text:
What changes should be notated in a journal resubmission?
I am currently in the process of submitting a manuscript to a journal.  During this process my manuscript has come back for revision, and the journal has asked for an updated manuscript with revisions annotated.  What level of changes should be annotated?  Similarly is it acceptable to provide a generic comment when changes are for flow and not for content (e.g. "sentence rephrased for clarity")?
As an example (in my perceived order of required-ness):

Adding or removing significant content (figures, paragraphs, sentences)
Rephrasing a sentence changing the meaning
Rephrasing a sentence changing the grammar, but not the meaning
Adding/removing words that are superfluous (or change the meaning in an insignificant way)
alteration of comma's, periods, etc.

An editor once "requested" that I submit a "tracked changes" or latexdiff version of my resubmission if I wanted him to deal with it in a timely fashion. Since then, my strategy has been to submit:

revised manuscript (no annotation);
latexdiff of revisions against version submitted last time, to highlight every last comma changed;
cover letter, describing all scientific changes plus any major textual changes ("we substantially rewrote the methods section in an attempt to improve its clarity"). I refer the editor to the diff for minor textual corrections.

No editor has complained yet... ;)

Suppose you are not using LaTeX. How does that change point 2?

@FaheemMitha My strategy is always to use LaTeX. ;-) Users of word processing software can instead use "tracked changes", as I mentioned.

@FaheemMitha My collaborators prefer to use MS Word, and it contains a (buggy) feature to diff 2 word documents. The approach we chose in resubmission was to run the Word diff and then fix the more obvious errors (paragraph deleted and re-added instead of one line changed)

What editors (and their journals) expect may vary. In the journal I edit, and also journals with which I am familiar as author and reviewer, expectations cover the two first points in your list. It is very common to request a point by point account for how reviewers' (and editor's) comments have been dealt with. This, to me is the important part of the revisions. Some editors want files highlighting changes, while other definitely do not. The important changes deal with the science and not the grammar or spelling. If the language has been a focal point for revisions, an editor will not likely check all changes you have made but rather read the manuscript to see if the language has been sufficiently improved.
While some (unclear what percentage) will not care about tracked changes, it is not wrong to supply them. Doing so allows the editor to chose which version (showing revisions or not) to use. But, always provide a clean version of the revised manuscript. I sometimes receive manuscripts with all changes visible in the manuscript and I feel uncomfortable accepting all on behalf of the author. The revised version is the responsibility of the author so the sharp new version should be included in the submission.

Peer reviewers should care about tracked changes because they often reveal author dishonesty.

@AnonymousPhysicist, please expand on the comment to develop your thoughts.

I have personally seen, as a peer reviewer, authors who provide a "point by point" account of revisions, where they claim to have made many revisions, but in reality they only did the first few revisions.  If they had provided tracked changes, it would have been much easier for me to catch them cheating.

Otherwise, Avid's answer seems pretty complete to me.


text:
Is it proper to cite something when using it just as an example?
In academic writing, is it proper to cite something to provide it as an example of something else? For instance, we have lines like this in a number of our papers:

Many research endeavors, including environmental and coastal hazard prediction [1], climate modeling [2], high-energy physics simulations [3,4], and genome mapping [5] generate large data volumes on a yearly basis.

Each citation is merely providing an example of a research project that generates large volumes of data (more often than not, it's not even a paper, just a URL), and content from the cited source is not otherwise used anywhere in the paper.
I suppose I tend to think of citations as references to work whose content contributes to a significant portion of content in the paper. A citation then indicates some kind of "weighty" relation between the paper and the thing being cited. In the example I provided, it seems to me that invoking the "weighty" power of citation simply to say "yes, such a data producing project of this type does in fact exist, in case you were wondering"--and doing so five times--is somewhat excessive and that it might serve better as a footmark.
To me it seems these should either be footnotes or just be left out. In any case, it seems they should not go in the bibliography.

A citation then indicates some kind of "weighty" relation between the paper and the thing being cited. Not at all. A citation simply indicates that you are saying something that is not common knowledge and not an original contribution of your work. If you give examples that are not common knowledge, you should certainly cite them.

Though citations are valued in academia, no distinction is being made between the reasons behind a citation. Even if you reference some publication only to thouroughly deconstruct it, it still “gets” a normal citation and all its positive aspects.

I am not sure about other disciplines, but this is certainly neither uncommon nor in any way frowned upon in my field (Computer Science).

Thanks for your response. I'm in computer science as well. I'm just concerned about having "too many" citations I guess.

Why do you care about "too many citations" ? there's no limit on cites :) ? And I agree with xLeitix that this is neither uncommon or frowned upon.

And if the editor thinks they are superfluous, it is trivial to take them away.

@Suresh: there are cases of overdose of citations. Some articles have ridiculously long bibliography. It may look like sort of name dropping of famous researchers; or on the other side, citations of irrelevant articles of friends working in the same area.

But this is hardly an example of that.

I agree with the other answers. It is better to provide citations to good articles that back up or give examples of your statements.  In the example you have shown, the use of the citation is allowing the reader to see for themselves what you mean without you having to provide painstaking details that may detract from the main point of your writing.  I, myself, have written some articles that have been very heavy on citations, and were not criticized for it.

This is common practise as has already been established by other answers. In fields where the Harvard style is used it is common to add "e.g." (for example) to the references so that the example would read

Many research endeavors, including environmental and coastal hazard prediction (e.g., Smith et al., 1989), climate modelling (e.g., Doe and Smith, 2007), high-energy physics simulations (e.g., Svensson, 2005; Fischer, 2006), and genome mapping (e.g., Iglesias, 2010) generate large data volumes on a yearly basis.

It is not uncommon to add more than one example although there is no "law" either way.
With the Harvard style it becomes easier to see that these are just examples, one of possibly many alternatives.

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text:
Should I list my work as dissertation or conference paper?
I have a dissertation under the supervision of my advisor. Then my university hosted a conference and we decided to make it a paper. The paper will soon publish on the conference's website, but it won't have peer-review. Should I list my work as a dissertation or a conference paper?

Are you talking bout the CV?  Because typically you have a education section where you list your institution, degree, year, and title of the disertation.  Then in another section you have conference presentations, and the paper could go there.

Yes, I ask the question under the tag [tag:cv]. So you suggest that my work can have both form: dissertation and paper, am I correct?

Yes they are independent.

In a CV you try to organize your important personal information in a clear and useful way for others to see and gain a good perspective. In this case you have a thesis. It should clearly be listed so that it is clear it is one of the outcomes of your degree. It is commonplace for people to turn a thesis into papers but that usually involves rewriting the material substantially. Such papers will be listed under headings such as, for example, "Peer-reviewed articles", "Conference contributions", "Abstracts", etc. In your case you could add your article under a heading such as "Conference contributions", Non-reviewed articles" or "Other articles" (the later only makes sense if you have a heading "Peer-reviewed articles") and make sure it is clear that the heading also implies the articles are not peer reviewed.
If your article and your thesis is, in fact practically the same text with the same title, it would not be advisable to follow the guidelines outlined above. the reason is that it may seem to a reader of the CV as if you are trying to inflate your publication record. In that case you could perhaps make a note in the CV in conjunction with the thesis that it has also been published under the same name or to add it under a different heading but stating that the paper is the same as the thesis, thereby taking the possible edge of the double appearance.
In the end it is clearly not a problem to publish thesis material after a degree and still count both the thesis and the resulting article but the basic rule is that a specific text should not be counted twice. It would then essentially count as self-plagiarism. So just act responsibly and be open and honest about issues that can cause confusion or raise eye-brows.

Thank you so much. To clear my situation, I want to add that I'm just a graduate student, not PhD nor Ms. The article is a short version of my dissertation. The structure is change, the title is change, some part is cut off but basically there is no change in writing for the selected parts. Which solution is best for me?

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Phd application procedure in European universities, specifically in Scandinavia and the Netherlands
For Phd application in Europe, we often directly apply to the interested group, a little bit like application to a job. I would like to know in general, will they send you a email if they reject you? or only the successful candidate will receive email? (Just like job application) How long does it take for their consideration? I would like to hear some of the experience or general cases because I cannot find enough information on this. (No reply from HR etc)

Can you be more specific which country do you apply?
For instance, in Germany, you need to directly contact professors. If they are interested they will give you replies. If not maybe they are busy, not interested, etc. You know, professors are always busy.

For my case, they are Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.

