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What kind of questions can I expect in an an interview for an Associate Professor position in the Netherlands?
I am an Asst Prof working at a mid-size liberal arts college in the US.
Recently I applied for an Associate Professor position in the Netherlands and got invited to do a Zoom interview. I’m pumped! I’ve read a bit about the differences in academia between the two countries, but sure would appreciate any input in what kind of questions I could expect.
I’ll be interviewed by internal 4 professors, one PhD student, and an external scholar. Intense.
I’ve never had to interview before because I did my MSc, PhD, postdoc, Lecturer, Assistant Professor jobs all at the same institution.
Any input on what I can expect, especially from the Dutch and European perspective, but honestly overall, would be great! Should I wear a tie?

I recently had an interview for a faculty position in the Netherlands. I did not find the experience any different from other European countries where I had interviews (four in total). One unique question was: How would I approach exams and grading in a lecture with 100s of students? (Given that it's not allowed to involve TAs in grading in the Netherlands.)

Wardrobe questions will mostly depend on your field, rather than the country.

Off topic, but I'm staggered that you went from Master's student to assistant professor without having a single interview. Even though you stayed at the same institution that seems bonkers.

Cool, ok. Great point.

@astronat I went from undergrad student to full professor without being interviewed.  I think that means only that I'm old.

@lighthousekeeper "Given that it's not allowed to involve TAs in grading in the Netherlands." That...isn't true! I wonder why they told you that! Maybe you define TA differently somehow?

A late answer, but this is for anyone else on the forum searching for Netherlands answers.
For the most part, the topics, focus, and advice for interviewing in the Netherlands is the same for the UK. The hiring process is similar and, thus, is nothing much like the USA. Sample questions for the UK though apply here and there is a lot of guidance on this forum and elsewhere regarding UK interview process and questions.
In the Netherlands, though, be prepared to answer questions about language if you don't already know how to speak Dutch. Even in very-English-speaking Universities (such as mine) there is a strong social push to learn Dutch and there may even be a hiring requirement for you to achieve a certain Dutch level within a few years. Get ready to talk about this and what that means to you. You, yourself, should ask questions regarding the language culture of your department, e.g. if faculty meetings take place in English or in Dutch. Even within the same faculty, it can vary by department.
Second, spend some time familiarising yourself with the Dutch and European funding landscape. Dig through the NWO website and know what Veni, Vidi, and Vicis are. Know about Horizon funding, including the ERC, and the various other EU schemes. Come up with some application plans and run them by a Dutch academic friend to ensure that they make sense. This will put you on even footing with local/European candidates who already know the ropes.
Finally get the Dutch PhD straight in your mind. It is hard for Americans to grasp (I know, I am one), that in most cases Dutch PhDs are employees with pensions etc. They are referred to as PhD Researchers, not students. They are colleagues. At most Dutch Universities there is no paying for a PhD, you are either paid, or you do an "external PhD" where you get supervisors and a library card, but never pay any fees. Okay yes, there are a few other PhD scenarios but this is the most foreign one to a lot of outsiders.

"in most cases Dutch PhDs are employees with pensions etc. " After >5 years at the universities almost for free, those spoiled europeans even get a working contract to do a PhD, with holidays, unemployment and retirement schemes included by default!
Holidays: something like 8 weeks, if you do not take them all, you can buy a bicycle with what is left over (not paid ou directly).
What a strange world :D

Great answer. However, having done both UK and NL interviews, I'd say that the NL one had a lesser focus on 'generic' questions ('sample questions for the UK') and more focus on asking on-the-spot questions about my research as presented during the interview. I'd say the ratio was maybe 20:80 for specific-generic in the UK, and around 50:50 in the NL. So in addition to 'UK academic interview questions' I would definitely practice talking about various parts of your work at different abstraction levels (and even 'sparring' about your research a bit with a colleague if you can).

Similar situation also was true for teaching questions. In the UK, there seems to be more value on willingness and ability to teach foundational courses (in my case, something like "Intro to Programming") and even the more specialised MSc level courses are pretty standardised at least in name ("Image Processing"). In the NL, the focus was on specific, tailored courses ("With your Image Processing background, what course would you propose to the students based on your research interests?").

@EarlGrey, nothing is "free" I expect that taxes are generally high as they are in many European countries. It is a social choice to organize things in a certain way. That is the real difference with the US. Education is a social good that can be well or poorly supported with public monies.

@Buffy The taxes are high but, as implied, you get quite a lot for them. You actually even get £350 towards a bike then you can do the tax thing. Also, there's the 30% tax ruling: for 5 years 30% of my salary is untaxed. The External PhD really is free. You don't have to be physically present in the Netherlands to be doing one, you just need two supervisors to accept you. You can choose whatever you want to be for it.

@penelope It might be situation and department specific: we always asked specifics in my UK department and usually had specific courses in mind beyond the basics that, really, anyone should be able to teach. So hiring specifically someone who could teach something like "transnational security" at a masters level.


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Proportion of journal submissions by developing countries
Is there any source that details the ratio of journal submissions that come from developing countries to those that come from developed countries?
I see extremely low acceptance rates in my field and wonder about the contribution of developing country submissions to this high rejection rate.
EDIT: Feel free to answer the slightly different question of the ratio that comes from extremely low ranked institutions (e.g. below 1000th in the world).

This is a question straight out of the domain of scientometrics - a field I have had some limited experience in. There is no one source which gives you your answer; rather this is a contextual, complicated and rather nuanced question which you have asked. The true answer is it depends on the field. For instance in the field of ICTD (Information and Communication Technologies for Development), the proportion of articles is very high (which makes intuitive sense) but this may not be true for other fields. Remember also that the term developing countries has a very shifting definition and is therefore temporally bound.
With this exposition, here are some studies which I can point you towards which have looked at  answering some, sub-section of your question. I also include studies on conferences (because certain fields are more conference centric) and also broadly scientific productivity and impact among scientists and researchers in developing countries. This is because these are all highly related and in total, might help you.
This study tells us that only 7.9% of articles in the top 21 Library and Information Science journals are from developing countries or eastern european countries.
This study tells us that articles from developing countries tend to cite other articles form other developing countries and thus, creates a vicious cycle of citations.
This study attempted to define a special collaboration metric for articles from developing countries. It recommended usage of this metric to measure productivity and impact from developing countries instead of the usual suspects (h-index etc.)
This study, specific to Chile attempts to find out root causes of low scientific productivity (i.e. publications) from Chilean authors in Chilean universities. (eg. low priority of funding, lack of interest in research, corruption etc.)
This study is a meta-level article into looking at the scientific productivity in developing countries across the world. It presents a socio-historical approach and also attempt to quantify certain key characteristics of developing countries' scientific productivity and reasons behind the low numbers of article.
This study points out that the present measures of bibliometric/scientometric analysis is skewed towards developed countries and as such is not a good indicator of research productivity in developing nations. The authors point out that alternative sources of databases, specifically presented as a case study of Cuba might provide better insights.
I would also request you to take such quantitative studies with a pinch of salt because they do not often paint an accurate or holistic picture of what's actually going on behind the scenes.

It might be helpful to summarize each link in a single/couple of sentences - links move/die, hence SE sites typically require some additional content about the links in an answer as well...

Agree with TCSGrad. When this is done I'll award the correct answer. One sentence each is fine (e.g., 'this paper finds X,Y and Z').

Thanks for the comments. I have made the relevant edits. I hope that my answer is clearer now.

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Where to find journal impact factors stripped of self-citation?
Where can I find a database of impact factors where self-citation has been removed? A journal's self-citations are defined as those citations by that journal's papers towards other papers in the same journal.
The reason I want to know this is to know which journals are engaged in coercive citation so that I know which journals I should avoid.

Even with self-citations excluded, I don't think impact factor will be a reliable measure of reputability / goodness.

@Jase can you write a little more about what you're trying to find out, as that will help us provide better answers?  Perhaps if you can say why you want to know which journals are actually "reputable/good" that will help. Is it to decide where you should publish? What you should subscribe to? Which you should cite? Which you should trust?

I want to know which journals are actually reputable/good. — Which journals have papers that you actually read and actually cite?  Those.

@NateEldredge I have rephrased my post to make it more sensible.

@JeffE Since I am a new researcher I am not really familiar yet with the 50 or so mainstream journals.

@Jase: Then you probably have some reading to do before you start thinking about publishing anything.

@Jase, given the edit, I think the question is really something like: "how do I find out which journals engage in coercive citation?" Is that right? If so, please could you change the title accordingly?

@EnergyNumbers All I want is to know where to find IFs stripped of self-citation. This will help me to identify those engaged in coercive citation. There are other ways of identifying this which I don't want to be told (because I already know them), and therefore I feel that the existing question is appropriate.

Self-citing journals could also be prestigious so that most good papers in a field are found in them. This is definitely the case in my research field. So the issue is more complex.

Why do you think coercive citation can be adequately detected by the amount of self-citation? A lot of fields work with a small subset of good journals where self-citation is almost mandatory.

