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How to encourage seminar attendance?
My research lab organizes monthly “internal” seminars, where we give the opportunity to talk to PhD students around the middle of their PhD, as well as newly arrived post-docs (who can talk about what they did before and present their project). However, attendance is a big problem, and it's the same people who never show up, unless the speaker is from their group. I suppose good team leaders encourage their whole team to show up, while a few others have told me point blank that they consider it “wasted time”, because it decreases the time students can work at the lab bench. So, while they cannot forbid them to attend, they just discourage them.
So, I am wondering what we can make to help increase student turnout. What do you use to attract people to seminars? We have tried coffee and sweets, which didn't work very well.
Some specifics, if it can help: research lab is about 25 permanent staff, and between 2 to 3 times that number of students and post-docs. Seminars are held every month, rotating between teams.

So, I am wondering what we can make to help increase student turnout. What do you use to attract people to seminars?

Short answer: Make the seminars useful for the group members.
First, the diagnosis: The group members are probably too narrow-minded and do not understand that getting insights from currently irrelevant topics does in fact become often very useful in the long-run. The group members seem to optimize in a greedy manner for their short-term interests, shooting themselves in foot in the long-run. It seems, they do not understand that seeing connections between dots at some future timepoint is much much easier if you saw the dots and their contexts before. But this does not come by direct explanation, they need to realise it by themselves. It's your task to set the example and at least showing how at least you benefit from the seminars. This is a long-haul task and has to do with your general attitude to world. In the short term, you can perhaps do the following:

push for all group members (including the professor(s)) giving conference rehearsal talks - if you are in an area where going to conferences makes a difference. At the talks encourage giving the speaker not only content-relevant feedback, but more importantly methodological feedback on how to speak.
invite external speakers and actively support networking of the group members with the speaker. Especially in informal interactions (which are often started by interactions during, or right after the talk), people tend to find common interests and receive feedback on their own work. Possibly start even a small collaboration. The idea here is to, over time, show the group members that attending tangentially relevant talks is useful for cross-breeding of ideas.

Yeah… the point about external speakers is that it clashes with the aim of giving our younger scientists (PhDs and post-docs) an opportunity to talk about their work… Regarding rehearsal talks, it's not something we do on this big scale (usually it's team-scale, meaning 5 persons rather than ~30), but I'll think about it… Thanks!

@F'x: conference audience is relatively large (>5), hence big scale is good

I would disagree with the narrow-minded diagnosis, it can be very real that a student deep in his PhD will rather spend his time doing more experiments or surveys than hearing about a whole new topic that might not help him/her with the dissertation.
It will be a waste of time, and he/she would end up doing extra hours, and probably with a bit of resentment.

a student deep in his PhD will rather spend his time doing more experiments or surveys — Sure, but following that urge is not necessarily better in the long run.  Their research life doesn't end with their dissertation!

Yeah I know, but still, it's very demanding and frustrating having to present results sometime next week and there is a 2 hr seminar that you have to attend to. You are going to end up reading your own material while the speakers go on. Is just human nature.

In my university, we have the students seminar around 12pm with pizza at the end. Using a time slot when most people are free usually helps. And although sweets are good you can't survive on that, free lunch on the other side is always a plus.
Else we also have seminars friday around 4pm with snacks and beers afterward. It is a time when most people are not as productive as the rest of the week, and the ability to socialize afterward with the rest of the department is always a plus.
Of course, the best way would be to engage the leaders. Maybe invite them to give a talk and try to make it worth their while so they can see that the goal of those seminars is not only giving the talk but the discussions that can flow out of it.

I am all about the lunch time seminars, where you can eat at the seminar. I feel like eating and getting a seminar is a good use of my time.

I suppose good team leaders encourage their whole team to show up,
  while a few others have told me point blank that they consider it
  “wasted time”

First I wouldn't put a quality judgment on the team leaders. Hopefully all the team leaders are "good". Further, hopefully all the team leaders have done a cost-benefit analysis of their staff attending and have simply come to different conclusions.
The problem does not seem to be the junior staff, but rather the example set by the senior staff. I would argue that you do not want to encourage the junior staff to "disobey" their team leaders by offering sweets. The permanent staff needs to come to a consensus as to whether or not these meetings are useful and who should attend. The possible outcomes are as follows:

The meetings are a waster of time and should be canceled
The meetings are critical for all groups and attendance should be
mandatory
The meetings are useful for some groups but not others ant those
that want to attend should attend
The meetings are critical to some groups and require participation
from all groups and attendance should be mandatory.

Once a decision is reached, it is the lab director (the person responsible for the 25 permanent staff) to see that it is carried out.

Yeah, good/bad was a bit narrow. The judgment of value is mine own: I see that these PhD students get very little scientific interaction with other people. They typically go to few conferences, and skip even local seminars. The lab director has decided that attendance is highly recommended, but doesn't want to clash with its staff. As organizer, I am trying to find a positive way of increasing the participation of these students in seminars…

@F'x you might want to take a lesson from the lab director; if he doesn't want to clash with staff, maybe you shouldn't either. I believe this needs to be addressed from the top down. At a minimum, I would want to know why the director is hesitant before fighting the battle.

The idea is not to clash, but to find ways of encouraging students to stand up if they want to, by making the seminar more attractive to them one way or another. Somehow, you're saying “either order them to order the students to go, or leave the matter alone”. I'm trying to find a way in-between, because the first one is not gonna happen, and I'm not very happy with the second one.

Sometimes clashes are necessary.

Identify the needs/wants of the people you want to attend.
You are currently phrasing the benefit of these seminars from the perspective of the speakers (i.e., to provide an opportunity for PhD students and postdocs to present their work).  This is a noble goal and I would keep it as a goal but if you are having attendance problems then perhaps the other members of the lab do not see this as a useful activity (you mention that some have clearly expressed this).
So you need to identify what they would want from the seminars.  Perhaps more informal chalk-talk discussions, a journal club where each paper is based around the work of a student or postdoc, etc... would generate more interest.
If those that do attend are consistently talking about how useful the experience is, then attendance will go up.

One thing you can do is also use this time slot to present additional information that people will want to hear. For example, you can add a 5 minute "news cast" about the lab: who's new, who is leaving soon (and what they will be doing), general announcements, lab babies, whatever announcement people will have. We are doing this at my group.


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Requiring student to participate in online challenges to complete coursework
I'm teaching a programming course with ~20 students, guiding them through coding assignments and helping them understand what they are doing, and why it works or doesn't. Tasks expected of them range from trivial to medium-complexity in the range of a 40-hours curriculum.
Now, toward the end of the course, they know enough to solve moderate programming problems. In order to get them to work on a few things more "exciting" than what we offer them, I am considering asking them to join an online coding (or problem-solving-through-coding) competition, such as Project Euler. I wouldn't expect them to be able to solve all problems, of course, but I could select a list of problems for them to pick from. For example:

For this session, you are expected to solve between 5 and 10 problems from the following selection of Project Euler numbers: 1-10, 13, 15, 20-24, 26-29, 33, 35-38.

Sure, I could just copy these problems and make them "assignments" for them, but I think it could bring some fun for them to see it as part of a competition. Also, why I don't understand why, it seems that to their generation, doing anything online is vastly more exciting than doing the same thing otherwise. Finally, I have some hope that a few students might actually get into it, and continue doing it for fun after the course.
Now, comes the question: what downsides do you see to requiring them to participate in one of these online challenges? (I'm most interested in the specific case I detail above, but generic advice/answers for other types of online participation might be interesting too!)

Possibly related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5076/do-academicians-consider-challenges-on-kaggle-to-be-research-worthy in that the question mentions using challenges in teaching, but then asks about research

You really want to answer my question about why "students would want to cheat themselves on Proj. Euler", don't you? :-)

@WillieWong In fact, I wouldn't consider “looking for hints online” cheating. After all, it's pretty easy to recognize when I will interrogate them: “cool, you thought about using … I’m wondering how you would apply it if the question was changed thusly…” (watch student become livid)

Why not set up your own on-line challenge? I do that all the time with my course in Thermodynamics (I understand it isn't coding). But I set up an online challenge through the use of modules in an LMS like canvas/instructure. Only after they get one module correct can they scale the ladder to the next. This also counts towards grades (10-15% of final grade).

One issue I'd see that should not be considered on its own (thus not warranting an answer), but that is at most alluded to in the answers is that you would require your students to sign up with an external service. Asking students to use online services provided by (and thus within both the responsibility and range of influence of) the university is one (reasonable) thing, but asking students to sign up with and use a third-party service is a very different story. I for one would have considered it a serious issue if any professor had forced me to use a service by some external entity ...

... and divulge any of my data (starting with connection details such as my access/working times and my IP address, but most probably not limited to that, as I'll not just access the service but actually have to upload solutions to questions, thus illustrating my problem solving techniques and the like) to that external, essentially uncontrollable (by the respective professor) service.

@O.R.Mapper in this case, you may just not require submission. The questions are public, and I imagine the code has to be sent to the grader (to Euler you only send the final number).

@Davidmh: What is meant by "final number"? A result of a computation retrieved by the student, or a grade given by the grader?