I only have experience in applying PhD position in North  America, I sent bunch of emails to several professors, some sent me lukewarm replies, others didn't. Send your applications to several prospective professors, but don't expect fast response. After a while you don't get reply (1-2 months), the worst case can be the professors aren't interested by our application/rejected. The chance can be quite slim, so In my opinion, send a LOT of applications

I think this question is impossible to answer. Some professors will silently ignore your application, others will send an answer. Some professors will answer immediately, others will let it tangle for months.

In the Netherlands, you can find vacancies for PhD position on the websites of the universities. Contacting the professors directly is generally not appreciated. If there is no vacancy, they can't help you anyway. In the Netherlands a PhD position is considered a fulltime job (with salary, benefits, pension, etc.) rather than a studentship. Therefore the procedure is pretty much identical to a job application.

I have some issues with the formulation of this question; first of there is a contradiction between the question title and the first sentence. The OP first asks for the application procedure in the question title, then goes on to describe it in the first sentence as if to answer his/her own question...
Then there is the issue of seeing Europe as one big consistent body. Anyone who has dealt with academic bureaucracy in Europe would likely laugh at the notion. I would personally give the ECTS system as a beautiful example of how little collaboration and consistency there is in higher education system in Europe.

According to the Swedish "Law of Higher Education" (Högskoleförordningen) Ch. 12 par 2 employment on a PhD position can not be appealed by other applicants. Text in "[]" is a attempt to translate the Swedish text.

12 kap. Överklagande [Appeal]
...
2 § Till Överklagandenämnden för högskolan får följande beslut av en högskola överklagas: [The following decisions made at a University/College may be appealed to the appeals board]

beslut om anställning vid en högskola, med undantag av anställning som doktorand, [Decisions on employment ata university/college, with the exception of PhD positions]

Since this is the law that dictates higher education in Sweden it matters not whether the University(/College) is state or private.

I have a couple of additions and clarifications:

there are two schools that are not state-owned, Chalmers University and Jönköping Business School. These schools have their own regulations which I suspect is very similar to all the other universities but slight differences might exist.

the statement that you apply directly to research groups (i.e. group leaders) is simply not true. It is praxis (and actually good manners) to get in contact with the group leader prior to application but it is in no way compulsory, neither does it have any formal meaning.

Like all other state-owned organisations, the universities in Sweden have to have a transparent recruitment process that is open for general public. Universities have HR departments and centralised recruitment applications (typically on the university homepage) where positions (for instance PhD or post-doc positions) are posted.

At Lund University (and I am pretty confident this applies to other major universities in Sweden) applications are then collected and directed to the person responsible for recruitment of that particular position in question (often the group leader) who then does an assessment of the applicants based on the job description and qualifications. If necessary one or more steps of filtering is done, and top N candidates are typically invited to some sort of interview (in person or via skype).

Once a single candidate is chosen out of all applicants the group leader then needs to write a formal letter where the decision is motivated; i.e. why was the chosen applicant better than the other ones.

The applicants are then informed whether they are accepted or not.

I cannot swear for all Danish universities, but I know that DTU has a similar procedure to the one described possibly differing in, if anything, being even more formal and controlled.

I hope the edits are ok, you may need to make additional ones. Note that I edited the title of the question as well.

@PeterJansson looks good, seeing as the OP has accepted the answer I don't think additional edits are immediately necessary. Thanks for the collaboration :)

Hi. Maybe you can add any details about Netherlands as OP requested. I too am interested in Netherlands. How long does it take to send a formal offer letter after they interview you and make up their mind to take you?

@MycrofD I don't know much about the Netherlands as I have not worked there myself. I have left that bit to our Dutch academics here. Note that Mythio has left a comment to the OP, briefly explaining the situation in Netherlands


text:
Is publishing papers before the evaluation of thesis a good idea?
Is publishing papers before the evaluation of thesis is a good idea?
Isn't there a risk of making the idea public?

Risk?  The whole point of publishing is to make your ideas public!

Publishing is usually required to be competitive on the academic job market.

You should try to publish before you finish your thesis. An idea in a published paper will be recognized as yours, there are more chances of an idea getting stolen from a thesis.

Thanks. A journal article or conference article?

That depends on your field.

No disrespect intended but in this thread it's funny that people forget that he would publish on his name so what would be stolen?

@LelaDax : Publishing a thesis goes to, maybe, 5 people.  That doesn't get the student's name associated with the idea.  Publishing to a journal goes to MANY MORE people in the field.

A very smart friend of mine essentially stapled together a bunch of his published papers to form his thesis.

Four reasons why it's generally a very good idea to publish papers before you submit your thesis:

The earlier you publish, the less likely it is that your idea will be scooped [1], i.e. that someone working in the same area actually publishes the same idea/result before you.
Once ideas are published, they are not stolen: they are used, built upon, with proper attribution (usually in the form of citation). This is not theft.
The goal of an academic is actually to disseminate new knowledge, not to lock it into your desk drawers.
Having papers published (or at least accepted for publication) is very very important for your CV. It may also be a requirement (formal or unspoken) for defending your PhD.
If said publication includes peer review, the peer review is likely to improve your work, both by vetting it thoroughly and giving you new points of view on your arguments. (I edited this in after reading gerrit’s answer; it is an important point.)

In some specific cases, good arguments can be made against publication before thesis submission. Most are actually not specific to the thesis itself, but generally apply to delaying publication of a research:

If research is performed as part of a contract that requires an embargo on publication (say, imposed by one industrial partner). This is a very awkward situation, but it does happen in some fields.
Sometimes, a delay in publication is necessary to protect intellectual property, e.g. in the case of delaying publication until a related patent submission is complete.

Ref. 1:

+1 for comic.  (This actually happened to me within the last month!)

I'd like to add one important point that hasn't been raised yet: if the research that lies at the basis of your PhD has already passed through peer review, that makes it easier to defend against an opponent. You've already replied to two or more reviewers and improved the manuscript and possibly the underlying work. This makes it much less likely that awkward things turn up during the actual discussion with the opponent or the examination committee.

+1 - it's also helpful for problematic committee members.

Actually, publishing paper(s) is a requirement for defending your thesis in some universities.
The best thing you can do for your thesis and the field is to make your ideas public through publications.

By publicizing an original idea at earliest possible moment, you increase your chances of being the first one to publish it, and thus make it known that this is your idea. So, in fact, this prevents it from being
Also, I don't think published ideas can be stolen. The worst that can happen is they can be used without attribution but that is always a possibility wherever you publish them.


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If no revised date is mentioned in the paper, does this means the paper is directly accepted by the journal?
When I am reading papers, sometimes I see statements like

Manuscript received October 29, 2012; accepted March 16, 2014.

Does this implies that the paper is directly accepted?

Not necessarily. Some journals only state dates for submission and acceptance. In such cases dates for revisions are not mentioned. Since it is not uncommon, at least in fields with which I am familiar, for papers to go through two (or sometimes more) revisions, a date for revision usually refers to only one, the first set of revisions.
I can also confirm Anonymous Mathematician's notion that some journals only accept papers that receive minor revision and reject those with major, but with the explicit understanding the paper should be resubmitted once revised. This will officially shorten the times from submission to accept but is of course a questionable action to manipulate such statistics.

With a submission date of Oct 2012 and an acceptance date of March 2014, I really hope this wasn't a play by the journal to shorten the decision time.

Yes, it should mean the paper was accepted with no substantive changes.  Otherwise, it would say something like "revised June 1, 2013" in between the submission and acceptance dates.  If there were several revisions, then only the final revision date is recorded.
In my experience, journals can be a little sloppy about this and allow small changes (such as typo fixes or minor rewording) without such an indication.  Perhaps they should be more careful, since following an unambiguous rule has its benefits.  However, this doesn't seem to be considered a big deal if the changes aren't substantive.
There might be some journals that never indicate revision dates.  I think that would be pretty nonstandard, but there are a lot of journals out there and diverse practices in different fields, so it's hard to say for sure.  (There are certainly journals that don't even show submission dates in the first place, but that's a different issue.  The weird part would be highlighting the submission date while ignoring substantive revisions.)
I've heard stories about journals asking authors to submit a revision as a new submission (see, for example, this blog post).  In that case, the "manuscript received October 29, 2012" might be disguising the fact that there was an even earlier version (to make it look like the journal handled the paper more quickly).  However, I've never seen any evidence of this myself, or heard these stories in mathematics.

At least one of the journals I review for (iirc) uses the following system: accept / minor revision / major rev. / reject and resubmit / reject permanently. It helps because some authors don't treat major revisions as 'major' enough.