Update from March 2016: it seems like ISI Knowledge offers citation counts with person-level self-citations taken out. Any of that should be treated as experimental, of course. Don't know if this could work for a journal.

I don't think any of the existing systems take out the self-citations. The publishers and journals are not interested in seeing reduced impact factors, so few editorial boards and fewer yet commercial publishers would be interested in anybody producing such rankings. If a discipline has its independent referencing and citations systems, they might be interested in such more objective analysis -- e.g., economists have their CitEc (Citations in Economics), a part of RePEc (Research Papers in Economics), which does track self-citations (see the 2012 Nobel prize winners, Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley as examples... the first one has as many self-citations as the second one, total citations). I would venture a guess that mathematicians might have a similar system. But I doubt that natural or social sciences do.
The high impact journals are obviously important for publishing, getting good academic jobs and getting tenured. However, impact factor may only tell a part of the story, and some disciplines have reputable journals that may not have the highest possible IFs. Let me take again economics as an example that I am familiar with. In most US departments, you'd get tenured if you have a paper in either American Economics Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, or Econometrica. (The QJE is often said to mostly publish MIT and Harvard folks.) AER is only 19th in this list of impact factors (which may be as good as any other list that's not password protected by ISI), and I have never heard about some of these journals. The AER's impact factor of 2.5 is not even funny for a biologist seeking Science or Nature publications, though -- the impact factors of the latter are what, 30 or so?
I work in industry and tend to care little about the journals outside of my area (statistics); generally, statistics journals tend to have IFs between 0.25 and 4. The reality of my particular field (survey research) is that people just submit their paper to proceedings of the annual conferences and move on with their paying projects, and don't have the time to BS back and forth with the reviewers. There are people in academia who need to publish-or-perish, so you would see some typical academic papers with rather small contributions to the knowledge, but their authors either have their own time or slave labor force grad students to write these up.
As a guiding rule of what journals to avoid, you can start with commercially published journals and respect the professional organizations publish their journals themselves, without Wiley or Elsevier grabbing them as a source of income... although I can imagine that coercive citations is what the editorial boards insist on, which may or may not correlate strongly with who publishes a given journal. I have received requests to cite the given journal more (this is a problem for disciplines with an overproduction of journals fighting each other; again, in my industry, there are probably four or five decent ones, and they don't need to fight), but tended to ignore them.

The SciVerse Citation Tracker service, available to anyone with a Scopus subscription, allows it to exclude self-citations. However, it is not designed to evaluate journals, but rather to review citations to a particular author or field. Both the Journal Impact Factor (IF) computed by Thomson Reuters and the Scientific Journal Rankings (SJR) computed in Scopus by Elsevier include self-citations. I am not aware of any other database that excludes them.
And yet, I wouldn't use any bibliometric indicator as a measure of a journal's reputation, but rather trust the advice of experienced colleagues.

Let me add a new answer to an old question for posterity's sake.  Thompsons Reuters Journal Citations recently (I believe in the past year or two) started making this information available.  See an example below:

Of course making this data available does not address the "citation cartels" mentions in Anonymous Mathematician's answer, or editors writing papers with rampant citations to their journals, as in the case of IJNSNS discussed here.  The data above is for the IJNSNS case.  (Note the editorial board has changed, which I imagine coincides with the decline in impact factor.)

I just happened upon this Thompsons Reuters essay on journal self citations from 2002, which indicates self-citation information was (or at least supposed to be) available from around 2004.  This should have also sufficed to find journals likely to be engaging in coercive citation.

I don't know of any impact factor database for which citations from a journal to itself have been removed.  One reason why such lists aren't popular (and may not exist at all) is that they would distort the statistics of specialized journals.  In a subfield with a small number of journals, one would expect a substantial fraction of the citations to come from the same journal.  That does not indicate a problem, and it would be unfair to these journals to judge them without those citations.  (Comparing impact factors between journals in different areas is already foolish, since publication and citation practices vary greatly, but there's no point in making it even worse.)
I am skeptical that such a list would be useful for identifying patterns of coercive citation.  Thomson Reuters already tries to detect these problems and punish journals.  I'm sure the community could do an even better job of detecting fraud if they opened up their entire database, but they of course have strong commercial reasons not to do that.  If the current level of fraud checking is being done at all competently, then providing this additional list would not help much.
Incidentally, as I understand it, the state of the art in citation fraud is networks of several journals publishing review articles citing each other's papers.

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What contributions from your advisor must you specifically acknowledge in your dissertation?
When you're writing your dissertation, your advisor will undoubtedly make many contributions. They might suggest literature to look into or ways of tackling a problem. Many of these contributions I assume would be acknowledged sufficiently in the acknowledgements section where you thank those who helped, your advisor above all.
But what about when you're discussing something specific, maybe trying to figure out some problem. When you're working through it together, your advisor says "What about you try X?". It turns out that X solves the problem.
In the section of my dissertation where I discuss the problem and present my implementation of solution X, should I include something like a footnote stating explicitly that X was suggested to me by my advisor in conversation? I'm interested more in the issue of academic honesty/integrity than issues surrounding my relationship with my advisor (e.g., whether it might tick him off to not be specifically acknowledged in the section on X).

It really depends on how original the contribution is.  At one extreme, your advisor might say something like "Hey, you're integrating an oscillating function times a smooth function.  Have you tried integrating by parts?"  This sounds impressive to a beginner and pointing it out could be a valuable contribution, but your advisor is just cluing you in to something every professional knows.  There's no need to offer explicit credit.
At the other extreme, your advisor might hand you a sheaf of handwritten notes and say "Here's what I tried and where I got stuck when I thought about this problem a few years ago."  If you make use of original ideas from the notes, then you should certainly attribute them to your advisor.
The tricky part is how to gauge originality.  You might not have been able to tell at the time, but looking back you'll often have a better feeling for this.  If you recognize an idea as being relatively standard, then offering general thanks in the acknowledgments should be enough.  If the idea still impresses you as you are writing your dissertation, then it deserves attribution.  If you aren't sure, you can always ask your advisor.  For example, "One of the decisive moments in my studies was when you suggested I should use Bayesian hierarchical modeling.  I haven't seen other papers using this approach, so I feel I should explicitly credit you with the idea in my dissertation.  Does that seem appropriate?"  Your advisor will either gracefully accept credit, declare that it's not worth worrying about, or offer background references you've missed.

My typical interpretation of a thesis is that the advisor is effectively a co-author, and may have been deeply and intimately involved at any step of the research.  Thus, from a perspective of academic honesty and integrity, I would not see any reason to need to provide specific acknowledgement of an idea coming from your advisor.
On the other hand, the labor reported in a thesis is typically assumed to have been done by the student, and if your advisor contributed strongly to that, then it would be appropriate to note that fact.
Thus, for example, if your advisor suggested the critical idea that enabled you to carry out an experiment, no need for credit beyond declaration as the advisor.  If one of the experiments you report was actually carried out by your advisor, then explicit credit should be given.

It is not true for all theses that the advisor is effectively a co-author.

@AntonioVargas That's what the supervisor's review report is for: He should fairly emphasize your strengths and abilities.

Interesting, I haven't heard of a "review report".  Is that common in your field?


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Should we trust a journal article that does not cite any previous work?
My area of interest is not so well-researched in the US, but it attracts more interest in some developing countries where the topic is more relevant, but also where academic standards tend to be different, and I must proceed with much more caution.
In EBSCO, recently my searches have turned up a number of articles published in journals abroad that either: (1) contain no in-text citations, but present entries in the reference list related to material discussed earlier in the paper or (2) contain no citations at all and no reference list at the end.
Is the lack of citations in an article sufficient criteria for casting aside a paper, even if I think some of the ideas relate to a paper I am writing?

I know of one example of a widely-cited and widely-regarded journal article with 0 citations.
The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of "writer's block"

I believe that this question should not be marked as duplicate, as its main thrust is not about writing articles (which is the linked question), but about whether to distrust an article because it does not contain citations.  I have edited to make that clearer and voted to reopen.

OK. I can see your point. I've also edited the question title to make the intent clearer.

This seems pretty non-standard.  I'm guessing you do not have easy access to the journals where you can read the articles and judge them yourself (or for some reason this would take considerable effort).  You might start with a quick investigation of those journals.  Are they predatory?  Peer-reviewed? (or at least standard places where respected researchers publish?)

Number of citations often means little. This article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8137688   published a "discovery" which is known since Newton, and has 100+ citations.

This sounds very fishy. But you should cite these papers if you think they have valid ideas related to what you do.

@NickS I don't think the OP meant people citing the paper but actually meant references within the paper. In your example, that paper only has 6 references.

Is the question about articles that have no citations or no references?

@AustinHenley Per corollaries (1) and (2), it is likely that the OP is asking about a paper that does not cite any sources.