@O.R.Mapper in Project Euler you only submit the final solution, as a number, but no code.

@Davidmh: Mhm. So, as a student, I'd have to reveal my profiency in the subject toward a third party outside of the realm of control by my university, by showing them what final solution I submitted. Obviously, that sounds inacceptable.

@O.R.Mapper For the course you submit the solution (including code) to your grader. It is up to you if you also want to participate in the web, under your own name or not.

@Davidmh: If it's up to me, it's off-topic here, because the question is about requiring students to participate on the web.

This sounds like a great idea to me overall, but I can see a few potential issues:

It's possible that one or more of your students might already be a participant, which could raise issues of fairness.  (Other students may complain that he/she got a head start.)
Similarly, the fact that these problems are widely distributed on the web may make it easier to find solutions online.  I haven't looked at the Project Euler solutions online and don't know if they are any good, but it's not hard to find purported solutions.  This could also be a pain for you: if you make it easy to cheat, then you're more likely to have to figure out how to deal with cheaters.

I don't see that #1 is an actual problem; one can raise the same issue about any assignment.  Some students had good high school calculus teachers; others didn't.  Some students have read Martin Gardner; others haven't.  Some students read StackExchange; others don't.  Some students have been on job interviews; others haven't.  It's a fact of life that some students do have a head start.

@JeffE: Sure, life is never fair, but it's awkward if one student has already completed an assignment before the other students were even notified of it. That could happen here if one of the students was already participating in Project Euler. I wouldn't cancel the whole thing because of that, but it's worth keeping in mind that students may be upset over it.

One potential problem, if you're within the US, is running afoul of your University's interpretation of FERPA.  My university forbids me from requiring students to participate in an publicly-accessible forum using their real name or university email address, because the fact that someone is a registered student is considered a protected educational record.

Thanks for the advice… my country hasn't yet reached the standards of US craziness, but we might get there one day (certain people are certainly trying hard!). I think I would never have asked said students to use their real names and email address… but then, you may have already perceived hints that I like pseudonyms :)

Project Euler is pretty reliable but (as well as the other answers) I can see two risks:

The website (with the challenges on it) may become unavailable.
The owner of the page can edit the content as often and as much as they like, so there is no guarantee the challenges set when you viewed them are the same as your students will see.

I'm doing my entire Bachelor course by distance (online) from an interstate university in Australia, when I live in antother state. To check that we've done all the related online module readings, etc, for most subjects we have 10-20 marks of the total marks for the subject set out for forum participation.
You could allocate a small percentage of marks for this which would hopefully give your students the incentive to do this online task.

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What books, biographies, or survival guides are helpful for men in education in academia?
Men make up the minority of students who receive undergraduate and graduate degrees.  As a group men also tend to dropout of school at a greater rate than women.  Men are even more in minority status as students in fields like psychology and education.
So, what books, biographies, survival guides, or other resources exist for men who say want to become educators?

I don't understand "in education in academia." Do you mean e.g. being a professor in the field of education? In general "want to become educators" is off topic for this site unless it is restricted to "educators at the university level" or "educators who do research on education", and as far as I know men are not a minority among professors.

Perhaps you could change the question to "men in academia in female-majority fields" and ask for resources for men who "want to pursue graduate degrees and/or academic careers in female-majority fields"

For these 5 (as of now) downvoters: is it a double standard (cf. What books, biographies or survival guides are helpful for women in engineering in academia?)? I mean, the question may be not ideal, but it looks (relatively) clear, on topic and answerable. (And no one asks you to empathize with the OP. So "I don't feel that way about academia." does not sounds like a good reason for downvoting.)

@PiotrMigdal I suspect that the downvotes are due to some false assumptions presented in the question. The title is also quite clearly plagiarized from the linked question. Perhaps the topic could be phrased with a more eloquent and directed question, but I agree that it's certainly valid. [upvoted]

Because the text and question is plagiarized, this question sure seems like it might be men's rights trolling.

From his behavior on the site so far it seems clear to me that Doug is not an academic and has far more interest in misogynist trolling than in genuine questions about academia.  Don't feed the trolls.

@NoahSnyder Yeah... I'm sure a question like this is "misogynist" (sarcasm), even though though this question focused on men.

I think the answer lies in the fact that your question is receiving downvotes, while the same question posed for females instead received 25+ upvotes, with spammed links to feminist blogs as answers. The blatant sexism against males in almost all of academia is quite absurd to say the least.

Given that non-academic careers are off-topic here, and StrongBad has already offered an answer for academic careers, I will answer the question of resources for men who want to pursue graduate degrees in female-majority fields.
I would offer the same advice to anyone of any gender who wants to know what it is like to be a member of a gender minority in graduate school: Learn what it's really like by reading about the personal experiences (both positive and negative) of others who have been in that position.
As such, here are a few resources that I believe may be helpful:

On being a man in an MSW (social work) program
On being a man in nursing school (includes experiences from men in undergraduate through doctoral programs)
On being a man in a doctoral program in psychology

http://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/060114p34.shtml

I would suggest reading survival guides (or anything that will prepare you and give you an advantage) since academia is a difficult road. I would not worry so much about finding gender specific or field specific reading, especially if you are a male. The reason I say this is, while I am sure there are some factors that make males less likely than females to succeed in academia and some of these factors may be unique to "female dominated" fields, by limiting yourself to those factors, you are missing the critical fact that the vast majority of people fail to succeed in academia, regardless of gender or field.
For the purposes of this answer, I am going to define succeeding in academia as becoming a full professor. This is not demean those who choose to aspire to different goals (e.g., making a valuable contribution, having a well balanced life, or being happy), but it is merely a byproduct of the available data. For the same reason of the availability of data, I am also going to limit the analysis to STEM fields, for which Psychology is a member, but Education is not.
The reason I suggest reading survival guides is that over 99% of people fail (i.e., do not become a full professor) in academia regardless of gender or field. The Royal Society did a study which found that less than 0.5% of the people who enter academia do not succeed:

This is a huge problem, and if you are not prepared, and even if you are, you are likely to fail.
There is also a lot of research on gender differences. HESA has a study, which I can only find summary data of, which shows a "leaky pipeline" for women in STEM fields. For example, in the male dominated field of Physics:

at the GCSE level there are essentially equal numbers of men and women, but less than 6% of women are Professors. The same leaky pipeline exists in the so called female dominated field of Psychology:

At the undergraduate stage, the numbers are essentially the opposite of Physics with more women than men, but by the time you get to level of full Professor, the female domination is lost. The existence of this leaky pipeline means a lot of effort has gone into determining why women do not "succeed" in academia. The fact that both male and female dominate fields show the same trends means that most of the research into gender issues, in particular why women are less likely to succeed, are field (at least within STEM) independent.
In summary, men are doing better than women in "female dominated" fields, but no one is doing particularly well. Therefore, limiting yourself to small effects, while ignoring huge effects, is generally not efficient and you should read in a field and gender invariant manner.

"For the purposes of this answer, I am going to define succeeding in academia as becoming a full professor."  This is a very strange definition when the vast majority of students in academia are simply not pursuing such a goal.  It furthermore implies that the vast majority of both male and female students are engaging in a several year project in which they will almost surely fail.  It also seems clear enough that plenty of programs, such as a masters in education program, are NOT solely designed with the purpose of training people to become a tenure-track professor.

@DougSpoonwood your question asks about "in academia". From your comment, it seems like your question is about surviving/succeeding in the workplace in general and therefore may be outside the scope of academia.SE. It might help if you edit your question to make it clearer.

I'm pretty sure the question is well within scope of this site http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17253/what-post-phd-path-alternatives-are-there?rq=1

This also isn't an answer to the question.  It more qualifies as an attempt to dissuade the question from even getting asked in the first place.

@DougSpoonwood that question is asking about about alternatives career paths, which I agree is on topic, from your comment it seems you are asking about hope to have succeed at an alternative career, which I think is off topic.

@DougSpoonwood my answer is that I the same books that are helpful for men are helpful for women and this is independent of whether the field is predominately men or women. I don't provide specific recommendations since that is a huge list and depends on your current level of seniority.

The above doesn't show that psychology as a whole is male dominated for the simple reason that it purposefully excludes consideration of non-academic fields that people with psychology degrees go into, or at the very least comes as significantly misleading.  This especially becomes clear when you think about the ratio of men to women practicing psychotherapy http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_ratio_of_men_vs_woman_therapist

"In summary, men are doing better than women in "female dominated" fields, but no one is doing particularly well." Utterly false and nonsensical, as evident by your own images. How many of psychology professionals are there compared to undergrads?

@Keith this site is about academia! In academia Psychology, especially at the Professorial level, is not female dominated. Given the proportion of female Psychology undergraduates, it wouldn't surprise me if many non-academic Psychology careers were female dominated, but those types of careers are off topic here.

Academia does not encompass students in your mind?

