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Should I include journalistic articles in my CV?
I have written a couple of articles for two different daily newspapers. In them, I have discussed the issues of my academic field. Should I include these articles in my CV?
If so, under what title? Is press release appropriate? What is the most common and accepted term?

What is your background and where are you sending this CV?

@Penguin_Knight I am doing my 4th semester in Tourism management. I like research and have conducted some up to now. Besides I have written 2 articles about tourism in 2 different. news papers. I am sending my resume to different professors to get to know me. I gonna continue my studies by PhD..

I would list it under Outreach.

I have written a couple of articles for 2 different daily newspapers. In them, I have discussed the issues of my academic field. Should I include them in my CV?

Yes, certainly, as long as you clearly separate them from your academic publications.  Strictly speaking, they are form of publication, so it wouldn't be lying to list them together with your research papers under a vague enough title, but this would be a very bad idea.  It would come across like you are trying to make your publication list look longer by inflating it with non-academic publications.
[If the newspaper articles had nothing at all to do with your academic work, then mentioning them probably wouldn't make sense.  However, it sounds like they do.]

If so, under what title? Is press release appropriate? What is the most common and accepted term?

Definitely not press release, since a press release is something else: it's a document given to journalists to inform them about a possible story they could write about.  Occasionally newspapers publish lightly edited versions of press releases, without gathering much more information, but this is considered bad reporting.
I don't think there's a clear standard for how to list this information.  You could list it in several ways: outreach, other publications (if you have a "scholarly publications" section, say), writing for the general public, etc.

I am very impressed that you wrote articles about academia that got published by daily newspapers.  I think that information is well worth including on your CV.
In terms of what to call it: I don't think there are any codewords here, at least none that will be reliably decoded by your entire intended audience.  Rather, just clearly identify what you've done, e.g.:
Articles published in Daily Xer: Title1, date1; Title 2, date 2;
Articles published in City Y Times: Title3, date3
If you feel like your readers might not know that the Daily Xer or the City Y Times is a daily periodical, you should include that information as well.
In terms of where to put it on your CV: well, think about in what way writing these articles will be impressive and valuable to readers of your CV.  Does it show off your high quality writing skills?  Does it show your willingness and ability to communicate technical or insider issues to a very broad audience?  And so forth.  Once you figure out what is the "primary virtue" demonstrated by this activity, you will know where to put it in your CV (perhaps with a section of its own title, but the title should indicate to the reader how you answered the above question).

thanks for your compliment and really thanks for your answer. The titles are: The next Iranian Cabinet and tourism and The first obstacle to developing tourism in Iran

I definately think that you should add them to your CV, but, as other have mentioned, under a separate heading from you academic publications. My suggestion is to use the heading Popular science articles for these (if all of them are indeed science), or Newspaper articles for something more general. I've seen both of these used on CVs. "Press release" would not be suitable to use.
The ability to express scientific results in layman's language is clearly valuable (both inside and outside of academia), so generally I see such an addition as a plus on the CV.

+1 for The ability to express scientific results in layman's language is clearly valuable. Indeed it is!

I do not think there is a standard ,unless such articles are commonplace in the specific field (e.g. journalism). I definitely think it is worth adding such materials to a CV since they indicate activity. You need to think twice, however, whether or not they provide a positive aspect when you use your CV. Suggestions for appropriate headers could be many. your suggestion sounds good., you could consider something like "Scientific debate articles" or something more descriptive that encapsulates their contents.


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Financial aid sources for dependent, disabled student?
I am disabled and have to live with my family. I don't want to go into detail about my condition.My experience in the public education system here was less than happy, including being used as a pawn to fill roles in programs that needed funding. My education history is confusing, but essentially has left me with no chance to qualify for scholarships.
I've applied for financial aid at a local university. In response, they offer only loans, telling me that I do not qualify for anything else due to being claimed as a dependent. However, a loan would be financial suicide for me. Their disability counselors just shrug their shoulders or basically tell me to go die somewhere.
I've been finishing prerequisites here and there, though most of my learning has been done independently. I can easily test out of these classes (and most of their "graduate" curriculum as well, in fact), but they don't offer credit for doing this.
My parents make a comfortable income, but are not very intelligent with money and getting on in age. They will not be able to support me when they retire. They have to keep claiming me, otherwise I would no longer be classified as disabled and would lose my only pathetic source of income (disability pay requires that I am dependent, or so the SSA tells me).
I want to transfer my credits somewhere and get the hell out, but I'll basically need to be funded entirely by financial aid. What can I do?

In the U.S., folks in your situation can apply for "Federal Direct" loans, and options exist for deferred repayment. The idea is to seek out government assistance while you need it (now), and repay them after you've finished your studies (later).

What are you applying for financial aid for? Undergraduate? Master's? PhD?

If you change the tone of your question to less of a rant you are likely to get more, better quality answers. I understand you have had difficulties but you are where you are. So the goal is to find out what you can do with what you've got today.

This response is US-centric.
It is most unfortunate that the local university was unwilling to provide any kind of financial aid except for loans. However, this need not spell the end of your academic journey. Here are several avenues you should explore before giving up.

Begin your higher education journey at a community college. They offer lower tuition rates than almost any other institution is able to do.
Apply for federal financial aid using the free FAFSA application.
Investigate other financial assistance and scholarship opportunities. As a disabled person, you should be eligible for various scholarships. There are various free scholarship websites which will permit you to find scholarships suited to your specific situation and interests. Scholarships.com and Scholarship Experts are among my favorites, but there are many other free services available, including this comprehensive list of external scholarships provided gratis by the University of Phoenix.
Make friends of the folks in the financial aid office. They are usually more than happy to walk you through the process of applying for federal, state, and local financial aid and may help you find other sources you hadn't considered or were unaware of.
Find out where the community college Foundation Office (or similar office) is located and make a special effort to meet these people. Their job is to match students with sponsors and the rewards for your efforts can be substantial. (For example, they once put in my application for a scholarship I didn't know existed, and gave me half-a-semester's worth of tuition without any effort on my part!)
Finally, contact a counsellor or other mental health professional. Depression is a serious illness. Get help!

Your problem is that you did not get enough financial aid from your local university.  I think the solution is to apply to some other institutions.  Many institutions think it is important to help students with disabilities.  If you look around, you can find one that 1.  Cares.  2. Has money to do something.  3. Has time to consider special cases.  I suggest applying to smaller higher educational institutions because they are better able to adjust to special cases.

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How to cite a paper when I don't know where was published?
I have collected some papers regarding the subject of my M.A. thesis,  but I have some articles that I couldn't find where they were published.   The point is when I Google the title of the article, Google shows me that the article has been cited more than 60 times, but I can't find where and in what journal. How can I find the journal in which these articles were published?

I don't understand how you can use a system that tells you how many times an article was cited without telling you where it was initially published.

Could you provide an example of such an article that Google Scholar has 60+ citations for with no clues for where it was published?

If you have a copy of the paper, then the info you need should be printed on it somewhere. If you don't have a copy of the paper, you shouldn't be trying to cite it. If you are trying to find this info so that you can find a copy for yourself to read, @aeismail's answer is the right one.

Sometimes the route that seems most tedious can end up being the most efficient. I would try looking at some of those 60+ references. Any work that's been cited so many times will have to have the source listed in the bibliography sections of those references.

Google Scholar typically offers "Cite" button that will give you its best bibliographic information available on the citation.  That will usually give you everything you need.  If not, follow the links in Scholar to where it found the article, and there will usually be bibliographic information.  And you can also do as @aeismail suggests and look at how others have cited it.
For some particularly odd or obscure articles, however, you may still be unable to find an appropriate set of journal/conference information.  For example, technical manuals often have no official publication, but just an online reference site that is being maintained.  Another example is the Carlson Curve is widely referenced but has no official publication beyond a series of blog posts.  Still, there is always a correct way to cite: follow the principle of giving the most complete and persistent data that will allow others to find the same information that you found.

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Travel grant for undergraduate researcher for attending conference
I am an undergraduate student doing independent research. My research work is selected for presentation at a very reputed conference in the US. I am from India. I cannot afford to attend the conference at all. How should I fund my trip? The travel grant for students available from the conference is very low. It can hardly buy me a one way ticket. What are my options?

Sorry, don't have an answer concerning travel grants. But if you can't make it to the conference at all, try to find a colleague to present the paper there. Then you will keep the paper at least.

When you say "independent research," do you mean that it is completely outside the scope of your classes?  If you have an advisor, have you talked to him/her about trying to find some funding through your own university?

@ChrisGregg I mean I am doing mostly on my own with the help of another student.

@Maxsteel I see -- I would not underestimate the ability for a university to find some money for an undergraduate who is publishing in well-respected conferences in the U.S.