I think it depends what you mean by "trust".
A modern academic paper which references no other paper is unusual and possibly fishy, but at least in my field (mathematics) there is nothing inherently faulty about the practice: perhaps you really are answering a question that you thought up yourself and for which the answer does not require you to use or cause you to refer to any published result.  (There must be some examples of this: anyone?)
If you're being asked to evaluate a paper then, sure, read it much more carefully if there are no citations.  That's not a good sign.  If you know the field well enough to know specific papers that the paper you're reading should have cited, then you should evaluate the paper negatively for not citing them.  If the paper has been published in a reputable journal you might consider writing to the editors to suggest missed citations.
On the other hand, a lack of references (or in-line citations) does not cause a paper to cease to exist.  If you want to cite the paper then you still can, and if you do use the material in the paper then you must cite it, as usual.

Wasn't there a math paper about "cutting" or "folding" (I don't know the mathematical term!) that had no references? I will try to find it.

The complexity of cutting paper

One place to look might be the American Mathematical Monthly's Notes section (or Mathbits, as they now seem to call it). They often publish very short self-contained papers that may not necessarily need to cite anything. (For example, short clever proofs of well-known results.)

@NateEldredge But don't those usually give some references to the "standard" proofs? At least the few I have read seem to have a fair number of citations compared to their length (if nothing else then to put things in broader perspective).

@Tobias: Sometimes but not always, especially if the standard proof is extremely well known (say it's in every textbook in the subject). I can try to find some examples.

I remember that Dan Margalit was very proud of the paper http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.5036, which was initially rejected by the arXiv moderators because it had no references (he shoehorned a couple in to get past the censors), and was later accepted by Geom Topol (for those not in the know, among the best subject-specific journals in mathematics).

Is there any kind of formal or empirical validation of the information that the paper contains? Citations and peer-reviews are standard today, as well as the reputation of the venue. Trust is often correlated with these, but this leads to the perversion of the whole system.
Many systems pervert when there is some discrepancy between how things are and how they look. E.g. economic bubbles, perceived and real value of some goods.
IMHO, trustworthiness comes from verifiability (and I think that is the whole point of science). Verifiability implies replicability, reproducibility, falsifiability, etc.
In short: no, you should not trust a paper that doesn't cite any previous work, but you should not trust a paper that cites many others just because they are there. You should, in general, trust no one, and check whether what they say is true by yourself, whether it is coherent with latter studies, whether latter studies could have contradicted it, whether it is possible to see if what they claim is true or not (open data, open science, open source, etc.)
Related and recommended: Top Ten Reasons to Not Share Your Code
(and why you should anyway)
PD: a whole different point (as pointed by @petelclark) is evaluating a paper, in that case you have to consider whether what the paper says is true, but you have to check as well whether it is original research (or it was published before). Citations help to understand the context and the state of the art previous to the paper, and to see that the authors know the state of the art.

There are certainly non-traditional publications that have a high value and that you may wish to cite.  For example, one of the important driving scientific analyses in biotechnology right now is the Carlson Curve, which is the DNA synthesis equivalent of Moore's Law.  The up-to-date versions of the analysis, however, are not published in any journal article that I am aware of, but rather on Rob Carlson's blog.  Not only is it not a "proper" article, but it has no "proper" citations---just links to various sources and related work.  As such, it clearly preserves the intent and the value, just not the form.  It's also not even vaguely peer reviewed, but it's an important work that is sometimes necessary to cite.
For the cases that you describe, coming from areas where the academic traditions are weak or different, it will typically be harder to determine the difference between low quality work and work that is high quality but fails to conform to the norms of scientific presentation.  You should not discard something just because it fails to follow forms.
You should, however, treat non-conforming publications with heightened suspicion: publishing according to typical standards in well-known peer-reviewed publications can be viewed as a form of costly signalling.  Conforming is no guarantee of quality, and failure to conform does not prohibit it, but failure to conform with publishing norms is strongly correlated with poor quality work for many different reasons.


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How should I use a laptop in class without distracting others?
In science/engineering subjects, it's not yet commonplace to use a laptop or tablet in class as most people still take notes with a pen and paper.
What is some good etiquette for laptop use in classes, so that I don't annoy or distract either my fellow students or the professor? Should I ask the professor if he/she would mind me using a laptop?

Every professor is different.

I find this question 'primarily opinion-based' and not very useful.

Voting to reopen following the edit (thanks Moriarty!). A question on customs and best practices for having a laptop in lectures is definitely interesting to have, and the answers do a great job of giving widely-applicable guidance (even though specifics will vary from place to place)

"In science/engineering subjects, it's not yet commonplace to use a laptop or tablet in class as most people still take notes with a pen and paper." - with its lack of qualifiers such as "in some places" or "at some universities", I can only call this statement entirely false. And even if we assume the statement were generally true, using a laptop in class can be very much commonplace even if it is not the majority doing it.

Professors don't share the same rationale so mileage may differ. Usually, the younger ones are more forgiving. Those born before late Generation X (aka 1970 or before) are more likely to feel awkward because in most of their education life, portable computers had not been made popular. So, personal computer and laptop were/are much less integrated into their daily life.
In fact, it's not the laptop, it's what the laptop being used for and the manners of the owner's. Here are some guidelines, most are in my syllabi as well:

If the syllabus does not require a labtop but you'd like to use one, inform the professor through e-mail for permission. This step, however, can be skipped if the majority of the students have started using one since the beginning.
Sit to the side or back so that your screen will not interfere with other students' line of eyesight.
Mute all sounds.
Be courteous about where to plug your charger and make sure no one will trip over the wire.
Type quietly.
Refrain from doing anything other than tasks related to the materials being covered (no Facebook, Reddit, Youtube, games, porn, jokes, e-mail, IM, shopping etc. even you think you have nailed down the contents).
Occasionally establish eye contacts with the professor.
Ask questions, keep engaged.
If there are very few students and the interaction becomes more of a meeting, angle your laptop to either or your side by about 40 degrees so that it's not becoming a wall between you and the professor, or you and other students.

I also ask my TAs to sit at the back of the classroom so that I can make sure karma finds its way when I tally up the in-class performance portion of the final grade.

+1 for using TA's. As a TA, in multiple courses, I have sat in the back (albeit with my own laptop open) but have scanned the classroom for students doing non-student-y things on their laptops (usually reddit) and have reported to the professor when asked to do so.

I largely agree with your points, except one: I don't see the point of wasting TAs' time in policing the lecture room or writing down offenders. If you (as a teacher) do not notice the change in behavior of the student, i.e. if their are not less engaged in the course and are not impolite, I don't see why you would penalize them.

@F'x, thanks. First I have to make a disclaimer that it has never happened because it seems just having two TAs at the back is deterring. Second, I disagree with you because on the students' part it is a breach of contract: I allow that privilege with a condition, and they violate it. Whether the lack of attention has to be visually detectable should not be an issue here. Lastly, because the peers can see the screen, the behavior also disrupts the class. Even intermittently and in the span of a few seconds, the quality of the class will decrease.

Lol for the porn

Follow the directions given. If nothing was said with respect to laptops, you may use one but be ready to fold it if asked to do so.

In addition to other useful information given earlier: yes, some "older" faculty are very sensitive (I almost wrote "hyper-sensitive", but that would have been judgmental...) about electronic devices of any sort in the classroom. Thus, no matter what you're doing, even if it's note-taking from their lecture, it will upset them.
Some of that reaction is due to the greater difficulty of telling exactly whether you're paying attention, or not. The point is that most other "inattentive" activity is more easily distinguished from "attentive" activity... so that part of what is upsetting is that it's no longer possible to easily distinguish.
Indeed, when I was in high school, one of the great attractions of my hobby of mathematics was that writing technical-looking stuff in a notebook looked just like taking notes in class... which was a great trick for me, personally: make occasional eye contact with teacher, then go back to what I was doing. :)  An astute chemistry teacher did make a very cryptic comment which I only later realized was meant to let me know that, although no action was taken, not everyone was fooled. :)
But/and, in fact, "even many old people" realize that "paper" is being significantly supplanted by electronics. In my graduate courses, students have the PDF notes called-up on their tablets, and mark on them using the touchscreen corresponding to the "added value" I (attempt to) provide in my lecture/discussion of the material. This is entirely reasonable, and certainly preferable to everyone printing out their own copy to physically mark on... ?
Similarly, if/when I give references during lecture/discussion, how could I discourage a person from looking up the reference document (assuming it's available on-line)??? I realize that a well-prepared student may often have "extra cycles" available, so that they can legitimately pay attention well-enough, while looking up the peripheral stuff...
And, similarly, in fact, I realize that a well-prepared student can fully follow what I'm doing while intermittently carrying on an email/facebook/text-message discussion with friends. Why not? Is this worse than daydreaming, looking out the window? :)
I think the genuine operational issue is not whether-or-not faculty are offended, to which the answer is something like "yes, but that's not the only thing that offends faculty, ...", but whether it would be genuinely appropriate to try to actively prevent or "police" electronics use in class. This seems like a hopeless battle, beyond the larger request for ordinary civility in all things.