@StrongBad Academia is NOT confined to the world of professors.  Look, even if undergraduates were not part of academia, and if graduate students were not part of academia, what you've said is not plausible.  That is, it is not plausible that psychology is not female dominated.  You'd need absolute numbers to back up such a claim.  Your own graph indicates that 67.6 % of researchers in psychology are women.  It also indicates that 61% of senior lectures in psychology are women.  And it's generally known that most faculty are not professors...  Here's a quote and a source for that...

"The article says that in 1960, 75% of college faculty were full-time and either tenured or tenure-track while today only 27% are." "While the New York Times may have just noticed this, it's certainly not news to those of us working in academia" http://hudsonvalleygeologist.blogspot.com/2010/01/full-time-vs-adjunct-faculty.html  So, in academia psychology is female dominated (unless you can supply absolute numbers, or have better reasoning that you can demonstrate here).

The last two points (senior lecturers&professors) are hugely off because they are based on decisions (individual & of hiring committees) that were made in another time, twenty or thirty years ago.

@Karl I agree the data are not perfect, but your claim that they are hugely off is completely unsubstantiated.

They are hugely off, by the numbers you can see, and that is because they come from an incomparable, twenty year old dataset. In 1990, when those profs were hired for their first junior lecturer positon, there were not 75% female postgrads in psychology.

@Karl Again an unsubstantiated, and likely an incorrect/exaggerated claim. In 1990 73% of BS Psychology degrees went to females as opposed to 77% in 2010: http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/

Sorry, i meant postdocs, not bachelors. You hire postdocs for junior lecturers

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Would it be ethical to hire a proofreader for theses and academic articles?
Proofreading documents for orthography is a pain. I consider that I am decent at writing in my native language (on the grammar and orthography side), but proofreading for typos and whatnots is a time-consuming pain. I’d much prefer to have someone else do it for me, but it's a pain to bother other people with it. Also, when I read students’ work, in some cases it requires two iterations (because it's hard to focus on the science when the spelling is… suboptimal).
So, given that a professional proofreader would be much more efficient at this job than me, leaving me more time to review the scientific content or otherwise actually do research, the logical conclusion is that I should hire one. This would work either for my own writing or for
I know some people actually do that (and also buy more extensive services) for grant writing. However, I wonder: is it ethical to hire a proofreader for theses and academic articles?

Short answer
Yes, it is ethical
Long answer
The three options are:

Proof-reading it yourself
Asking a co-author (for academic article) or a 3rd person (for theses) to proof-read it
Pay for a commercial proofreading service.

As I see it:

Option (1) is inefficient. You've written the text, read it many times over, and your brain will simply fool you in not seeing the typo's.
Option (2) is done quite often in practice. In my opinion, it's most suitable for journal articles; some articles have quite a lot of co-authors, and one could give a section to each co-author and distribute the work. That's what I usually do (my thesis will be quite small, because it's just a summary for a sandwich thesis).
As for option (3), I don't see any ethical problems with paying for a proofreading service. I know a number of people (they are not native speakers) who do this systematically for theses and academic articles. They buy commercial services who check and correct the quality of their English writing. This improves the quality of the text and therefore reduces the chance to annoy the reviewers.

Speaking as a frequent reviewer, I wish more people did this for the articles I review.  Grammatical errors do distract me somewhat from the actual content.  I see no ethical dilemma.  Go for it.

@Dan But note that some popular proofreading services are sub-standard; I recently reviewed a paper with a company's certificate stating that it had been proofread. Not only were there some grammatical errors, but there was some ambiguous and poorly written content. On the other hand, it had the overall feel of native English.

I've recently had for the first time experience with option 3 (in addition to some such experience where corrections were done during the publication process). I've had to change particularly some of the grammar "corrections" as they completely changed the meaning of sentences. (I don't think the commercial proofreaders are even remotely connected to our field). However, that is still useful: it points out difficult places that are easily misread. So the change is often not to undo the "correction" but to rewrite.

@Abe, how can you have the "overall feel of native English" without grammatical errors?

I've proofread my brother-in-law's psychology thesis, and a friend's thesis on modern Irish church architecture. I have a background in neither area.

@Ian A document can have an overall feel of native English with or without grammatical errors

I see no problem in hiring an external proofreader. However, I would ask them to flag all the changes they made and then re-check those changes myself. It is certainly possible that the proofreader could misunderstand what the paper was trying to say. So if the proofreader is essentially pointing out places that need my further attention, that seems valuable to me.

Not only is it ethical, but, for really important documents like grant proposals, hiring a proofreader/editor is a really good idea. I've done it, and am glad I did.


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Festschrift articles: is the peer-review as strict as for other papers?
Many journals sometimes publish Festschriften, i.e. special issues in honor of a distinguished (but still alive) researcher in their field. Articles for such issues are typically invited articles by other groups in the same field, and current and former collaborators of the researcher honored.
A colleague told me that such articles are peer-reviewed, much in the same way regular papers are. I somewhat suspect that this might not be entirely true, and that the standards used by the editor (and even reviewers, if they are aware of the context) are lower for these special issue invited papers.
A quote on Wikipedia (from one Endel Tulving) seems to agree with me:

a Festschrift frequently enough also serves as a convenient place in which those who are invited to contribute find a permanent resting place for their otherwise unpublishable or at least difficult-to-publish papers

So, my questions are: in your experience, are reviewers given a hint by the editor that the paper they review is intended for a special issue? and is the review process and editorial decisions typically as strict as they would be for a regular paper?

My understanding is that a Festschrift is usually not a special issue of a journal, but a monograph (AKA book), although the contents are, for all practical purposes, journal articles. However, this may vary by discipline.

I think the difference is whether the Festschrift is its own book (then the quality solely depends on the editors) or in a renowned peer-reviewed journal (who'd have a reputation to loose with a bad special issue). And I'd have a look what is the title and what the subtitle - the impression of "Festschrift for Big Guy" is entirely different from "Scientific Subject" subtitle "dedicated to Big Guy" or "collected in honor of Big Guy's scientific work".
In my field, special issues of peer-reviewed journals about conferences or concentrating on a certain subject are common. The idea behind the conference issues is to ensure the normal peer-review process because conference proceedings have a bad reputation of no or no real review after the contribution is accepted (by  abstract only). To the point that many people do not submit conference proceedings because they see them as a complete waste of time.
The indications I have are that the peer review process is up to the usual standard of the journal.
If you look at this table of contents of a special issue dedicated to Prof. Mantsch, you'll see that the special issue consists of original research, there isn't even a review article in about the historical development of the field in that issue (there is an editorial, though). Also, it is primarily a conference special issue, and this conference (of a regular series) also had the dedication (which came out most at the conference dinner speech, not at the scientific sessions).
Our paper had a two-line dedication before the abstract, and besides that it is a normal original research paper that underwent peer-review. I have not seen in my field a special issue that was primarily dedicated to someone and not primarily thematic with a dedication.
(thematic special issues):

I don't know whether the reviewers know that the paper is intended for the special issue, I never had a review to do that indicated anything of the sort.
In my experience not only the normal quality but also the normal subject criteria apply.
Sometimes, the invitation takes place only after the peer-review process is over: after the acceptance of a paper we were asked whether we'd like it to be published in a special issue that was upcoming and where it thematically fit in.
Sometimes, special issues are not filled by invitations, but the fact that a thematic special issue is planned, is circulated.

In my experience in mathematics, papers submitted to a Festschrift are held to the same standard as any other papers as far as correctness and novelty go, but there is definitely some flexibility regarding importance.  The Festschrift is often considered a good place for articles that would be of particular interest to the person being honored, because they build on this person's work or involve topics close to their heart, even if the papers are not particularly important in absolute terms.  Referees know the paper is submitted to the Festschrift, and I think this vision of which papers are appropriate is broadly shared among authors, editors, and referees.  An embarrassing or inappropriate paper would be rejected, but for example a minor observation related to the honoree's work could be accepted.
It's hard to say how this compares with typical journals, since there's a range from low-end journals that will publish anything arguably new and correct to high-end journals that regularly reject excellent papers because they aren't quite wonderful enough.  A Festschrift will never match the very most prestigious journals (there simply aren't enough thematically-appropriate papers at that level to fill it up), but it can be comparable to a middle-of-the-road journal or occasionally better.
As in Stephan Kolassa's comment, a large majority of the Festschrifts I've seen are monographs, rather than journal issues.  When they are special issues of a journal, it's generally not a particularly prestigious journal.  (However, it can happen: the Duke Mathematical Journal published a Festschrift for Nash.)  My interpretation is that prestigious journals generally don't want to publish Festschrifts because they know the papers won't all meet the highest standards of importance.

My experience in theoretical computer science is similar.

In two such instances that I have been involved since November (invited papers for special issues but not Festschrifts) no indications were given to the reviewers and strict double blind procedures were followed. I would go as far as we had even stricter procedures because of the notion that special issues are not of the same quality to the point that I found it frustrating.
I suspect this is entirely dependent on the editor and the practices vary significantly depending on the journals editor, the special issue editor, and the relation between the two.