There are several strategies for this in addition to the usual ones outlined previously. I assume you are in CS/IS/IT from your profile. Your primary costs are conference registration fees, air fare and living expenses.

If its a top conference, it will have student volunteer positions. For instance, this and this. This defrays cost of registration (free) and some of your living expenses (food and some cost of living). Apply for it immediately.
You mention that you are getting some travel grant from the conference. Thats a good thing. Keep it for airfare.
If its a ACM/IEEE conference, it will be sponsored by a SIG. SIGs have their own funding. For instance, see this and this. If you are an ACM/IEEE member then you can apply for these funds which are independent of conferences.
Sometimes, in limited ways, industrial research labs and other government labs have funding. Search for and apply for these. For instance, see this , this and especially this.

I was once a poor student and had to make use of multiple sources of funding to go to conferences. You can also do it ! Basically, apply for everything that you find and see. Of course, the best way is to simply ask another co-author or someone actually visiting the conference to present the paper.
Another way is to just pay the registration fee (which is comparatively less). That way your paper is still indexed in the ACM DL or IEEE Xplore etc.

Doesn't IEEE have the policy of not publishing papers in the proceedings if they are not presented on the conference?

I have definitely published and have papers indexed in a quite reputed IEEE conference without attending it. I just paid the registration fees and confirmed that my paper would be indexed in Xplore. It was ! Of course, this is data from 2007 when I was a poor undergraduate.

I'd also like to point out that you can considerably defray living expenses by couchsurfing, YMCA dorms and airbnb in addition to crashing on some personal friend, acquaintance, relative's couch. I have done so on multiple occasions. I refuse to pay exorbitant amounts of money for living in the over priced conference hotels as they usually are.

Perhaps the ACM SIG or IEEE society in your subfield does not have a no-show policy, or does not enforce it; but some others do. Your last paragraph can potentially be very misleading. I suggest you edit it to clarify that this is something you can "get away with" in some conferences but not all. (I wouldn't want readers to waste money on registration, only to have their paper removed from the proceedings when they don't appear to present it.)

I've seen several solutions to problems like this.

Ask someone else to present it. Your supervisor, or another professor at your university may be able to travel. Alternatively, they may know someone else nearby who is attending the conference already. As a final alternative, they might know someone in the US who is planning to go. I have seen people add the presenter as an additional author on papers. Not sure about the ethics of this, but it could be used as an incentive.
Contact the conference organizers directly, and explain your situation. Their general travel grants budget may not be the only source of funding available. You might be able to get some funding in exchange for helping with the conference registration desk, for instance.
If your paper made it into a top tier conference in the US, it is likely it will be accepted at other top tier venues. Consider a journal publication (no travel required). I also see many top tier conferences in places like Beijing these days, so you might be able to find one closer to home.

The only option I can see is:

start a PhD at a place that will have money
get them to pay for your trip.

There may not be enough time to carry out this plan. But having a paper accepted at a reputed conference certainly will contribute to you getting a PhD position at a good university.
This assumes that you want to do a PhD.

Getting phd requires a good publication and that requires travelling :)


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Is there a credit hours requirement for applying to a masters course?
I am currently taking an undergraduate degree, and by completion, I would have 112 credit hours accumulated.
This is fine and all if I don't plan to continue my studies or apply to a local university, but I heard some of my seniors getting rejected applying for a master at universities abroad because the credit hours they accumulated were not sufficient, and thus their degree is only acknowledged as a diploma equivalent.
Edit: I am especially interested in universities in US, UK, and Japan, but I am looking for a rather general answer, as in, is it common for universities to reject an application because of credit hours, even though the degree came from an accredited university?
Edit 2: my main concern is, whether I should take extra credits to ensure I won't run into a road block because of difference in the credit hours standard between universities (instead of say, my performance/cgpa/accomplishments).

This probably very much depends upon the university/country where the undergraduate degree is given and the university where the candidate applies to. It may even vary from degree to degree. (The word abroad means nothing on the Internet.)

@DaveClarke thanks, edited the question to add more information on that. How does things work where you live?

btw, the undergraduate degree that I am talking about here is a Bachelor of Computer Science from a university in Malaysia. But does it really matter?

It matters because the quality of university degrees from some places are not known in other places. Everyone knows that an MIT degree is good, but people in Europe (for example) know little about universities in Malaysia (for example).

So, do Universities uses credit hours as a measurement of quality of an applicant? I know some university have a veery specific CGPA requirement, or where they review the resume of a applicant to decide whether to accept the applicant or not. Is it the same case with credit hours?

We don't at our university. credit hours seems less relevant than many other things

No.
Since there is no universal standard for what constitutes a "credit hour", imposing a required number of credit hours is simply impossible.  If you have a degree, you have a degree.
On the other hand, which courses you've taken definitely does matter.  For example:

If you're applying for graduate school in computer science at X, but your classes have small overlap with the undergraduate computer science program at X, that raises a red flag.  That gap makes your undergraduate program look weak, or at least that it develops a different set of skills than the grad program at X normally expects.
If you claim in your application that you're interested in (say) artificial intelligence, but you've never taken an artificial intelligence class, that raises a red flag.  How an you claim interest in a field you've never been seriously exposed to?  How can we judge your abilities in a field where we can't see a single grade?

Of course, all this is secondary to your potential for research excellence, as described in specific and credible detail in your statement and in your recommendation letters.
(I'm on the graduate admissions committee in a US CS department.)


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Where to publish a critical comment on an academic paper?
Background
Last year, in October, an exceptionally weak paper was published in Nature. The publication of such a piece in a top journal was a clear violation of peer-review standards. Despite the title and publication in a reputable journal, this paper did not provide any evidence.
My attempts
I guess, I was the first to submit a Brief Communication Arising to Nature just a week after the initial publication. My comment was rejected two weeks later, and I published it in Publons system. I see that up until now there has been no clear statement in the peer-reviewed academic literature of the flawed nature of Dong et al paper.
The question
What is the best way to publish a critical comment on a paper published in top journal, if that journal rejected the comment?
I believe, it is very important to publish the critical comment in a peer-reviewed journal. However, usually journals are only willing to consider critical comments on the papers published in their pages.

Yes, but it was not very clear. First, the editor mentioned that there is a high "competition in this section of the journal". Second, she noted that, to her view, my comment "...would not add to our understanding or otherwise clarify the issues for our readers".
I dare say, the second is not correct.

It would be nice if in this day and age all journals would provide an online venue for discussion of their own articles.  I think USENIX started doing this for their conferences a while back.  But in this case, I agree with @Saturnus, looks like OP took the path available and should leave it there.

Yes, I am happy with Publons - it's a nice platform. But the thing is, it seems, in academia only peer-reviewed pieces are valued.

Valued for what? Do you want to publish this because you think it is important for people to know, or because you need publications on your CV?

@Tobias do you often see academic papers citing not peer-reviewed texts? In this context, I want my comment to be viewed as a part of academic literature. This way it will be known to the relevant audience

@ikashnitsky For your work to be peer-reviewed, it seems, it will have take a form of an independent paper, rather than a comment to an existing one. In particular, it seems, it should assert something (this is the data, this is our model, this is our conclusion) rather than refute (this is the data, this is a model, this model is bad).

@AlexeyB. I offer a fresh explanation why the data on maximal lifespans in the recent years seemed to hit a ceiling. We are working on a bigger separate paper; but meanwhile I would like to frame this comment as an academically recognized piece

She noted that, to her view, my comment "...would not add to our understanding or otherwise clarify the issues for our readers".  I wonder if you could strengthen your comment and re-submit?  Also, I wonder if you could request more detailed feedback?

@FredDouglis the Nature page of the article does have a comment section, with currently only one comment.

@aparente001 I did ask for a more detailed feedback but received no answer for my email. It did not sound like the re-submission was welcome. Anyways, I said what I had to say. The only way I saw to "improve" my comment was to ask some senior colleague to be a co-author upon re-submission. And that's not what I wanted to do.

@ikashnitsky - Could you ask a more senior colleague for feedback on your manuscript, without actually co-authoring?

Just for the record: the paper has already a handful of brief comments published in Nature, so  if OP is one of them, congratulations, if not, maybe the editor was correct limiting the number of these comments, and OP may better shoot for a full paper (if she/he say more to say than the already published comments / critiques of the paper)

Do you know what is the best way to publish a critical comment on a paper published in top journal if that journal rejected the comment?

In another top journal. But your comment "have take a form of an independent paper" as Alexey wrote.
Check those two examples from Computer Science field. First (1) from ICSE, Software Engineering community top venue, where Monperrus offers a critical review on others' paper. Second (2), Arapakis et al. challenge the results reported in Bandari et al.
In my opinion, you should go for a peer-reviewed paper, which is a very noble form of scientific debate.