It might give an impression that you are doing something else on laptop and this might make someone  angry. The tick tick from keyboard can also be disturbing.


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Should I put my résumé on LinkedIn when applying for a PhD?
When I apply to a university for acceptance to their PhD program, I send my résumé with the application. When I want to apply for a job outside of academia, I also send my résumé to them. In both cases they also read my résumé at the interview stage.
But I am not sure whether it is advantageous to also upload my résumé to LinkedIn. Will people visit my LinkedIn profile and read it? Is it likely to help?

"So What is the usage of put your resume on liknedin at least on academia.when you want to apply." There is none. I know not a single professor that looks at LinkedIn profiles when searching for PhD students.

Warning: Faculty members don't care at all about LinkedIn, but they care a lot about correct grammar, spelling, and capitalization. If I got a cover letter written similarly to your question, I'm afraid I would have a very strongly negative initial impression.

A data point on LinkedIn usage in academia: when I applied to assistant professor positions last year, I noticed that anonymous users from several schools that I applied to viewed my LinkedIn profile. I do not know if these people were faculty or not as their names were not revealed to me, only the institution name was listed.

@xLeitix I have always thought that LinkedIn profile and person's connections in it play significant role in easing one's way towards a PhD position, finding positions, presenting himself, etc.

I don't think it really makes any difference.
Admissions committees are not in the habit of doing social media searches for applicants.  In fact, I don't think I've ever heard an academic talk about using LinkedIn at all.  (Maybe it is more commonly used in certain fields that are more closely related to business.)  Even if they did, there's no particular reason they should come across your profile, and no particular reason why finding a resume there or not would influence anyone's decision.
The only possible benefit of posting I can imagine is that if, somehow, one of the admissions committee happened to see it and form some favorable impression of you, that might help their opinion when they read your application.  But that seems like an unlikely coincidence to hope for.
On the other hand, I can't imagine any possible way in which having your resume on LinkedIn could be a disadvantage in the application process.  So from that point of view, you probably might as well post it.
On a related note, I would not recommend trying to add LinkedIn connections to faculty members at the university where you are applying.  Since most probably don't use LinkedIn, this will just result in them getting annoying emails.  And you don't want them to read your application and think "Hey, I remember that name - this is the guy who's sending me all that LinkedIn spam.  What a jerk."

+1 for great answer, and +1000000 for "Hey, I remember that name - this is the guy who's sending me all that LinkedIn spam. What a jerk"

"I don't use the face book" - said a majority of professors when asked about social media.


text:
Does working while you are studying affect your GPA?
I am studying computer science and I have money to pay for my university study, but I do not have money to spend on entertainment such as going to cinema with my friends in the weekend or upgrading my laptop. I have applied for a job at McDonald's. My shift is 4 days per week with 7 hours per day.
I am scared this would affect my grades. How can I balance my studies with the part-time work I must do in order to improve my living standards or afford a social life?

I'm not sure that anyone who doesn't know you well can offer you useful personal advice.  Some people are able to successfully balance school and work, others are not, and it depends greatly on other circumstances (course load, other responsibilities, etc).  If you are looking for statistics about how outside employment tends to affect grades, that might be an appropriate question for this site, but of course it wouldn't necessarily help you personally.  Personally, 28 hours a week seems like a lot to balance with school, but again I don't know you or your situation.

This question is pretty badly formulated; I am sure you would find examples that indicate both ends of the scale. Just exactly how working might effect your GPA is impossible for us to estimate. Essentially how bad it is to work while studying is a very subjective question.

With a full-time computer science degree and 27 hours of work there will probably not enough time for you to rest or go the movies. Is there any other part-time job alternative (e.g. tutoring / freelance programming) that will take less of your time? Also working on McDonalds can be quite stressful and exhausting.

Similar to @Alexandros, try to get a job which relates to computer science. McD offers no benefits other than money.

Maybe look into options like short-term work at the holidays or over the summer. Stores often need extra staff around Christmas, for example. Or you might find a job that allows you to do some studying during downtime. (E.g., a shop or restaurant with slow periods, or working as a security guard where you have to do regular rounds, but in-between you can do other things as long as you keep your eye on the monitors). Not every employer will agree to this, of course, but you may get lucky and find one that does.

This study suggests that employment outside the university (especially in excess of 25 hours per week) does have a negligible adverse effect on GPA, and a signigicant adverse effect on the probability of a student's continues enrollment. A second paper (here)  suggests that hours worked do have a significant negative effect on student grades.

...results show that an additional weekly work hour reduces current year GPA
  by about 0.011 points...

A personal anecdote: When I attended the mandatory freshman orientation seminar during my first semester as an undergrad, they recommended no more than fifteen hours per week, suggesting that anything more than that would tend to have a negative impact on our grades. I do not now recall whether they also provided references to back up their claims...
Of course, this is a general guideline, and an individual student may well be able to handle more. I know some students who were somehow able to juggle a full course load, a full-time job, AND major family responsibility, but those paragons are very rare!

I worked 40-50 hours per week and studied full-time. I had nothing left for anything else (certainly not a family). I found working helped with my studies mainly because I was studying business (so the work gave my something to apply theories to in real life).

I worked full time for the first year and a half and part time for the remaining year and a half during my undergraduate career for Computer Science. It certainly meant that I had less time and flexibility but, ultimately, I think it made me more marketable and a bit better prepared for the working world than many of my peers. That's being said there's a fundamental difference between my work and your work - my work was within the realm of Computer Science.
Having a job, any job, is a necessity for many students. I would recommend, though, trying to find a job that's going to benefit, even if in a small way, your studies. Many schools have IT departments that hire undergraduate students as part time help. Many schools have departments that have an independent IT department, separate from the main IT department. Research schools tend to have infrastructure related jobs and internships. University towns often have businesses that are happy to have future CS graduates working in their IT or programming departments. If you have been in school for a bit you should know some of your professors - there are often paid jobs in research labs all over campuses. They aren't advertised but good relationships with professors will open a lot of doors.
I would try to get a job that's going to have long term benefit for you. Having a high level of confidence and comfort around IT business practices makes you a far more marketable computer scientist than someone who can code but is afraid to install an operating system(for example). Knowing the vocab and jargon will make you more marketable. Having a job, of any sort, with references will help when it comes time to start looking at what happens after you graduate.
As to whether a part time job will effect your grades... it will at least a little. Instead of spending 40 hours on some projects, sometimes I only had the time and energy, a finite resource to be sure, to spend 30 hours. I ended up graduating with a very good GPA(honestly I think being involved in research affected my GPA more than my job.) But having a job, especially a challenging job, in addition to being in school will mean you will have to be more organized than many of your peers. It means you'll have to be on top of your school work and that last minute all nighters will be pretty detrimental.
I don't think there's an all-inclusive answer for whether people should work during school. In my own hiring and looking-to-be-hired experience students who are employed during their schooling tend to be more reliable, more marketable and a more 'sure thing' than their counterparts who did not. But, as mentioned by J. Zimmerman in their excellent answer there are sacrifices involved. As a CS student I would be putting a lot of effort in moving beyond a 'mcjob' and into something at least slightly relevant.


text:
How should a teacher approach a student with distractingly strong perfume?
How might a professor approach a student who comes to class and/or office hours wearing perfume or cologne that is distractingly or overwhelmingly powerful?
Certainly, different people have different thresholds for this sort of thing. Lets say that in this case it is unclear the extent to which this is distracting other students in class but it is clear to the teacher that it is strong enough to distract the teacher. Of course, it might be affecting other students as well.

Must... resist... but can't..."From upwind."

I might ask quietly and privately to speak to the student immediately after class. At that point, when no one else is present, I would politely say, "I am sensitive to the strength of your perfume". After that, I would let the conversation unfold. When the student would be defensive, I would just politely repeat the one statement "I am sensitive to the strength of your perfume". I might add "This is a health-related issue for me, as much as an allergy might be. It could eventually affect how I could continue to teach in the class". I would NOT ask or even suggest the student should NOT wear the perfume or take any action. I would hope the student would volunteer that step.

Migraine and many other problems could exist.

I feel that this could be treated differently depending on if the student is spending a lot of time at the department during business hours, or if the student is only going to a class. If you are only seeing the student in one class you may want to endure? I could easily see a student complaining about a teacher that is having opinions about his/hers perfume. If you are to complain I would open the conversation with "I am terribly sorry to bring this up but I have an allergy and..". It doesn't matter if it is true or not but it is a smooth way of handling it, which would save the student any embarrassment, and settle the issue effectively.

I am uncomfortable with some suggestions here. Is the idea that one should just "endure" appropriate when a reasonable option exists to fix the problem? Is an allergy really an "opinion"? Doesn't such a complaint suggest an unhealthy perception, and should we let our actions be driven by fear of unhealthy perceptions? Why start the request with an apology, and then end with a BUT phrase ... have we done something wrong, and won't the ending phrase just be ignored then? Why not just be straight-forward, respectful, polite, and make your concern known to the student?

