published per grant dollar, core grants in population and community ecology from the US National Science Foundation averaged 3–4 publications per $100,000 of grant between 2000 and 2005 [...]. That is, $400,000 invested in original research resulted in about 16 papers. [...]
  Assuming that Dryad has a comparable rate of reuse and collects at least 2,500 data sets annually, an investment of $400,000 in one year should contribute to more than 1,000 papers in the next four years — far more than the accepted value for a research dollar.

Here authors claim that good data archiving/management can increase academic "yield" by 10-100X