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Is there a minimum amount of methodological modifications for extending previous work from other authors?
Given a published paper, as a Computer Scientist, I see an opportunity to extend the work and methodology of previous authors.
By modifying the presented work, introducing some concepts and a different approach for input parameters (for example) my "new" work can achieve better results than the results presented by the original authors.
In some cases, the modifications I suggest are not extensive or radically divergent, but even this way the results are better than the current state of the art.
Is there considered to be a minimum change from the methodology in the original paper, to publish an extension of that earlier paper from other authors?
EDIT: By extending I mean: writing a paper emphasizing the modifications that produce improved/better results, instead of copying significant passages from the original work results.

You need a little bit more than for the results to be better than the state of the art - you need the modification to be a non-obvious one that moves the field forward.
For example, there are a lot of results in my field that I can improve by tuning some parameters (to make the results in a given scenario "better") or by combining two known methods. If the modification involves new intellectual or technical insight, it's a meaningful extension and can be published. Otherwise, it's probably not publishable.
The "minimum" modification that is necessary for the work to be publishable is the modification that involves (at least) the amount of new intellectual content that is necessary for work in your field to be considered publishable.

At least in my field and in my experience, there are so many journals out there that it is essentially impossible to define a "minimum publishable contribution".  Moreover what constitutes a nontrivial intellectual contribution is inherently subjective and dependent on the expertise of the readers.  Once or twice a year I see a published paper for which my reaction is "Not only have I known this result for a long time and never considered it worth publishing, since you bring it up here is a significantly stronger result that I still think is too routine to publish."


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Is it legal in the UK to aim for a certain percentage of women in a math department?
Athena Swan charter is a UK organization promoting gender equality in academia, among other things. University departments apply for gold / silver / bronze Athena Swan certificates, while providing an action plan of promoting gender equality.
In STEM Departments, typical goals in an action plan may include percentage targets for:

female PhD students

women in Lecturer / Senior Lecturer position

female speakers in seminars

The question: is this legal in the UK to set such recruiting goals?
By the 2010 Equality Act, positive discrimination, i.e. hiring someone based on their protected characteristic, such as age, race or gender, when they are not the most suitable candidate, is illegal in the UK, see here for some examples, including a successful litigation case.
Do not goals (1), (2), (3) link directly to positive discrimination, hence form an illegal practice in the UK?
(3) is more subtle, as no actual employment is involved, but it also seems to be a more blunt case of positive discrimination, as having more female speakers than the average in the field (whatever this average is), provided that the ability is equally distributed among the genders, will most likely imply that some better, male speakers will not be invited.

I'm neither from the UK nor particularly familiar with legal questions, but I would note that you seem to be jumping from setting a goal ("achieving a certain percentage of women") to an assumption about which measures will be taken to achieve this goal ("hiring candidates based on gender rather than qualification"). I doubt whether this conclusion is valid.

I wonder in particular whether setting a goal which seems to be pushing the hiring committees to break the law is itself illegal.

How do you know if the amount of women as speakers right now is equal to the average in the field? Because if is not, the status quo perpetuates that some better, female speaker are not invited

@curious: Does it push the hiring committees to break the law, though? One of the conditions you mention in order for a hiring to be a illegal is "when they are not the most suitable candidate". Now for many positions the idea that there were a single most suitbale candidate (which could even be determined in an objective way) is unrealistic. So if one has several candidates who would all be extremely well-suited for the position, it all comes down to a judgement call - it's unclear to me whether taking gender into account in such a judgement call would violate the law that you refer to.

@curious: Apart from this, one can think of various different measures to try to increase the number of women in a department, without taking gender into account during the hiring decision at all. (For the record, I'm not arguing here for or against setting such percentage targets. I'm just pointing out that claiming that such targets were merely about "hiring people based on gender rather than merrit" seems a bit unimaginative.)

Interesting you assume this may be a case of positive discrimination. 'Targeting women' could simply be a case of, for example, redressing currently existing positive discrimination towards male candidates or negative discrimination against women - let's say, not hiring people who are likely to become pregnant. Therefore, I am not sure this question is answerable without more details.

‘Aiming’ is certainly legal. The methods may or may not be. Trying to attract low-representation candidates certainly is legal.

It's also legal to change the job spec to make it more attractive to women, for example changing the working hours.

Your assumption that the low percentage of women in some fields is due to always hiring the best candidate and not some other factors boggles my mind.

You have to remember, while you might not be aware of your unconscious bias (that's why it's called that way), it can be blatantly obvious to the people on the receiving end. I'm 50 and have been in a male dominated field for 30 years. Literally every woman I know in my field has stories to tell.

I think asking this question on the academia SE will give you biases results.  Try posting on a legal questions board and comparing the answers :)

@AnonymousM While the question "Is it legal in the uk..." probably does belong on law.se, I think answer here are useful, if only to the slightly different question "What is the reasoning on UK academics in believing that X is legal?", as it is academics, not legally trained people creating and implementing these policies.

You are making the wrong assumption here that aiming for some minimum percentage of women would involve selecting a weaker women over a stronger man.
I am involved with running a conference series in CS/Math, where the expectation is that at least a third of the invited speakers are women (the area is so overwhelmingly male that this is already a lofty standard). Whenever I was on the programme committee, this was achieved just by reminder all PC-members to not forget about nominating great female speakers. There are a few subconscious biases around in our society that make it easy to overlook women, and just taking a moment to consciously think about "Aren't there some women around who give great talks/have done some fascinating work recently?" can lead to the realization that of course, yes, there are. Not once I have witnessed a situation where people thought Bob would be the better choice, but then invited Alice because she was a woman.
Similarly, when it comes to Athena-Swan-related questions like "What can our department do to increase the percentage of women faculty?", the two top approaches I've heard people voice are: A) "Let's make sure that our department provides a welcoming work environment for women." B) "Let's make sure that highly qualified women applicants know about A)." Not once have I seen any indication of "Let's just hire some mediocre woman!" as being part of the strategy.
When it comes to hiring decisions themselves, there are a number of well-documented subconscious biases around which can lead to people assessing female applicants as weaker than they are. Attempting to avoid those is simultaneously going to work towards ensuring that appointments are as merit-based as possible, while also increasing the percentage of women.

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There are two main factors at play here. Firstly, as suggested by some comments above, there are ways of attempting to increase the number of women in various roles, such as ensuring a supportive environment or combating the perception of some departments as a 'male-dominated' area. These do not directly impact on the hiring process itself at all.
However, even in the hiring process, there is a provision in the Equality Act which is broadly supportive of a range of types of 'positive action' to redress historic disadvantages due to protected characteristics. This includes targeted support, promotion of the role to disadvantaged groups, and, in the limit of otherwise tied applicants (which is arguably very rare), taking the protected characteristic into consideration during hiring decisions. There are a number of limitations on this, so they can't e.g. have women-only openings (officially or unofficially) but there is a range of positive actions available which are still legal to increase the representation of disadvantaged groups.

Having read the linked regulation, I am not so sure that the second part of this answer is correct. In particular, 159(4)(b) seems to say that you can't have a general policy of taking these types of action. But I find this sort of legalese very hard to understand, so I may well be wrong...

@EspeciallyLime It is an ambiguous condition - as I understand it, the University cannot have a blanket policy to always hire from disadvantaged groups in the event of a tie, but the hiring panel has the option to use it as a tie-breaker at their discretion. See, e.g. this policy from UCL which lays out the application of tie-breaking from point 24. The point at which a 'target to recruit minorities' becomes a 'policy to recruit minorities' is, of course, left as an exercise to the reader.

The only thing I'd add to this is that I think its fairly common that its difficult to separate two candidates on purely objective criteria.

I think others have done a pretty good job of answer the question about 1 & 2 (although I'd note that the PhD students are not employees, and therefore don't fall under the ban on positive discrimination for employees): Its not illegal to set recruitment targets as long as your proposed means for achieving those recruitment targets don't involve privileging individual women over individual men.
However, for your third point, seminar invites, (and perhaps PhD students, I don't know), the law (Equalities Act 2010, paragraph 158(2) )explicitly allows for positive action:

This Act does not prohibit P from taking any action which is a proportionate means of achieving the aim of—
(a) enabling or encouraging persons who share the protected characteristic to overcome or minimise that disadvantage,
(b) meeting those needs, or
(c) enabling or encouraging persons who share the protected characteristic to participate in that activity.