I have reviewed a few articles for special issues. At some journals, you know that there's a difference, because you're recruited as a reviewer by the "special editor" for that issue.
With respect to the standards used, I would say that there should be no difference between the two. However, I think it's fair to say that some allowances might be made for special issues that would not apply under normal circumstances. At the same time, I think that the awareness of this is fairly widely known in academic circles, and therefore some allowances are made for this. These tend not to be the "super groundbreaking" papers, but often tend to be "current progress" or "latest but perhaps not greatest" work out of the labs submitting them.

I think there is a difference in the peer-review process, but not so much on the reviewer end. In general, when I review a manuscript, I do not consider the target journal. I attempt to point out the good and the bad and leave it to the editor to decide what to do with my reviews. The difference then arises with what the editor does. While the topic of a manuscript might not fit in with the journal in general, hence making it difficult to publish, it might be a perfect fit for a special issue. Similarly, the manuscript might not have as much data as typically required for the journal making its scope narrower, but it still might fit fine with the special issue (especially give the time constraints).

I would argue that this may differ quite a lot between individual journals and, I venture to guess, may also differ between journals with different status. A basic "rule" for a journal (upheld by its editors) is to make the journal as good as possible, to attract good and high impact papers. To have an issue that is sub-par is therefore not favourable. Hence each editorial board will impose restrictions on such "festschrift"s. In the journal where I am Editor-in-Chief, we have had a tradition of such "schrift"s but we decided to not accept such themes. We do run thematic issues with guest editors but in all cases the papers and their reviewing is transparent to the Editors-in-Chief which means we can intervene and ensure a fair review process and uphold the quality we strive to ensure. In my opinion the "festschrift" is something which is generally not looked upon favourably since it signals that there may be dodgy reviewing or just buddy-reviewig involved. Most journals probably stay clear of such issues for this reason. In the end the local traditions will determine whether such "schrift"s will be produced. So the bottom line is that certainly editors would be cautious about such journal issues. This means that the review process may not be any different, in fact sometimes more strict, while in some cases anything could go through and it is this uncertainty which on the whole makes the "festschrift" concept unattractive to any journal which tries to uphold a good reputation.
So my (probably unsatisfactory) answer is: yes and no, it will vary quite substantially between journals. Such differences should not exist but they do and it is difficult to know or judge in each individual case.


text:
What's the editor's benefit in setting deadlines for manuscript revision?
In many journals of my field, upon acceptance of a manuscript for publication with minor revisions, the editor sets a deadline (4 weeks, in many journals) for submission for the revised manuscript.
While I usually resubmit these papers as fast as possible, I don't see the benefit for the editor to set a deadline. After all, once a paper is “almost accepted”, the authors are motivated enough to get it over the final line, aren't they?

Editing a journal is a non-trivial exercise, something which tends to drag on forever and requires lots of pushing of reviewers and authors to complete their tasks on time. It is time-consuming. Without deadlines, reviewers and authors will submit their work arbitrarily late, making it very difficult to get each issue out on time.
Authors may well be motivated to get over the final line, but when there are other things to do and the possibility of delaying one piece of work yet another day, then it is easy to delay that work.

As a side note: in the journals I know, having your work accepted happens much earlier than determining what goes into which issues… (that, and some of the online journals actually don't have issues)

Without deadlines, progress doesn't.

Well, you want predictability in any manufacturing business, and printing press is that kind of manufacturing endeavour. Without deadlines for submissions, you won't have predictability in production.


text:
Referring to previous work “by the authors”
Let's consider two papers, one by authors A1, A2, A3 and one by authors B1, B2, B3. In the case of two publications by the same research group, some of the authors may be the same, some may be new… Typically, the senior author/team leader is the same, which means that A3 = B3 (in fields where the senior author is typically listed last).
Now, my question is: in which cases is it okay to refer to the earlier work by the words “the authors”, as in “the authors have shown in [ref] that…”? Is it only okay if the two author sets are strictly equal? Or is it used when A ⊂ B or A ⊃ B? Or when the first author is the same?

I would avoid it altogether, why not simply write B1 et. al have shown that...?

In a paper by X and others, it seems a bit weird to write “X et al. have shown that…”

Of course this situation will only come up occasionally unless you are in the habit of submitting a lot of MPUs.

@dmckee: Yes, but that's one of the reasons the situation feels so awkward.

@dmckee I had to look up what MPU meant… It probably is related to some extent. The most common situation I see is having one or two staff researchers as authors common to multiple papers, along with a post-doc. As post-docs come and go, authorship changes along time on related (but not necessarily sequential) papers.

I would avoid "the authors" unless it is exactly the same set of authors (preferably in the same order).
I don't see anything wrong with "B1, A2 and B3 have shown that..." even when A2 is one of the authors of the present paper.  It seems a little strange at first, but is quite common.  I have also seen phrases like "B1 and the second author have shown that..." to refer to a paper by B1 and A2 while avoiding mentioning A2 by name, but in more complicated examples it gets pretty unwieldy.

+1, Similar to your second suggestion, especially when there is a clear "lead authority" on a topic, I've used B1 and colleagues have shown. It is similar to to gerrit's suggestion in a comment on the question, and avoids the awkward use of et al. when not citing a specific set of authors.

@JeffE I'm not sure I understand you comment (what does “this” stand for)… could you detail it a bit?

Sorry, I'll clarify:  If your name is AndyW and you are the "lead authority" on some topic, do not write "AndyW and colleagues have shown...".

What about the passive

It has been shown that ... (refs)

First, passive voice is generally to be avoided.  Second, the phrase "it has been shown that" carries no information; just delete it.  Third, people should get credit for their work, by name, even if the name is your own.


text:
Does submitting an enrollment intent mean that I am commiting?
I recently got accepted into two universities for the Fall 2013, and both of them asked for me to submit the enrollment intent. I submitted the intent for one of them but then one of my friends said that since I did that, it means I HAVE to go there. But I am still deciding where I want to go. The other university has asked me to send in the form within 2 weeks otherwise I would loose a seat. So let's say if I send an intent to them too, would I be able to pick which one I want to attend when I make my final decision in a few weeks?

I submitted the intent for one... but I am still deciding where I want to go — Don't do that.

Universities typically consider such intent statements to be binding.
If you submit these statements to multiple universities, they will all hold seats for you, seats which could otherwise go to someone from their waiting list.  This hurts those other applicants.  It is also a serious inconvenience to the department's admissions committee, as they need to meet their enrollment targets as closely as possible; failure to do so can affect their funding, and in extreme cases, the survival of the graduate program.  So this is at least inconsiderate on your part, and arguably unethical.
If the institutions find out that you have done this, it is possible that they may rescind their acceptances; this is uncommon but has been known to happen.  In addition, you would certainly forfeit any deposits that you paid.
At the undergraduate level, where deposits are almost always required (in the US), this practice is called "double depositing".  The National Association for College Admission Counseling, in their "Guide to the College Admission Process", says:

Colleges view dual or multiple deposits by students
  as serious violations of trust and may revoke a previous
  offer of admission from any student who is found to have
  sent tuition deposits to more than one college.

My advice is this: at this point, you should plan on attending the university X to which you've announced your intent.  However, if you are absolutely convinced that doing so would be a huge mistake (not merely that you think Y is a little bit better), then you could contact the admissions committee at X, explain your reasons, apologize, and ask to be released from your agreement.  If you do this, you should do it as soon as possible (ideally within days - don't stew about it for two weeks), and know that it will probably burn your bridges with X, as well as forfeiting your deposit.  If X says it's all right (they probably will - if you don't want to be there, they don't want you there), then you could send your intent to Y.
Some people might argue that you are also ethically obligated to inform Y of the situation.  I think it's kind of a gray area, myself.
You might also discuss the matter with an advisor or other professor at your current institution.  They might offer some perspective on X that would help reassure you.  In general, most people say that it isn't so crucial which institution you attend, within reason - your own skills and motivation are a much greater factor in your success.


text:
Waiting until MS thesis is Published before applying to PhD?
I was wondering if it would be a good Idea for me to wait until after my MS program is completed and my thesis is published before applying to a PhD program. There is no chance of me publishing my thesis before the December/January deadline of the fall 2013-14 admissions cycle as I am only 2 semesters into my program and the project I am doing doesn't necessarily move as fast as other projects.
Its important to note that I have NO publications at this point, but I do have two presentations at international conferences. Also, my ugrad Gpa was slightly higher than a 3.0... and my Masters GPA is a 3.7. I'm also in the Geosciences, if that matters
So with all that in mind, would it be a good Idea to wait until that publication comes in before applying to PhD ?

Remember that your letter writers will say what they think of your Master's thesis regardless of whether it has been published or not.

No.
Why rob yourself of potential opportunities?  Your chances of admission might be less than if you had a publication, but they're certainly bigger than if you don't apply at all.  If you aren't admitted anywhere, you can always apply again next year, after your thesis is done.

So the publication of a thesis is reason enough to reapply to schools that would have rejected me otherwise? That seems to suggest that the publication would be fairly significant in my application.