#Jeffrey Question 1: People may bother us in all sorts of ways. Of course you can choose not to "endure" this by confronting them. The smell of someones perfume may be enough for some people to confront them. I would choose not to, certainly if I am in a situation where I will only meet the person a few number of times. Question 2: No it is not and that is precisely the reason why I suggested that the OP should mention an allergy as it is a legitimate excuse in any scenario.

@JeffreyWeimer Question 3: Some students (at least in the culture I am in) would find it strange if you confront them about their perfume without any reference to e.g. an allergy. You may find that an unhealthy perception, but some other people may not. Question 4: You start with an apology because you are going to comment on the other person's smell. Question 5: We have done nothing wrong, we are just trying to maintain the best of relations possible.

@JeffreyWeimer Question 6: I do not think it increases the risk of being ignored. A person who you are in a good relation with, who are complaining about an allergy that you are causing.. you would probably respond in an appropriate way. Question 7: Yes true. I do think that you have some valid points. But sometimes straigh-forward, as in repeating the phrase "I am sensitive to the strength of your perfume" may also come across as negative to someone who is young, uncertain about themselves or any other reason. That is why I suggested another approach, which may or may not be the best.

I appreciate and accept your references to cultural differences. Thanks.

I think the "I apologize" also lends itself to interpretation by culture. Rather than an apology in that way, I might instead start as "I do not mean to alarm you or appear as though I am telling you that you are doing something wrong". A shorter version might be "My apologies if this seems to come across as intrusive".

Your statement is phrased verbally in the form "Statement 1 BUT Statement 2". I have learned with such phrasing, the first statement generally gets full attention at the expense of the second. Try it with kids ... "You can go outside BUT you have to clean up your room first". ... Three minutes later when the kid is gleefully outside "But mom, you said I could go outside"!


text:
How should I approach the editor if I have been omitted from the author list of a paper I contributed to?
As I left my PhD in between, my name has not been put in the published paper. My PI published  the paper in a very clever way. I worked in the entire project and it was a team work. he put all the names who are involved except mine.
How should I approach the editor as I deserve an authorship? And one of the editors of that journal was our departmental head and his name was there in the paper.
Kindly let me know about your suggestion.

You said your PI forced students to falsify data. Are you sure you want to sign that paper?

@davidmh:It was not my PhD project. I did that part because I established the protocol for that experiment. I do not deserve first authorship but a co-authorship and as I said it was a team work. I was involved  for 4 months and also did the time -taking animal trial. As I invested my time and my protocol has been used I deserve a name.

My point is that if there was fraud (perhaps after you left), you, as an author, could be held accountable for it.

@Lucas: I would also say do not waste your time anymore on your unfortunate past. It is quite obvious that even if you have worked hard in your previous lab you are the 'worst' student always and as a PI he/she can always give reason against you. So forget about it. You faced harsh reality of academics but now you have a good PI , so focus on that. I know it is hard but you never know the data they published is totally falsified.

You need to be very careful. It sounds like you are accusing your former PI of academic misconduct. Even if he committed misconduct, things can (and will) likely get messy fast.
Normally, I would only recommend approaching the editor after other avenues have been explored. For the case where the editor is an author and your former department head, it is going to be hard to avoid the editor. I would suggest you contact all the authors on the paper (this includes the editor/department head) and tell them you were surprised you were not an author. They will hopefully be able to clear up the misunderstanding. Potentially, they forgot to list you as an author, although that seems unlikely, and are willing to contact the journal to get you added. Alternatively, they decided your contribution did not warrant authorship.
If they do not think you deserve authorship, it is best to get their side of the story first. Maybe they recollected all your data and redid all the research that you were involved in, in which case your claims for authorship are weaker. Maybe their argument is that while your data and analysis are included, they do not think it was enough for authorship. Once they tell you their side of the story, if you still think you should be an author tell them why.
If you cannot resolve the authorship issue as a group, then you need to bring in your head of department. In your case, he will be aware of the issues, since he is also an author. Once you raise a formal complaint, he will hopefully hand it off to an independent person (e.g ., the head of a different department).
If the university cannot help you reach an agreement, then you need to approach the journal. Again, in your case the journal will likely be aware of the issue because the author is the editor. Hopefully, the issue will be handed off to an independent editor from the journal.
If you cannot get an independent person from your university or the journal, or you cannot reach an agreement regarding authorship, then you may want to contact COPE.

From the question, it's unclear if the (former?) department head who is an author is actually the editor.  This should not be the case--hopefully it was assigned to another editor from the start.


text:
How can I prove that I didn't plagiarize?
This year I have decided to take a Computer Science course on FLVS, an online learning institution.
Throughout the whole year, I worked well, and I had a lot of fun with the course. I was close to finishing the second semester of it, and I randomly lost access to the course. I was surprised to find out that they took a some of my assignments (about 6~7), and they flagged me for academic integrity, claiming that I used the answers from an online answer source. Another problem is that because it's so many assignments, they have kicked me out of the course, without me even communicating with them the issue.
My teacher had no idea about this, and she can't do anything about it. She told me to talk to academic integrity themselves. I now have a 0 for the course, and I'm very angry, and I have no idea what to do. I can show them I didn't cheat by answering on the phone any questions they have, and I've already studied for the exam and I plan on taking it, and I'm very confident I can get a good grade. I've also used the knowledge I've learned from the course, and I've created iPhone applications as well as games and other software.
I've left the academic integrity team a message stating that I need to speak with them ASAP, but how can I communicate to them that I didn't plagiarize the work?

UPDATE: I have done some research as to how I present my case, and I found a couple things regarding appeals. FLVS claims that its so called "academic integrity" team is fair and not biased and they utilize a lot of technology to ensure that their claims are as factual as possible, such as www.turnitin.com. I have found a Customer Support number that I can voice my concerns to, so I'm going to present my case to them.
UPDATE #2: After speaking with customer support (see update above), the person on the other line wrote down my grievance in an email, and she sent it to the academic integrity people. I also received a copy of the email. She told me she's sorry for my problem and that I should expect a call in the next 48-72 business hours. Hopefully I will fix this.
UPDATE #3: We had a long talk with the academic integrity team yesterday, and apparently (I had no knowledge of this) they claim I have copied work from my twin brother Varun from about 20 assignments. Going through these assignments, there seems to be evidence of similar code, but that's because certain instance variables and functions had to be created as per the assignment's instructions, but the overall design of the program is different. They also say that we had the same typesetting (meaning me and him had the same spacing and tabs and white space), although we're both very experienced programmers, and we follow the conventional format of tabbing and spacing. I'm most likely going to court :D.
UPDATE #4: This is the best part. After talking we academic integrity before (see above update), we decided to check all of the assignments she flagged and come up with legitimate reasons as to why I didn't cheat on them. After coming up with a long list, we sent an email to the academic integrity people and told them that we came up with a lot of reasons as to why we didn't copy, so she said that she would call us in a couple of days. After 2 days, she sends another email stating that her reasons are legitimate, according to her "boss", and that she won't discuss the issue any further. I am now super angry about this, and I have legitimate reasons as to how I didn't cheat. She won't tell me anything, and my teachers haven't returned any of my calls. I really hate FLVS.

A general note: "How can you defend yourself against plagiarism charges?" is an on-topic question for this board, even though the question arises in the context of high school—precisely because it can apply to pretty much any level of academia.

@ff524 I understand what you're saying about the question being too specfic, but I'm trying to explain the situation as best as possible, because FLVS is just like any regular high school. Basically I'm asking how to prove my innocence, and prove to them I didn't plagiarize and cheat.

@VishwaIyer aeismail has edited the question (and I have too), hopefully this revised version of the question still preserves your original intent but is general enough to be answered here.

It seems like the first step is to ask for their evidence that you plagiarized. habeas corpus and all that.

Do I understand right that they summarily expelled you from the course with no discussion or even notification?  That seems bizarre, and it suggests that either they are irresponsible/incompetent or they must have very serious evidence against you (possibly both).  As ff524 says in her answer, the first step is finding out what the evidence is.

@AnonymousMathematician Yes they did. I have tried to contact them numerous times, but I can't even speak with them (they have not returned my messages). The funny thing is the academic integrity team said they left numerous messages, but I don't seem to have any. I only heard the news in an email today.

In your case, you dont need to prove anything to them. THEY NEED TO SHOW YOU WHERE YOU PLAGIARIZED. Otherwise, this may be considered offensive to your rights as student. Get ready for the battle (assuming you really didnt plagiarize)

@seteropere I understand, I'm expected a very long argument on the phone. My dad also has a lawyer friend that he's thinking about bringing as well, because I want to fix this.

Honestly, I would be suspect of automated plagarism detection tools (such as turnitin) for assignments where all (or nearly all) correct assignments will be identical. I would expect very little variation in the results of assignments in a high school-level CS class.

@BrianS That's exactly why I'm mad they just assumed I cheated and they took me out of the course. Also, many of the assignment require specific variables and functions, so it's not my fault if it's similar to someone else's.