IANAL and I am not qualified to provide a binding answer to a legal question.
However, from a purely general point of view, a University may set up a goal of reaching a certain proportion of under-represented staff. Your question seems to imply that the only way of achieving this goal is through (positive) discrimination, that is not necessarily true.
Athena Swan encourages universities to identify why certain groups are under-represented and make actions to remove barriers. These actions often end up being useful for both the under-represented group and for other candidates as well. For example, it may not be easy for women to secure a job or promotion in academia, if a job description specifies that candidates have to secure X grants in N years after their PhD.
Women are more likely to take an extended career break due to maternity leave, and therefore may find it more difficult to meet such time-restricted criteria. As an example, relaxing the criteria to take in account career breaks helps women to compete more fairly for the positions. But it also helps men who had career breaks due to the health issues or family issues etc. At the end, everyone benefits from such adjustments and no discrimination happens.

While I generally agree with your answer, why not add that men who take PATERNITY leave may profit as well? It is (and shouldn't be) not only women who take care of the newborn.

@Sursula You are correct, however, in the UK (for example) women can take upto 12 month of maternity leave, while men can take 2 weeks of paternity leave. The different impact on career is perfectly clear

@Sursula unfortunately it is not so easy for an early-career academic (in the UK, at least, which is where the question is asking about) to take extended paternity leave, because frequent changes of employer make it difficult to be eligible.

@DmitrySavostyanov Mothers may take six weeks of maternity leave, and fathers may take two weeks paternity leave. The rest of the leave can be shared in any way the parents wish, nowadays. The law changed a few years ago. (Source: father of three young children.)

@DavidA.Craven We tried to do it and found the University HR departments are totally unprepared to the change in law. My wife and I work in different Universities, and HRs had no clue how to communicate between each other that our leave is shared. YMMV of course.

@DavidA.Craven yes it can, but only if the father has worked for the same employer for sufficiently long beforehand. Postdocs, or even recently ex-postdocs, will often fail this condition.

@EspeciallyLime The same restrictions hold for mothers, I thought?

@DavidA.Craven The same restrictions apply to whether this is required by law. The difference is the extent to which employers are willing to go beyond their legal obligations.

@EspeciallyLime I'd be amazed if an employer explicitly discriminates in this way, as that would definitely be an offence. Whether they underhandedly attempt to reject requests for parental leave from fathers is a different question.

For some reason, fathers on average are less aware of their right to parental leave, than mothers of their right to maternity leave.

@DmitrySavostyanov We were in your same situation and had no problem whatsoever, so I guess the problem was the "other" university.

@LucaCiti I am happy to hear that!

There's a relevant older post:
Is it lawful for a fellowship linked to a permanent faculty position at a British university in the STEM field to only be available to females?
The top answer

In the UK, there are a number of fellowships exclusively for women (e.g., L'Oréal WISE fellowship). The Equality Act of 2010 allows for positive action outside of recruitment which these fellowships likely fall under. The Equality Act of 2010, however, does not allow for positive action in recruitment (apart from giving preference for equally qualified applicants).

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


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Writing a thesis acknowledgement: should I address the person as "you" or use 3rd person?
I'm writing an acknowledgment for my thesis. I looked at several written acknowledgments and realized that the people who are acknowledged are addressed by "you" rather than "He/She". For example,
"I'm thankful to Dr. Marry. You have been the weekly contact ...."
But I personally prefer to address them in a 3rd person format saying "She has been the weekly contact".
I'm wondering if my preference is wrong and not common.

I strongly suggest using 3rd person in this case, for the reasons nicely outlined below in the Daniel Wessel's answer (+1).

I'd go (and did go) with the 3rd person format, for a simple reason: It's not a letter to that one person, nor a (handwritten) dedication/signed copy of a thesis. Instead it is something that is printed and which is (hopefully) read by more than this one person.
So you talk to a broad audience about that person, hence 3rd person. Only if it were a handwritten, personal message in one particular copy, I would ever go with "you".
(Another exception could be a dedication. In contrast to the acknowledgements the dedication is more specific and -- usually -- to one person or specific group of people, like family. In this case 'you' might also make sense, because here you address them personally.)

In my thesis I made an acknowledgement infographics. The logic was simply that nobody wants to read a dry acknowledgement page, so the best way to thank them is to make people want to read the page. In fact my thesis was often taken out of the shelf in my PhD department solely to look at it.
EDIT: here it is.

What a great idea!

it's a good idea however i cannot put weight on the factors that contributed and helped me with the thesis.

I assume that you refer to the fact that the values are set without mathematical calculations. I did give some thought to guestimate the values, but the contributions follow a power law and some of the people acknowledged did not do much (bar for being important). I did get jovially asked what the units were and what the boundary conditions were, but nobody doubted that I was bad at maths simply because I had unitless arbitrary values in my infographic acknowledgement page.

I will offer a contrary opinion: thesis acknowledgements are generally yours with which to do whatever you wish, within reason.  If you prefer second person, this is the one piece of scientific writing where you can definitely get away with it.  If you want to write it in a sonnet, that's OK too.

I advocate for a mixed approach. In my thesis acknowledgements, each individual was initially introduced in the third person, essentially for the reasons Daniel Wessel has mentioned above. The goal is for the Acknowledgements section to be read by more people than just the ones you are acknowledging.
However, for a proper subset of the acknowledged individuals, namely those I wanted to highlight, I included short personal messages in the second person. The goal was to highlight these individuals, break the monotony of just listing names, and inject something personal and heartfelt into the text.
Here is an example:

I am deeply indebted to Professor Dumbledore for his constant and genuine
  support of all his students. I would not be where I am today without
  him. Albus, I miss you every day.

The actual acknowledgements I wrote can be found on my website (within my thesis) if you're interested.

Great idea, essentially the best of both approaches. :-)


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Using a graphics tablet to support recorded lectures?
My lectures (mathematics) are delivered in a theatre with full projection facilities, and my lectures are given as PDF slides.  But I often need to explain something not covered in enough detail on a slide, in response to a particular student difficulty (my lectures are very interactive!).  For that I can use the whiteboard in the same room.
However, my lectures are recorded, and the recording system only picks up, as its video, what's projected through the computer onto the projection screen.  My whiteboard ramblings (which often amount to a significant part of each lecture) aren't recorded, although my voice is.
A simple solution would be a graphics tablet which I could switch to and write on; as it would be projected through the computer system it would be recorded.
So - does anybody have any advice for a relatively inexpensive graphics tablet which would work for this purpose?
(A few years ago I used a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet, running Android, which came with a nice digitizer pen.  But my newer Lenovo Yoga tablet doesn't support such pens.  And I don't want to buy a new whizz-bang tablet+pen.  A cheap-and-cheerful solution is my hope here!)

Is just photographing the Whiteboard before you clean it not an option?

My personal experience with different media used during lectures (basic calculations during an engineering course)
Tablet:
I experimented with my tablet (Galaxy tab S) but to be honest, my handwritten notes look like a child had written them. The Galaxy S is not particularly designed for taking handwritten notes, so maybe other tablets are suited better.
Graphic tablets from Wacom may be suited well. The possibility to project the notes live while explaining something to a particular group anywhere in the classroom may be a big advantage but in my opinion it does not outweigh the unprofessional look. Unfortunately, no shop in my town has Wacom tablets in stock. Otherwise I would try them. One of my students uses the new tablet-laptop from microsoft and is very satisfied with his handwritten notes. Still, the writing looks not very professional.
Document camera:
There are different models and I used a document camera in the price range of 700 $. The camera itself can be used to capture the notes while writing on a notebook. The video can be streamed live using standard video software. Additionally, it is possible to record the session and save the data on a SD card (including your voice). I like the feeling of a pen on paper and my notes look much better than on a tables. In my opinion it is the easiest solution right now.
But nothing beats the white or chalkboard. The possibility to teach while using my whole body for supporting the things I said is most comfortable for me. Furthermore, there is no device or desk between me and the students. As a consequence, it is easier to focus their attention.
Since most questions do occur every year again and again, I produce short videos at home using my hq-webcam. It is much easier for me because I can focus on one particular goal (producing a video, or explaining something to one student in one particular class). I am not the multitasking type.
To sum it up:
If you like the feeling of a pen on a paper you might want to search for "document camera"
You may want to look at those two videos:
Tablet for Tutoring Wacom Pad in Teaching

+1 for document cameras. Resolution much better thatn webcam. Mine is A1, costs <350$. Advantage over blackboard: you can backtrack.

+1 for the document camera. Resolution is great, you can use many colors, backtrack, use post-it's, point with your pen, open a book, take pictures and be left with pages you can scan if need be. (you can also use it as a quick-n-dirty scanner at the library). With a bit of experience you can show your handwriting together with other windows on your computer (a pdf, spreadsheet, etc.). Some are very portable (I use Hovercam). My students love it.

