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Is it self-plagiarism to summarise a topic in the introduction of two of your papers using similar references and examples?
I have written two papers, let's say X and Y, about a concept, let's say A.
X is about other overview of concept A and how it can be improved in general.
Then I have another paper i.e. Y discusses about relationship of A with reference to one particular topic.
As both papers are literature driven papers (can be called as literature reviews) and the focuses are different. However there are some sections which are overlapping with each other. Therefore I have given similar examples and used many common references.
My question is, is it a case of plagiarism ? I have written both papers separately and not copied text of one into other, rather sometimes the sense is same. I would appreciate your thinking and advices in this regards whether it can be counted as a case of plagiarism ?
Thanks in advance.

I thought the general advice is you can't plagiarize yourself. Plagiarism by definition is trying to pass someone else's work off as your own, or improperly referencing it. As long as you have the all the right references I would imagine you'd be fine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism#Self-plagiarism

@OrangeDog mentioned in a comment above the concept of self-plagiarism.  I have definitely been in a position in a program committee where a paper was rejected because it had large parts completely in common with another paper without giving appropriate context.  I think @Saturnus is on the mark with the comment that it doesn't matter if they cover the same material if they are written differently rather than copied, but only up to a point.  It also matters what the content is. Literature reviews with common references make perfect sense; I think in the example provided here, you ought to be in the clear.
But I wanted to respond in order to provide a somewhat more general answer.
If someone wrote a paper about project X, and they had an extensive introduction and a section with a couple of pages about use cases, say, and then they wrote a new paper about X, there are a couple of cases:

Is the new paper an extension of the earlier paper, for instance a conference-length paper going beyond an earlier workshop-length paper, or a journal version of a workshop or conference paper?  Then it's fine to include earlier content verbatim, with a comment (usually a footnote to the title) that the paper is an extended version of the workshop paper.  Aside: this really complicates double-blind reviewing, as people typically omit the self-referential footnote, and reviewers have to guess.
Is the new paper substantially different, even if some content is the same?  Small amounts of overlapping content, in my experience, are OK, but if it's not quoted or referenced as coming from the earlier material, it may be a red flag if too much.  Think about what automated plagiarism detectors would flag.

Finally, beware of the "least publishable unit".  Whether the content is literally identical (and self-plagiarism) or merely semantically identical, you want to be sure enough is different.  Again, in the description provided here, they sound different enough.  I'm referring to others who may come across this in the future, wondering about reuse across papers....

+1 for the warning about the least publishable unit. You want to be sure you're not writing one of those, and not seen to be writing one.


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Should you send refined version of manuscript to editor three months after initial submission?
I submitted a paper to a a good mathematics journal about 3 months ago, and have not heard anything yet (based on some of what I've heard this is fairly normal).  During that time I made some significant edits to the introduction and some of the proofs (the original proofs were not incorrect but now they are easier to read/understand).
Should I send the updated version to the editor?  If the paper is already being reviewed, then I wouldn't want to muddy the waters by submitting something new.  That's my only concern at the moment.  Thoughts?

I feel like we've had this question before, but I can't find it at this point. The general consensus was do not send through an update. If you get a revise and resubmit, then incorporate the changes then.

I would not do it. If the referee is happy with the submitted version, you should add the changes when you send a revised version, explaining what you did with the utmost detail.
Keep in mind: if the changes are significant, and only to make the proof nicer/easier to read, it might not be worth doing it. Perhaps just add a remark explaining how to do it in a nicer way, or something like that. If you change the manuscript too much, you risk the referee to be very annoyed that he spent a lot of his/her (free) time reading and understanding the paper, and now he has to do it all over again. This is, of course, if the editor is also not very annoyed.
Minor changes are expected and very common, but major unrequested changes might not the best idea.

I would value the readers over the referee, and would certainly advise against not implementing improvement in the final paper. Making a paper nice to read is part of the job, and an important part at that.

I agree though that it might be unwelcome to resubmit a new version: the changes could occur after receiving the referee suggestion. They need to be good changes, and to be duly documented, so next time try to polish your work before sending it, but don't let a suboptimal paper in the open.

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Can I be successful as a lone wolf researcher in mathematics?
I am not a people person, and therefore I usually work alone.  I'm quite content with this, and I have actually been able to achieve some wonderful results (to me, anyway) working this way. However I worry that nobody else will really care about my research.
Are there examples of modern day mathematicians who have been successful (as recognized by the mathematical community) working alone?
How can I get more people to be interested in the problems I'm interested in, without being able to connect on a personal level?  Even if I'm not able to collaborate with anyone, I'd like to create some level of dialogue between other mathematicians and my publications. That is, I'd like for them to perhaps answer some of my questions, and for them to pose new ones that I could possibly answer.  So far, I have failed to achieve this.

Please [edit] your question to clarify: 1) Do you aspire an academic career? 2) If yes, what have you achieved so far in that respect? 3) If no, do you care about publishing your work? 4) Did you publish any of your work so far and if yes, how?

I know that it does not directly answer the question: however, one has to ask why one expects to get something out of others which one does not want to invest oneself. My experience is that people do not like such an imbalance of giving and taking; why should they be interested in dialogue if OP isn't. There are exceptions, either because the work is astonishingly brilliant or in cases such as Fermat, where one suspects his isolation was due to being a judge at the time of Richelieu; any undue social interaction could have cost him job, freedom or life. That being said, try a blog.

I am not in the field, so I can't give you real insight. Only that, yes, in specific cases like maybe Perelman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman), it is possible. But it is not likely to work.

You were not clear on whether or not you are a student in an academic department. If so, one of the expectations people have is that a Ph.D. or even an M.S. implies the student has improved his willingness and ability to collaborate with his advisor and other students, and to be a functioning member of his academic environment. Almost regardless of your research accomplishments, employers expect a minimal level of sociability--and of course especially if you are in a teaching institution.

Do you at least give good talks?

Does your research build off of existing research?

Why conduct science if you have no interest in collaborating?

From the body of your question, I'm concerned your title is focused in the wrong direction. You say that you want to create a dialog between your work and other mathematicians, that you want to ask questions of other researchers, and you want to solicit new questions from your conversations with them. Is it possible what would actually help you most is an answer to the question in your third paragraph? To discover ways to achieve those goals, rather than validation that lone wolf success is possible?

If by this you mean can you do a career without coauthoring, then yes! If by this you mean can you do research in a vacuum without any context or relation to others' work, then absolutely not.

@Wrzlprmft I would like to work in academia.  It is still very early in my career, though I have published two papers.  The referee(s) have given me some wonderful feedback, but I still worry about falling into obscurity.

Successful is a social measure. Why would a lone wolf even consider trying to get good scores on it? It kind of goes against the definition of lone wolf doesn't it?

I think it's common in maths or theoretical CS that people mostly spend their time working alone - when proving theorems, developing algorithms etc, we need to focus on doing that, thus we need the alone time. It's different from people who mostly just use the concepts, just use the existing tools/libraries/codes without delving further into the heavy theory  - those people collaborate because they are doing application and dont need to focus on the heavy theory which needs more full-focus and more difficult to talk about.

And after you work on your research or at least have an idea, then you can try to find like-wise people who might be interested in the topic - which might be difficult to find depending on how narrow it is and if the other party has time to spend or not. But still most part of the work will be done alone..? Since only after working on it, can we discuss it, isn't that so..? sorry if i am mistaken.

Plenty of mathematicians are introverted, quiet, and typically prefer to work alone. (Also, plenty of mathematicians are extroverted, boisterous, and prefer to work with others -- but I believe the profession does a reasonably good job of welcoming various personality types.)
All successful mathematicians whom I know spend some of their time and energy engaging with the mathematical community. Going to conferences or chatting with colleagues are good ways to do this. There are also ways such as MathOverflow to interact with mathematicians online. And simply reading the (contemporary) work of other mathematicians is also a form of engagement.
If you want your work to be appreciated by others, then I recommend taking the time and energy to appreciate others' work. For example, are there any questions asked by others, for which your work gives any insights? If you can help people answer questions they are interested in, then it is quite natural that they might take an interest in your own work as well.
Good luck!

I will try to follow the advice in your third paragraph!

The questions in the body of your question are quite different from the one in the title. I will address the titular question

"Can I be successful as a lone wolf researcher in mathematics?"

by going out on a limb and predicting that the answer is, simply, No, you cannot.
It's true that there are people like Perelman, Wiles, Yitang Zhang and other notable (and less notable) examples of "lone wolf researchers" who have become very successful. But the fact remains that those examples are few and far between. My experience is that among ordinary, "mere mortal" working mathematicians, it is normal to see people producing the occasional solely authored paper, but one hardly ever encounters a researcher who has not had coauthors on at least, say, 50% of their papers (my own ratio is about 50% coauthored papers, and I've been told that that's an unusually high proportion of solely authored works).
What this suggests is that by limiting yourself to not collaborating at all with others, you are confining yourself to such a small group of people that most of us professional mathematicians here have trouble naming more than 2-3 people (all of whom are extremely famous) belonging to it. Unless you know something about yourself that we don't that leads you to believe you have a reasonable shot at being the next Wiles or Perelman, I don't think I'm taking too much of a chance by predicting that in fact you aren't (and that's not an insult in any sense since obviously I'm not either), and that your chances of making a successful collaboration-free career in math are very close to zero.