This is not my experience. Do you please have an example, which journals provide the dates of all the revisions?

@tohecz: As I said in the answer, I believe only the last revision date is recorded if there are several revisions.  But recording a revision date is common in mathematics (see http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/S2330-0000-2014-00003-4 for Transactions of the AMS), physics (see http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.071303 for Physical Review Letters), and computer science (see http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2629600 for Journal of the ACM).

@AnonymousMathematician Ah, thanks. I have never seen that. It's really interesting that it exists. Now I see that it might be useful to know the revision date if the revision includes something crucial. Thanks again :)


text:
Do students need traditional books?
Do students need books to learn in courses? For example, I found that books often contain some mistakes and therefore it is better for me to study those things on the Internet where I can concentrate on one thing, learn the best knows methods of that subject and then move to the next. Okay, that course wasn't really advanced.
But if you have to decide whether one should write a traditional book or editable lecture notes like in http://stacks.math.columbia.edu/, which one would a lecturer choose?

Your question is a bit ambiguous, could you clarify. I'm not sure if you want to compare contributing to stacks.math.columbia.edu/ to writing a text book or if you want to know if you as a student which you should read for a more advanced subject.

Materials on the Internet contain mistakes too.

I hope you are confident in your ability to separate the wheat from the chaff of those things you find "on the Internet."

Well, I study mathematics and thusfar I have managed to prove everything from the axioms. In minor subjects there are things that I don't know but I have used google and forums to find details.

I certainly hope not!

There is a bit of confusion here; do you mean "paper (dead tree) books vs ebooks and online notes", or "all of the above vs browsing randomly on Wikipedia, Planetmath, Google and the like looking for the proof you need"?

No, Students don't need a book. They DO need good resources.
Maybe its an eBook or a PDF compiled from your teaching notes or outline/slides (Hopefully cited well) and things like short stories needed for a language class can often be found online in their entirity, for free legally, when copyright has expired.
For a language class, using a Sherlock Holmes story could prevent students from needing to buy a book as they're out of copyright. You can also look for material that is licensed as Creative Commons which allows for free use, such as material from MIT open courseware, Khan Academy, and P2P Univerity. You can learn more about Creative Commons for Education here.
Long story short, make good content, and use it legally, either by using stuff people have given to the public, or under doctrines such as Fair Use.

To answer your title question--Student do NOT need books, they just need quality resources.
The best option for this will vary depending on the subject, class size and teaching style (the latter more than the former), and the students' learning ability. For example, in a undergrad intro course filled with students of average ability, a standard textbook may be the best option, perhaps supplemented with a few additional resources (links to videos, papers, etc). However, when you are teaching an advanced course, with students who both know how to learn on their own and have some experience with the subject matter, a textbook may still be a good option (depending on your institution's policy, you may be required to assign on for the course), but students will learn more and better if you provide them with primary sources, seminal papers in the field, and thought-provoking position papers, in addition to the textbook.
As for which a lecturer should do,

write a traditional book or editable lecture notes

that will depend on all the above factors, as well as individual talent and motivation. Not all faculty members will necesarily want to write a textbook, though almost all will write lecture ntoes.

Depends on the class. I've been in classes where the handouts were a book -- a pre-publication version of a textbook that the professor was developing. In those cases, the handouts contained as much detail, and expressed it as clearly, as the final book would -- and luckily these were good instructors AND good writers, so the books were decent ones -- and the chapters were provided sufficiently far in advance of our needing them to permit reading ahead, so I didn't feel a need to consult other textbooks as well.
If any of those requirements is not met -- if the notes cover only the material addressed in the lecture and homework, or if they aren't clear and complete and correct, or if they aren't provided in a more-than-timely manner -- then you probably do need a textbook to back them up.
If in any doubt, you need to specify an alternative textbook or textbooks that students may optionally want to consult (which is good practice even when you do specify a primary text).


text:
How to Access an American PhD Thesis?
I need to download the following PhD Thesis:
"LH Jensen - Large deviations of the asymmetric simple exclusion process in one dimension"
However this website forces me to pay for it. I think it is possible to download the thesis from the Columbia Library (link), but as I am a PhD student based in the UK, I don't have access to it.
So how can I access an American PhD thesis?

It's available if your institution has a ProQuest subscription. There's no general way for an individual to download an American PhD thesis if your institution doesn't have a subscription and the author hasn't made it freely available online, but you should ask your institution's librarians for help.

That proquest link is not to the thesis itself, but only a preview version of the first few pages. Email the author or their adviser.

@mt_ The full text (94 pages) was available to me through my institution's ProQuest subscription.

my institution allows me to download only a 19 pages preview :-(

@ff524 weird.  My institution has a proquest subscription, but the page linked to says "PREVIEW" and I only get 19 pages. I guess there must be different kinds of subscription

I could swear there was a question just like this once before, and I think I wrote an answer. But now I can't find it.

I'm pretty sure this is the guy on LinkedIn.

In general, one could also just write a polite e-mail to the author of the thesis requesting the file (and making it clear that you need it for your research). Unfortunately, in this particular case I was not able to find the author's e-mail by googling.
As a truly very last resort one could try to contact the thesis advisor (which in this particular case can be found through this link) and very politely ask whether he could either pass your request to his/her former student or even provide you with the file of the thesis.

I've had a lot of luck contacting the writer and getting a free copy. I'm sure most are more than happy to do so as it's generally in their interest to make their research visible.

You could use ProQuest for free at the British Library.

Obtaining theses in the Reading Rooms: North American theses
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses is available online on the electronic
resources terminals in Humanities - Floors 1 and 2.

http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/theses/hrrtheses/theses.html

You deserve 1,000,000 rep for this.  Everyone forgets about the public library.

There are a number of ways of accessing American PhD theses. Many, possibly most, US PhD theses are are archived at ProQuest (cf. this question for more about them). In some cases there may be an embargo period before which the thesis will not be available. Some universities have subscriptions to ProQuest allowing you to download the theses from them for free. If your university does not have a subscription, you can purchase the thesis directly from them.
Most US universities have archival copies of all recent theses in their libraries. If you search the library catalogue (as you did in the question), you may find a link that allows you to download the thesis for free (or a fee). If not, it should provide enough information to allow you to make an inter-library loan (ILL) request.
If for some reason you are unable to buy the thesis from a place like ProQuest and you library cannot arrange for an ILL, you can also ask someone at a university with a less inept/cheap library to download, or make an ILL request, for the thesis. Note, however, that this may not be legally allowed by the licensing agreements. Finally, note that the main site of AC.SE is not the place to make such a request, but you could try in the chatroom.

The same way you can access almost any other publication that does not seem to be available online: ask your local university library.
Interlibrary loan works very well, also internationally. Most likely you can get fairly quickly photocopies or scans of the thesis. You do not need to locate a copy of the thesis yourself; you do not need to browse any library catalogs or anything of that sort. Just tell your own library what you want, and they will do everything for you.

I agree entirely with Jukka. Your institution pays librarians to do this for you, go give them something to do ;-)
(Plus, theses are interesting and librarians like a challenge. I much prefer getting a request for a thesis, or something like a pre-revolutionary Russian publication, than for an article in a recent journal...)
So as to add something useful to this comment rather than just "+1, me too", here's a worked example of how the librarian will try and find your thesis, assuming they don't have ProQuest:

Google it. You'd be amazed. I've had people shyly ask for something deeply obscure which they assumed was near-impossible, and then discover in two minutes that the author put it online years ago.
Nail down the author, date, and institution - and correct the title if needed, as a surprisingly high proportion of thesis requests have the title garbled. (Why this is more common than for journals is an interesting question). Then double-check our own catalogue in case we have a print copy. You never know. [For a British work, I'd now try the EThOS service, but that's UK only]
The original institution's repository. New York University has a repository (archive.nyu.edu)  - these are always worth checking, as they're not always indexed well enough to be picked up by step 1. 2000 is a little early to make it into the repository, but you never know. Sadly, we draw a blank in this case - it's not quite clear if the repository covers theses at all.
Nearby libraries. Occasionally, copies of theses get acquired by other institutions, and these can usually be borrowed without too much trouble. In this case, COPAC reports no copies in the major UK libraries, and a separate check confirms there isn't one at the BL.
The original institution's library. Checking the catalogue, they have both microfilm and print copies, as well as a link to Proquest (very helpful). Digging around on their website, they do accept ILL requests from overseas, and (praise be!) they will loan bound dissertations (see http://library.nyu.edu/services/lending.html). They also hint they'll do copies but don't go into detail. Some institutions are exceptionally generous and will scan entire theses on request without charging; others will charge a standard fee but we have an ILL budget for just this reason.