It might be.  It might not be.  It certainly can't hurt you.  The only way to find out is to reapply.

thanks for taking the time to respond Jeff, its a service to all of us nervous/neurotic students.


text:
Can an article "in press" (available online) be withdrawn/retracted?
Nowadays, many journals publish articles online ahead of print, in a state that is given various names by the various publishers: in press, ASAP, just accepted, ahead of print, etc. The final printed paper will be identical with the online one, except maybe for page numbers and color figures… They can be cited through their DOI.
But if somebody, author or reader, were to find a fatal flaw with one such article, what should happen? Would the article be withdrawn (or retracted) before printing, or would it be printed nonetheless, then retracted later? And in any case, would the resulting paper be considered part of the scientific record, or not?

I am not sure once a paper is in press the author has any "rights" to the paper.

In your question you say "fatal flaw" and the answer will strongly depend on the meaning or intent with using these words. A fatal flaw might mean a figure is wrong; you may have submitted an earlier version of a figure you later revised. A fatal flaw may also mean you discover something that negates your results; you used the wrong equation or based your conclusions on the wrong data, both in ways that would pose serious risk. A third way to interpret the term is by personally simply disagreeing with what has been published, but my guess is that this is not what you are primarily thinking about and it is of course not grounds for any actions.
In the second case, retraction could be the only way forward. You should of course make the journal aware of this as soon as possible and ask for their suggested solution. If you have your paper published online but not yet printed, the journal (publisher) might retract it and it will never be printed. If it is printed they might retract it and probably print a note in a following issue to that fact. See examples for why in The New England Journal of Medicine
In the first case, the journal will likely publish an erratum, publish the correct figure to follow up on the example. Anything that is of a technical nature and can be rectified by providing the correct version will be done so through errata,. In print this will be included also in a subsequent issue.
Elsevier, for example, summarizes their rules and provides the following grounds for retraction:

Article withdrawal: Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.
Article retraction: Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Occasionally a retraction will be used to correct errors in submission or publication.
Article Removal: Legal limitations upon the publisher, copyright holder or author(s).
Article Replacement: Identification of false or inaccurate data that, if acted upon, would pose a serious health risk.

In essence, if something is officially published with a doi, there is no way to get corrections made in the pdf or in print. The online version must correspond to the printed and so the solution becomes providing a correction later on.
Anything that has published will be possible to see. A paper that has been retracted will just be associated with a clear sign that a retraction has been made. The paper might live on through older copies on peoples computers or in their desk drawers.
There is an article in PLOS one that provides a perspective on retractions in general and which may be of interest.

I think that unless you're talking about a quarterly or annual journal, the investigative process for a retraction would probably stretch past the point where the journal would have to be sent to press. The only exception I can see is a clear-cut plagiarism case.
Therefore, I'd expect most plagiarism cases to proceed as if it were a standard case.
For online-only journals, you might be able to stall publication while you figured such issues out. The article, once accepted, should go through the same treatment as a published article, so a formal retraction should be done. Otherwise, it could look like nothing was ever submitted in the first place, which is wrong.

Yes, it makes sense for retraction. But for withdrawal by the authors, the time scale is shorter, isn't it?

I would assume so, although thankfully I don't have direct experience with that!


text:
Doctoral Consortiums: When, How Many and Are they actually useful?
I am a fourth year graduate student of information science. Broadly, I work in a rather interdisciplinary area at the intersection of location based social networks, usable privacy and surveillance studies.
I am post A exam - which in my university refers to a combination of qualifiers, orals and dissertation proposal/prospectus confirmation. I am regarded as ABD/doctoral candidate in my university. I go on the job market in another 6-12 months (depending on certain criteria such as in progress journal articles being published on time etc.)
In my specific field, folks publish in a combination of journals and conferences tending more towards the latter although my committee prefers the former.
My adviser and I have been discussing the possibility of my presenting a general overview of my doctoral dissertation work in doctoral consortiums in various conferences to get feedback and exposure to the community as a whole. Some of the sample conferences where my work is a good fit are here, here and here. I am looking to go into academia primarily (looking for both calls for tenure track positions as well as post doctoral positions)
My questions to the academia.stackexchange community are as follows:

How useful are doctoral consortiums for feedback and presentation of your dissertation in-progress to the broader academic community?
When is a good time to start attending doctoral consortiums?
How many doctoral consortiums are "enough"? (assuming funding to attend multiple ones)

Thank you for reading this question.

Having attended one of the doctoral consortiums you linked to as well as one you haven't, here's my perspective (as a student) on what doctoral consortiums provide a venue for:
A) Networking with peers and senior researchers in your field in a very targeted way.  A prolonged period of time ranging from 1-2 days is usually provided where you'll be closeted with other consortium students and senior researchers.  This gives you a set amount of time where not only will you have a bunch of students with you who are also interested in networking, but where senior people in the field who may not generally be approachable during a conference will be available and open to talking to you.  In addition, it also gives you a subset of people that you know will be at the conference that you can continue to network with during breaks and meals.
B) Getting an outside opinion on your research.  Doctoral consortiums will usually give you time to present your research so that the senior people in your field can give you feedback.  As a PhD student, sometimes it's difficult to get a perspective outside of what your advisor's agenda is.  Feedback during consortiums can help to provide new insights into how your work will be received in the larger research community, what people in the community perceive to be the strengths and weaknesses in your topic area, and how they think about what you're doing.
C) It gives you a place to practice presenting your research to a wider audience than just your advisor or your lab.  Even in a specific research area like human-computer interaction, which you linked to, there is a wide spread of topics that people will be doing research in.  Presenting at a doctoral consortium gives you a chance to really try to explain your research to a receptive audience that may have no background in what you're doing.  It's sort of like having a low stakes first shot at what you'll have to do when you eventually give job talks.
D) Depending on the conference, doctoral consortiums are arguably really nice for your CV because some of them are very selective and difficult to get into.
Not all doctoral consortiums are the same, but generally they are targeted for the point in your graduate career when you've picked your topic, done preliminary work or published a paper or two in that area, but before you're really entrenched in your planned research and can still change direction.
The idea is that by getting that outside feedback from senior researchers in the field, they'll be able to give you a nudge in the right direction if they foresee real problems with your topic/work in time for you to make corrections.
The general opinion that I've heard/witnessed has been that going to more than 2 is overkill and that at that point you won't be getting much out of them.  However, it's really good to get into at least one as a student.
A last point, since you mention funding, many doctoral consortiums provide some level of funding for students that have been accepted to ensure that they can attend.  In addition, they will often cover the registration fee for the conference that they're attached to.

Thanks ! This is a great answer ! Might you tell us which one you went to (out of the 3 that I linked?) and what your experience was specifically, there.

CHI Doctoral Consortium, I not only got a lot of great feedback on where I was in my dissertation process but also met a lot of other students, senior researchers in the field, and had the opportunity to see what other students at other institutions were doing.  It was also invaluable for giving me others to talk to and continue to meet with throughout the conference.

Here are some answers based on subjective experience in computer science.

How useful are doctoral consortiums for feedback and presentation of your dissertation in-progress to the broader academic community?

As you frame it, they are of little use. Most such events are collocated with better (top-tier) conferences in an area and those and their collocated workshops are actually much more useful forum for presentation of your on-going research.
Doctoral consortia are primarily a vehicle for networking in the community. The benefits of attending an event like that include 1) getting to know better your peers in your "academic generation" (if you remain in academia, this might become useful later in your career: think of them as future collaborators); and 2) getting an opportunity to have one to one interactions with senior members of the community (think of them as future supervisors/employers).

When is a good time to start attending doctoral consortiums?

In the last third of your doctoral studies. Given the purpose of doctoral consortia I mention above, often the participants will be specifically selected to only include those in the later stages of their studies when your thesis is outlined, your main thesis-relevant contributions to the state of the art are already set and when you are supposed to start to look for a post-doc gig.

How many doctoral consortiums are "enough"?

I don't know, but for most people I know one was the right amount.


text:
Can you cite a workshop or conference in a paper?
Some time ago, I went to a workshop/conference on the specific topic in my field. It was a small event, with not proceedings published. I would like to discuss it in an upcoming paper, in order to state that:

it was discussion with X and Y, spurred by the workshop on Z, which initiated this new direction of research.

in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due. Now, I could leave it in the text, or cite it as “private communication from X at Z”, or cite it directly in my references:

Workshop on Z, Big City, Country (2012)

Journal style doesn't say anything of this, but generally calls for references with superscript numbers. So, what is the best option to cite a whole workshop/conference? (and not a specific presentation)

You could mention the people with whom you discussed in the acknowledgements "thanks X and Y for helpful/... discussions" and cite the conference in the text.
To cite it in the correct style, I would recomment that you contact the editorial office and ask. I once asked about the style of referencing a thesis and recieved an answer very fast, so this is the safest way in my opinion.

The issue here is that conversations are not normally "on the record." The point of a citation is verification: you are giving credit by citing the "original source" that you are using. Since you would not really be pointing them to material actually associated with the workshop, you should cite "Private Communication" with the involved individuals—although you could cite the event as the "location and date" fields for the communication.

"The point of a citation is verification: you are giving credit"  Those are two very different things, not one point.