@BrianS Good plagiarism detectors for CS projects would include things like whitespace detection and indentation.  Even aside from those things, beginners tend to have the highest variation, since they're not entirely sure what they're doing, while the good programmers tend to converge towards a "best solution".  (I was a TA for introductory highschool-level CS courses for 3 years;  it was easy to tell who was the beginner and who was not.  The assignments of those with prior experience tended to look similar just due to being good, while the beginners were all over the place)

Technically, you can't prove you didn't plagiarize. That's proving a negative. It's up to them to prove their case, but sadly it sounds like their understanding of logic is broken. That means this is a political battle, not a logical one. Remedying the situation might require pushing the debate into a venue that respects logic, such as a courtroom. Good luck.

re: Edit 3 & 4, just out of curiosity, has your brother also been kicked out of the class?

@Mr.Mindor Yes he has.

I've recently known about this service: http://www.proofofexistence.com/ it's unique in its category AFAIK. This kind of things should be integrated with other tools like GitHub, IMHO.

@Trylks The concept isn't new: Trusted timestamping. But it wouldn't have helped the OP, since the claim is that he and his twin had too similar solutions.

@VishwaIyer curious how this ended up turning out for you; any further updates?

There are a few steps you can take, but the specifics depend on the individual institution and its procedures:

Find out what evidence is behind this accusation. Presumably when you talk to this "academic integrity team," they will tell you more specifically why they think you cheated. Once you have a chance to find out what their evidence for this accusation is, you will be in a position to show them how they made a mistake.
Find out what the institution's official policy is for appealing accusations of academic integrity. This depends on the individual institution's policies. When you speak to the "academic integrity team," you can ask them directly what the appeal procedure is.
Find out what the general grievance procedure is. If you don't have a good experience with the "academic integrity team" (e.g. they did not give you a fair chance to appeal the accusation), you should find out what procedures your institution has in place for voicing grievances in general, and you can pursue these if necessary.

The important thing here is that generally speaking an academic institution can't act as judge, jury and executioner. They do have to have policies in place. And you don't have to defend yourself BEFORE you hear the evidence against you.

FLVS's academic integrity claims are non-negotiable.

@VishwaIyer I googled FLVS grievance procedure and found these guidelines (page 7). Go ahead and follow this procedure if you can't get anywhere with the academic integrity office.

@VishwaIyer They're saying that "academic integrity" is non-negotiable, not that accusations of such are non-negotiable.

Ditto on point 1. You can't prove you're innocent of plagiarism in general. You have to know the details of the accusation and refute them point by point. It would be like saying, "the police arrested me but won't tell me what the charge is. How can I prove I'm innocent?" Where would you start?

People seem confused between criminal law and rules and regulations of an institution.The universities can do whatever the hell they want because they make their own rules, and the law allows them to do that. So learn the rules:

You need to get the assessment regulations and all the related policies you find and then read them
See if your uni has an advice place and see what they have to tell you.
If the Country of your Uni have any Freedom of Information laws. Request everything related to this problem formally and in writing that is, meeting minutes, emails related regulations and rules etc. Your brother may wish to do the same.
Learn the appeals process and be prepared to use it.
You may wish to counter with something offensive like a complaint - Get a copy of the complaint policy from your uni...
Find out what happens when the internal process is exhausted - that is, when you either hand over your case to an advocate or go to court if your issue still has not been resolved and the two parties (you and the uni) still disagree.

I don't think they have a leg to stand on if it's white space or coding style, but if I were you I would get a git diff of the related assignments of yours and your brother's to see for yourself what you are up against. Moreover, if the git diff does support your story by suggesting the content of the assignments are different in every regard but style as suggested, then that is evidence right there.
Aside: the uni should not really be reusing assignments used in previous years for assessed work, so many people cheat when that happens by getting the answers off someone else who has already taken that class.

FOI requests could get fairly expensive. I know my uni (as is allowed by local law) changes for the work required to gather the information and censure any private information (iirc $30 per hour, minimun 1 hour). Cheaper than going to court though.

(-1) It is not true that the universities can do whatever they want.  Most universities are public institutions and are subject to administrative law.  Even private universities are subject to rules pertaining to funding, accreditation, etc.  There are a slew of court cases setting out due process requirements that universities must follow when they are engaged in internal disciplinary matters, and many universities have been successfully sued for failing to meet these requirements.

One main aspect of the law is "innocent until proven otherwise". That said it is them who need to proof that you plagiarized. First thing I would do would be to speak to them, explain that you strongly disagree with their decision, and that you want to see their proof to analyze it.
Once you have that proof try to figure out how good it is. If it only contains partial similarities, point out to them that given the amount of articles on the Internet, it is actually very likely that parts of your work look similar to the work of someone else, even though you never read it. That would not be a proof that you copied something, only a hint at best.
If large passages of your text are similar or identical to what someone else wrote, you have a problem. At this point you can only hope that they believe you or you have to take a lawyer and hope for the best.

This is nitpicky, but "innocent until proven otherwise" does not apply here. While there is a strong cultural bias towards that sort of fairness, we're talking about the policy and process of an educational organization, not civil or criminal statues. That organization can choose to be as fair or unfair as they want.

The laws apply for everyone, and no organization can ignore or bent the very foundation of that law. They can however choose to ignore it, this will however give one the right to sue them. Now the big question is: to what grade of success? And when? They know that any lawsuit will take several years, and then it is far too late for the student. So they do act against the law, but with little to no risk for them.

@TwoThe: what is "the law", and where does it say that private organizations have to consider people innocent before proven guilty for their decisions?  as far as I know, in the the US, it is only a policy established by precedent (Coffin v. US) that applies to actual state/legal/civil crimes.

While I certainly agree that "presumed innocent until proven guilty" is a good principle, that is a principle of law, and we are not talking about law here, but about academic policies. The U.S. Constitution says that you have to apply this principle in criminal cases, not in every business and social interaction. An employer doesn't have to prove you're not qualified: they can demand that you prove you are qualified.  I can't force a girl to go on a date with me despite the fact that she thinks I'm boring on the principle that she has to prove that I'm boring before she can turn me down. Etc.

Before worrying about evidence, focus first on due process
The primary issue here ---before you get to any evidentiary matters--- is basic due process.  Universities should have misconduct procedures that provide due process to the person accused of wrong-doing, and that should generally entail that you are informed of what you are accused of doing and given an opportunity to respond prior to any findings of fact and resulting punishment.
Legal requirements for due process differ depending on what country/jurisdiction you are in and the legal status of the university (i.e., is it public, private, etc.).  Nevertheless, most jurisdictions impose some kind of legal requirement for due process on universities in regard to their internal disciplinary procedures.  (Other answers here suggesting that universities can do whatever they want are false.)  In particular, public universities are subject to administrative law rules in regard to their internal decision-making, including rules on due process.  To give an example of this legal position, in US public universities a person who is subject to a university disciplinary procedure is generally entitled to notice of the allegations against them and a description of the evidence for those allegations (see e.g., Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education 294 F.2d 150 and later legal cases elaborating on that).
Now, as to what to do, here is some general advice for dealing with a complaint of cheating/misconduct.  The main thing to note in the present case is that you are getting ahead of yourself by worrying about evidentiary matters prior to knowing exactly what the allegations are.  The first thing you need to do is to put your university on notice that you expect due process in this matter, and that you would like them to inform you (in writing) of the allegations against you and the nature of the evidence for those allegations.  As others have pointed out, "proving your innocence" is nowhere near the first step of this process.

I had to deal with a misconduct case involving twins once. I did not consider it odd that twins should have the same handwriting and approach things similarly. Even though they deserved the benefit of the doubt, the instructor was ready to die on this hill and had their HoD's backing (this was a cross-departmental case, spare you the messy intricacies). I advised the twins to just stomach the very possibly unfair accusation and made sure that the other department involved would know to treat this condemnation as the nonsense it was. It was a bad compromise and I regret not having been firmer.
Twins, work harder to avoid any semblance of wrong-doing! Do not always have to team up with your twin sub on every assignment! It is not fair but our world is twin-ignorant!

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


text:
Why would a journal force me to register on ORCID?
I recently got a paper accepted as a co-author in a relatively good journal. Now that we are at the finalizing phase, I got an email prompting me to give my ORCID identifier and to create one if I don't already have one.
Here is an excerpt from the email (emphasis mine):

Note that unless we have ORCIDs of all coauthors on file we will not be able to publish the manuscript, in case of acceptance. To avoid a delay in processing this paper, please take care of this at your earliest convenience.
You will receive this reminder on a weekly basis until you have authenticated your ORCID

I find this to be very annoying. It doesn't seem like I have suffered from not having an ID until today, why does that journal absolutely needs me to register on that thing?

Are you asking about the publishers' intention(s)?

You doesn't seem to have suffered from not having an ID until today, but other people did, e.g., when papers are misattributed by databases because of equality of names.

@MassimoOrtolano all the other journals to which I submitted my work until now seemed to have been able to handle these issues.