Copy found, and if we're lucky it could be in the post by the end of the day...
[Steps 6 onwards would be various forms of "look for the author", but not needed here]

No offence to professional librarians, but tracking down things that are this relatively easy to find seems like a waste of money.

It's certainly an easy one when you know where to look, but the fact that someone asked suggests it's not easy for everyone ;-)

Just to ad there is also "Search NDLTD" http://search.ndltd.org/index.php which is the nearest thing to a global PhDthesis/dissertations index. Sadly not comprehensive and this one, again, draws a blank.
Tip: encourage your own library to get their theses indexed in Google and/or added to Search NDLTD.


text:
Authorship Disputes and Contributions in Collaborative Research Projects
Background
My colleague (referred to as X) and I collaborated on two research endeavors, termed A and B. While our overarching goals aligned, our specific inputs varied due to individual commitments, relocations, and different tasks.
In project A, I mainly coded, while X was responsible for writing. Despite our efforts, this work wasn't accepted due to a reviewer's concern. Later, we aimed for another venue. At this stage, X proposed modifying the model's architecture. I was skeptical since the reviewer's feedback didn't point to this aspect. Nevertheless, X went ahead, and after achieving promising results, I rejoined X to conduct the necessary benchmark experiments (the new design had a slight variation from the old model). We then tried submitting this revised work elsewhere. When faced with another rejection, I proposed an arXiv upload, but X was keen on a lower-tier conference. I assisted with the draft transfer to a new format, and X, skilled in LaTeX, managed most of the restructuring. We received positive feedback this time, necessitating more experiments during rebuttal, which I handled, while X drafted the rebuttal.
However, the point of contention arose during the camera-ready submission. Despite my efforts to discuss this phase for a week, X took the lead, finalized the paper as the first author, and submitted it without my prior knowledge. Confronting X led to his justification that his decision to try a new venue and the paper's subsequent modifications warranted his primary authorship, sidelining the need for a mutual discussion and equal authorship.
Project B
X has decided to remove my authorship from project B, (which again was a reiteration from a previous work in which we contributed equally). I never questioned X's lead in B, since B required a complete overhaul of our previous work and required more advanced hardware to run the experiments which I simply did not possess. In spite of this, I helped X in whatever way possible, benchmarking other methods on different data and suggesting edits to the manuscript. It is to note that by this time I had joined a new job and was having trouble juggling both. I agree that for B my contributions were limited, but to say that I do not deserve to be an author was deeply disconcerting.
How should I deal with this situation, what options do I have?

I think there are separate issues with each of these situations.
Project A obviously had a bumpy road to publication. I can sympathize with your colleague's apparent desire to be done with the paper. I don't agree with the apparently unilateral decision to take first authorship (or the revision/submission without your approval) though. But I would not die on that hill as I think your only recourse would be to contact the journal/conference and express that you did not consent to publication. This would be bad for all involved. Again, I do not think this was an ethical thing for your colleague to do, but I see limited practical recourse.
I think Project B has some more subtlety to it. Your colleague clearly feels that you have not contributed enough to warrant authorship. You clearly feel that you have. You should discuss this plainly. I feel that the courteous (and ethical) thing to do on their part would be to offer you the opportunity to contribute enough to remain an author. I suspect though, and this is just speculation, that this is your colleagues way of indicating that they do not want to continue collaboration.
This does feel somewhat underhanded. However, if you really haven't contributed (and have not made significant effort to contribute) why do you feel that you should be an author?
My advice would be to move on and find others to work with. At best, this person is just a poor communicator. At worst they are actively trying to screw you over.

You are both in agreement that you are both coauthors of Project A. This means in particular that it can only be published with both of agreeing with the particulars such as author order. You do have the option of contacting the conference and informing them that you did not agree to the publication, which ought to lead to the paper being withdrawn.
For Project B the situation is different: If you aren't actually a coauthor, X doesn't need your agreement for anything here. However, if you are a coauthor, well, then you are. (Of course in reality there are grey areas.)
My recommendation would be to involve a trusted third party as mediator.
Another potentially effective although ethically dubious approach would be to use the threat of raising a fuss over Project A in order to blackmail X into recognizing your contribution to Project B.

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How should I reference my own previous work in a talk to a general audience?
I have to give a presentation to a general scientific audience (specifically, an interview talk). As part of the presentation I would like to highlight some of my previous work.
I work in mathematics, where paper authorship is always alphabetical. The standard practice in talks is to replace your own name with an initial. That is, a person with the last name Potter might present their joint work with Granger and Weasley as "the horcrux theorem, due to Granger-P.-Weasley".
Presumably this mathematical convention is not used or even known in the general scientific community.
How do people reference their own work in other fields? How do people reference their own work when talking to people in other fields? To people in a mixed group of many fields?

ETA: thanks everyone for your answers!
I’m editing to highlight a point which hasn’t been addressed yet - how does one convey that authorship in mathematics is alphabetical? (My last name begins with R so I’m almost always the last author in any paper of mine.)
I don’t want to change the order of authors in a published paper, but I also don’t want it to seem like I’ve never been a first author.
Is it okay to simply state this verbally? This seems like it could be perceived as somewhat tacky....

Do you want to put the reference on slides? Or is it a reference in speech?

I was thinking specifically of how to put the reference on the slides. However, I would also be happy to hear what one does in speech.

You're right, the mathematician's way of referencing would come out rather obscure to people from many other fields. If I were to read Granger-P.-Weasley, I would interpret P. as the first-name initial of Weasley, and I'd think that you forgot to write the first-name initial of Granger.
In my field, and in several other related fields of physics and engineering, there's no distinction between referencing one own's work or other's people work. So, generally, in the slides, one simply puts a short form of the reference, like (in the slides, I use et al. when there are more then two authors)
M. Ortolano et al., Metrologia, 55, 499, 2018
or
L. C. et al., IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas, 64, 1460, 2015
Notice that even if I'm actually also an author in the second case, I don't break the format.
During the speech, describing what's in the slides, one would simply say things like "in our previous work [...]" or "in 2015 we developed [...]" or similar sentences.
Another way of referencing someone's work, either own's or someone else's, is that of inserting in the slides a picture of the article's title with the journal and list of authors. I've seen this quite frequently, and I used it myself. You need indeed a bit more space for this but, perhaps, for a general audience, this could be the clearest solution (and it wouldn't hide your contribution). An example of this, taken from a set of mine, is shown below:

If the list of authors is short, just write all of them:
For example: Lagrange, Cauchy and Carnot, 1800, Journal of Mathematics
You may want to put your own name in bold.
If there are many authors, then a pretty standard way in many disciplines is to write as FirstName et al., see here: https://www.scribendi.com/advice/how_to_use_et_al.en.html
But if you are at the middle, you need to choose. Maybe something link:  AAA ... YouName et al.,
Or you can still put your name as first and the rest as et al.,

As I understand the question, you are talking to a slide presentation. Any slide will be on screen for a very very few minutes. Nobody, I mean nobody, will read the details of your citation from a slide. Your aim is to leave the audience in no doubt that you are presenting your own work, but nevertheless, not to hide the fact that you were collaborating with other researchers. So you say something like 'as I and my collaborators have shown in our recent paper...'.
The slide can give the full citation, if you really think that is necessary. In practice you don't need to: 'Buggins et al. (2019)' will give anyone who is sufficiently interested all the information they need to track down the relevant paper.

This generally sounds good, but I would suggest that you actually mention your collaborators by name.  "In a recent paper with Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, we showed that..."

@NateEldredge of course, if that is possible. There are papers with so many co-authors that that would be impossible.

In conversation, just reference it naturally. If it is a paper that you were prime mover on, call it "my paper".  If one, you assisted on, mention that (and probably note what you helped on...they want to know what you did, more than what the paper did).
For slides, just list the footnotes or final references in normalm bibliographic format (i.e. follow the math format of alphaticity, list how the papers were published or planned to be published).  But I would maybe do references at the end or just emphasize the actual argument.  Not an appearance of a math paper transcribed into PPT.

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Handling editor sent me a review invitation
From your experience, is it some kind of sign when handling editor of your manuscript (which is under review) sends you a review invitation for other manuscript?

Yes, it's a sign that they don't think you're a complete crank. That may not sound like progress, but it is a good thing nevertheless. It doesn't mean anything else about the handling of your own paper.
And remember, part of the art of getting published is keeping on the good side of editors.