I would put up a webcam recording the whole lecture. This way, the students can see the whole whiteboard and your hand movements, and you get to use an instrument suitable for writing.
I don't like the idea of using a tablet for this for two reasons: the size is limited (you can only write in a 20 cm wide range, as opposed to two metres of board), and the handwriting looks, for most people, terrible.

The handwriting is mostly a matter of (1) practice, and (2) having a decent tablet, possibly with an active digitizer (iPad = bad, Wacom/nTrig = good).

I can't put up a webcam recording of the whole lecture: I don't have the equipment do get a good enough recording, and my institution's recording facilities won't do it.

@AlasdairMcAndrew my professor just uses his laptop. It is not the best, but enough to keep a record.

@AlasdairMcAndrew Any recent phone (e.g. S5/S6, iPhone 6, etc.) records at 720p or 1080p, which is enough. No need to call AV.

Wacom makes a few good USB graphic tablets in the 100$ price range. I have used a Bamboo Craft model myself, and I am kinda satisfied. You can plug them into a computer and sketch notes using applications such as Windows Journal or Sankore (the latter is open source).
The main drawback is that they have no screen, so you'll have to practice writing while looking at the computer screen rather than at your fingers. But one quickly gets over it; you will get a decent handwriting on them with a little practice.
What matters most is that these graphic tablets have a quality active digitizer. This means many pressure levels and better writing accuracy than the touchscreen you get in most consumer grade tablet pcs. To match that quality, you'd have to go with a device explicitly meant for pen input (nTrig or Wacom digitizer --- I think your former tablet had one, while the new Yoga doesn't, so you probably noticed the difference yourself already).
As Davidmh notes, another drawback is the limited screen real estate --- the cheaper models have a small writing area. But it doesn't matter much in the end because one can be precise enough even with a small writing area as long as the digitizer quality is good.

That's just the help I was hoping to see!  I think I'll just buy a Wacom tablet and see how I go.


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Can an associate editor of a journal see my name?
Recently I received a rejection from a top journal. But when the editor in chief sent me the rejection email, she included the name of the associate editor that handled my paper. This associate editor works in a department which has a job opening this year that I have applied. So I'm nervous because if the associate editor can see my name, he could think negatively of me because of my paper, which could affect my chance to get the job. So can the associate editor see the author's name on their paper? Thank you!

Some things are unclear to me: Did the editor in chief put the associate editor in cc? If so then the answer to "can they see…" is obviously yes. But probably you wanted ask should they see… or are the associate editors allowed to…, but the answer to this is also yes.

What does it change now? You already applied for the job, and you already submitted your work.

If the paper review was not double-blind, then pretty much certainly. If the journal uses double-blind review, then maybe, maybe not,

@xLeitix Can you please post your answer as an answer?

@Dirk No I didn't want to ask should they see. My question is clear. Can he see. No she didn't cc him on the email

@xLeitix As you can see, I have not included an answer in my question.

@rr5832 If you are looking for sympathy, that's probably not the right place. The question in itself is pretty vague (unknown journal, unknown field, is the associate editor a reviewer, etc), and there is much certainly a bigger picture about it. Just trying to get what it is about. If it's just about being reassured... well, I'm not sure we can really help you with this. If you're wondering what to do about it, that is a different question that might need a bit more information.

Note that even if the editor can see your name (and they probably can), this is not necessarily a bad thing for your job prospects.  Now you know that somebody at the institution is familiar with your work.  And although they rejected your paper, they might still consider it to be good quality work, just not quite outstanding enough for the top journal.  That would still give you a  significant advantage over a random applicant who nobody in the department has ever heard of.

With most journals, (handling) editors get to know who the authors of a paper are so they can avoid conflicts of interest when picking reviewers and similar.
A review process that avoids this is called triple-blind review¹²³⁴⁵. As this is considered a selling point, I would consider it very unlikely that a journal does this without telling you about it on their website.


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What does "awaiting EIC decision" mean when it occurs immediately after "awaiting reviewer selection"?
I submitted a paper to a top journal last week. At first, the status showed "awaiting AE recommendation". A few days ago, it was changed to "awaiting reviewer selection". So I thought it passed the associate editor's evaluation and now they were looking for reviewers. Even yesterday the status was still "awaiting reviewer selection", but today it was changed to "awaiting EIC decision". What does this mean? Does this mean that the AE changed his/her mind and recommended to desk reject my paper and put forth his/her recommendation to the editor?

Sometimes tracking systems do not work very well and a change of status could mean nothing. Since I am a pessimist person I would give the same interpretation as you, but it is impossible to know. The wait is frightening but in this case is all what we have. Good luck!

Indeed -- it is impossible to know. The online systems map only poorly onto the workflows of editors. You cannot draw any inferences based on what they report. Have patience.

Usually, the handling editor (or whatever name they have in the journal’s system) handles a paper in one go, which typically includes:

They decide whether the paper is actually a good fit for the journal or they want to desk-reject the paper.
They decide whether anything needs to be done before sending the paper to peer review.
They select the peer reviewers.

Now, an editorial management has to somehow summarise that you are waiting for this step. A good compromise between precision and conciseness would arguably awaiting potential reviewer selection or awaiting editorial assessment, but there are also journals who call this just awaiting reviewer selection.
Thus the interpretation that suggests itself would be that the handling editor did find out something that has to be decided upon first. If you hadn’t already passed a step called awaiting AE recommendation, the handling editor recommending desk rejection would indeed be my best guess. Apart from that it could be something trivial like you botching a figure or the list of citations.


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Starting a new academic society
I am a microbiologist in the UK with a specialism in Mycology.
I feel that the British Mycological Society is no use and does not offer enough support to mycologists in the UK.
I want to form my own society for Applied Mycologists.
I was wondering what is the protocol for this? If anyone has any experience.

I have been a part of Canadian graduate student societies in the past, and I am not familiar with the culture/formalities of forming societies in Britain. I have been the Vice President (and acting President) of a 600 member society (pretty small) so most of my knowledge comes from personal experience.
Forming a society is actually quite straightforward, though a very involved process (it will not be easy). It's quite similar to starting a business. Essentially a Society is just a collection of like-minded individuals. Anyone in a free society can form a Society whenever they want, and have as few or as many members as they want, as long as they abide by their country's laws of course!
Zeroth Step: Maybe join the existing Society?
But before I get to the answer about how to found a society, have you considered running for Executive positions in the British Mycological Society? They would already be set up with resources, members, bylaws, etc. so it would probably be easier to join them and take up a leadership position to guide the society in the preferred direction than to create a brand-new society. Just a thought.
First Step: Learn about Societies
The first thing that you will want to do is take a quick look at Robert's Rules of Order, especially Section 68-70 in the Fourth Ed. You can find the fourth edition online in the link that I provided. If you want the latest edition (11th) you will have to buy it. I highly recommend this book and it has served me well in my society experience. The 11th edition has a tonne of info about how to found a society, how to write bylaws, how to track finances, how to hold elections and (most famously) how to hold meetings. The fourth edition doesn't have as much info about forming a society but it is still quite useful (and free!). It is written from a somewhat American perspective but I should think it mostly carries over.
You'll want to familiarize yourself with how similar societies are operated, what their constitutions/bylaws look like, etc. This shouldn't be too hard: you can probably check out the existing British Mycological Society.
Second Step: Find your supporters
Robert's Rules of Order Revised, 4th Ed., XII 70(a)
The second thing you will want to do (and maybe this is obvious) is find some like-minded individuals. At least ten would be a good starting point, depending on the size of your field (how many mycologists are there in Britain anyway?). If you already have a lot of connections in your field, take some time to meet with them individually and discuss with them why you think the British Mycological Society isn't working properly and what your vision would be for your own Society. Once you feel like you have a reasonable number of supporters, you should call a meeting with all of them together. They purpose of the meeting should be to come up with a shared vision of what the new society will be called and what its purpose should be.
You should also be discussing whether or not the Society will be feasible. Is there really a place for it next to the existing British Mycological Society? Will there be adequate interest from others in your field to make this a worthwhile endeavor?
Be careful about putting out some kind of public notice, lest you find yourself with the newly-formed society being taken over by strangers with different ideas from yourself.
Once you feel like everyone is on the same page and is actually committed to the idea of forming a society, you should move on to step two. If you can't get ten people excited about forming this society, then it probably won't last very long.
Third Step: Write your Charter/Bylaws/Constitution
Robert's Rules of Order Revised, 4th Ed., XII 67
Essentially you want to write a document that lays out the founding principles of your society, called a "Constitution" or a "Charter" or "Bylaws" (I prefer Bylaws myself). You'll see a lot of different preferences for what to call this document based on culture (here in Canada you will often hear the entire document being referred to as "the Bylaws"). At a minimum this should include:

Name and object of the society. (What the name of your society and what is its most fundamental purpose?)
Qualification of members. (Who is allowed to be a member of the Society? How can people become members? This would be a good place to include a non-discrimination clause. Are there member dues/membership fees? If not, where will you get your operating budget?)
[Executive] Officers and their election. (Who will run the operations of the Society? What will the positions be called, i.e. President, VP, Secretary, Treasurer?)
Meetings of the society. (How often are meetings held? When and where are they held? Who can call a meeting?)
How to amend the constitution. (Who is allowed to change the document and under what circumstances?)