+1 for being blunt. Being a successful researcher is hard and doubly so if you are doing it without help.

Among the lone wolf researches we must not forget Victor Porton, who works in the field of the OP (general topology). Also, neither Wiles (who obtained essential help by R. Taylor and N. Katz) nor Perelman really are "lone wolf researchers" in the sense of the OP. These people worked on well-known problems, which by virtue of their importance are interesting to many people (the OP, like Porton, works on isolated problems which have no connections to main stream subjects like algebraic geometry or algebraic topology).

I think this is among the most philosophically troubling and challenging questions in mathematics research. I wish there was a clear answer one way or the other.
The majority of mathematicians are, I think, working very hard to achieve publications and collaborators. Many will say that networking at conferences is crucial. In fact, some will argue that the whole essence of a mathematical proof is that it is a social construct, and that the very best strategies are to work with others and explain it to others.
However, I can't help but recall a number of researchers in recent years who did work almost entirely alone for many years: Wiles, Perelman, Zhang. And in fact these are uniquely the figures who broke open the pinnacle, hard, long-standing, important problems: Fermat's Last Theorem, the Poincare Conjecture, and the Twin Prime Conjecture.
Personally I have an outstandingly hard time reconciling these observations. As far as how did those lone figures get attention: By working on, and solving, such incredibly hard and famous problems that no one could ignore their results.

One attempt to reconcile these observations involves the idea that some people have a talent for "wearing different hats", that is, switching between the perspectives of a creative problem-solver and a critical peer who aggressively tries to find the flaw in the solution.

I think an important element of this issue is Survivorship bias - the most logical synthesis between the observations that 1) some solo figures are successful, and 2) most mathematicians try to collaborate is that success with the solo approach is so rare that only the most successful who solve the hardest problems are ever recognized.

@BryanKrause: Perhaps, but based on the existing sample, it seems equally valid to infer that the hardest problems are only solved by the solo approach. For example, are there any teams of mathematicians who have solved a Millennium Prize Problem?

@DanielR.Collins Only one of those problems has been solved (sort of an impossibly small sample size), and the person given credit, Perelman, who you mentioned, refused the prize on account of, in his opinion, an at least equal earlier contribution by Richard Hamilton. So, even if he primarily worked alone, his work was closely influenced by others in the community that he read. Of course don't know enough about the personal biography of Perelman to know to what extent he interacted with colleagues outside of reading the literature.

@BryanKrause: Of course I agree that reading literature is indispensable. Zhang has said the same. (Not that we need someone to tell us this.)

@DanielR.Collins The classification of finite simple groups is an example of a difficult, important problem that was solved by a whole mathematical community.

@DanielR.Collins and with regard to Bryan's comment, I think part of his point is that Perelman regarded Hamilton's contributions of equal importance, and Hamilton is a mathematician that is active in the community and has collaborators. So it is perhaps unfair to say that the Poincare conjecture was solely the work of a "lone wolf".

I will take the following to be your question, rather than what appears in the title: "How can I get more people to be interested in the problems I'm interested in?"
I suspect that if you imagine some other mathematician working in a solitary fashion, but wishing for some professional interaction, you might surprise yourself, with your ability to find a solution for him or her.
Wouldn't you suggest that s/he make the first move?  And not be discouraged if the first attempt doesn't get you anywhere?
Some ways to take the initiative to connect with other mathematicians:

Math SE
write to the author of a paper that interests you
you might need to compromise and branch out a bit from your own niche
go to talks, chat with others over cookies afterwards
go to conferences -- again, here, please don't limit yourself to your own niche
visit another university, and write to someone there ahead of time to say, "I'll be in your area in the month of x, may I give a talk about my work while I'm there?" followed by a very short description of your possible topics, along with links to publications
volunteer to tutor math undergrads who are having some trouble with a class -- this will help you get out of your shell, and help you improve your math communication skills; also, it will make you more visible and attractive to other mathematicians.

I recommend that you do some reading about how others with limited people skills have negotiated this in their lives.
Congratulations on taking the first step.

To answer your first question, here is an example of a highly successful mathematician who never collaborated with anyone: http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/search/author.html?mrauthid=177585 (William Austin Veech).
It is worth noting though, that collaborations are just one aspect of participating in the mathematical community - one still needs to give talks, write papers, get hired to an academic job, be on committees, be chair of the dept, ....

Louis De Branges is another well known mathematicians who works almost exclusively by himself. Of his more than 80 publications, only a handful are not solely-authored.

The obvious downside being that he De Branges has annouced multiple wrong proofs. One could argue that this is happening since he is not open to collaboration. In fact he has claimed to have proven Riemann Hypothesis!

@mystupid_acct most mathematicians would be extremely happy to have authored a body of work equal in importance to that of De Branges. The fact that some of his claims are controversial is indeed interesting but does not invalidate his legitimate, important contributions, and indeed it's not even obvious to me that it should be considered a "downside".

@Dan It is. His work is often not taken seriously, so achieving grants is almost impossible, as is publishing in decent venues or even having people believe in his results.

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How to report an author who doesn't share the last name but had similar first name as mine, is adding my articles in his profile on google scholar?
Recently, I got to know that a person who doesn't share the last name but had a similar first name as mine, is adding my articles in his profile. Ironically, my most recent published article didn't appear in my profile, but it already appears in his profile. When I inquired and requested him to remove my articles from his profile, he just ignores my emails. How to handle is the situation? I found his LinkedIn profile, should I contact his school? How one can trust the "google scholar profile" of a researcher; especially if it's that simple to add other person's work and there is no way to report or flag fraud etc. This man has 8000+ citation; who knows he is adding other people articles, maybe to achieve some short term goals.

I realize it's frustrating, but do note that it's within the realm of possibility that he let's Google Scholar update his profile automatically, and that he didn't see your emails. Also consider if you can include a middle initial in your publications going forward, in order to reduce the risk of getting confused with different authors.

@Anyon I always add my first and last name, his first name is same with me, not the last name. I am surprised how google can automatically add article just based on same first name. I always use my email of my institution and this person has verified email of his institution on google scholar. This is making me suspicious as he is doing intentionally.

I see. I assumed you shared the same last name - and had similar first names (as you write in the title, but not the post). It'd be good if you could edit your question to make this clearer.

Why downvoted? Instead of just downvote, please share your opinion if there is something wrong with this question.

@Anyon thanks! I updated the question

Maybe it is an issue you can clean up much faster with Google as the admin of Google Scholar instead of the other person.

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Getting an academic position right after an industrial based PhD program
I am about to end PhD within next 5-6 months. The PhD program I am enrolled in is different compare to normal universities PhD programs. During first 2 years I took course work from a regular university as an exchange student and afterword I start working in a research institutes whose prime target is to develop projects for the local and international industries.  Luckily or unluckily I am in the section where we deal with various small scale projects; during my 2.5 years of stay I worked on 6 different projects. These projects address totally different issues and topics are independent to each other. Therefore I didn’t get chance to focus on a single topic which can be my PhD thesis.
As a first author I have published 5 SCI articles including two in top notch journals but all of the articles are not related to each other. In the given situation I am unable to write a good dissertation. I have just 4 months left to fine tune my thesis. After PhD I want to get an academics position but I am bit worrying about my profile.

Is it something positive to have the articles published in different
areas which have no link to each other?
How much PhD thesis is important for evaluation process?
As I was working closely with the researchers who mostly focus on standardization and patent activities, none of them has a single SCI publication after graduation even my supervisor had 2 publications around 15 years ago. I am worrying whether the recommendation letter of my supervisor and team leader will be acceptable and effective for the academic position?

Actually, this is a question for your university, you are enrolled to. If they offer "industrial" PhD program, they should explain the criteria for "good" PhD thesis. It is entirely possible that 5 SCI papers are plenty, given the orientation of the program.
If, on the other hand, you are worried about your future career after PhD, yes, there is reason for concern. You enrolled in a program that fits people who want to get employment in the industry, not in the academia. In my opinion it is not the question of what your CV or PhD thesis says, the question is whether you learned enough of the basic research stuff you will need as an academic scientist (as opposed to the industrial developer).
If I would be faced with a candidate like you, I would be very interested in the content of those 5 SCI papers and would like to know which parts of the research were exactly your responsibility. If you implemented a solution, but someone other did rigorous experimental evaluation on all papers, then I would consider you less qualified than someone who did the experimental evaluation part as well (which is usually the case with first authors on journal papers, written in academia).
The unrelated subjects on the other hand would not be a disadvantage.

thank you for your answer.  we are the only two authors for all those 5 articles, me and my adviser. In fact his contribution is no more than proofreading. Regarding PhD thesis, is it common practice in academia to evaluate the candidate based on thesis work? or as you said they will be more interested in published articles?