"Yeah, I'm not a complete crank" is a very low threshold :)

@xLeitix sometimes it seems like a pretty high bar.

No, it's no sign at all other than that the handling editor thinks you are qualified to review the article you were invited to review.

Apart from the fact that you are seen as a person qualified for providing a review, this CAN (half-jokingly) be the sign of desperation of laziness from the side of an editor. Knowing that you are currently enjoying the services of the journal you are perhaps more likely to accept doing the journal a service as a reviewer. The situation you mention has happened to me quite a few times where a rush of requests from a specific journal has followed after submitting a manuscript to that journal. Of course an eaqually or more likely explanation is that the editor is running thin on good contacts that have not been asked already and now finds a new fresh name that can cover topics that correspond to manuscripts of the editor's desk.
In the end, you will never know, but as alrady stated elsewhere, you are deemed as a person with a standing or reputation that qualifies you to provide valuable input as a reviewer and that is all that you need to know.


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Number of reviewers
What is general rule regarding the number of reviewers? Date under manuscript status "under review" has now changed for third time within two months. What could this implicate?

You are asking two very different questions here (and it seems to me that both have already answers on this site).

@FedericoPoloni: I couldn't find the duplicate of the first question. Links to duplicates would be useful. In any case, this should be split into two questions.

@BenjaminMakoHill There is some discussion in http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12380/do-editors-ever-overbook-referees. However, you are correct that (1) it is not an exact duplicate and (2) it is not easy to find by searching the obvious keywords. I seemed to recall other discussions, but can't find them now; sorry if this has misled you or made you lose time.

It is very common to use two reviewers although other numbers occur as well. The process of getting reviewers to accept to do a review can be a long and hard process. In your case the delay may well be the result of an editor receiving negative answers to requests which means the editor will contact further persons. whether or not the date change in the manuscript handling system reflects this is hard to say without knowing what system is used and how it may be set up for the specific journal. My bet would, however, be that you see the editors multiple attempts to find reviewers to accept. At some point in the process, you can e-mail the editor to ask about the progress of your manuscript but you need to assess when the time is becoming too long and this will differ between disciplines and journals within that discipline. As an editor, it can be very annoying when people start sending such mails prematurely when one is in the middle of trying to line up good reviewers. But, as stated, it is a judgement call.

It is Elsevier editorial system. Does the status "under review" means that the paper is actually being reviewed or just that reviewers have been invited? Is it OK to send query to editor after two months of "under review" status?

@Navi I imagine a polite email can never hurt. But depending on the field, reviews can take from a month to a year.

In my field (biology) most of journals use two reviewers, but the third reviewer is normally called if the first two significantly disagree.

This really depends on the journal. I think in most of the biology papers I sent to review I got 3 reviewers (although I also had 2 occasionally), and in a few cases 4 reviewers (due to some disagreement, I suspect).

The number of reviewers can vary. In my experience, it is normal for a paper to be by two anonymous referees (in double blind review, also blind to the authors) and the final decision will be made by an editor or associate chair who, generally, is not blind to the identities of the authors of the reviewers.
In situations where this is significant disagreement, additional reviewers can be added.
This can even vary within journals. For example, PLOSONE assigns an editor who can reach out to as many reviewers as they like or accept papers outright. Last I checked, the median number of external reviews at that journal was 2.


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Saving handwritten notes for future reference
I have more than one hundred pages of handwritten notes.
I made these notes while writing different chapters of my PhD dissertation. The notes include summaries of journal articles, my thoughts, suggestions by others and anything that I thought could be potentially useful for my research.
I am wondering what is the best way to organise and store them. Converting them into pdf is one way of doing it but I want to organised them in some way e.g. by chapter, or date or key words.
Is there any program or software that can be useful in this regard?

It's not an answer, but it's too long for a comment…
I have one word for you in the future: Moleskine. Good quality notebooks, organized either thematically or chronologically, is a great way to store that sort of information. For notes, long term conservation is a big issue, and you have little guarantee that bells-and-whistles software X will still be working on your computer in 10 to 20 years. Simple solutions (both electronic and not) are the best for that purpose.
Finally, I have managed my notes electronically for some time (I tried many combinations, including iPad/Evernote/Dropbox, text files, LaTeX), but wasn't satisfied for the reasons above. I went back to dead wood storage (aka paper) with delight!

I love Moleskine notebooks for taking notes, and I agree, dead wood storage is great. Why not combine it with scanning and Evernote (see my reply) for easy searching!

I agree that paper storage is the ultimate future-proofed solution (especially for an individual career) but I can't imagine a near future in which a computer would't be able to read plain text.  So if the OP really wants the benefits of digital (searchability, etc...) w/o any real loss of future-proofing, then simple text files is the way to go.

and of course, bridging the 2 most excellent worlds of Evernote and Moleskine we have this: https://evernote.com/moleskine/

Good advice from F'x. I used Moleskine for years and I switched recently to (the very similar) leuchtturm notebooks (http://www.leuchtturm1917.com/en) that I discovered in a Dagsthul seminar. Pages are numbered and there is a table of contents at the beginning : it is very convenient.

One other tip would archive safe ink if you care about longer term storage of your notes.

I scan my notes to PDF and then use LaTeX to add a custom Table of Contents that helps with navigating the PDF.

Perhaps Qiqqa might be worth looking at.
It's a PDF / reference management system with particular emphasis (useful, novel features, not found in other such programs) on notes and links between notes on your various research papers.
...and STOP writing notes on paper! Write your notes on digital media and it'll make your life so much easier, especially WRT organization / linking / archiving / indexing...
If you're a scientist and want to keep track of notes you make, Open Notebook Science software solutions may also be worth looking at.
I wouldn't recommend EndNote. It's changed relatively little in years and years. Many of the newer PDF management systems have far better user interfaces and are in general more modern (and often free!).

I would second Evernote. They provide really great handwriting OCR, the key is to remember to scan your notes in as JPGs (or convert them to JPGs) as Evernote doesn't OCR handwriting in PDFs. With their OCR, you don't even need to organize in the app, you can just search for keywords to find what you are looking for. If you are looking for an easy way to get your notes into Evernote and you have an iPhone, I highly recommend JotNote Scanner Pro.

I use Endnote, which allows you to take pictures of the notes and put tags/dates/More Notes! on top of it.
It is very device independent, and you can do all the digitization process using an iPhone or and Android phone, of course if you have a good camera, it will be better for the resolution issues.
There is a company that does OCR for Endnote compatibility, but you have to buy their special paper, which is a bit pricey.

I want to make sure OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition? If yes, does that company's paper work for Chinese/Japanses?

I do not know if it works, but you can use Acrobate Professional after taking the picture/scanning and use Adobe's OCR, I've used it before with good results for Japanese Kanji

Are you sure you mean Endnote, and not Evernote?

Surely "Evernote"?? "Endnote" is not good.

A lot of OCR doesn't work well with handwriting...Evernote OCR on the other hand does!

Since you already have the notes written, it seems that mainly what you are looking for is a digital reference management system - akin to the digital card catalogs of the library.
This would allow you to search your notes for a key word or subject and then know that it is in notebook A on page 20.  There would be lots of ways to do this but zotero is very flexible and should be able to accommodate your needs.

You could also have a look at Evernote, this does a nice job of organizing notes. I think it even supports making pictures with the Evernote app (android or iphone), and upload it (e.g. for a poster on a conference). I use to store computer typed notes, but you could also upload and store scanned handwritten notes. Evernote has a free account with limited bandwith, so depending on what you want this might or might not be enough.

Even though this thread is old, this may be helpful info.  You can use the Onenote program incuded in MS Office.  It tries to do OCR on any document you either scan and drop into a Onenote page or "print" from pdf into a Onenote page.  For notes that it cannot OCR, you can add annotations with searchable keywords.  To separate pages of a large pdf document you can use a program like PDFill Free.  Not a perfect solution, but can still be a big help in making handwritten notes into electronically searchable documents.

I would scan them and save them to evernote. An alternative is that you find a freelancer (for example on odesk) that types your notes (software is not very good at recognizing handwriting).


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What open access textbook publishing initiatives are around?
I am wondering how open access textbook publishing platform is viewed in regard to publication turnover i.e. how quickly can one get published through it, compared to (say) traditional publishing?
There are several open access models and I am aware of Open Suny which describes itself as follows:
Open SUNY Textbooks is an open access textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York libraries and supported by SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grants. This pilot initiative publishes high-quality, cost-effective course resources by engaging faculty as authors and peer-reviewers, and libraries as publishing service and infrastructure.
This is a peer-reviewed platform (so it is different from self publishing).