You may want to form a small committee (3 to 5 people) to draft the bylaws because it can be hard to coordinate 10 people or more all writing the same document. Once you have a document that the committee is happy with you should call another meeting and present the draft to your supporters. At this meeting your supporters should have the opportunity to discuss the bylaws and amend them if necessary. Finally you should put the acceptance of the bylaws to a vote. If the vote passes then congratulations, you've just formed a new Society! If you can't collectively agree on a set of Bylaws, then your Society will not last long.
Fourth Step: Elect your Officers
Robert's Rules of Order Revised, 4th Ed., X 58-62
Your society will need Executive Officers to handle the day-to-day organization and operation of the Society. The titles and roles of these offices should be laid out in your Bylaws. You will usually need a President, Treasurer and Secretary at a minimum. If no one is willing to volunteer for these positions, your Society will not last long.
Fifth Step: Promote and grow
At this point you have the skeleton of the Society, maybe some of the internal organs (are you the heart or the brain?). You need flesh out your society with more members if you want to make any kind of impact. Start advertising the fact that there is a new Society in town. Maybe get some posters on campuses across Britain. Try contacting the biology department secretaries of local universities and ask them if they could pass along invitations to the students and faculty. Make some profiles on social networking sites. Put together some small events, like a networking social in a public place (so you don't need to pay rental fees). As you add more members you can start taking on projects like branding.
Keep in mind this will be slow going. You likely will have to work for at least a decade, if not more, before your society really starts to gain real influence in your field. It will be tough to get new members, especially if you have membership dues, because people might be worried that it is some kind of scam. This is why you need a dedicated group of founding members who can stick with the Society for the long run.
Sixth Step (Optional): Get yourself officially recognized by a larger organization
This is not necessary but can be helpful. For student societies, you often want to get your society ratified underneath your student union at whatever university you belong to (become a member society). This is often helpful because the union will have resources to help protect and promote your society. By "protect" I mean that they will usually insure your events so that you aren't personally liable if someone is injured at an event, etc. as long as you abide by their bylaws. I am not familiar with any similar arrangements for non-student societies.


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Missing Software Citations
I've written a statistical software package and published a paper on it. Recently, it appears to have received moderate use, but with at least less than a 50% citation rate. I know this because Google Scholar will tell me that a paper mentions the name of my software package (it's a nonsense word, so this shouldn't be by chance), but the paper will not cite the package itself; in some cases there will be something like "We used package X for statistical programming language R", with a citation for R but not X.
One the one hand, I'm glad people are using my tools and that makes me happy. On the other hand, I would like citations due, if just from a career standpoint. My guess is that many researchers may not be aware that a citation should be included; I estimate that the majority of users of the package probably work outside the field of statistics. R makes it very easy to cite software (R> citation("X") gives you the bibTex)...but I didn't even know that until I started writing software.
It's my view that at least some of the responsibility should lie with the reviewers/editors. Would it be impolite to point this out to the editors of the journal? I really don't want to be in the business of harassing the users of my software, nor trying to point the finger at them either. Or is it just accepted that you should expect a little under a 50% citation rate?
EDIT:
A good question was asked in the comments: what do I hope to achieve? I'm not 100% sure! I suppose I'm wondering if there's a polite way to raise awareness of proper citations for software? Both writing software and continuing to support users of the software is fairly time consuming (I would estimate I've spent over 300 unfunded hours on those two tasks?), but I'm convinced it's one of the ways statistics researchers can be most helpful to outside researchers. As such, I suppose I would like to gently push the system to be more supportive of that effort...without being a grumpy ol' stats guy complaining about anyone who uses their contributions.

The way I learned it, only specialized software normally needs citation. E.g. a basic math package that a lot of people use is similar to "common knowledge", but a specialized package for calculating criticality in Soviet-type nuclear reactors would need to be cited, as even math and physics-heads might have never heard of it.

@RobertColumbia: In this case, I think the authors recognize the software as specialized enough; they did mention that they used it, implying it was specifically targeted at their type of data problem, but perhaps didn't realize they should cite it. It's my thought that an editor should recognize this is a case when a citation is warranted? I do recognize it's not black and white; I've never cited Unix, for example.

For career purposes, it seems like you've already used a good strategy, unintentionally or not: by using a nonsense word that can be easily indexed, you can summarize the number of papers using your package regardless of whether they include it in a reference list.

Have you published a paper related to your package?  My experience has been that authors generally will cite a paper if one exists.

@BrianBorchers: there has been a paper published. Although the software was released 2 years before the paper was published, so I do recognize that in some cases, missing citations are just a feature of lag time.

Giving the citation of the paper in the user documentation and asking people to cite it can be helpful too.

Look at the bottom of the GMSH web page, there they provide citations for their software, respectively software features.

@BrianBorchers: "My experience has been that authors generally will cite a paper if one exists." - while it may help the OP in the concrete case to provide such a paper, it seems questionable to further promote that practice.

@O.R.Mapper it is increasingly common in my field (ecology/evolution) for software developers to publish a short paper announcing their program, in large part to deal with the issue OP has raised - giving users a way to cite the program. I'm not sure why you suggest not promoting this practice?

@Tyler: Citing software is considered appropriate for a variety of reasons (giving credit, disclaiming parts of the contribution that were not done by the author, pointing out/"advertising" interesting or useful resources to othe researchers). Nothing about these reasons changes depending on whether the software author happened to publish a paper-like document to present the software, so neglecting the citation just because there is no such publication seems unethical. Accordingly, promoting the practice of publishing a paper just to announce the software in order to "giv[e] users a way ...

... to cite the program" (as if there were none otherwise) could give rise to the idea that due citation could be skipped if the software author has not provided such a paper.

See more recent discussion of this, and how to enable citations, at https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/164177/are-software-citations-indexed

Reaching out to journal editors might backfire, I'd be careful with that approach.
Ultimately it's going to be up to your users to a) know how to cite your work and b) decide to do so. You have some control over a): you can display a short note with the preferred citation when the program starts. In the case of an R package, you can use the function .onAttach to display a message when your package is loaded. If it's a stand-alone program, put the message in your splash screen, or on the console, wherever a user might see it.
In the short term, you don't have any control over b), so I suggest you focus on maintaining the program and responding to users as best you can. As we use an increasing number of programs, deciding which ones get cited in any given paper is going to be a bit subjective. If my analysis depends on a bug fix or new feature that a developer implemented for me, they will definitely be cited!
Beyond that, your influence is limited to longer-term approaches to changing practices:

lead by example, so people become accustomed to seeing software getting cited
as an editor or reviewer, request citations be added where you think they should be
promote the idea to your students and colleagues

The RCUDA and RLLVM packages for R that allow the use of GPUs inform the use on the license that the paper should be cited. I think the best way to minimize the problem is to clearly inform the users in the license text of your package and also on the Readme file of the repository (maybe even as the topic 0 of the quick start guide, that we know everybody will read).
However this is no guarantee that the users will follow the instruction.
EDIT
It seems that there is no reference on the RCUDA and RLLVM repositories to which paper should be cited, although there was a pointer to the original paper before.

Are you sure? From what I can see from their pages, RCUDA is licensed under BSD 3-clause, which does not require citation, and RLLVM is under GPL2, which again does not require citations.

Also, see this relevant question on "crayon licenses".

I am separating the software use from the paper. I was referring to the scientific paper citation. (Just clarifying my idea)


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How to organize a graduate student seminar on pure math?
I am a first-year graduate student of pure mathematics. Now the department gives us the chance to organize graduate student seminars.
I want to run a seminar based on the book called Sheaves on Manifold. But I totally know nothing about how to organize a seminar well.
Could you give me some advice?

Maybe wait until after you have attended a seminar organized by a more experienced graduate student.  Then you will see how it is done in your department.

@GEdgar it is really a great idea:)

@GEdgar: Does the webinar/seminar organizer have to pay the presenter?