Not only publishers start to collect/request/demand ORCIDs more and more but also institutions.
What is it all about?
It's about bibliometrics and author profiles. Being able to identify an author and its publications is useful for the institution and its authors. Authors benfit by having an accurate and complete publication list, even if they change the institution. Authors and institutions benefit because bibliometrics become more accurate, e.g. the author's h-index or the list of publications affiliated to authors of an institution.
Why are publishers taking action?

We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to join us in adopting ORCID and making it easy for researchers to connect their iD to their contributions and affiliations. source

Publishers want to enhance their services for authors by including ORCIDs in the publishing workflow.
Why are publishers making ORCIDs a requirement?
One reason I can think of is that they want ORCIDs because bibliometrics, especially impact factors, are important for them and the enterprise(s) providing the impact factor(s) are also interested in author specific factors like the h-index. Additionally, I assume, publishers also want to know and present who publishes in their journals. Think about a publisher stating that a nobel prize winner published most in their journals.
Overall, ORCIDs solve a lot of the problems regarding author identification, which benefits authors (named Smith or Wang or ...) and institutions. ORCID itself is a nonprofit organisation. So far, I haven't thought so much about the benefits for the publishers to make ORCIDs a requirement. Maybe there are different/more reasons.

I think your last point is by far the most important: an ORCID is a unique identifier for an author and much more useful than a name for all sorts of things (e.g. recommending papers to readers, managing author/reviewer accounts), as anyone who has ever done any database design will be able to appreciate.

@arboviral That's true, but the question is not why ORCID or author identifieres in general are useful but why are publishers forcing authors to have an ORCID.

I might not have made my point as clearly as I could have above: I think publishers are forcing this because it makes their databases tidier - at least more so than because they want to track publications by Nobel prize winners. I think the point about bilibometrics such as H index is a good one, though.


text:
Contact previous postdocs of a potential postdoc supervisor to receive feedbacks
I have been offered a postdoc position in a very good university.
However, I had a quite negative impression from the PI, who looked a bit bossy. Also, I had the sensation that he is looking more for a manger of his phd students (who btw have a better CV than me) rather than for a researcher.
Given these doubts, I would like to contact a previous postdoc of this professor, to have a feedback on his experience.
Is this a bad idea? Or is it something common?

Similar to https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/104777/etiquette-for-reaching-out-to-previous-students-of-advisor


text:
Application Letter for European Universities
I'm applying for a research fellowship at a European University, and one of the requirements is an application letter that outlines which project proposals (created by professors at the university) I'd be the most interested in. Is anyone familiar with this process? What is the format of this kind of letter?

Are you asking about the difference between cover letters for US applications vs European applications? Or do you want to know how to explain you interest for and fit with a particular project and/or supervisor? At least the latter doesn't seem to be Euro-specific.

I'm just not sure if it's a cover letter, statement of purpose, or what really. All it says is: "Application letter, clearly stating which projects (1 – 3) you are applying for". The problem is that I'm not sure if I should include statements about why I am applying for the program, why i'd be a good candidate, etc.

Without being able to read their minds, I would guess a cover letter and a statement of purpose are the same, save for the fact that European cover letters tend to be as short as 1 page. In which country are you applying?

Where in Europe? There are big differences between e.g. the UK, France, Italy, Germany. Good advise for one country does not work for the other. (For example, in Italy candidates usually include a photo in the cover letter, in the UK you would never do that, in Germany I see it in about 50% of the time. Also what you write and how bold you write differs quite a bit between countries.)

Speaking as someone who has chaired selection committees, I would say that it is expected that you make a succinct argument for choosing you; if it were just a choice of projects then a check box would have sufficed. Also, the professors will usually be asked for an opinion and a ranking of candidates, so contact professors whose projects interest you.
In France this would be a lettre de motiviation, a kind of cover letter where you present your arguments for being the right person to hire. Typically one page or a page and a half. Generally you would want at least to explain

What you have done before: education and experience relevant to the position
What your ambitions are, scientifically of course and personally if appropriate
Why the institution and project would be great places to realize those ambitions
What you hope to contribute to the institution and project

For example, as a graduate of the University of Souther North Dakota's department of bike shedding, you have been trained to design bike sheds, and your time as a summer intern in Unité Velocipède of the Clermont Ferrand police department gave you insight into the role of bike shed ergonomics for special needs users. Your ambition is introduce bike shedding thinking at all levels of the outdoor shelter design process, and feel that your application to the prestigious Slough Institute of Canine Environmental Protection provides a unique opportunity to place your experience and abilities at the service of innovative projects. In particular you would be thrilled to contribute your expertise in chromatic selection to the development of height-appropriate shelters for injured Great Danes using wheeled carts.

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


text:
two body problem - tenure track and PhD
My partner is currently interviewing for tenure track positions. I am a first year PhD students and We would ideally like to be in the same city. Ideally I would like to find a co-superviser to continue the path of my current PhD or find a new PhD that I like and start over.
When is the best time to mention this two body problem? ( It is not mentioned in his application)
What is a good way of phrasing it? The positions we are talking about are in the UK and Denmark.
p.s: Is it possible that mentioning the two body problem will reduce his chances of getting the position?

Two-body problems is something which is usually only brought up proper once you have the offer during the negotiations phase. Then, hopefully, your partner's future institution will really want to have them, and hopefully try to accommodate their wishes.
Of course, the room for negotiations at tenure-track level might be limited, depending on the place. But then again, giving a funded PhD position is a comparatively low effort/risk, as compared to giving a partner a permanent faculty-level position. So I would think that chances should be reasonably good, though it might of course mean that your partner will get less startup funding e.g. for PhD students (the university will ultimately look at the full package).
Finally, if your partner is being asked in the interview if there is a two-body problem, or generally about family-related issues with relocation, they should answer truthfully.
Independent of all that, it should also be a feasible task to find a new PhD yourself in the new place (unless it is very small), as PhD positions are much easier to get than faculty positions. So overall this might not be so much of an issue.

Context: US based answer. I’m a professor and former department chair who has had a lot of experience with situations like these, both on the hiring side and in other ways.

When is the best time to mention this two body problem?

It’s important to understand (and this is something that I think the other answers are missing) that this question has no right answer. There isn’t a “best time”, just different pros and cons to mentioning it at different times.
If he mentions it early in the interview process, he is giving information that is potentially useful to the interviewing department. They may be able to help with the two-body problem, which would give them a competitive edge over other departments. This could make them more excited about the prospect of hiring him, and a bit more likely to make him an offer. They could also tell him and you about resources that may be available to help with situations like these, like extra funding to support your acceptance to the local PhD program, which could help you focus your own search efforts and perhaps ease some of the stress you may be dealing with.
Alternatively, the information may make the department less excited, and a bit less likely to choose to make him an offer, if they get a sense that the hurdle of causing him to choose to move to their city is improbably difficult or too much trouble. This could happen for example if your area of PhD specialization is so esoteric that they think it is very unlikely that you’ll be able to find a co-supervisor in their university or another nearby one, or if your partner is only a marginally attractive candidate to them to begin with.
At the very least, revealing this kind of information early on will signal that your partner is a serious person with a professional attitude, who is engaging with the interview process in good faith and is not wasting people’s time by playing games. Some people (me, for example) would be impressed by such an attitude, and that could also conceivably affect the likelihood of getting an offer. Even if he doesn’t get an offer, it’s always good to leave a good impression as this could end up helping in various ways with his future career.
Conversely, springing this information on the department at a late stage after an offer has been extended may (or may not, depending to some extent on the local culture and on the way he brings this information up) feel like he is pulling a bit of a “bait and switch” maneuver on them. It may be a dealbreaker and leave the interviewers with a sense that their time has been wasted, leaving a sour aftertaste.
Finally, revealing the information early on may help avoid wasting his (and your own) time and mental energy. Bringing this up could give both of you useful information and possibly rule out that institution as a viable option. If there is no hope for you to find a PhD co-adviser where he is interviewing, are you both sure that there is a point in going through the interview process?

What is a good way of phrasing it?

In a forthright and polite way. He should simply explain the situation and avoid giving any obvious signs of dishonesty or immaturity by disclosing misleading information or answering follow-up questions evasively.

Is it possible that mentioning the two body problem will reduce his chances of getting the position?

Yes. It’s also possible that it will increase the chances as I explained above. The most likely effect will be that the chances of him getting hired will not really be changed at all, but the interview process will go more smoothly and pleasantly for both your partner and the people interviewing him, he will leave a slightly better personal impression, and you and him will be a little bit less stressed out while the process is playing out.
Summary. At my (US) university it is definitely helpful to mention a two body problem early on. We have lots of experience and resources to support candidates and their family members in those situations, and usually see them as an opportunity rather than a reason for discouragement or to give up on promising candidates. During the years when I was a department chair I interviewed around 20-30 tenure track candidates, and the topic was a standard one to discuss, and one that we were able to help with on several occasions leading to a successful recruitment.
On the other hand, the other answers suggesting not to mention it until late in the process also have a valid point. I don’t think anyone will argue that your partner has an ethical obligation to explain his personal circumstances before receiving an offer, and if he feels that there is a strategic advantage to withholding this type of information, it’s perfectly legitimate to do so, and there are specific situations where that could be a good idea. However, personally I think any perceived advantage to such an approach may not be as significant as people without experience in such matters typically think, and may be nonexistent.