Pttthhp.  Just put a pdf on your web site already.

Related: How to publish an academic book but make the PDF freely available online?

Rather than revising so much that the nature of the question changes, I would ask a new question.

I agree with RoboKaren; it's not fair to change a question in a way that completely invalidates the existing answer. Just ask a new question.


text:
Making sense of PhD Transcript
At my university, there is no grading on a PhD transcript. There is no exam or predefined coursework (i.e. you can work on any aspect of the dissertation and in any order, which is not assessed but reviewed by the supervisor). At the end of the program (three years), the candidate must submit a dissertation for examination.
The PhD dissertation is examined by internal and external examiners and their reports give either a  pass or a fail. There are various shades (e.g. pass, pass with minor revision, pass with major revision, fail, fail but allowed to resubmit, fail with a lesser award, fail with no award etc.).
The final transcript states "satisfactory progress" for each semester of enrolment and "pass" for the final semester. The graduation then takes place and the degree is awarded.
I recently had a request to provide the transcript of my PhD. The problem I have is that "satisfactory progress" and "pass" can both be seen as equivalent to a "C" grade (as per the key to grading that explains the grading for all university programs e.g. bachelors degree) I know this is not the case for a PhD. (I got some outstanding feedback from the examiners!)
How do I reconcile this situation?
I know I can alawys provide the examiners' reports but each report is close to 10 pages, with positive and negative comments. The award of the PhD is subject to the candidate making changes to the dissertation as per the examiners' comments (or otherwise defending why the examiners' comments are not valid in regard to the study). The final dissertation is not the same as the one the examiners assessed and in almost all cases it is a better product (hence the examiners's comments are no longer a true reflection).
How does the grading of PhD work in other universities?
EDIT: The 'issue' with no grades being available is that the Official Academic Transcript lists the six semesters (three years) with "Satisfactory Progress" for the first five semesters and "Pass" for the last semester. On the back is the grading information (i.e. what "Satisfactory Progress" and "Pass" mean). "Satisfactory Progress" is coded SP and means meeting all requirements to progress to the next course in a sequence of courses in a postgraduate research program and "Pass" is coded "C" and means demonstrated satisfactory levels of achievements in all objectives designated as essential for passing the course. The grading information also provides information on the highest grade which is HD (High Distinction) through to the lowest grade F (Fail). In this situation, why shouldn't a person see "Pass" as a C grade for a PhD!

How do I reconcile this situation?

You don't.
It will be clear to the anyone reading you transcript that your university does not provide grades for preliminary stages of your PhD.  Most likely, what they're really asking for is merely proof that you have the degree.  If they actually want more detailed grades, that's too bad for them, because those grades don't exist.

How does the grading of PhD work in other universities?

In the US, dissertations are not graded; you either get the degree or you don't.
Along the way to the degree, PhD students may take classes (either by requirement or by choice), and grades for those classes typically show up on the transcript just as they do for undergraduates.  US PhD students also typically sign up for research credit hours as a "class" during semesters when they aren't taking real classes, but those "classes" are almost always graded pass/fail or equivalent (for example, at my university, "satisfactory/unsatisfactory").  The actual dissertation and defense never shows up in the transcript, even if a student fails their defense.
I can't think of any circumstance where anyone (at least in the US) would even look at the transcript of someone's completed PhD program.  Proof of degree, sure, but grades?  Never.

In this situation, why shouldn't a person see "Pass" as a C grade for a PhD!

Because PhDs don't have "grades".

Thanks JeffE. I have updated my question in response to your first answer.


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Ethical Disclosure of Professional Knowledge in PhD Dissertation
I have just completed my PhD. Although my examiners did not raise any concerns, I have been grappling with an ethical issue for the entire duration of my candidature.
The issue concerns professional knowledge of the field on which my research is based. This is an issue of concern because I am employed in the field and have access to information that is generally not publicly available (but is available to me as an employee) or only found in hard-to-get industry publications (e.g. newsletters). These publications are hard-to-get because of their specialised nature and limited circulation.
Disclosing this information creates a potential conflict of interest for me (because of reasons associated with commercial-in-confidence, breach of trust etc.). It gets even worse because I am often actively involved in generating this information as part of various negotiations I am required to have with third parties (in my capacity as an employee). As an example, I draft policy speeches for my CEO so this has the effect of quoting my own work in my dissertation (but attributed to my CEO in the citation and bibliography!)
To resolve this matter, I have declared (categorically) this conflict of interest (several times in my dissertation) (although I don't identify myself as the ghost writer). I have also put whatever information I thought could be ethically disclosed in the relevant context (e.g. cited the publicly available newsletter, where possible). This was to ensure future researchers could benefit from this 'inside' knowledge. I have stated this as one of the contributions to knowledge that my dissertation is making.
I must add that the professional knowledge does not contradict or undermine my research, so I am certainly not withholding the information for this reason. On the contrary, this information enhances the main arguments of my study (so omitting it presents a significant dilemma for me).
i would love to hear how else could this matter be resolved.

I've known cases where the thesis itself has very restricted circulation for a fixed period (e.g. six years) after completion, to protect the commercial information that went into it. The restriction also meant that papers couldn't be published on the back of the PhD research for six years, too.
That was an arrangement made early on during the writing of the thesis, and it enabled the use of a lot of information that would otherwise have been out of bounds.
That's potentially quite an impediment to one's career, so one would have to get good advice on whether it was a price worth paying. But it doesn't make an academic career impossible: I know of at least one successful academic who's take this path - she's an exceptional talent, and so it's no surprise that her path has been exceptional. It does put an emphasis on diversifying straight after the PhD, to gather material for new publications. Diversification can be a good thing: lots of new post-docs get typecast and trapped by and in their PhD subject.

Six years of no publications means no career in science probably...

Yeah, an option like this could make sense only in very restricted cases.  For example, someone who for bureaucratic reasons needs a Ph.D. for a certain sort of job in their field, but whose employer doesn't care about publications and who has no intention of looking for a faculty position.

Six years of no publications means no career in science probably... — But six years of not publishing results in the thesis doesn't.  it just means six years of publishing something else.

Thanks. I have no such restrictions as I have been careful what I have disclosed. It has been a fine balance. My dissertation is now available because it is ground breaking research for my profession.

A good starting point would be to talk to your research advisor about how to handle this, and follow his/her advice.  This is the sort of situation for which advisors exist to help.
That said, the way you are handling it seems reasonable and sensible.  You cannot breach your confidentiality obligations.  However, public but hard-to-find newsletters don't seem quite as problematic; you can cite them and quote from them.
For future reference: I personally try to separate out my research from any confidential commercial work I do, precisely to avoid these kinds of conflicts.  In other words, I try to avoid doing research on the same topic where I also know confidential commercial information, and I try to avoid taking on confidential commercial engagements on the same topic where I am actively doing research.  I personally think that is good practice, but this is a matter for personal preference and style.

And, as a small point, if one's work is confidential for the reason that it is so extremely useful/important/wonderful (!?!), while one cannot claim this directly, it is usually possible to communicate facts about the situation in a way that will be understood by potential employers. One's letter writers would hopefully/presumably comment on the situation, and possibly gossip will lead the way, besides, if it's really something good.
At least as a starting point, honesty + keeping promises is a good baseline. :)

It appears declaring a conflict of interest is the best solution.


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What happens when two papers prove the same result?
A hypothetical situation: two (groups of) authors have independently proven the same result. How do we determine who gets credit?
There are some obvious bounds - if Group A posts a paper to the arxiv, and Group B posts the same result to the arxiv n time units later and claims to be independent; if n=10 years, then clearly Group A gets credit. If n=1 week then it's less clear to me.
Other than posting a paper to the arxiv, to what extent do talks count? What about talks containing nearly complete proofs?
ETA: I'm aware that such situations occur not infrequently; I only say "hypothetical" in the sense that I'm not personally involved in such a situation and I'm just curious to know the community's opinion.

What do you mean by "who gets credit"? If one cites this result both published within one week, then ideally they would cite both, if they are aware of both.

Moreover, this is far from being hypothetical. I believe there was some problem in Group Theory where two groups published within hours in arxiv?

Usually both get credits, and the result gets both names attached to it.