Typically, only published sources should be referenced. Exceptions may be personal communication and reports. Quoting, for example, a discussion during a meeting is therefore quite difficult unless you can quote the persons (and that meeting) as personal communication. The problem is that the discussion or statement(s) are not officially recorded somewhere. There is of course nothing wrong with simply printing out the occurence of the discussion at the meeting in full text. I am not sure if I have seen it but something along the lines your first example with names (and titles) clearly indicated. Just remember to clear the statement with the persons you quote and do not forget to state the date of the conversation/conference.

"Typically, only published sources should be referenced. Exceptions may be personal communication and reports."  That's not logically consistent.

@AnonymousPhysicist, In what way?

Something cannot be "only" and also have "exceptions."  Also, the first sentence is just wrong.

@AnonymousPhysicist OK, in my mind the word "typically", which preceeds the word only modifies the second word so that it taken together reads something similar to "in most cases" or "most of the time". With this in mind I do not see your issue. If you feel the wording is still wrong please feel free to change it as long as the gist of the answer is not lost..

Discussions with peers are the most common way to produce new ideas, insights, and actual work that gets published.

Peers that have been crucial for the paper are co-authors
Peers that contributed to some important ideas that spurred the paper, but not the actual paper, should go in acknowledgment section:"The authors wish to thank John Doe for..."
Peer whose unpublished ideas are quoted in your work should be referred in a citation as "Doe,J, private communications".

If you want to specify that the workshop X has been particularly helpful, then you can cite "Doe,J, private communications at workshop X".
Of course some journals may ask you to revise this logic, but you can stil use it as a starting point for submission.

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


text:
When suggesting referee names, where do you draw the line for conflict of interest?
Journal submission guidelines in my field typically require the submitting author to provide the editor with a list of potential referees. The journal guidelines ask to suggest people with whom we have no collaboration, no joint publications and no conflict of interest.
Given how competitive academic research is, I sometimes wonder how conservative one should be in choosing potential referees. After a long career, if I am to exclude all people whom I have collaborated with over time, there will be few experts left qualified to judge the work! On the other hand, someone with whom I am just starting a project with, and has nothing published with me so far, would not be seen as a violation by the editor, yet would not be rally fair (if we work together, he has a vested interest in my success).
So, I am asking here what guidelines or principles can be proposed in this gray area.

In addition to any guidelines you might get, I suggest that if you are in doubt you can give the editor all the relevant information and let them decide. BTW this is also relevant when being asked to review a paper.

The National Science Foundation in the US has clearly articulated guidelines for what constitutes a conflict of interest for reviewers of grant proposals.  These are probably safe — and certainly defensible — guidelines for you to follow.  Specifically (and for the reason you mention), research collaborations are considered to be a conflict only if they occurred within the last 4 years (there are other rules as well, please see the document).

link is dead, can you update the answer?


text:
What does “Prof. Dr. ir.” mean?
I have a Belgian colleague who is “Prof. Dr. ir.”. What does it mean?

I am assuming you are confused by the "ir" part. I think it is a reference to engineer/Ingénieur. I am not sure if it means the individual holds an EngD/ScD or simply a certification in engineering.

@DanielE.Shub I am also somewhat confused by the addition of all those titles… does “Prof.” mean university professor? If so, I don't think you can get there without being “Dr.”, thus I don't see the need for “Prof. Dr.” compared to just “Prof.”…

"Prof. Dr." is different from, for instance, "Prof. M.D." or even "Prof." alone since you can become professor without having a PhD.

@SylvainPeyronnet how come you named Professor without holding PhD degree?

I don't know the Belgian system, but in the German system it is not uncommon to list all honorifics, so something like Prof Dr. Dr. Dr. Smith would be someone with a single professorship and 3 doctorates. Sometimes you would see that as Prof DDDr. Smith. If Smith got a fourth doctorate, I believe the honorific would change to Prof. Dr. mult. Smith.

@seteropere you can become a professor without a PhD. A doctorate (e.g., MD, EdD, ScD) is helpful, but not a requirement.

@seteropere In France (only country for which I know very well the system), you need the "habilitation" to become a (full) prof. To have the habilitation, you need either a PhD plus a good research record with many publications, students, etc. or a very strong research record without the need of a PhD. For instance, there are researchers from industry who obtain professorship without having a PhD.

@Pieter, I deleted my answer as it just duplicates information from an existing answer and existing comments.

In The Netherlands the ir bit is the equivalent of an MSc from a technical university.

Ir. means a masters degree in Engineering.
source : Belgian Education :)
I added a "reference". This Prof. Dr. Ir. received a M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven), Belgium
Also, from wikipedia:
Belgium
In Belgium, there are two types of engineering degrees:

"Burgerlijk Ingenieur" /"Ingénieur civil" or "Master of Science in Engineering" (abbrev. "ir.") - 5 years study (3 BSc. + 2 MSc.)
"Bio-ingenieur"/ "Bioingénieur" or "Master of Science in Bioscience Engineering" (abbrev. "ir") - 5 years study (3 BSc. + 2 MSc.)
"Industrieel Ingenieur" or "Master of Science in Industrial Sciences" (abbrev. "Ing.") - 4 years study (3 BSc. + 1 MSc.)(3 BSc. + 2 MSc. in 2013-future) (for the Flemish Region)
"Ingénieur industriel" or "Master of Science in Industrial Sciences" (abbrev. "Ing.") - 5 years study (3 BSc. + 2 MSc.) (for the Walloon Region)

link

Suggested reference: https://ie-net.be/content/belgium

In some countries you use all of the titles one holds (e.g. Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium etc.)
In plain English it means someone who holds the profession of engineering (can be just bachelors or masters) who has a PhD and who is a Professor (senior ranked, depending on the system can mean a full professor or even an associate prof).
Edit:
The tricky bit is what constitutes holding the professing of engineering. In Netherlands/Belgium it is automatic once you have the degree from a technical uni (e.g. Delft or Eindhoven). In some places you need to be a certified engineer to hold it (e.g. Malaysia or Mexico as I understand).

Yeah, I imagined that… the question is: what are the exact requirements for this particular denomination (in the Belgian system)? “holds the profession of engineering” is vague…

@F'x, it means that they have completed an engineering degree. Just for contrast, my academic parent now holds the title "Prof. Dr. rer. nat.", as he is a professor and holds a doctorate in the natural sciences (in the archaic sense, he's a computer scientist).

Thats the tricky bit. In Netherlands it is automatic once you have the degree from a technical uni like Delft or Eindhoven. In some places you need to be a certified engineer to hold it (e.g. Malaysia or Mexico as I understand). Don't know the situation in Belgium.

"Dr. ir." is usually someone from Belgium or the Netherlands; I haven't seen that abbreviation used in other countries.

@aeismail Agreed. That exact abbreviation might not be used but similar flavors are used elsewhere.

A minor addition: you don't get the ir. title with a bachelor degree, only after a master's.

@Pieter True in Netherlands and Belgium but in other places you can if you are a certified engineer.

Prof-DR-Ir refers to three professional titles: (1) Prof - Professor (2) DR - Doctorate Holder (3) Ir - Professional Engineer.
Prof is normally awarded to one who lectures in a university. He might or might not have a PhD or equivalent. But current university's requirement requires all Professors to have a PhD.
Doctorate is a doctoral level qualification ie above master. This could be PhD or EngD or now a new one IndDoc
Ingeniur refers to engineers with a minimum BSc in engineering. This is a Board of Professional qualification after a graduate sat for the professional exams after a minimum of 3 yrs experience in field and management.
So if a person holds the title DR Ir he is a doctoral holder in engineering. And if he holds Prof DR Ir he is a professor in a university who is holding a doctorate in engineering.

This is true for Germany, but I am not sure about other countries.
The doctoral title you hold, unlike other titles, can be a voluntary addition to the name. It is therefore the only title you can add to your passport.
Based on the situation, you can leave it out though. Most colleagues left it out on their doorbell, some add their field (like the engineering in this case); partially to avoid people with the flu ringing at their door.
Adding your field to your title can help in other situations as well, since it simply conveys what you are doing in three letters or less. People from your, or related, fields can then simply judge what subtopics best to look into, while talking to you at e.g. a conference.
The addition of the Prof. tells people that you are (also) holding a teaching position, or at least where at some point. This shows people even more of what you do. Being yet another bar to pass, some people don't like it being left out, when addressed.
So: trying to tell people more about him, your colleague added eight letters and three dots to his name. Pretty neat, for a CV, right?
EDIT: Changed, based on information given by pieter.

I don't think it is true that Dr. is part of the official name in Germany, see e.g. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doktor It is certainly not true in the Netherlands (and most likely Belgium as well).

This isn't quite accurate. A "Dr. rer. nat." is not considered the same thing as a "Dr." according to many German universities.

Ir. is a title equivalent to a Master's (it takes five years to get as far as I know since all technical/natural sciences Masters are two years, on top of the three year Bachelor) but from a technical university, so therefore in a technical field. I have an MSc. (2 years) and a BSc. (3 years) and thus can use 'Drs' (Doctorandus) which is a title used in the Netherlands. Had I done this/a similar degree in another university, I would have gotten 'Ir.'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctorandus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_degree for explaination on the 'Ir.' title. I don't know how much is true of the statement that it often takes seven years, even though it's a five year program.
I know people who have 'Ir.' but are not an engineer (at least not in the classical sense) but have studied something like biotechnology or molecular biology.