You seem to view the tenure track hiring process as a market in which the applicant has the stronger position - arguing that allowing a department to make a stronger offer will make the department "more excited about the prospect of hiring him, and a bit more likely to make him an offer." This view of the tt job market strikes me as a little odd. Apparently, that's what you're doing in your field, but it seems from left-field in others. I think what you're saying makes sense if the couple will insist to be at the same place, which, again, I don't see as the rule.

@gnometorule I don’t see on what basis you interpret my answer in such a way. The point I’m making is that if a department is somewhat excited about person X (enough to be seriously considering making them an offer) and you then give them additional information that gives them reason to believe they are more likely to be able to make person X an offer he will accept, they will typically become more excited and view the prospect of making such an offer to X a bit more favorably than they did before. This has nothing to do with who has a stronger position.

@gnometorule Not sure I got that same impression, Dan's answer seems pretty balanced.

This is the initial interview process in which x candidates will be invited to talk to faculty. One (or two) of the candidates might receive an offer. As long as I don't know for sure I will not accept w/o my spouse, I will not rock the boat and present myself as having more needs than other candidates before it has to be discussed. I found your answer interesting and upvoted it, but I still read it as I mentioned above (and would not personally do this).

@gnometorule sure, but “I wouldn’t do this” doesn’t address why one shouldn’t do this, and doesn’t convince me your judgment is correct. It’s just your personal feeling. I believe you are falling prey to the same fallacy I mentioned in my answer that a two body problem is always perceived as a liability and a flaw to be hidden until one must absolutely disclose it, and that mentioning it is “rocking the boat”. As I explain in the answer, that’s simply not how many people on the hiring side think about this issue.

@DanRomik: Very interesting, thanks. :)

@DanRomik Would the expectation actually be that the candidate brings up such things by themselves, or is it only that they should answer honestly if asked?  (I certainly never meant to say to lie on this - I just feel that there is no obligation to bring this up proactively if the committee does not ask - I wouldn't consider this playing games.)

@user151413 there isn’t an obligation to discuss personal circumstances (including family status, your partner’s career ambitions or any such related things) in a job interview, and in the US it’s highly inappropriate for an interviewer to even ask about such things, and exposes them to legal risk. If they do ask, it’s perfectly appropriate to say you do not wish to discuss it. I would never advise lying as an answer to any question in a job interview.

Ok, but you are recommending to bring it up even if they are not asking?  (My experience with european interviews is that this is often asked, though I'm sure not answering would be fine.)

@user151413 I’m not recommending anything. As I said, there isn’t a universally correct answer to the question. I gave my analysis of the situation and OP and her partner will have to decide what to do based on that and the details of their specific situation.

Sure, but there could still be a different answer to "what to do when the ask in the interview" vs. "what to do when they don't ask, should he/she bring it up"? In not sure what your answer says about the latter case.

@user151413 there’s a lot of things that my answer doesn’t say. I addressed the specific questions OP asked, and don’t have much to add beyond that. If you need advice on how to manage getting through a job interview when faced with different scenarios, I suggest that you start a separate question for that.

That's not my point. In the question of the OP, there's two inherent scenarios: 1. The committee asks, what should I do.  2. The committee does not ask, what should I do.  It is not clear to which of the two you answer refers.

"will signal that your partner is a serious person with a professional attitude"  I have to disagree with this.  Search committees are expecting applicants to want jobs for their partners.  If the applicant comes across as demanding a PhD position, that sounds petty by comparison.  The applicant also needs to be careful not to send the message that, as faculty, they are going to get fired for having inappropriate relationships with a PhD student.

@AnonymousPhysicist Oh come on. I don't know where in the world you are coming from but it seems to have given you an extremely cynical view of the world. "I'd like a job for life but it's important to me that my SO also have an opportunity to work towards their goals" is not petty or inappropriate. "I want my spouse to be able to continue research" does not announce "I want to start inappropriate relationships with students".

It's not an inappropriate thing to want; it's an inappropriate thing to discuss in a job application/interview.

Absolutely +1 for It’s important to understand ... that this question has no right answer.  As a former job candidate with a two-body problem, I believe that the approach we took worked out to our advantage at some places and to our disadvantage at others.  As a professor on the hiring side I've seen couples taking similar approaches to each other get different results under slightly different circumstances.

UK perspective
First, it is important to remember that the UK is a relatively densely populated country with reasonably good transport links. As a result, it is very common for academic couples to work at different universities (many UK cities have more than one university), even in different cities. Some couples manage to find positions that are close enough geographically to enable them to live together all week -- examples of city-'pairs' that are eminently feasible for commuting: Manchester & Liverpool; Edinburgh & Glasgow; Bristol & Cardiff; York & Newcastle. But it is not unusual for UK academics to do long-distance commuting, even to the extent of staying in hotels or renting a 2nd home (even before COVID-19, some UK academics would cluster their on-campus commitments to a couple of days per week, and then work from home the rest of the time).
In the UK, "spousal hire" (that is, offering a job to a person by virtue of his/her being the spouse of someone who has already been offered a job) is generally illegal. When it comes to hiring, every candidate must be treated as an individual on merit alone. The same principle would apply to a PhD position (although it is not employment, strictly speaking).
So, there is almost certainly no point bringing up the two-body problem until after you have received a job offer (possible exception: if your spouse already works in the local area, and you are thus applying for the job in order to solve a two-body problem, and you are applying for a lower-ranking position than your current post).
Of course, staff at the university are perfectly entitled to offer informal advice to the spouse of a colleague. It may, therefore, be appropriate to seek such advice after receiving the job offer but before signing the contract.
Now, as far as getting a PhD place in the UK is concerned: as long as you have a coherent research proposal (you need to have a fairly clear idea of your thesis topic, although it is understood that this may change/evolve somewhat) and the appropriate credentials to pursue it, getting a place somewhere is not too difficult (of course, actually completing the PhD is still a long and hard journey). The two main challenges are securing an appropriate supervisor and funding. If you want a funded PhD place, it is much more competitive, and may require some flexibility on the topic, supervisor, and institution.

This type of question will be discussed after your partner has been extended an offer. If a department is committed to hiring faculty, they will, within reason, attempt to help their spouses get settled too. If you’re both in the same field, this might work out; if not, there might not be much they can do. Given that you’ll mention it after an offer has been extended, it can’t hurt your partner. And at that point, there is no need for special phrasing as two-body problems in academia are common.
Given how hard it is to find a tenure track position even without further constraints, you might also want to begin discussing with your partner what to do if getting you to move into a Ph.D. at the same university/in the same city won’t work out. Off-hand, I can think of two cases where the spouse was accommodated, but of plenty more where that was not possible.

"if not [in the same department], there might not be much they can do": Sure, the department or search committee head can talk to the president/rector of the university - not very likely in the case of a TT position, but otherwise, sure.

@user151413: well, I said “might.” :) I’ve seen it happen, but not into a Ph.D. program in a different field. There are many theoretical ways the department could help, but only so many in practice.

Though this is unrelated to "PhD program", and much more likely to "tenure track". If this were a faculty member which Dean at department A strongly wanted, then they could certainly press for a PhD position at department B (of course, at some point they would probably have to return the favor).  The "value" of a PhD position is small, so if I were department B, I would likely try to accommodate since it would buy me a favor from department A in the future.

(The question changed.  This advice is not for Europe.)

Is it possible that mentioning the two body problem will reduce his chances of getting the position?

It's possible.  I see no reason to inform the search committee that you have a problem that might make the hire more complicated.

When is the best time to mention this two body problem?

Probably never.  The faculty search committee does not control PhD admissions, particularly if you plan to get your PhD in another department or at a nearby university.  They will not be able to help you achieve your goal.
I think the most you can hope for is that your partner's new job comes with a tuition waver for you.  Tuition wavers are not usually negotiated as part of salary packages.  They are automatic.

Which tuition.?

Ya PhDs typically don't pay tuition in Europe...In fact it's often considered a job so they're actually paid...

Also, which PhD admission?

This does not seem to answer the question, which refers to an interview for a tenure track position, not to a PhD admission. Could you please edit it to answer the question or remove it altogether?

I initially upvoted this answer (PhD admission might be an issue in countries that have a process for that - which would be relevant for OP), but after OP added the relevant countries, I think it doesn't apply anymore.

They will not be able to help you achieve your goal. This is factually incorrect. I know of specific examples where they were able to help in a situation identical to OP and her partner’s.

@BLBA The question did not specify Europe at the time I posted.

@MassimoOrtolano You claim that the question does not refer to PhD admission, but the question says "I would like to ... find a new PhD" so I think you are wrong.  It is about both topics.