It's not particularly strange to see papers doing the same thing posted almost simultaneously to the arXiv. Sometimes, researchers even coordinate this, once they realize that they are close to solving the same problem (the situation is usually less adversarial than it sounds, unless someone is trying to game it).

@darij Or of course none of the names get attached to it and it keeps being referred to by the name of the original conjecture (though the KL conjecture might be unique in that regard).

Even the n=10 years case is not that clear as you might think. Imagine that group A publishes a proof for something of little interest, but because of some development, this topic suddenly gets interesting and some time (maybe 50 years or more) later, group B publishes the proof. Only later someone finds the old A paper and sees that they actually already proved that theorem. I think there was one such example in the development of cryptography, where number theoretical results suddenly got interesting with the upcoming of PCs, but I can't remember which one it was...

This situation is by no means "hypothetical". If you are not alone to be interested in the range of problems you are working on, it is pretty much
guaranteed to happen to you sooner or later.
The answer to the question as posted is "on a case by case basis". No general rule applies and no universal attitude exists. You can meet everything from bitter rivalry, fight for priority, and open hostility between the "groups" (or individuals) in question to a gentleman's argument of the kind "you go ahead and publish now and I'll hold my opus for a while".
The simplest and easiest to handle case is when the proofs run on drastically different ideas and employ nearly disjoint sets of techniques. Then one may, of course, try to squawk that he was there a few days earlier but everybody understands that the real test is whose approach turns out more viable and useful on the long run (and quite often they both survive, just lead to different developments). There is no question about the possibility to publish each of them either.
The worst case scenario is when the proofs are nearly identical or one is obviously superior to another, so once you see one paper, there is no reason to look at another one anymore. If the authors know each other and are on friendly terms, they can usually figure out some reasonable strategy (combining everything into one article under all names is the most common way out). Otherwise pretty much anything can happen.
Most situations are somewhere in between. So, just apply your common sense, remember that good relationships are more beneficial on the long run than establishing priority, don't think that you (or anybody else) may really own a mathematical statement or its proof any more than one can own the wind or the light or that one can carry any "credit" beyond the grave, enjoy other people successes as your own, and you'll be totally fine.
If the question is just about "how to cite properly?", when in doubt, cite both works and abstain from any judgement about priority, etc.

Situation 1

Two Groups, Same result, Different procedure, Uploads or publishes at same time to arXiv.

Both of them get credit for their work. Especially the procedure that is easy to reproduce and more concise, understandable, intuitive and errorless gets more citations as years pass by.
Situation 2

Two Groups, Same result, Different procedure, One Uploads to arXiv before submitting to journal and other submits directly to a peer-reviewed journal, both of them gets published at same time in Journal.

Both of them get credit for their work. However, one who submitted to arXiv gets more outreach. Again here, the elegance of the work is still the predominant factor that determines who gets popular for the work.
Situation 3

Two Groups, Same result, same procedure, both uploads to arXiv.

Clearly trouble. Why? Plausible plagiarism. However, both of them can still get the credit if they mutually agree to collaborate. Other ways to resolve the conflict is to keep making progress in the article and write more and more on it beating the other group. This is a perfect way to resolve. As two groups who continue will now produce papers which will hopefully fall in situation 1 or 2. Or sometimes will produce Different result going in different directions.


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How to phrase authors' contributions when the convention is that all team members are authors?
The question
When a journal (such as one of the Nature family) asks for information about authors' contributions, what is the most effective way to answer this, to ensure that the co-authorship is assigned as intended, and to ensure that reality is represented: that the work is a product of the intellectual environment of the whole team; and that all members have contributed in various degrees to the analytical methods used, to the research concept, and to the experiment design. Is what I've just written there sufficient, or is there a more judicious phrasing that is accepted by heavyweight journal publishers such as the Nature Group?
The context
The primary context is publications from a team that works on the principle that all members of the team are to be named authors on all papers coming out of the team.
I'm very specifically looking for answers from editors who handle such papers; or from members of teams with similar rules. Answers from others are of course possible, but I'd value direct personal experience.
Here's the Vancouver Group's (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) statement on the subject:

Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.
When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship/contributorship defined above, and editors will ask these individuals to complete journal-specific author and conflict-of-interest disclosure forms. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals generally list other members of the group in the Acknowledgments. The NLM indexes the group name and the names of individuals the group has identified as being directly responsible for the manuscript; it also lists the names of collaborators if they are listed in Acknowledgments.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship.
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed.
Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

The caveats:
 1. My field is not medicine: I've used the Vancouver Group's guidelines, as I haven't yet found any in my field.
 2. note that this is emphatically not about the ethics, pros and cons of such a rule. If you want to discuss that, please do so in chat. I may join you there as time allows
Related literature:

Author contributions audit, by Maxine Clarke on the Nature Nautilus authors' blog, lists example contributors' satements
Drummond Rennie discusses "Authorship Credits"
Academia and Clinic, by Yank & Rennie: Disclosure of Researcher Contributions: A Study of Original Research Articles in The Lancet
and lots more at the US Council of Science Editors

I'd suggest asking the editor.  It sounds to me like the phrasing in the first paragraph defeats the purpose of asking for author contributions, so I'd guess that the editor may be unhappy with it, but it's not something I have much experience with.  I'd assume the editor would also want confirmation that no author is being listed just because the team has a policy of listing all members (but rather than they have all made contributions sufficient to justify authorship according to the journal standards regardless of this policy, and the policy merely reflects this duty for team membership).

How does this information appear in other articles published in the same journal?

Your phrasing is fine, but you could be more explicit. Let's say there are four authors: ABC, DEF, GHI, and JKL. You might say something like

ABC, DEF, GHI, and JKL designed the study, developed the methodology, collected the data, performed the analysis, and wrote the manuscript.

It seems nitpicky, silly, and egregious to go through a paper that may contain dozens of experiments/simulations and list which person did which. That would be akin to noting who wrote each sentence. However, if there is a key component that only a subset of your team participated on, then, as D.W. suggests, it would be unethical not to list it that way:

ABC, DEF, GHI, and JKL designed the study, developed the methodology, performed the analysis, and wrote the manuscript. ABC and GHI collected the data.

If there is a requirement to list the contribution of each author, it seems the ethical way to handle it is, well, to list the contribution of each author.  If some authors did not contribute directly to the paper, you should state that.
It is unethical to try to conceal that some authors did not make a direct contribution.  Please note: Your team policy is what it is, and I'm not trying to judge the ethics of your team's policy.  I'm just saying that, whatever your team's policy is,  you must disclose it forthrightly, without evasion.  That's exactly the point of disclosure requirements!
(If you're not comfortable stating your team's policy explicitly, that might be a hint that it's time to consider changing the policy -- but until then, you must disclose it frankly and honestly.)

There is no attempt at concealment or evasion. Please can you suggest a constructive rephrasing if I've mistakenly given that impression?

I don't have enough information about the specific team members and how they contributed in your particular situation. But have you considered listing the contribution of each?  e.g., X performed the experiment in Section 3, Y and Z performed the experiment in Section 4, X and U formulated the original problem and provided direction and guidance, V provided helpful feedback on an early draft of the paper, W assisted with data analysis.

You can use the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (or CRediT) approach as a reference to state what was the role of each co-author in your paper. Journals like Plos ONE are adopting this approach or using a modified version. You can read more about this here.


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Can I tactfully change my mind after agreeing to do an independent study with a professor?
I recently asked two professors by email if I could do an independent study with them. Both of them responded, saying that they can sponsor me for the study. As soon as I received the first professor's response, I replied, saying that I wanted to work with him and scheduling a face-to-face meeting.
Now that both professors have responded, though, I think I would enjoy working with the second professor more. Would it be appropriate for me to tell the first professor that I changed my mind, or would it be wrong to take back the commitment I already gave him? If it would be appropriate to change my mind, how can I handle the situation tactfully?
Although I would prefer to work with the second professor, I know that I would enjoy working with either of them, so I'll be fine if it's too late to change my mind.

Edit: Here is some more information about my specific situation.
I am planning on doing the same project with either professor. I am currently writing the music for a video game, and I would be working with the professors to produce the music and create a graded portfolio. I haven't worked out any specific details with either professor.
Both professors are music professors who have specific knowledge about music technology. The reason I would prefer working with the second professor is because I know he has expert knowledge of the software I'm using to produce the music. In addition, he is skilled with the genres of music I'm producing as well as writing film scores. I'm not sure how much the first professor knows about these specific topics.

I am an undergraduate, but I believe my question is still appropriate for this site because it is applicable to similar situations in post-graduate academics.