I'm"Ir.Wisoot SRIRUENG".I'm a Thai Engineer which I've been Certified/Register by Malasia Engineering Council.
I was graduated in Welding Engineer and Master of Science(MSc.Env)also including "International Welding Engineer(IWE)"Diploma register from IIW (International Institute of Welding).
Ir is used for Certified/Register Engineer in Malasia that shown you're a professional registered engineer.


text:
What should you do if you cannot reproduce published results?
I am trying to reproduce published results in a paper. Those results come from numerical simulations. The original authors and I do not use the same software, and theirs is proprietary (I don't have access to it). I have tried to reproduce their results, and it works qualitatively but not quantitatively: the differences between their results and mine on typical quantities of interest are between 2 and 5 times the expected accuracy of the method.
So far, I have communicated with the original authors, trying to clear out all possible sources of error I could think of (checked that I got the tricky parts of the algorithms right, checked that the “usual” parameters that were missing from their paper had the “usual” values, everything I could think of). They are forthcoming enough, and reply to my questions quickly, but it's clear they don't want to invest time in doing any serious follow-up on their side. And without access to their software, it appears I'm stuck.
Now, my question is on how to proceed. The “ideal case” for unreproducible results is to make a detailed analysis of how and why they cannot be reproduced, and possibly find out a source of failure (or at least plausible issues). This advances the field, and is probably publishable (not in a very high-profile journal). Here, this is not possible.
I have, however, nice results that I have obtained (extending their work far beyond what was already published), and if I didn't have these differences with their paper, it would make a very attractive paper. What can I do with those? Is it possible to publish them, merely noting the different with their paper without more comment? Or are my results simply unpublishable? I welcome any comment, especially from people who have found themselves in such an uncomfortable situation!

You mention different software. How much difference between the hardware platforms?

@scaaahu don't know, probably don't care :)  The algorithms are robust, I can run my own simulations on various hardware with only minor differences (100 ulp, at most…). The differences I observe currently are of the order of 1-5%.

That was my 2-cents worth.

Different softwares maybe mean different technical choices that impact on the accuracy, such as representation of real numbers and related stuff. Did you check about that issues?

Are you going to make your code freely available?

Can you compare model results to measurements?

@Nicholas it's not my code, but it is open source. I can make my input files (full parameters, etc.) available as supplementary material with the article…

@F'x Great - so your code is freely available and you can publish (or at least make available) your input parameters. Interested workers in the field can then replicate your results easily and hopefully confirm them if desired. The same can't be said necessarily of the authors of the original paper owing to the proprietary nature of their software. I've added my vote to EnergyNumbers' answer. Publish.

I have been in a very similar situation. The difference is that in my case, the others' code was a different approach to the same problem as mine that a reviewer asked me to compare against. The other authors had not published their source code, so I had to implement their method from scratch. I spent three months working on four different attempts to implement their method but was unable to make it work. In the end, I published my own method without comparison to the other because I was able to convince the editor that I had made a huge effort to try to reproduce their results.

Just publish. Publish your attempts to replicate the findings, documenting the discrepancies, together with the nice results you've obtained by extending their work. Consider sending a draft to the original authors for their comments.

If I was the editor of the journal or conference this was submitted to, I would almost certainly invite one of the authors of the original work for a formal blind review.

@ChrisGregg Wouldn't there be a conflict of interest for the reviewer?

Publishing results that contradict previous publications can be awkward, but if you can show that your method is correct beyond reasonable doubt, then it shouldn't be a problem. No code is guaranteed to be completely free of errors and no result is guaranteed to be correct just because it is published.
You don't say much about the nature of your computations/methods, but do you have any test cases for which analytical solutions are known or can be derived? If you can show that your code reproduces these results, then you can make the case that your code's results for the specific problem in question should be reliable.
Ideally, if you have such a test-case, you could ask the other authors to run it with their own code, and see if they also produce correct results. They may not want to, but that's their problem, not yours.
In summary, if you go to reasonable lengths in your paper to demonstrate the accuracy of your code/method against known analytical solutions, you shouldn't be too worried about not matching other people's results. At least that would be my opinion as a referee.

Contrast “if you can prove that your method is 100% correct, then it shouldn't be a problem” and “no code is guaranteed to be completely free of errors”. There is no way I can prove that my method has no bug.

@F'x: Good point, I amended my answer accordingly :)  What I meant is to show that it is correct beyond reasonable doubt.

@F'x This is a bit pedantic, but it code can be proven to be correct, although it's rare and usually happens on a small scale.

@PeterOlson, your comment begs for the famous quote by Donald Knuth: Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. ;)

@Pedro Excellent idea on the benchmarking, which is really one of the best ways to validating the accuracy of a method. It's really amazing how often we researchers avoid this critical step, thinking we have everything in order when we don't.

(Disclaimer: I have no personal experience with such a situation, so I'm just going off plain common sense.  That said...)
It sounds like you've already taken every reasonable step to discover the source of the discrepancy, and you're now left with just an "unexplained deviation" between your results and theirs.  You also say that the discrepancy doesn't actually affect the qualitative conclusions drawn from the results in any way.
At this point, if I were you, I'd just go ahead and publish your extended results, and just briefly note the discrepancy when you compare your results with prior work.
As long as you're reasonably certain that your results are correct (up to expected limits of numerical accuracy), you can't really be expected to be able to explain any inaccuracies in other people's results.  Of course, you definitely should make sure that others can easily reproduce your results and verify the correctness of the methods you used to obtain them, e.g. by making your software freely available.
If you really think that merely documenting the discrepancy between the two sets of results would be publishable on its own, doing that and then citing that publication in your main paper could also be an option.  Generally, though, I'd expect that to be practical only if the precise quantitative values in dispute are actually of importance to others working in your field.

All the publications in the scientific journals should be reproducible and accurate. It is very important task to examine others' results. Original authors get lots of credit if an independent researcher verifies their theory or model.
Almost all journals have a section named Comment, *Letters* or Letter to Editor. Below are some links to these columns:

Comment in IEEE Trans. Antennas. Prop. A Comment on “Joint elevation and Azimuth direction finding using L-shaped array”
Letters in PNAS Genome composition, caste, and molecular evolution in eusocial insects
Correspondence in Nature Reply to 'Measurement of mobility in dual-gated MoS2 transistors'
You can send your findings to the same journal and explain all of your finding. Then the editors send your comments to the authors, and they need to provide appropriate response to the journal.

Of course, this is tricky, and you need to be careful. If you think everything is precise in your code, comment on the paper is an option.

I would be very wary of publishing and as a reviewer I would be wary about recommending publication. The unexplainable difference in results hints at a mistake. That mistake is either yours or theirs. I would like to know for sure that it is their mistake before publishing. Even though you cannot compare the two methods directly, you could still publish your method independently showing that it gives the "correct" answer in a battery of test cases and then noting that it gives a different answer in the non-testable case.
You could then refer to this paper when you publish the real work. The advantage is that it removes the need to dilute the message of the real paper with the details of the method. A second advantage is it may result in the original authors running the test batter with their method. This is especially true if you call them out in an earlier draft and send them a copy prior to submission. You could also request them as reviewers.
A different strategy might be a lab visit (physical or virtual) to use their software on your test battery.

The software is different, but the method is supposed to be the same.

"The unexplainable difference in results hints at a mistake." Yes, it does. But it does not provide any particular handle on which party made it. F'x hasn't provided us with any particular reason to that that the earlier publication can be taken as gospel. A important question here is "Have other reproduced it?".

Any concerns that @F'x is the one making the mistake could be softened by F'x making his code publicly available.

I like the idea of giving them the chance to run your tests with their tool. If they get bad results there, you can comfortably call the former results errorneous. (Provided your tests are good, of course.) If they get good results, you are back at square one.

@F'x Clearly the software and the method are not the same . This could be different algorithms or different settings/parameters between the two codes. I agree with Daniel E. Shub that I would (as an editor or reviewer) be hesitant to accept your results without some attempt to explain the discrepancies. For better or worse, their work is published and yours isn't so the responsibility lies on you to try and explain the differences, or at least validate your method.

I'd like to add one point that has not been mentioned yet. It may or may not be applicable to your situation, but it might be in the general case. You mention that the output from the numerical simulations don't agree. Therefore, I suggest:
If two models can't be made to agree, it's time to do measurements.
Actually, this is a good idea even if they do agree, but if you can do measurements, you will be able to confirm that at least one of the models is incorrect at least for the specific situation of the measurement.
Of course this is not always possible.

Can you/are you willing to throw a bone?
It might be worthwhile to discuss having them as an author on the paper. Perhaps you can strike a deal to get what you want (get access to their software, results, etc.) in return for including them in your publications and having some level of collaboration. You might be surprised just being honest about this and talking about it openly might work! My best two papers to date come from doing exactly that and then developing working relation with the people that were not that forthcoming. After that we have published two additional papers together. Who knows you might actually end up collaborating and doing bigger and better thing together if it works. I would give it a try before deciding to just publish the results the way you described.