Depends on the university and perhaps on the PhD evaluation committee. In any case, future employers in academia would definitely weight your publications far more than your PhD work.

If your first round of applications are not successful, you could build up a more focused publication list through one or more postdocs.  You may also want to consider getting your feet wet with teaching by working as an adjunct instructor for a semester or two.


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How can I generate an elegant (academic) static CV web page?
A friend of mine has a personal website, including a CV laid out on a page of that site (i.e. not a downloadable PDF/ODT/DOC) document. I want to help them spruce up that page somewhat.
Now, this could be made into a more complicated question if I said I also wanted the style of the CV to match the basic style of pages on that website, but let's forget about that for now, and just ask: Is there a utility, or web app, which can be given a CV (in any format - in a JSON file, by feeding into some web forms etc.) and lay it out elegantly in static HTML+CSS?
Notes:

The result must have no Javascript, animation or animation-like effects (i.e. no "onmouseover", no CSS hover pseudo-elements etc.). So, "static" in the strong sense of the word.
Naturally I'm interested in producing an academic CV, but if I had something for a non-academic CV I would probably be able to adapt the generated HTML for my needs, or whatever.

My first instinct would be to copy and paste it by hand, so I can adjust everything to my taste in HTML directly. Why do you want to convert it automatically? Does it have to be updated frequently from another master document?

@FedericoPoloni: Not sure I understand what you mean by "copy and paste it". Paste where? Do you mean editing by hand? Of course that's possible, but I was hoping something reasonable is available without going to that trouble yourself. And one can always embellish by hand, so starting with a nicer baseline for that would be good to. Also, the CV needs to be updated occasionally, and I would rather my friend be able to avoid HTML + CSS editing by hand as much as is possible.

Depends what you use to edit HTML, but in the worst case if your editor doesn't do copy-paste a ODT->HTML converter will work. But if you don't want your friend to edit HTML by hand, are you sure that a static website is the best solution? Wordpress, a wiki, a static website generator working with Markdown, all seem better choices.

@FedericoPoloni: 1. Why would I convert an ODT? That's not what I asked about. 2. A static website is what my friend has, I'm not going to change that.

It is not clear to me what the input format is then. How would your friend want to write their CV? How do they deal with formatting, for instance the occasional word in italic or diacritic? Does the input need to be shared with another version of the CV? Or is it just for the convenience of not writing HTML directly?

@FedericoPoloni: The input format will be whatever the web page generator tool needs. Right now, the CV is inconsistently formatted anyway. No, the input does not need to be shared with another version of the CV. It is not just the convenience of not writing HTML - it's the convenience of not having to format, lay out and style the CV.

You can find templates from site generators like Jekyll and Hugo, for example al-folio or Hugo Academic.

@GoodDeeds: Those seem like website templates. They're interesting, but - I'm looking for an HTML page generator (without dynamic elements, navigation bar, sub-pages etc.)

I am not sure I understood you, those templates do generate fully static HTML pages from config/data files populated by the user. You can configure the output to be on a single page entirely if you like. There is no need to edit HTML directly anywhere unless you want to specifically customize something.

@GoodDeeds: I followed the two example links, and did not see static pages. But I'll take a closer look at how to configure them to create a fully static page. If you can describe a complete procedure - that would be an answer to this question...

I have personally only used Hugo Academic, and IMHO its documentation details the steps quite well. But the example site is a static site -- there is no backend, nothing is generated dynamically -- so maybe I am still misunderstanding your requirements.

@GoodDeeds: The example site is full of scripts, has a navigation bar which scrolls the content up and down etc.

I think that ORCID is what you are looking for.  However, it generates their website, not your website.  If you must control the site yourself, hand written HTML is still the way to go.

@einpoklum Usually by "static" people mean "served directly from HTML/JS/CSS files on disk, not generated on-the-fly by PHP/Python/etc (and a database) when the client requests a page". If your concept of "static" includes "no Javascript", then I suggest you make it clear.

@FedericoPoloni: Edited to clarify that.

@einpoklum, you can create google site

@learner: Not relevant to my needs.

Based on your requirements, markdown-cv seems like a good option.
To use it, you write the CV in Markdown (the same format that's used in Stack Exchange), and use Jekyll to convert it to HTML. Documentation can be found here.
Screenshots for reference:
Markdown Input:

Rendered Output:

I have no affiliation with this software.

My read on your question suggests to me that you could start at the basic level with raw HTML. Let's stay platform agnostic in your workflow.

Get a text editor that promotes its ability to work in raw HTML.
Review an on-line tutorial that instructs how to work with the beginning elements in raw HTML.

The most basic format will have HEADER and PARAGRAPH elements as its only input. You may eventually include LIST elements. HEADERS would include such things as Education, Experience, Publications, Proposals, and Professional Affiliations. PARAGRAPHS and LIST elements would be under these headers. All the effort at this stage is simply to copy + paste the current information into the new HTML.
Once the basic HTML works and has all the content required, move to formatting. The standard approach for this is to incorporate a CSS style header or CSS style file. Will you need lots of CSS styling commands? Not really. Define the text size and font face in each ELEMENT (HEADER, LIST, PARAGRAPH). One distinct advantage with HTML (over PDF) in this case is the ability to use relative font sizes, allowing the person viewing the page to scale for their own needs. One certain reason also to include a basic CSS is to define the view for different platforms such as desktop versus tablet versus mobile device.
Can this process be automated? Perhaps. But ... for what you are asking ... the time you would invest to find, set up, and establish proficiency with an automated tool is likely not minimal. Alternatively said, you can probably find a good application that will allow you to do WYSIWYG layout designs of Webpages, but it will likely over clutter the source with its own ELEMENTS (e.g. SPAN, DIV, ID), perhaps include additional page settings (e.g. width=...), and maybe even end up putting in javascript code. By implication in you posting, you are seeking to avoid this. Also alternatively said, you may find a tool that will allow you to take the current input, run it through a filter, and have it automatically produce a new HTML to a different format. Then you will likely have to learn how to design your desired filter for old -> FILTER -> new.
You may struggle with raw HTML editing to achieve elegance in the Webpage design. Be prepared at that point to need additional CSS ELEMENTS. Rather than learn how to do this with raw HTML on your own, consider two options. Find a professionally designed template that provides what you want. Copy and paste the content from the old CV to the template. Otherwise find a WYSIWYG Web page design application, layout the content in the format that you want, push a button, and get a Webpage. The advantage is that you can format in almost any way you want.
As to adding content dynamically to HTML, the only way to do this is using a server-side script method. One example is to allow your friend to keep a CSV file for publications, download that file to the Web server, and have the Web CV automatically update with the most recent list. This avoids the need for anyone to have to re-edit the raw HTML later, e.g. simply to add a new publication to a list. This step could be a later investment in your effort, but only when you have confirmed that the server can support server-side delivery of scripts.
In summary, an automated tool to convert from an existing format to a new format may not exist or simply be too much work. Doing raw HTML coding is the most future-proof approach. It may however not provide you with an end result that you consider to be the most elegant. If so, consider copying into a template or using a WYSIWYG application. Finally, assure yourself that someone else (e.g. especially the owner of the CV) will be able to reproduce the approach that you take to put content together with format, especially if you will not be responsible to update content later.

Even if you use raw HTML, I would suggest to use a CSS framework like Bootstrap, otherwise it becomes difficult to make a website that scales well to both desktop and mobile.

I've done this (many times, many sites) and my results are anything but "elegant", especially since I have a geeky mind-set, not an artistic one. It is pretty hard for a beginner, especially a geek, to get an elegant result.

@FedericoPoloni Added note to support your comment.

@Buffy The OP thankfully did not ask for or define a level of elegance. We might spend hours otherwise bouncing this question on and off the list because the answers for what application to use to obtain the most elegant site will always be subjective.

Hmmm. I can't define elegance, but I know it when I see it. (Misquoting Justice Potter Stewart)

@Buffy Agreed wholeheartedly. Or as well … I cannot objectively define all parts to ugly but they sure do stand out when I see them. Yet another reason to not try to take this question in that direction.

@Buffy After some consideration, I've added a nod to using templates or WYSIWYG editors to address the OP's reference to elegance.

I understand the suggestion, but it is literally not what I asked for. "the time you would invest to find, set up, and establish consistency with an automated tool is likely not minimal." <- actually, the existing CV my friend has is not that consistent with the rest of their website, and not even entirely self-consistent... also, if the generated CV is not super-complex and convoluted, then making it consistent should not take that long. I hope.

I've change consistency to proficiency and stressed automated tool. You may take only a little time to do the work manually. This is indeed exactly what I recommend. I doubt that you will find an automated (as in input old, press button, output new) application that does what you want in a fully automated way (as in without you needing to work at something manually anyway) or in an easier way than doing the translation manually.