It depends on what you mean by seminar - it sounds like what you'd like to organize is simply a reading group, in which case all you would need to do is recruit some students (via email or otherwise) and set a date and time to meet. If people are interested in the topic, they'll come because it requires a low commitment. Organizing such a thing requires no special knowledge on your part, just do it.
In my department, we have several graduate student seminars that are slightly more structured, but still fairly casual.  Every week, a student presents some work, either to practice for an upcoming conference, defense, or just to talk about a subject they recently learned about.  These are usually organized by a second or third year student, mostly because they need to coordinate a particular person to talk each week, and this is difficult to do if you don't know anyone and they don't know you - it's easier to persuade someone to give a talk if you know them.  For this type of seminar, I would recommend not trying to organize until you've seen how it is run.


text:
Can we share the presentations and posters that we presented for a international/national conferences online?
Can we share the presentations and posters that we presented for a international/national conferences online, may be in LinkedIn and other job websites? Is it allowed?

Could you clarify your question, please? Do you mean whether you're allowed to? Or whether it is adviseable? Or whether it is technically possible? (I'd guess the answer is a more or less clear "yes" to all three of these, but some more information might clarify the doubts you have and get you a more suitable answer.)

@O.R.Mapper Thank you for the response. I was just wondering if is allowed, legal and not going against any terms and conditions.

It highliy depends on the contant. Are there figures included that have a specific copyright, e.g. have been published in a journal?

@FuzzyLeapfrog Here I am including presentations made at conferences for the paers that were accepted there. Yes it contains figures that are there in the conference paper. So do you mean that there will be copyright issues as the conference has copyrights?

@prashanth Yes, there might be copyright issues regarding the published article in the conference proceedings. Check the copyright agreement, the proceedings website and/or Sherpa/RoMEO.


text:
In touch with a professor of a college I am applying to. I haven't mentioned his research work in my statement of purpose?
I am applying to College A where I found the research work done by two labs (Lab X and Lab Y) interesting. I emailed the professors heading these labs two months ago and I did not get a reply from either of them. As a result, I emailed a few of the PhD students working for these labs and I managed to get a reply from one PhD student of Lab Y. Since I was able to discuss the ongoing research work and possible openings with the Ph.D. student, I expressed my interest in working with Lab Y in my SOP and sent my application last week to the college.
Yesterday, I receive an email from Lab X's professor saying that he is interested in taking me in and will look out for my application. While this could have been good news, I have not mentioned Lab X's research at all in my SOP. Would this antagonize the professor and have an adverse impact on my application?

I didn't down or up vote your question, I only edited a typo in your question. I am innocent of what you accuse me, I swear.

You welcome, no worries,

I think the more relevant question at this point is - is there really anything you can do about it?  The short answer here is "no" - so don't worry too much about it (I know, easy to say, hard to do). To answer your question: could it antagonize Prof X?  Sure, but their reaction isn't under your control.  And if the follow-up question is, "should I contact them?" - no, other than to continue expressing interest in the lab's work.  Beyond that, there's no need to mention that they weren't included in your SOP.
A word of advice for the future though - if you're interested in working with a particular lab, don't worry about whether or not you've heard back from them. Just list them in your SOP anyways - best case scenario, they send you a message; worst case scenario, nothing happens.  You've got nothing to lose by including them.

Thanks for your answer. So could this lead to an application rejection since it could antagonize professor X?

@tr_quest: Sure it could - but it might also not matter.  The point is that there's no real way of knowing what Prof X will think, unfortunately, so I doubt anyone can answer your question definitively (I apologize if that comes across as harsh, it's not meant to).  Here's a question for you though - if Prof X gets offended because you didn't mention them in your SOP, you may not really want to work under them in the first place.  Finding an adviser is about more than just the research - it's about finding a mentor who can support you and teach you.

To add to your second paragraph, the middle scenario is that you don't hear back from them, but they still read your application, either because they read all of them, or someone recommends it to them as the interests are similar

@tr_quest I mean the professor you sent the email to who did not respond.  You may not hear back from the professor, but it is still possible the professor will see your application materials.


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Will a good GRE Computer Science subject test score overcome a "weak" academic record?
Disclaimer: The GRE Program discontinued the Computer Science Test
I'm from an unknown school in Georgia. I want to apply for grad school in U.S, but I don't have a good GPA although I am at the top %15 of the class. Here we have some strange grading system - we use 4.0 system but grading is not similar to the western world. I am confident on my knowledge and I believe that I can do well on GRE CS Subject exam.
So do you care about or value GRE Subject test results ?
If so, what score do you expect from a candidate ?
Is it possible to get some funding at top 40-70 range schools?
Regarding research, I don't have possibility of doing any research and it is not a top priority here, so we aren't provided opportunities for research.

Help, yes.  Compensate, yes.  Overcome?  Probably no completely.

Regarding research, I don't have possibility of doing any research and it is not a top priority here, so we aren't provided opportunities for research.

For purposes of graduate school admissions, any self-directed intellectual activity counts as research.  Have you contributed to any open-source projects?  Have you written any Android or iPhone apps?  Did you solve all the double-starred problems in Hopcroft and Ullman?  Did you write a confluently persistent graph data structure library?  Did you participate in (or better yet, coach for) the International Olympiad in Informatics?  What about Google Summer of Code?  Do you contribute regularly to a StackExchange site?  Have you rebuilt a pinball machine?  These are all real examples.
Research opportunities are not something you're provided; they're something you hunt down and kill.

How do you provide proof of such accomplishments as part of the application? I think committees (or at least the ones I've been involved with) prefer organized activities, because the record-keeping is more extensive and traceable.

How do you provide proof of such accomplishments as part of the application? — Make a web page with links to your work.  Include specific and credible technical details in your research statement.  Show off your work to your references.  Whatever it takes.

I want to tattoo that last sentence on my arm.

The GRE subject tests are useful measuring sticks in disciplines where it's available, as they test understanding in a single discipline in a way that is hopefully "neutral" across different schools.
That said, you'll need to have a very strong overall package in order to overcome the weakness in your GPA. A strong showing on the GRE subject test will help, as will strong letters of recommendation from several of your instructors. These letters should clearly indicate structural reasons why you can't do research, and should find some way to indicate your aptitude for graduate studies. If it is possible, you should also get an official note on your transcript indicating your class rank.
I can't really comment on the funding situation in CS; perhaps one of our other site users can fill in that part of the picture.

I don't think my recommenders know how to write a good academic letter. We don't use letters here in a way u are used to. Usually they are perfunctory.

In that case, you'll need to show them examples of what a good letter are, and provide them with material that can help them to write a better letter.

I wish it were so easy as you said. Ofcourse it is a method but probably our professors will take it as a disrespect. And it might have serious consequences and deteriorate the situation.

Actually, if the people you want to write letters aren't really willing to get additional information to do a better job, then they probably weren't worth asking to write you a letter in the first place. It won't do you any good to get a "boilerplate" letter at a US graduate school.

Pure anecdote.
I got a peak at the notes that were written on my file1 at one place I applied to after a ... uh ... less than stellar performance at my undergraduate institution.
Things on the lines of

Great test scores. What was he doing in school?

That program offered to admit me without support. In fact, a lot of places offered to admit me without support.
Grad school is very hard if you have to work too. The program I eventually chose gave me support about a year in, and it is just as well because I wouldn't have been able to keep it up much longer.

1No cloak and dagger stuff here, the reviewers wrote summaries on a sheet affixed to the front of the file which was left were I could see it while the departmental admin stepped out to flag someone down.

In short, a good GRE score does compensate for your getting an undergraduate degree from "not among the best institutes". As for funding, a graduate student in US generally gets funded through either (1) some research project funding, or (2) the department. In the former case you become a Graduate Research Assistance (GRA) where you assist a professor or a researcher in his/her research. In the later case you help the department (through some professor/teacher) in work related to teaching e.g. grading homework and so on. This position is called Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA). Apart form these two ways of getting financial support there is fellowship but that is achieved generally by those with exceptional academic and research experience.
With your background and expertise, the only feasible option is to get a GTA. I would suggest doing your best to get good GRE score (general and specific -CS) and then do a good search on available GTA and write to the professors (top and medium level universities) how you can hep them teach classes. Your cover letter must clearly and honestly state your abilities and interests.

Fellowships often also have citizenship requirements associated with them, so that can make them difficult to obtain as well.

I suggest contacting specific schools to ask how much they value the GRE, both subject and general.  When I applied to a top ten grad school in CS (long ago), they didn't care about the subject test, but they were somewhat picky about my scores on the general test (I actually took it a second time to score higher to make them happy).  But my main point is that this varies noticeably from one school to another.

Correction: A good GRE score might compensate for your getting an undergraduate degree from an unknown school.