This can be a bit tricky... The joint paper may just as well look like the original author extending his/her own work, with you as just a subordinate co-author. The question you have to ask yourself is: Will this be seen as my own work/contribution? This is the question that hiring/grant committees will be asking too. If it is not clear that it's your own work, e.g. the other author is more senior and still active in the field, and/or he/she will present the joint work at conferences and talks too, then stay away from it.

@Pedro I suggested because "It's clear they don't want to invest time in doing any serious follow-up on their side". I agree that this could happen if the relation is not managed and negotiated well. But the up side is also significant as i experienced. In my case it was with the world lead author in the field and yes he took some credit for it but always mentioned me. I have got four papers out of working with him so far (and we still going) all in the fields top journals that i could publish and i think this had to do with the fact that i was publishing with him...

I agree with others that have suggested that publishing the new results are OK. Mention that there is a difference with the old method but that it is not qualitatively different.
Many journals have a policy of asking for a comment/rejoinder from the author of any study whose work directly contradicted. If the editors think your comment within the paper qualifies, you might finally get the answer you are looking for.
But I would also urge you to think hard about how much you want to put on the line for this discrepency and how much time you want to spend on it. It sounds like the results are qualitatively the same. If you end up being 100% correct on everything, the contribution from a paper that only talks about the difference will be a slightly better estimate. In some situations, that can be worth a lot. In lots of others, it doesn't count for much. You'll know how important this is for your field.
I once found a small methodological problem in a paper in my second year of grad school. I asked a similar question to yours to a professor who asked me if the methodological error was likely to change the result or invalidate the core findings. When I said it was very unlikely, he told me that it was probably not the best use of my time to work a lot on a rejoinder.
It's tough. I think you should say something. A note in the paper is probably enough. For this sort of thing, I think a research note on Arxiv  that you can cite might be an alternative.


text:
Which license should I aim to publish articles & software under?
Suppose I have the choice of license under which to publish my research work in Computer Science (constituting scientific papers and software) online; and that I need to make this decision before any journal or conference has accepted any of it. Specifically, suppose for the sake of discussion my academic employer would accept whatever it is I choose.
So, what to do, what to do... Is "better" or worse to put things in the public domain (e.g. via a CC0 dedication or otherwise), or to have a more rigid license? The FSF seems to be pretty critical of Creative Commons licenses, yet these can be seen at, say, arXiv... plus, I'm not sure I want to be all that legalistic with a 1000 pages of license text.
What should guide me when choosing the license, then? And what does your "licensing experience" teach you?

@BenCrowell: I know more than one PhD candidate whose advisor took some of his work and published it as his (the advisor's) own, with no attribution. So it's not about your work being classic, it's about (the fear of) plagiarism.

CC licenses are good for the written word, but you need a software license for software. You're going to have to have two licenses at the very least. On top of that, depending on your publication venue, you may not have a choice of license. Many venues require the transfer of copyright in order to publish, so your license for your articles may not matter once you give up your copyright.
To answer your question directly, for publicly funded work, I prefer the 3-clause BSD over public domain for software, but this is partially due to my institution's requirement to either use GPLv2 or BSD for software. For documentation CC-BY is my preference, and I have no institutional requirements there. I have these preferences because I believe that publicly funded work should be as open and free as possible to the people (i.e. the public) that funded it, but I adhere to an academic perspective that credit should be given where credit is due.

Ah, well, I've had the "copyright transfer demand" thing brought up before. I made sure to already have a copy published before, after which I could say I can no longer surrender exclusive rights... (although, to be fair, my PhD advisor handled that, and I just didn't sign anything to avoid the argument.)

@einpoklum That's only going to work so many times. If you have a prior publication, then many journals won't accept your articles. If you are difficult about your copyright transfers, you may have other difficulties publishing with more reasonable people. There are other options with some venues. The future may change if enough people resist the current model, but your life may be made more difficult on the way to making others' lives better.

Well, since I'm not currently aiming for a tenure-track position - I actually don't care that much. I am going to be one of those people who resist the current model.

I wish you the best of luck. Publications matter for things in non-tradtional academic employment, as well.

Don't worry, I'll get published just fine.


text:
How to prepare academically-minded students and postdocs for the eventuality of not finding secure academic employment?
Graduate students and postdocs are predominantly trained to be -- and driven by the prospect of becoming -- full-time academics. For a majority of them, there comes a point of reckoning when they realize they may not be among the select few that "make it" to a secure full-time academic job. This realization is commonly accompanied by the feeling of having been exploited by the academic system, a feeling that becomes more and more exacerbated the longer one remains in graduate studies or post-graduate contingent positions before moving on to a different field. This is both well-studied and quantified in higher-ed literature and virtually omnipresent as anecdotal accounts on higher-ed media.
As a soon-to-be assistant professor, how can I prepare academically-minded students and postdocs for the eventuality of not finding secure academic employment? Are there well-documented mentoring methods on this subject?
I am more interested in what I can do individually, rather than how to force institutional change collectively, as I have found it easier to find resources on the latter topic.

Are you assuming a particular discipline here? Most of my contemporaries got jobs, and good ones, in industry...

I don't doubt that in many disciplines (including mine) grad students and postdocs go on to secure good jobs in industry. My question is on how to help academically-minded students shift their focus towards industry with as little "separation anxiety" as possible. I am interested in answers with discipline-agnostic generality, as I think the topic is relatively common across fields.

Be open about all options. Learn how many recent graduates have gone where. Collaborate with industry and national labs. Support decisions to go those places. Bring in seminar speakers from those places. Etc.

It's a little concerning that you say "eventuality" of not finding academic employment. This sounds like you want to warn students off pursuing an academic career rather than focusing your mentoring on making sure that they're competitive in the academic job market.

I'd like to see a few links supporting the claim, "This is both well-studied and quantified in higher-ed literature...", and perhaps this  would help focus the responses, as well.

@ElizabethHenning Eventuality is defined as “possible event or outcome”. If you are unaware of the chances of landing an academic job, even if you are in one of the most privileged academic environments on the planet, your answer is just a web search away.

@DanielR.Collins no time to point to you the enormity of evidence, just start with How the University Works by Marc Bousquet and follow the trail.

-1 for not giving citations for claims in the question.

A few of your students may just study your subject for the pure love of it. More of them, I suspect, will settle for nothing but an academic career. You may not be able to convince them to aim otherwise.
But, you can still, with some effort, show them all what the alternatives are. In particular you can do two things, one simple and the other harder.
The first is to develop a list of sources in various industries that utilize the sorts of things you teach. Invite someone to visit your class about one day a month and to talk about the sorts of applications that are done in their industry. Even better if they can talk about their own personal involvement. It will take a while to get started in this, but a contact might be willing to return annually. You can expand this, possibly, if there are several sections of your course, even those taught by others, and have a late afternoon or evening seminar with such a guest.
The second thing is to develop, over time, an internship program with local industries, where students visit the companies and maybe perform some tasks there. But just visiting the companies to see what life might be like in industry might be enough. Many universities have internships and some depend on them as a fundamental part of the education, so you might be able to get some help in this.
One of the problems of the future academic mindset is lack of knowledge of the alternatives. You can give them at least a hint of that.

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


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What to do when you have small yet additional results to a submitted paper?
Suppose I finished work on a manuscript and submitted it to a journal. After X weeks, I suddenly realized I can prove one of the conjectures I left open in the concluding section. It seems that X is small enough (e.g. 1) so that nothing visible has happened to my submission yet.
The proof is not long, and wouldn't be important enough to merit its own paper. Will it reflect badly on me if I contact the managing editor to have the current submitted version updated? The smaller X is, the less annoyed people would probably be. I could just submit to arxiv, but I would like to make the manuscript stronger, and don't have results scattered around giving a hasty impression either. Or is there another solution I'm overlooking?

Probably better to wait for the reviewer comments and incorporate everything in one go. It's a pretty safe bet considering how uncommon it is to get an accept straight away, at least in my field. Secondly, considering you see another proof only 1 week after submission already induces a hasty impression.

As Marc says in his comment, the best thing to do is probably to incorporate the new proof into your revision, after you get reviewer feedback. A small extension not worth its own paper is unlikely to make a difference between reject and revise. If you send it now, it may annoy the editor and reviewers. Also, the reviewers will likely be just fine with more new material you add in revision.

Out of curiosity: how much material can you actually add to your work after you get the reviewer feedback? If the addition is substantial enough, shouldn't it be reviewed again? Does the editor even like such behaviour? Does it happen that the author adds in stuff, and the reviewers look at the additions again? I'd think that it's good for the paper and the scientific community the stronger the paper is, but I can see this might be a little messy...

For a journal process, you can add quite a lot, just declare it in your response letter.  The editor will decide whether it needs to be sent to the reviewers again or not.  Speaking from my experience as an editor, adding material that strengthens a paper is pretty much always welcome, since it's good for everybody involved.