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Software platform for out-of-academia research collaboration
I've been volunteered (sort of) to help a subgroup of an activist group set up some on-line platform for (better) collaboration, and organization/storage of a base information. The subject is environmental issues and climate change more specifically, in the country we're in. I'm not talking about "collaboration" in the sense of authoring research paper, but in the more general sense of contributing information, effort, opinions, skills and contacts towards addressing "researchy" questions which come up in the context of that kind of activism, and synthesizing information and insight.
Have you had the experience of using some kind of distributed software platform (web-based or otherwise) or collection of tools which could serve this purpose?
Obviously there are "trivial" and more generic mechanisms such as a file store/joint web drive; a wiki; a discussion forum. But any of these sort of needs to be "twisted" into serving that purpose, and would not be that great in itself.
Notes:

The "research" group has no funded staff, nor full-time volunteers; it is somewhere between 10 and 50 people with limited time resources and variegated professional and academic backgrounds.
By "research" I mean mostly non-original research, with novelty being mostly or entirely in integration, analysis, comparisons, etc.

Google has many of those tools, no?

I suggest https://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com as a better home for this.

@JonCuster: No, but do enlighten me.

@Buffy: I could also have asked this on softwarerecs.stackexchange.com . It's somewhere in the convex hull of these three sites. But - I am first and foremost interested in the experience of academics with online collaboration platforms, which is why I chose this site.

Search on Google Workspace. Google is much more than email.

If you Google search "collaboration software", you'll find a bunch of options.
For chatting that can include multiple people in the same channel, there's Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Google Groups, and that's just the one's I've used. There are are far more options out there. These also allow you to send files to other people. Some of them let you have a file storage outside of the chat feature.
If you need the ability to store lots of files for individual modification, there's Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and again, these are just the one's I've used. These tend to be unversioned storage. If you need to keep track of older versions of files, such as for software code, then you'll be looking for repositories like GitHub, BitBucket, or Team Foundation Server (now Azure DevOps).
If you need something where multiple people can be modifying the same file at the same time, Google Drive does that decently. It also has all the "normaly" file formats, such as spreadsheets, regular documents, PowerPoint presentation style software, and many more.
I haven't used any free website hosting for well over a decade, so I can't recommend anything for a wiki, but it wouldn't surprise me if Google had something that could be used for something like that. If you need something more robust, you can buy a domain and hosting service from GoDaddy, BlueHost, HostGator, Wix, 1&1, SquareSpace, or 1000 other places. Many of them have price reductions for non-profit organizations, if you are listed with the IRS. Some have easy to use drag-n-drop website builders to use, others host Wordpress, Drupal, or other easy to use site builders, which tend to include plug-ins for forums and wikis.
For a comprehensive option, Google shows up across most, if not all, of these categories.
There are far more options than I've listed, or can list. Except for the website hosting services, most of the options I've listed are free. They may have paid options, but the base software/service should be free to use. Some of the paid versions are based on how much you use it and others are based on how many collaborators you are working with. Definitely do your research to make sure it's the correct software and price for your needs.
Even though you don't expect to write scholarly papers, it wouldn't hurt to keep yourself open to that option, as well as other things you don't expect to do at the moment. You may end up doing a wider variety of collaboration than you expect. And when you need to collate that info into a paper on an individual basis, it doesn't hurt to have all of your work in one workspace.
Speaking of workspaces, using an online system will not only make things easier for your members to move information around, but it also serves as a backup to prevent anyone from losing all the data when their laptop or other device fails.
Hopefully this answers a few questions that underlie your stated one.
I'm not affiliated with any of these companies or pieces of software. I've simply used them or come across them in my personal or professional capacities.


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Will your undergrad GPA affect your graduate GPA in US?
Will your undergrad GPA affect your graduate GPA in US?

These GPAs are separate and they will not affect each other. As far as I know, this is true not only in US, but also in other countries.

No, the two GPAs are separate.

This is not always true. But it is certainly always true if you attend a different school than where you did your undergrad. If you attend the same school, and you took grad coursework while completing the undergrad degree, depending on your schools policies, your grad GPA may include the grades from those courses. This is a rare situation to be in though.

@WetLabStudent I think this is the first time I've seen a comment that was substantially longer than the question and its answer combined!

@WetLabStudent, I was in that situation, and the grad class I took in my last undergrad semester did not count towards my undergrad GPA. I reserved that course's credit for grad school. My university only allowed the course to count towards one degree and, therefore, one GPA. I doubt any university allows the course to count twice.

@BillBarth which is why I said "depending on your school's policies." Unless you have verified this is how it works at every school, the qualification is important. I know of at least one school that does not count graduate class grades to your undergrad GPA, so in that case, they wouldn't be counting it twice if they counted it towards your grad GPA.

Unless you know of a university that allows you to count it as both grad and undergrad credit, I believe the effect on GPAs is the same.


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Writing referee report: found major error, now what?
I'm writing a referee report on a paper.  This paper is interesting and, if correct, would be worth publishing. However, I believe they have a major mistake in their method which invalidates their results more or less entirely. I am 90%+ confident that this method is in error, which will affect their results in (possibly unpredictable) ways.
How should I address this in the rest of the paper? I could write the rest of the referee report assuming that they haven't made this mistake - but I think that could be a waste of my time (and their time, since it'll take me longer to do).
If a referee had this sort of problem with your paper, what would you like to happen?
Edited to add:
One of the major concerns I have with just rejecting, focusing on this point (as recommended by Raghu and others), is the (time and $) cost of re-running things. Saying, "This is wrong" but not going through the rest of the paper could lead to a second referee report where they've fixed the error and re-done everything.  If I then say, "Also, Experiment B doesn't mean what you think it does," re-running Experiment B may have been a waste. How much consideration of these factors do you think a referee owes the authors?

You can just write to the editor about this particular point. If it indeed is an error, your job is done; if it is not, then there is a serious flaw in the exposition of the article, and the editor can request the authors that they revise this before further refereeing happens.

Interesting idea, and it might be possible. Though I think given the broad scope of the journal, the editor might not feel competent to make that call without consulting the authors, which means that it's like submitting the referee report anyway.

"This paper seems to suffer from a serious flaw in X.  Unless this is fixed or clarified, I would recommend rejection"  sounds like a perfectly legitimate report to me.  No one's interested in the validity of things that are already wrong.  The editor gave it to you to review because they expect that you have the competence and expertise to make such a determination.  Papers that are just wrong or horrible do not need a painstaking review of every part of the paper; determining it to be wrong/horrible is already an adequate review, as long as you judge it so in good faith.

I'll add that it's also a good idea NOT to write anything else when you're recommending rejection (or major revision). The addition of more "fixable" points just makes it more likely the editor will make a mistake. Maybe he/she will decide "most things were fixed, it can be accepted now". Putting a single major rejection-worthy item in the report makes the process more robust.

@VonBeche although I agree with you on the rejection part, I think that when recommending revisions (either minor or major) you should list all of your concerns. I hate when I receive the second review with "You just fixed what I told you, but then there is a) b) c) that I did not comment in the first review and now I want you to take care of..." making the review process an infinity regression thing...

If there's a "major mistake in their method which invalidates their results more or less entirely" it seems pretty clear that you should explain this in your review, and not bother writing much else. (This seems so obvious, I wonder if I'm misunderstanding your question.) Why on earth would you "write the rest of the referee report assuming that they haven't made this mistake," if you're quite sure that the mistake exists, and that it invalidates most of the paper? What purpose would it serve, for the authors or future readers?

The OP said they are 90%+ sure that it's a mistake, i.e. there's a ~10% chance that it's not. I guess the point is that it wouldn't be good to reject the paper if it isn't a mistake after all.

@Nathaniel Part of the job of an academic/scientific author is to write papers that are convincing and clear; and convincing and clear papers are the kind that (good) journals publish.  A paper that leaves you going "there's a 90% chance this is just plain wrong" already fails that.  Plus, for all we know that 10% is just a reflection of a lack of confidence in the OP.  Some people just aren't comfortable with definitively saying bad things, too.

@zibadawatimmy agreed with all of that. (I was just commenting on my interpretation of the question, not the answer. If it was me, I'd probably write a review saying "it appears that there is a serious flaw in the paper. I might be wrong about that, but if so the paper should be revised to clarify this issue before resubmitting.")

If the authors fix the alleged mistake (or demonstrate that you are wrong), the time for "minor" comments on the rest of the paper is after that point. You don't know what effect the fix-up will have on the rest of the paper until you have actually seen the revised version, so there is no point doing the reviewing work twice (and even less point in writing up a review of the parts that are unpublishable because of an earlier mistake).

Updated the question in response to Raghu's point. I think there is a real question here about how much consideration referees owe authors on this sort of issue.

It might be polite to write something like the following:

In Lemma 3.2.5, it seems that the authors assume that the ABC is XYZ, and that this is critical to most of what follows. But after studying the argument carefully, I don't see why this is necessarily the case. Could the authors please clarify?