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How to arrange courses to timetable?
I would like to ask if there is some algorithm how to arrange courses to timetable. I study at the university and we can choose a few different lesson times for each subject.
The problem is how to coordinate all subjects with student's requirements, for example to have school only 2 days a week and/or to select some hours based on capacity.
One subject - you have to select one from the first table and one from the second table (it's lecture and seminar). There can be only one table to select from (only seminar/only lecture):

Thanks. My problem is that I don't have time to learn Prolog:) I was looking for some idea how to arrange it. But I understand that's not so simple.

Check out this stackoverflow question for a related discussion. Not sure if it'll help you at all, but you'll learn something.

Are you asking as a student (because you need to fill your own schedule), or as an administrator (because you want to add a feature to your registration site)?

As a student. I want to have some variants precomputed based on my preferences (school only on Tue and Thu) and then select the best variant for me.

As Tom brought up in his answer, this is an algorithm question. It seems more appropriate for StackOverflow.

Why did this get moved to https://academia.stackexchange.com/ ?  This is an algorithm question!
Anyway, it so happens some friends of mine have one of the top timetabling algorithms, based on competition wins.  Here is a link to the paper (which will include references to other state-of-the-art timetabling algorithms)

An automatically configured modular algorithm for post enrollment
  course timetabling Chris Fawcett, Holger H. Hoos, and Marco
  Chiarandini - Technical Report TR-2009-15, University of British
  Columbia, Department of Computer Science, 2009. [pdf]

There are algorithms for timetabling, but I doubt that you would want to get into the level of detail required for understanding them and applying them to your - as I take it - one off situation. Timetabling is a difficult problem for a computer to solve when there are many activities and people to timetable. It is an NP-hard problem, and a hot topic of current computer science research.
Perhaps something like this would help you? I haven't tried it so I can't comment on whether it is a useful/competent solution.


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Is ABET accreditation important for a bachelors degree in software engineering?
Would getting a non ABET accredited degree in Software Engineering put a person at a considerable disadvantage when it comes to employment, or applying for graduate school?  I ask because I was accepted into San Jose State Universities Software engineering program and have learned that it's not ABET accredited.

Not really an answer, but software engineering bachelor degrees are still somewhat of a new thing despite having been around for the past 10-15 years or so, so many of them are not yet accredited but are actively being evaluated. I would do research to see how far they are into the evaluation process - there may be a good chance the program will be accredited a year or two after you start.

This question is on-topic, because it's a real concern faced by computer science and other engineering departments considering ABET accreditation.

My experience is that ABET accreditation is generally not very important, in the fields of software engineering and software development.
If the University program is well-regarded by employers, ABET accreditation is not important; their positive impressions will outweigh any accreditation.  If the University program is poorly-regarded, ABET accreditation is not going to make up for their poor impressions.  If the University program is unknown to employers, they will probably look at other measures first (like past projects you've done, your performance on a phone interview, etc.) before they care about ABET accreditation.
What is important is the quality of the undergraduate program.  Since you are choosing among multiple universities, you should be looking carefully at the quality of their programs.  While it's true that ABET accreditation is potentially a signal or indicator of quality, I don't think it's a very good measure of quality.  (I know of some extremely high-quality computer science programs that are not ABET-accredited.)  Instead, to decide where to study, I'd be looking closely at the programs, to assess their quality in as many ways as possible.


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Is it worth seeking disability accommodations if I get good grades anyway?
I have bipolar disorder and take medications that make me foggy and confused.  Because of this I am thinking of asking for extra time on tests.  But I generally score in the upper half of my classes, even when I am taking my medication.  Should I still register with the disability office?
Also, my advisor is teaching the class I'm taking, and many of the TAs are people I already know, who may think I am trying to game the system.
Edit: Also, do you think I should try to get accommodations for my qualifying exams?  Or are those not a thing?

Related: Is it unethical to accept extra time on exams when I still do well?

Congratulations on dealing with your diagnosed disability so far ... how much better might you be if you had the accommodations to which you may be entitled, supplied?

@user: Check your school's disability office website.  At my school there's special guidelines for psychiatric disabilities, and they specifically mention side effects of medication that lead to slower thinking or cognitive impairment.  You have to get evaluated though.

Why accept being in the top half when a level playing field would allow you to show that you're one of the best? Please get the appropriate testing and  accommodations to show your best effort.

The purpose of disability accommodations are to put students on a fair playing field. If you have a condition and if your physicians, mental health providers, and university disability office feel that it puts you at a relative and unfair disadvantage by making you foggy and confused, requesting accommodations sounds both ethical and wise. The fact that you happen to be a relative high performer in spite of your disability does not mean you are not at a disadvantage relative to your peers in this concrete way that can be accommodated for with extra time (for example).
The reality, of course, is that accommodations are not evenly distributed. In general, socially and economically disadvantaged students will be less likely to be diagnosed and provided with accommodations for their legitimate disabilities. There is also a sense that some people have that students will fabricate or exaggerate disabilities to receive accommodations that would help any student but that do not actually compensate for a legitimate disability. In this final sense, people might think you are trying to game the situation.
It would be wrong to game the situation but it doesn't sound like you are suggesting that. Despite others perception, it is both ethical and in your interests to be accommodated for your legitimate medical disabilities and I would definitely do it.


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Mailing list for internships and full time jobs for computer science PhD students
I have found many mailing lists for conferences. I just want to know: is there any mailing list that updates internship and full-time positions (computer science industry jobs and academic jobs) for Ph.D. students? Would you please tell me what are those? Any location would work for me.

Hi, and welcome to Academia.SE!  Can you please specify what field you are looking for, since different fields have different ways they organize themselves.

As it stands, this question can only be answered with yes – there is at least one such mailing list. If you want to ask about a mailing list for your specific country and subfield, however, it is too localised – you better ask others in your field. Either way, it’s not a question we can satisfyingly answer.

For computer science, the CRA computing jobs site is a good central clearinghouse for a large fraction of faculty postings and some non-faculty research positions.  For industrial jobs in computer science, however, there is no such central location.


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Deep reading or just skimming and scanning?
In order to write a lit review from papers which I already have, should I read all those papers deeply and summarize them, or can I just skim and scan and just pick the information that I need to connect it with other information available in another paper?
The main point that I want to understand, do I have to understand the paper fully that I took some things to write from? For example, If I found a paragraph in a paper and it is good to include in one of the themes, then do I have to understand that paper fully?

Short answer Probably not.
In order to write an effective literature review, you should definitely understand the material. So...

[D]o I have to understand the paper fully that I took some things to write from? For example, If I found a paragraph in a paper and it is good in include in one of the themes, then do I have to understand that paper fully?

I would say that you may not need to understand the entire paper completely, but you should be sure that you understand the primary points well enough to be absolutely sure that you are not taking the quote/paraphrase out of context. Again, as other replies point out, whether you can determine this from skimming will depend on your current level of understanding of the subject. I assume you have already read these papers, and have a fair knowledge of the content; however, I would still advise you to read carefully anything you will be quoting--this will improve the quality of the lit review you are writing (and anyway it is never fun to be called out for having misrepresented someone's paper!). Bottom line, unless you know the subject--and the relevant papers--very well, you will probably be better off with reading thoroughly.

For example, if I took points of some papers will the supervisor when they assess my lit review ask me about the whole paper?

@Kaser It depends...your supervisor may ask about the whole paper if 1) you made an interesting point, 2) it is something s/he has a deep interest in, or 3) it appears that you don't know what you are talking about. In any of these scenarios, I stand by the main point of my answer-- you should know the material you are quoting!

If the paper you are reading is familiar material, it might be easy to assimilate the data from scanning. If it is news to you, you may have to go slower. The answer is, read as fast or slow as you have to in order to actually understand the material.

Please look at the update of my question. Thank you

After your update, I stand by my answer. If you only find a paragraph that works for your project, you stand a good chance of taking it out of context. It could be that the author did not imply by that paragraph what you inferred from it.

I would add to the above answers that it also depends on what exactly you want to cite. Is it the description of methods, results, conclusions or general discussion or something else? I can think of a couple of scenarios that I came across:

I was writing about some algorithm on networks and cited a physics paper that used similar approach. I only skimmed the paper as just wanted to highlight that the method is widely used in various fields in various contexts.
I cited two papers that conducted similar studies but obtained opposing results. Here I read the papers thoroughly, especially methods section, to pick out the differences and try to understand what was the cause of such discrepancies.
I cited some general discussion and future hypotheses to test from one review paper. I liked the reasoning of the guy and I knew that he is one of the leading scientists in the field. I did not hesitate to cite his opinion because I had read a couple of his previous papers and knew his contribution to the field. I would probably be careful with citing opinions/conclusions from some obscure sources. If you don't know what brought the author to conclude something, you are risking that you cherry-pick nice sentences out of context (as already mentioned in previous answers).