Just ask, say: I got two simultaneous positive responses. Do you have a strong opinion about whether I work with you or Professor X? If he says no, I assume he means it. And if says yes you should probably honor his feeling.

I'd use your second paragraph as explanation (minus the last line) if the first professor asks (and only if). Also, in response to @user814064, I don't think that the professor gets "first right of refusal"

Can you work with both of them?

I think it does matter that this is an undergraduate question: it means that the expectations of the professors is likely to be much lower, as is the amount of time and effort they are likely to invest in it.

Do you have a project already lined up ? it sounds like your meeting with the first professor would be to discuss topics for the study. In any case, if no financial agreement has been reached, I see no harm in talking with both professors and then making a decision based on what happens in those meetings. I disagree with @aeismail that you've given a formal commitment at this stage.
You didn't say though why you'd prefer to work with the second professor prior to having a meeting ? is it the subject matter ? general rapport ?

The key is what has been said: if the professor could view it as an agreement in principle, that makes things thorny. If it's just a chance to discuss things further before making a decision, that's a different matter.

It's a good situation to have to be interested in two projects, and be equally happy to work on either of them.
However, if you have given a commitment to one of the professors, then you really should honor that commitment. Reneging on your commitment will look bad to the first professor, and if the second professor finds out, that could leave a bad impression on his mind, as well.
You could tactfully tell the second professor, "I would really love to work for you, but Professor X gave me an offer first, and I accepted before I received your offer. I am sorry to have to decline, but perhaps we can work together in the future."
I don't think there's a tactful way to say the same thing to a professor after you've made a commitment; you'll come across as very opportunistic instead (note: that's not a good thing!).


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Good resource/advice on mentoring undergrads
As a graduate student I will mentor some undergrad students so that they can help me with my work and get some useful experience working in a lab.
From my past experience, I realized that they lack knowledge. So I do not want to them work on data analysis at least for a semester (unless they show promise) but at the same time do not want to just work on tightening nuts and bolts.
Also they lack time to get up to speed on doing research on their own.
What is a good way to get them interested in learning more? Also if you can point to some good resources on mentoring that would be helpful.
Edit (following eykanal's comment): I do not need to interact with undergrads on a regular basis. So I am not thinking about getting them interested in research, in general. I believe most of the students, who come to work in lab, are in general interested in learning, ignoring few who are just want to beef up their resume.
Last time I worked with a student, I had assigned him some data analysis related work only to realize later that he was more interested in working in the lab then in front of a computer. Lesson learned the hard way, because we ended up wasting time.
What I am looking for is the missteps to avoid when mentoring a student so that they would stay interested and try to do things on their own.

You discuss a few aspects of mentoring, but the actual question relates to getting undergrads interested in research, which isn't how you started. Could you solidify your question?

All of the below stems from my own experience mentoring and working with undergrads, both as a grad student and as a postdoc.
Firstly, realize that many undergraduate students aren't ready to do research on their own when they first arrive in a research lab. (Heck, neither are many graduate students...) Additionally, many will not want to do their own research, but they're very happy learning what you do and helping you set it up and work through it.
That being said, you'll want to start with simply talking to them during the interview process to determine what they want to gain from the experience. Most won't have a solid answer, but for the few that say something like, "I want to improve my MATLAB skills," or "I want to gain experience doing cell cultures", you now know whether they're a match for your lab.
The majority don't have specific interests, though. For those students, consider allowing them to work on a variety of projects with multiple graduate students. This allows them to observe different research techniques, different approaches to solving a research problem, and the different tools used in research. If you have the time, you (and the members of your lab) can take a more hands-on approach and actively mentor the student, showing them the various steps involved in constructing an experiment and the logic behind the data analysis stream.

First, mentoring undergraduate students depend highly on their skills and motivation.
Second, you should expect that an undergraduate needs to learn the technique. Even if there are after many courses, real research involves learning particular theories, techniques, etc.
Consequently, you will need to invest some time in teaching them. Almost for sure it will be beneficial for them (unless there are not smart enough or lazy; or you overshot with a way-to-difficult problem). If they will pay back - it's hard to say.
Out of my experience (as a PhD student) - working was interesting and enjoyable, but I benefited only in terms of learning how to collaborate and lead projects (a crucial skill). In terms of boosting me research - well, I would have done the same (or more) by doing things by myself.
(But the main problem was that it was never so formal, so they had a limited amount of time to spend on the project; OK, once mentoring a high-school student it was very beneficial for them (the first prize in an international competition), but it's a different story than a collaboration.)


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What can one do when emails to the editor go unanswered?
I submitted a research article to a reputable mathematics journal in May 2014. The status of my article is still "under review." I have contacted the editor at least three times regarding the delay but have not gotten a reply to any of my mails. Under such circumstances, what can I do? It's really very troublesome and painful for me to bear this.

Can you contact an Associate Editor or another member of the editorial board? More than 18 months with no communication does seem excessively long and the lack of response from the editor suggests something is wrong. You might also try the secretary in the editor's department and ask her if she can get in touch with him.
If you don't hear back from them either, I would withdraw the paper and submit it somewhere else. Hopefully, there's a way to do that in the online system -- but if not, contacting them one last time with the notification should be sufficient. They can't publish the paper without you signing some forms.


text:
When is it necessary to consult a university lawyer?
A comment on this answer of mine about e-book lending suggested that it would be better to talk to a lawyer. The situation is as follows: My head of school asked me to explore means of providing our core text books in electronic form to our students. I talked to Library services and IT services and they recommended iPads with standard consumer licensed e-book versions installed. I passed this information on to my head of school, who instructed the school manager to buy the iPads, copies of the books, and other associated hardware needed for running an iPad lending service. Have I, my head of school, or my school manager been negligent for not consulting a lawyer in this manner? Should academics really be consulting university lawyers on a regular basis?

I know this isn't really about the question, but I'm really curious how you find it worthwhile to pay for iPads to put the textbooks on. It seems to me that ebooks aren't usually that much cheaper than physical ones.

@JessicaB our students asked for them and the university presumably thinks it makes us look cutting edge. No way they would give us money to buy textbooks for our students, but they didn't hesitate when we asked for money for iPads.

Well, first of all it's good to check the license yourself. Here you will find that it says that

(i) You shall be authorized to use the iBooks Store Products only for personal, noncommercial use.

So, in this case it wouldn't even have been necessary to contact a university lawyer for the simple reason that the license is incredibly clear. In cases where it isn't you should at all times contact a university lawyer or contact the company in question itself, because in general IT and library personnel are not trained in legal matters (I just dropped by the library to ask). Now a valid argument could be made that it's the libraries responsibility to ask the university lawyer instead of you, but that's up to the mechanisms within your institution, the core issue remaining that one should be consulted somewhere down the line.
As to the question of negligence, I think (as a non-lawyer) you might be attributed negligence for not reading the license yourself, but not for not consulting a lawyer and just asking library/IT personnel. Still, it all depends on who was technically responsible for what and how the question towards the library people was phrased.
Additionally for future reference in case people find this through Google, the license also says

You acknowledge that you are purchasing the content made available through the iBooks Store Service (the “iBooks Store Products”) from the third-party provider of that iBooks Store Product (the “Publisher”); Apple is acting as agent for the Publisher in providing each such iBooks Store Product to you; Apple is not a party to the transaction between you and the Publisher with respect to that iBooks Store Product; and the Publisher of each iBooks Store Product reserves the right to enforce the terms of use relating to that iBooks Store Product. The Publisher of each iBooks Store Product is solely responsible for that iBooks Store Product, the content therein, any warranties to the extent that such warranties have not been disclaimed, and any claims that you or any other party may have relating to that iBooks Store Product or your use of that iBooks Store Product.

So not only would you need permission from Apple, but also from the third party selling every single individual book.

You keep saying "you", who is the "you" you are referring to? Is it the person in IT services, Library services, myself, head of school, the school manager, or the person in the school office who hands out the iPads.

@StrongBad Whoever was assigned this task was the you I was referring to. Either way, just before your comment I added some in on the topic of negligence.

Note that not everything forbidden by a licence is actually forbidden. Some clauses can be overruled by courts declaring them abusive, or institutions may be special cases in the law for certain activities.

@Davidmh: True that, if I remember I will edit that into the answer next time I have access to a computer. Over where I live we indeed have some laws regarding physical books and public libraries (which state funded libraries normally but not always are), but no such thing for digital content, however this could well be different in other countries (although I have never heard of such a thing in any of the major countries).