In other words, give them the benefit of the doubt. If the authors are not cranks, then this will do as much good as claiming that they made a mistake, and will potentially cause fewer hard feelings. (And if they are cranks, you don't much care either way -- so may as well assume they're not!)
There is no need to continue with the referee report. Just send something like the above to the editor. The authors might withdraw the paper, or devise a workaround, or explain why their method is in fact correct. In any case, editors appreciate careful checking and you don't need to worry that such a brief message will make a bad impression.

The answer to your question depends on whether you think the mistake can be fixed with reasonable efforts (i. e. without redoing the work from scratch). This can be discipline specific, for redoing the analysis of a painstakingly assembled dataset is not the same thing as overhauling a purely theoretical work. If in your view it cannot be fixed, this provides ample grounds for rejecting the paper. Otherwise the referee should help the editor answer the crucial question whether to reject the paper or to request a major revision. In this case the rest of your review report should provide the clue whether the paper is worth revising and whether the authors are fit for this task.

I agree with Raghu's answer that you don't need to go through the rest of the paper until the error is addressed and with Anonymous's answer about how to phrase things.  But if it were me I would also tell the editor something like (assuming this is what you think):

The results are interesting and important and would merit acceptance in this journal (after minor edits) if they are correct.  So I'd recommend that the authors revise and resubmit if they are able to clarify the above point or replace this with a different argument.

Basically you want the editor to know whether they should be encouraging resubmission of a corrected version.  You want to be clear that it passed the initial "are these results interesting enough" screen before you got to the harder "are they correct" screen.

Personally, you are the referee, and thus by definition, you are the expert the editors and publisher are relying upon to deal with this sort of thing.  Go with your gut.
You should probably write out just what you wrote above bluntly.   There seems to be a mistake that makes interpretation difficult until the matter is cleared up. If the journal asks you not to put any recommendations for publication to the author directly, but they ask you for your opinion on the matter, you should make it clear in the confidential section that you believe any revision would require additional review.

If I were in your place, I would write to the editor explaining that I have these doubts on the manuscript, which I cannot verify based on my knowledge/experience, and you let the editor decide based on his experience and the other reviewer(s).
At the same time, I would mark it for rejection, propose my theory and make it clear that if they can answer to your concerns adequately, the manuscript is worth resubmitting (and possibly publish).

If you don't have the knowledge/experience, you have no business marking it for rejection. And if you mark it for rejection you can't make clear that resubmission should be permitted. These are incompatible options. If it should be reconsidered if the problem can be fixed, you recommend 'major revision'. If it shouldn't be reconsidered regardless, you recommend 'rejection'.

I think it's not so straightforward in this case, as the reviewer is mostly certain that there is a major methodology mistake. I think that when someone is assigned as a reviewer, they have to inform the editor of all their concerns and the editor will decide further. There is no automatic procedure. An editor actually reads our comments and can decide whether our reasoning for rejection or major revision is valid. (also the editor knows who you are and what experience you have when he assigns the review. he wants to know your opinion)


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Refereeing a lazy, but correct paper
When refereeing a paper, I often have objections to the work that do not rise to the level of using the coercive powers of a referee to delay or reject the work. For instance, I find myself wanting to write: "If I were you, I would be embarrassed to publish a paper with [such unclear writing/such a silly comparison to experiment/so few parameters studied/incredibly ugly figures]."*
If the paper is not wrong or incoherent, just lazy or badly written, I don't feel justified in rejecting the paper or requiring a revision. I also don't want to invest hours of time acting as a language editor or graphic designer for figures.
Is there a politer way to express this sentiment and encourage the authors to improve their own work? Or should I simply take on good faith that the authors have done the work to the standards they are willing to publish, and that these may differ from my own?
*note: this is distinct from the case where the paper is so unclear that you can't tell whether their work is correct or not - where I think rejection is appropriate. I'm also assuming that this is not a terribly selective journal - in fact, it could be a journal like PLOS ONE, which explicitly says that importance to the field is not a relevant criterion.
Note: I've edited this to address a couple of points made by answers, and to focus away from the writing part, which has been answered in the past. Bad writing is one aspect of this question, but general author laziness is the larger one.

Some journals will require major editorial revisions before accepting articles. For example, I've seen manuscript that were accepted only after they went through an outside editing service. (The research was sound, but the manuscript poorly written).

I find slide 12 of Jeff Offutt's "Rules for Reviewing Papers" incredibly useful.

Richard - interesting! This is not customary in my field, but I suppose I could recommend the authors use an outside editor.

@lighthousekeeper - I think the issue is not what recommendation I should make to the editors, but how I phrase my suggestion to the authors.

Or should I simply take on good faith that the authors have written as well as they can, and my standards are not theirs? It is irrelevant if the authors did the best job they could or not, and what their standards are. You are the referee, so it is your standards that the journal is asking you to apply. If the paper is so badly written that it cannot communicate its findings effectively to the scientific community, you should not hesitate to reject it on those grounds.

You seem to be in the mindset of not causing too much trouble for the authors.  Consider also your responsibilities to the paper's future readers.

What do you mean by lazy if not sloppily written? It can only mean substantive flaws or shortcomings. These are appropriate reasons to recommend rejection or revision.

I think there are two important factors here:

Reviewers are typically the closest subject experts a journal can locate.
Most journals have (or want) a target audience that is considerably broader than the expert reviewers they enlist. Think of the industrial practitioners, novice grad students, and other interested non-experts.

If it takes you a lot of effort to parse and understand a paper as the related expert, it seems entirely plausible that a non-expert would not follow the paper at all. Particularly if the poor exposition is so bad that you can only follow the train of thought because you as an expert can fix errors in your head or make logical leaps, then it's definitely beyond the scope of the general reader.
Both are valid complaints that could lead to a rejection of a paper, depending on the particulars of the work and the venue.
There are other avenues to address these problems than simply rejecting the paper. If the work otherwise is adequate, you might say so but tell the editor that the work does not meet the language standard for this journal and let them handle it. Some journals have a notion of "conditional acceptance" or "shepherding" where an agreement is worked out between the authors and editors that certain items must be addressed or revised prior to publication (however, they need someone to oversee such papers, so you might be volunteering for the role if you suggest it!).
Nobody wants a rejection, but most authors do want their work to be read and appreciated by others. Addressing these issues is a short term frustration for authors but a long-term win in terms of the visibility and impact of their work.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

You seem to be assuming the premise that a paper ought to be rejected solely for being wrong or for being so poorly written that its correctness cannot be verified. I reject this premise - it is decidedly wrong in my discipline (pure math) and I'm pretty sure it's wrong in most other disciplines, certainly in the case of prestigious journals (Nature, Science, PNAS, etc.) that have to be selective and reject the large majority of papers they receive, many of which are not only correct but also quite well-written and significant and still end up being rejected.
The bottom line is that you as the referee are being asked to evaluate the paper for its overall contribution to your area of research. That includes not only correctness but also significance, originality, and the ability of the paper to effectively communicate its findings to the research community. You are being asked to apply your standards (possibly calibrated based on any guidelines you receive from the journal), not the authors' or anyone else's, and you can and should reject the paper for any flaw(s) that significantly diminish its impact and contribution. In my opinion that can also include poor writing, except possibly if the results are so groundbreaking (e.g., a poorly written but still verifiable proof of the Riemann Hypothesis) as to overshadow all other considerations.
Edit: following your clarification and citing PLOS ONE as an example of a journal whose standards you have in mind, I checked out their publication criteria. They include the following criterion:

The article is presented in an intelligible fashion and is written in standard English.
PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. We may reject papers that do not meet these standards.
If the language of a paper is difficult to understand or includes many errors, we may recommend that authors seek independent editorial help before submitting a revision. These services can be found on the web using search terms like “scientific editing service” or “manuscript editing service.”

So, as you can see, my answer above clearly applies to PLOS ONE, and, I'm pretty confident, to many other journals of lesser stature than Nature and Science.

I've edited the question to clarify. I'm not talking about Nature or Science here, but journals like PLOS ONE and many others, where the acceptance criteria are focused on validity, not on impact. This is where I'm comfortable accepting the paper, but feel the authors have been lazy in aspects of paper-writing I value, or are slicing the salami pretty thinly in terms of the Least Publishable Unit.

The role of peer review is not just to check that the manuscript is original, correct, and significant, but also whether its clear, concise, and well presented. In fact, from my own experience as author, reviewer, and editor, as well as from anecdotal evidence from other editors (also in other fields), owing to reviewing process, almost every revised manuscript is greatly improved over the original submission.
The authors of a manuscript that suffers in the way you have described will greatly benefit from improving their style, because more people will read, understand, and cite it. Hence they should appreciate your comments.


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How do I convince my professor to keep me as his student?
This is a continuation of my previous question, I believe my advisor doesn't think I am smart. How should I deal with this?
It just so happens that when I asked my prof for feedback, he decided to just drop me. Obviously I had asked for feedback when I saw some signs recently which indicated that he wasn't very happy.
Now what do I do?
I really liked talking to this prof. I was enjoying the discussions. I thought things were well. But he seems to think that I get stuck with simple things! He probably also thinks that I am overambitious (in the few instances that I have tried discussing some other topics with him).
I wrote to my prof asking him to reconsider his decision and reflecting on what could be the issues of his disappointment and what I could do to improve. Obviously he didn't reply.
I met the grad coordinator.
He has schedule another between with all three of us.
I wonder whether I should be optimistic about that meeting!

That is a very strange reaction unless there's a lot of context that we're missing here.

I agree that this sounds like some context is missing here. Without knowing what actually caused the professor to want to kick you out I am unsure how to answer the question.

Dropping someone is also rather extreme as a means to avoid giving feedback. Even if he's dropped you *he should still answer the &^%ing question because he had a responsibility toward you. But once he's ignoring your messages that's for the grad co-ordinator to get into. Like xLeitix says, I don't see how you can proceed until you discover the problem.

It's possible that you really aren't capable of doing the work, and that your advisor thought about this for a long time and decided that the kindest thing to do would be to drop you now, before you waste more time.
It's also possible that you weren't really applying your advisor's criticism - for example, you weren't taking him seriously when he told you not to get distracted by new ideas, but to focus on making progress on your original research. Your advisor felt that he was wasting his time because you weren't listening to his advice.
You should really talk to this professor's other students, and find out how they experience him as an advisor. If the other students get along just fine with him, and only you have this problem, then it's possible he just can't work with you.
However, in that case, he should really have spoken to you about the possibility of dropping you before he did it.  (Not just making comments about your work, but explicitly telling you, "I can't keep working with you if this continues; this is what you need to do to show me you are making enough progress to continue.")

In any event, I'm going to answer this question as if you are a capable student, and your advisor is just unwilling to let you learn and work at a reasonable pace. (Obviously, I don't know you, so I don't know if this is true.)
In that case,
If your advisor isn't prepared to deal with a student who is capable, and clearly eager to learn and improve, then you should really reconsider wanting to work with him.
There is a professor like this in my department - brilliant, great to talk to, and there is a lot one can learn from him. But he is under a lot of pressure to produce results (he's new, like your advisor). He is constantly making "threats" to get his students to produce work (e.g., telling them their funding the next semester depends on whether their next conference paper is accepted - although he doesn't follow through on these threats). He isn't willing to let students grow and develop as researchers - he expects them to work up to his standards, immediately.
This professor's students are leaving him in droves. They are either leaving school with an M.S. (instead of sticking it out for the PhD), or switching to another advisor. As a result, he's only published one paper in the last two years (which is far, far below standard in his field).
So, you should think about whether you really want to work with this professor, and consider asking the grad coordinator for another advisor. If this advisor is not a capable advisor, you will not be successful with him, no matter how brilliant he is.

If you decide you really want to work with this professor, do not approach this meeting as a student who is begging an advisor to keep them on.
Rather, come as a student who is willing to stay with this advisor, but understands that both of you need to change for this to work. He will have to give you a reasonable chance to learn from, and apply, his constructive criticism. In return, you will agree to take his advice seriously, work hard, and do your best to improve and succeed.
Talk about how highly you value this professor's experience, and how much you want to learn from him. Explain that you take his concerns (about getting stuck with simple things and getting distracted with new ideas) seriously, and want to work on fixing those things - but that growth takes some time.
And of course, if you are able to work things out, and you continue with this advisor, make sure to talk to him often about what he expects from you, and how you are living up to his expectations. Work hard to apply his advice and improve your research skills, and make him aware of these efforts so that he doesn't think you are ignoring his advice.

For your first section, i recently saw someone post this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect  which may apply?

@ff524 (1) Given that I have had a great run with course grades I can't be totally sure that I am incapable. (at least my graduate coordinator says that he thinks and has validation from elsewhere that I am smart) May be all of them are wrong..but I don't know.. (2) There are no other students to talk to - he is a brilliant new prof and I am the first student to talk to him. (3) I really want to work with this prof - he seemed to be very nice to me till suddenly this happened!

@user6818 So what happened? Nobody just "decides" to kick out a student (it's a big hassle for the prof. as well) out of nowhere. Edit: also, I should add that good grades are not a very good metric for research capabilities.

Do not under any circumstances in any sense force someone to be your advisor that doesn't want to be. Your advisor has incredible influence over your success not only while doing your work, but afterwords, as he or she would be the most obvious person letters of recommendation should come from.
Some advisors are of the "throw them in the pool and see if they swim in my field" type, others are more of the "this is a sort of apprenticeship where I will guide you into my field" type, and there are many other possibilities. Choose one that doesn't want to get rid of you.
The last thing you need is to have the person who has the most influence over both your academic life and great influence over your post academic life to have grudging feelings about the whole affair.
I end with an old joke, but one that maybe sums up my recommendation.
"A good lawyer knows the law. A great lawyer knows the judge."
I don't really believe in that as a principle for lawyers or for myself, but I do think that trying to make the opposition situation work, where antagonistic feelings have developed, is going to be disastrous.

Consider how the rest of the grad students in your group are faring and this professor's history with past students. If there are recurring problems with students, then you don't want to work for this professor.  If there are no such recurring problems, then he is probably correct about your aptitude for this work at this time in your life.  You are going to need to take a step back an re-evaluate yourself and what you should be doing right now.
Hearing from the comments that you are his first student, my inclination would be to drop him if I was less than 1/3 of the way through my research.  Being a brilliant contributor to his field does not mean he is a brilliant advisor.  In fact, he is the most inexperienced as advisors can come, having never graduated a student.  He has no context in which to judge you other than what he remembers what his graduate student colleagues were like at a different school.

The OP said in a comment on my answer: "There are no other students to talk to - he is a brilliant new prof and I am the first student to talk to him."


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Should I host my academic website under my institution domain or under a domain of my own?
I'm a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering in France. My institution provides a dedicated storage space to host our academic websites, which is reachable via the institution domain (something like http://people.institution.org/John.Doe/).
I try to have a tidy website of a few pages listing my publications, research area, contact, etc. It is currently reachable through my institution domain. I try to also put some efforts in SEO when people look up for my name or particular research area on search engines.
I'm in my last year of Ph.D. and I will undoubtedly move to other institutions in the next few years. Would it be preferable to host my academic webpage on a dedicated domain http://www.johndoe.com? This would prevent the need to do the SEO all over again each time I switch to a new institution.
The only advantage to use my institution domain is the affiliation, but this information is present on my website anyway.

My experience has been that your university webpage will receive more traffic and more notability through search engine otherwise. Based on some of my work put on my page, I am the top result for at least one keyword which has resulted in being asked to review papers! I doubt this would have happened if I hosted it on my own.

Why would it receive more traffic ? There is no academic website list on my university site, apart from our research group page (in which I can modify the link to my website). As I said I was able to bring my website to the first page of results for selected keywords so I guess that shouldn't be different on my own domain.

Well, .edu domains are considered well in terms of Google's algorithms. You can also always mirror or redirect traffic from an .edu url. That might be the best thing if you already get traffic. My uni gave actually hosting space as in, .edu/~name

.edu TLDs are only used in the US so it's not relevant in my case (my institution uses a generic .fr TLD), but your remark is indeed of interest for people in US universities.

Actually a lot of the supposed "extra value" attributed to .edu domains is based on myth; if you do some searching you'll find that for the most part there is no significant benefit.

Some institutions don't even provide webpage set-up or space thus it would be wise to keep your own site. That said, you save about $50 a year by using the university site. I would use it if my university provided space.

@strnk Actually, .edu isn't exclusively used by US institutions: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona uses upc.edu. But, anyway, non-US .edu domains are very much in the minority and, as you say, your institution isn't one of them.

Besides redirecting your own webpage as nayrb mentions, if your institution is amenable, they can set up url forwarding to automatically forward to your current url (as well as with email), even long after your uni accounts expire.

@Kimball : it's possible, yes (see Raphael's answer ), but it doesn't apply in my case unfortunately.

@strnk: Ah, I didn't read that far down on the answers.  That's too bad.  My postdoc department did that for me, and I figured many universities would be willing to do so for people at the post-bac level, as it only requires a miniscule amount of resources.

How popular is your website?  How many links are there to it in the wild?  Is your institution going to agree on maintaining a redirect at that address for a couple of years?  If it's primarily a professional website about you, then I agree with Ben's advice.  But if your website has a lot of generally useful content and many links to it, changing address is going to be a very significant problem when you change institutions.  At least if your IT dept. won't agree to a long term redirect.

I used to think the same way as Ben but now I regret not getting my own domain because of all the broken links that moving is going to cause ... if your current institution agreed to a redirect, that's great.  But your next one might not agree (my situation).

if you do some searching you'll find that for the most part there is no significant benefit — [citation needed]

Please check https://register.domains/ which allow you to register a personal domain (e.g., www.johndoe.com) that remains consistent regardless of your institution. It also provide  tools to manage DNS and redirect traffic, ensuring your academic webpage stays accessible during transitions.

Why don't you just do both? By both, I mean use both URLs. I "do both", so when I graduate, I'll still have my site for others to see. You can do this in many ways, but I had my university student page auto-redirect to my personal home page. The code for that is like a one-liner.
This grants me the opportunity to refer people to different sites depending on the situation. I think myname.com is undoubtedly easier to remember than the nuances in my university student site URL: people.school.org/first.last ... On the other hand, if the situation is more institution-based, perhaps it's better to stick with my college's name. You've got options this way.

Having a redirect really isn't the same as having both. I have my own site and of course my department links to that on my faculty profile and the standard .edu/~name is a redirect link. But I don't think that would be considered "both" as my info is only on one site.

Related suggestion: if you are going to have both, use canonical links.

Both are good points for sure. TBH I should revise the answer a bit. I was not really considering the faculty case because of my (perhaps invalid) interpretation on OPs mention of leaving the current school though. Plus a department faculty page requires almost no effort to maintain at my school; faculty/postdocs email research/publication updates to the webmaster who changes their dpt. page. Lab group/personal site obviously a different story!

Thank you for your answer. I think I will mainly host my website on a domain of my own, and making a redirection from my university page to my domain.

I find it really strange that no one has mentioned the possible reputational benefits of using the university's website.   I don't think there's any way to write this without sounding like a snob, but I'll say it anyways; people are snobbier than they like to admit, and academia is probably worse than many other fields.  If you're at an at all prestigious institution (even actually, if you're at a not so prestigious one), you want to emphasize that affiliation.  Of course, your work has to stand on its own two feet ultimately, but people will be more open to it if they see you're connected to a serious institution, rather than some dude in his basement (remember, there's always something they could be doing rather than reading your paper).  Most academics keep a mental rolodex of where people are located for different purposes, like knowing where to send students or where they might like to visit.  Why make it harder for them to figure this out?
A couple of other commenters have mentioned that you should be building your own brand, not the universities, but I don't see how you separate those.  Usually, the university has a much stronger brand than you do, so you want to steal a bit of it for yourself.  If you're in a situation where this isn't the case, it's still a virtuous cycle where improving the department's reputation should ultimately pay you back, and shouldn't stop you from moving.
That said, I've certainly experienced the trouble of moving my website (many times), so I see the appeal of having a stable website that doesn't have to be moved, but why not both?

+1, this is the only answer so far that bears even a remote semblance to my experiences in academia. (Well, except @RoboKaren's remark about content management systems. That one's spot on.) The implied view in some of the other answers of treating your current employer as your antagonist in your academic career is frankly bizarre.

+1, you are discussing the untold importance of our affiliation, I was expecting someone to talk about it. I'd love to see other people view on that. As per "why not both": it would be a burden to maintain two separate websites. If they just have the same content then it's not even useful to keep them both... I'd rather go for @rch answer for that purpose: redirecting my university page to my own domain.

@strnk: FWIW, the redirection also works the other way around, always, with no hassle at all (in terms of setting it up and potential conflict with your institution's interests).

Reasons to use your own host/tld:

You don't expect to be at your current (or future) institution for very long.
Your institution uses a painful CMS system, requires you to use ugly templates, or has content or size restrictions.
You don't want to ask your department head or IT manager/webmistress for permission every time you want to update your page.
Your personal brand is more important than the university brand (see #1).
You are part of a multi-university project.
You created your own domain website when you were a graduate student and never found a good reason to switch to your employers' sites, even a dozen plus years after graduation (my case).
etc.

Reasons to only use your university website:

It's the default position.
It doesn't cost you any additional hosting or domain registration fees.
In many cases, the department or IT admin will help you set it up using one of their templates, meaning you do not have to learn web design
In some cases, the database that populates your research publications will be pulled from your Faculty Annual Report (or vice
versa). This means that keeping the university CMS happy results in
less paperwork overall in terms of reporting your research
activities to the university.
The google-juice (SEO) of the university will likely be higher than your own.
Some may argue it looks more professional to have an .edu/~name site rather than a private.com website.
Loyalty
etc.

And of course, one can always do both. The cons of doing both are:

Requires updating both.
Visitors may be confused about which site to go to (or you have the same info mirrored, which leads to #1)

Keeping your website on your university is the default position so I didn't think it required explanation.  I'll edit to add.

I'd like to suggest 3b. for the reasons to only use one's university site: Sometimes, these include a central (for the department, or even larger organisational units) database of publications and templates that automatically show a filtered view of each website owner's publications are available and maintained already. Even when that central database is not updated "centrally" (such as a secretary always entering all new publications made by someone from the department), it means at least that only one of the co-authors of each publication has to input the publication data.

@O.R.Mapper - done. The A.SE CMS engine doesn't allow for nested lists so I added your reason as reason #4 in the use-the-university list.

@RoboKaren: OT: Actually, it does: It seems than you just need to indent the nested list items by at least one more space than the parent level.

If I double indent, it'd list it as 3* or 3+, not 3b. As far as I can tell, one can't do  style a. b. c. d. ordered lists in A.SE. If it's possible, let me know!

I think you should do both, but in a different way that has been suggested by Raphael and by rch. Both of these other suggestions involve doing some sort of invisible "redirect" from one page (almost always the temporary institutional page) to the permanent page on your domain. RoboKaren suggested having two pages which is the closest to my answer. I suggest you should create a page on your institution but have it be a small "soft" redirect that asks people to click through.
Keep an institutional page but keep it very simple. Have the page give the following information (at most):

A short narrative biography of you and your research or teaching interests.
A nice recent picture of you. [Nice, but optional.]
A link to your CV on your website. [Optional]
A list of 2-3 recent selected papers. [Optional]
A very prominent link to your actual homepage on your domain. I do this with text like, "For more detail on my research and teaching, visit full academic homepage.

Ben Webster is correct in citing the importance of association with your institution for status reasons In order to get the benefit, put the name and the logo and/or seal for your institution prominently on your personal page in a way that makes it clear that you are associated with the institution but also clear that it is your personal page.
This is what I have been doing for years. One benefit is that many institutions make updating institutional pages tricky (e.g., you need to go through a webmaster). This is a nice compromise in this situation because you only need to update the biography, picture, etc. infrequently.

I wonder why you propose putting teaching material on the privately-hosted site. Arguably, this material that a) belongs on the institution site and b) never has to move with you. More so, it should probably stay even if you leave.

@Raphael, you are right. I put material that is specific to a instance of a specific course (i.e., COM597B in Spring 2014) in the course management website run by my institution. I put general resources or curriculum I have developed (curriclum for a course on innovation and online communities) and that I have used and will use at any institution on my personal website. I agree that my curriclum should stay available to students at my old institution. That said, few institutions will promise to keep websites up after you leave.

I see, that makes sense. (The point "they'll take it down, anyway" keeps coming up and I don't think I like that situation; researchers' websites are sometimes the only place to get preprints and other information. My department still hosts websites of professors that have been gone for 13 years. Even students keep their email accounts.)

@Raphael, the preprint stuff is a big issue. If it's allowed, it's always a good idea to put preprints in an institutional archive (usually run by the libraries) in addition to a personal website. No website is permanent.

belongs on the institution site and never has to move with you — Both of these assumptions are incorrect.  At my university, copyright to instructional materials belongs to their creators (but they must give the university a permanent royalty-free licence). And if you plan to continue teaching after you graduate, of course you want to maintain your own teaching materials.

You are trying to find a design solution for a technical problem that does not exist.
You mention SEO as your primary concern (for whatever reason¹). So when you move your professional website to another institution, (have your admin) put a 301 (Moved Permanently) in your old website's .htaccess and search engines will automatically update their databases accordingly.
This assumes that you can keep your old (sub)domain/page at least for a few months; as far as I can tell, this is common. Many groups/departments maintain lists to alumni at their current position, anyway; it is as much advertisement for them as it is for you (if you're good).
Note that you can still use one domain as an alias for the other. Which direction you choose is probably irrelevant in most cases. I'd argue that it is important to have something at an institution URL so that you have a representative address that looks official and leaves no doubt that you are, indeed, the John Doe from the University of Illustriousness and not some dude who happend to be the first to register john-doe.com.

As a researcher, I figure that your publications are your business cards. These are indexed in other places and your moving does not change how they can be found (and thank the powers that be for that!). Search engines pick up on your new website in a matter of days (for some you can even trigger indexing yourself) which should be enough, assuming that there is little more value but contact data besides the publications there. But ymmv.

Occasionally, one finds an institution, such as a previous employer of mine, which claims that it is technically impossible even to forward email to somebody who has left!

@DavidRicherby That's a bummer. I guess there is no upper bound on incompetence after all. That said, I would assume that group/department websites are often under more accommodating care (advisor/department staff) than email services (central technical division), so website forwarding/linking may actually work out better than email in such cases.

While I agree with your point on redirection my employer doesn't provide any way for me to do that after the end of my contract. No 301 redirection on my old web site nor even e-mail redirection.

@strnk Hm. Can you set up the 301 before you leave, pointing towards a place you control (and put a temporary clone of your site)? A couple of days, weeks at most are enough for Google et al to process it.

If I have a "place [I] control" then I would rather use it as my main server and put 301 redirections to there since it's more permanent. That would avoid the hassle of having to copy my website back and forth and possibly adapt it to a server config each time I move to a new place.


text:
Can I successfully adapt to an advisor who will not push me to work?
I am currently a first-year graduate student, now in the process of figuring out who I'd like to have as my thesis advisor. Of course, compatibility of research interests is quite important, but personality and work style are too.
The issue I'm currently facing (though it sounds odd to cast it in a negative light) is that the professor with whom I'm most compatible research-wise, is the most polite, nice, and soft-spoken person I've ever met. In lecture and  in conversation, he is self-effacing, will go out of his way to make things comfortable for you, never says a bad thing about anyone, etc.
Now, even though I love my field, I've been a procrastinator for as long as I can remember, and my concern is that I'm eventually going to lose my focus / energy if my advisor is constitutionally unable to say things like "You ought to have read more this week", "You should do a better job of this write-up", etc
My question is, should I opt for Professor Tough Love whose research I like slightly less, but who will do a good job of keeping me working, or should I go with Professor Nice Guy? If I do go with Professor Nice Guy, what strategies could I employ to make sure the effect of his coddling is minimal?
I've discussed this with peers, and I received the following advice:

You're going to have to become self-driven eventually - might as well start getting practice now.
Meet with Professor Tough Love regularly, sort of as an unofficial second advisor, who (besides discussing technical material, which is of course beneficial) will give me the impetus I need.
Directly ask Professor Nice Guy to give me more structure, and to be more demanding of me.

Thoughts about these? Any other suggestions?
I realize there's some overlap with  How to avoid procrastination during the research phase of my PhD?, but I suppose I'm asking specifically about what to do when my advisor is not automatically going to be a resource for helping me avoid procrastination.
Thanks for all of your help in advance!

My advisor is also far too nice and not nearly as verbal about issues or demanding like my previous bosses. I have realized that I can leverage my goal of impressing him to motivate me.

I work for Professor Nice Girl and her feedback and must point out that getting honest and useful feedback becomes an issue. If everything you do is really really nice then this becomes a source of frustration (to put it politely) after a short while.

To be sure, chooosing your advisor is one of the most important decisions in your academic career.  That is not to say that people don't switch advisors for one or more reasons (they do), but it's probably best to take the time to figure it out now (which it sounds like you are doing by asking the question in the first place!) so you aren't faced with that decision later.
It seems to me that you may be asking the wrong question, to some extent.  Relying on your advisor to push you is more or less the opposite of a good way of growing into being an independent researcher -- who is going to push you when you become that assistant professor and you're on your own?  Furthermore, the last thing you want your advisor writing in his/her recommendation letter is, "Great researcher when pushed to complete the work!"  You also don't want your advisor to think that he/she has to push you -- this may just lead to a poor working relationship between the two of you.
My advice is to ask Professor Nice Guy to be your advisor, but also start working now towards limiting the procrastination on your own.  That advice is predicated on your comment that your research matches his the best; that should be the driving factor and not some grand idea that you'll get pushed harder by one prospective advisor or another.  Tips for how to get a good plan together are outside the scope of this topic, but at the very least you could start by fixing a date you'd like to graduate and working back from there.
As for meeting with the other professor regularly, by all means do that if he is amenable to the idea.  I met regularly with my advisor and another professor and all parties were happy with the arrangement.

Given the number of questions on this forum about dealing with intransigent advisors, I'm surprised you even have to ask. I understand your concern about Professor Nicenik, but ultimately the first and third pieces of advice you mention are what I'd suggest as well (ie you're going to need to be self motivated, and you can ask your advisor to help, as long as you don't rely on it).
I wouldn't necessarily recommend consulting with Professor Toughski on a regular basis, although informal chats from time to time might help.

I'm a procrastinator too, in fact I'm procrastinating right now! I'm also a 3rd yr PhD student with a Prof. Nice Guy style supervisor. If you think your supervisor wont be able to 'force' you to do the work then that's not really a problem. You just have to know how to work with it. Here's a tip:
Tell you supervisor at the end of each meeting where you expect to be by next meeting. If you're anything like me you don't plan on procrastinating, it just happens. You'll be motivated to say you'll do the work in the meeting because you have the best intentions. You'll then have to stick to it out of the meeting because Prof. Nice Guy will be expecting you to have completed what you said you'd complete. It's a hack to force you to act like Prof Nice Guy is Prof Tough Love!
Hope this helps, I should probably get back to work now. Oooo youtube.

In addition to other good answers: It's not entirely clear but that two issues are being blurred here. After all, a person can give useful critical feedback while still being positive, and, oppositely, can be a jerk without imparting useful advice. However, it seems to happen quite often that at least in our mental constructs (as in @adbar's answer) over-simplify or caricaturize.
"School" often has the strange effect of encouraging an odd passivity, that people take no initiative, but only respond to "threats" (of bad grades, of embarrassment). Obviously this is undesirable, but seems to be what we have. Years of conditioning in such a system creates an unfortunate frame of mind. Equally obviously, unless one plans to take a job in which "motivation" is a boss standing over you and threatening you, being a self-starter is a critical virtue to cultivate. Academe, vaguely-structured or unstructured as it is, may be an extreme case.
Clearly one cannot instantly become a self-starter, and, equally, some degree of procrastination seems universal. Requires some degree of vigilance to fight back.
Grad school might be the time to change the source of "motivation", depending less on "teachers' threats" and more on personal goals.
If/when that part of the question is recognized as separate from "personality", there does remain a very serious issue of getting useful information from an advisor. I believe that it is possible to remain completely civil and personally respectful, even sympathetic, while giving accurate technical/scientific opinions. If it is the case that the nice-and-polite person is also not imparting information, that's bad, and it would also be bad if an intimidating, mean person didn't actually impart useful information (but was just scary).
So I'd try to be sure to separate the issues of motivation and information-acquisition.

I'd say it depends on the ultimate outcome you want? Academia is one of the most unstructured professions you can find, so I'd say that unless you can overcome some of the procrastination, it'll be pretty difficult to keep going with it. On the other hand, I have friends who intentionally picked supervisors that would push them, for exactly the reasons you described, and were in technical fields with intention of going to industry. I don't see anything wrong with that course of action either. It depends on what works for you too. Personally, I find encouragement really motivating, but hate being told what to do, so actually think that Prof Nice Guy sounds better all around. That's a personal choice though.
If you're doing a PhD with the intent of going into academia, here's an excellent article with a few more factors to consider too: http://genomebiology.com/2013/14/4/114

"Subscription required" to access this article...

I gave an answer here that could interest you. In short:
You need to determine how much time you want your advisor to spend on your case. Maybe someone who has a lot of time to discuss various issues with you is preferable even if he/she is too 'nice'...
And nice or not, your advisor has to be firm and polite, as he/she will more or less be your mental punching bag, so with whom can you imagine to live in your head during 3+ years ?

Noooo, I would never use my PhD supervisor as a mental punching bag!  I find it quite strange that you assume (you said it in your other answer as well) that everyone treats their advisor this way.

This is the weirdest question. Motivation should come from within!
Why are you relying on others to direct and dictate your goals in life?
If you want to be truly successful with your degree, stop worrying about
the "Nice-Guy" being too nice, and start being interested in your chosen
field. If you have sufficient interest in the field, you'll not require
anyone to drive you.

-1 For "Motivation should come from within!" . Very often motivation comes from without - not from people telling you to get motivated, but from your life experience. Or for Mathematicians: Abstract-theoretical-life experiences... OP: Don't "start being interested". You aren't interested enough, don't try to artificially fix it.

The comment was supposed to mean that the OP should have already considered the reasons for their interest in the field. Using that knowledge, they need to dig deep when the going gets tough. When you are lost out in the woods, you must sometimes force yourself to keep trying to survive. That type of motivation is obviously internal. Failing to go out and learn more about their field is not the fault of their supervisor.

You're going to have to become self-driven eventually - might as well start getting practice now.
Yep, this.
Meet with Professor Tough Love regularly, sort of as an unofficial second advisor, who (besides discussing technical material, which is of course beneficial) will give me the impetus I need.
Might help, but as a seasoned procrastinator you may find it easy to dismiss their tough love as a wooden spoon (if I may mix metaphors).
Directly ask Professor Nice Guy to give me more structure, and to be more demanding of me.
Could try, but technically s/he is doing all these things, just in the nicest possible way. You can ask a person to be more scary, but I don't think you'll get very far.
Warning: Prof Nice Guy may be nice, but that does not mean they are stupid. They can see things are not progressing, and at some point pull the plug -- always in the nicest possible way. Or blithely allow you to fail the whole thing.