text:
Is it considered unusual in the United States for a professor to run a class outside on the grass?
An American professor lectured in our university about American higher education. He mentioned that the university environment is not limited to formal education (what is the case in Europe more or less). A university courtyard is like a park and students are always hanging around.
He also mentioned that it is not unusual for a professor to gather students and sit on the grass outside and run a class. This is something that I have never seen in Europe (at least Hungary where I study).
Most universities I have seen (including new campuses built by EU funding) are just buildings, because people believe yards are waste of money. Things happens in buildings. In these universities, students go to the class, and after that, they quickly leave the university.

Welcome to Academia.SE. This is very much opinion based as there is no direct answer to your question. Such approaches differ from one university to another.

@ÉbeIsaac I did not ask about opinion. I wanted to be sure if this happens. Is it possible for a professor to run his class on the grass in yard? The answer is yes or no. Because in my country, it is absolutely no.

It's not clear what you mean by "friendly." The question "Is it considered unusual in the United States for a professor to run a class outside on the grass?" is perfectly answerable, but that's the only part of this post that is. Perhaps you can [edit] to clarify.

I don't think this question is answerable either. You're confusing "social life", "professor deciding to teach outside on the grass", and "university policy to make class fun." Those are all different things.

I'm pretty sure that it's not a policy that Germans focus on football. It does seem like you are trying to ascertain something other than the thing you're actually asking about.

@EnergyNumbers forget about that example.

Is it usual to run a class outside on the grass?: What is the significance of this question? I have also witnessed occasional classes outside in Europe for a change of environment. This is up to the professor taking the class and the willingness of the institution to permit this. This doesn't just happen in America.

@ÉbeIsaac It never happens in my country, and never a university permits that. It is completely new to me that this happens in America. Then, it is significant for me. My question is if this happens in the US on a regular basis? Do you know European universities with such regular experience (not an exceptional professor).

Concerning the first paragraph of your question, this certainly differs between universities, but so far, all European universities I have seen were like a park and students were always hanging around.

@O.R.Mapper most European universities I have seen (including new campuses built by EU funding) are just buildings, because people believe yards are waste of money. Things happens in buildings. In these universities, students go to the class, and after that, they quickly leave the university.

For what is worth, I have seen that happening in Spain once. It was odd as in uncommon, but not odd as in "what on Earth is that guy doing out there?!"

"the university environment is not limited to formal education (what is the case in Europe more or less)" Huh? Complete nonsense.

In high school in Finland, we once had a class in sauna. It was a small class, the teacher and all students happened to be men, and the course had a very relaxed atmosphere, so we just had to try. (Note: chalkboards don't work very well in hot and humid conditions.) Due to practical reasons I can't imagine that happening in my university, but having a class outside wouldn't sound too strange (although I've never seen that here).

I went to college during the California electricity crisis.  That year, we had classes outdoors a number of times by necessity, since the electricity was out, and the usual classroom was underground and had no natural lighting.  There were a few other occasions where classes were held outdoors just for fun.

@Jia, here in the UK some newer universities are as you describe - just some rooms like offices where lectures and tutorials take place, with nothing going on outside of that - but the majority of universities contain student (and sometimes faculty) housing and therefore have people living and socialising in and around them 24/7. Older universities typically contain grassy courtyards which the buildings are set around. So the EU is maybe not as homogeneous in this respect as your experience hitherto would suggest.

This probably doesn't apply to you, but incidentally, I've seen that if a few students ask nicely to do the lecture outside (and the weather is good and there's a nice outside area nearby) many professors won't object. So, if you really want to do the class outside...

I'd like to note that while teaching a class outside is unusual, it is not unethical, counterproductive, illegal, dangerous, or in any serious sense a bad thing.

Here in the south, it's very common and not unexpected to see a class outside, especially if it's a smaller class.

@barbecue: south of what? :-)

Your curiosity is healthy.  Watch some movies that take place on a college campus in the U.S.  They won't be as informative as a documentary might be, but I think they will help.

There are always exceptions to the rule, but there is still a rule. Asking a like question in the U.S. creates uncomfortable reactions, and usually denial that classifying people or countries or ... is not possible!, as you notice in reply to your question; and this is similar at Academia SE.
That all said, I've studied in Germany, France, and the U.S., and spent about half my life in both Germany and the U.S. By and large, all your original questions should be answered "Yes, yes, yes, and yes."
The main reason lies probably in rules that apply in most colleges - you are held to live in university housing, while sharing a room with a stranger for a year or two, in many cases hundreds or thousands of miles away from your hometown. Even when attending universities that, for space reasons, can't have housing on campus (e.g., Columbia in Manhattan), you will usually choose (if only for rent price reasons) a university provided off-campus dormitory type facility. This would have been terrifying for young, shy me, but has some very good consequences in that, by and large, Americans learn to deal with imperfect living accommodations, and to get along with people you have little in common with (my first room-mate was just back from a Mormon mission). Even when I lived in a dormitory at my undergrad alma mater, I had no room-mate, and close to no contact to the other dormitory residents.
There is also a tendency to use college years as the years you go craaaaaaaazy, which is accommodated by the many campus universities which often look like a large park (google Berkeley, or CalTech, say). I've seen a guy run around campus naked, covered in peanut butter head to toes, as part of his campaign to become the football mascot; that mascot (costume) was 'kidnapped' by the rival university (which led to some pompous administrative reactions); one day each year Freshmen caught in a particular spot were supposed to be kissed; and the school band occasionally mooned the opposing team, and performed other 'look how crazy we are' acts. Things have. I think, gotten more Puritan in recent years - I am fairly sure the weird annual kissing tradition stopped. But it existed as recently as about 10 years ago. As you'll know from your campus, that is a far cry from typical European experiences. My undergrad campus, as an 18th century castle built to resemble Versailles, had ample lawns, and a good amount of parties; but the events mobilizing students were the frequent political demonstrations which pulled tens of thousands of students to the castle and the surrounding streets.
Finally, giving a good, entertaining lecture is valued much higher in the States. This is a good thing: all the professors that truly impressed me I met in the U.S. As part of this, lecturing outside happens, but is not common. The world is getting smaller every year though: Europeans teach in the U.S., then go back to Europe - and vice versa; and the Information Age removed barriers that used to be high. So obviously, the stiff Dr. Unrath no longer teaches in Germany either, and I've had classes outdoors there too.

I am a bit confused by this answer. There is absolutely nothing wrong about it (even though I find the idea of considering any other university a "rival" rather than another possible partner for cooperation an utterly alien and incomprehensible concept); it just seems to be weirdly unfocused with respect to the question.

@O.R.Mapper College/University athletics are taken very seriously by a significant subset of the US population.  The rivalries that result are taken as real as those for professional teams.  Otherwise I share your confusion about the answers overall relevance.

@O.R.Mapper: You are right: (1) The original question had more parts - only my last paragraph relates to the question as is, but I felt like answering the question as originally asked; (2) as pointed out by Dan Neely, the 'rivalry' is sports-based, and about a century old. Each year has the teams meet once, and it's a huge event for undergrads (or probably for staff and teachers too). In terms of academia, there is plenty of cooperation (visible, e.g., in fields I care about in a standard undergrad text book in CS authored by a researcher at either university).

A university courtyard is like a park and students are always hanging around.

There are thousands of colleges and universities in the United States. Some have large campuses with lots of space to hang around. Some are urban campuses with little outdoor space available. Some are entirely contained in one building. Some have mainly residential students, and some have mainly (or only, or some) commuter students who live off-campus. Some serve mostly full-time students, while others cater to students who are doing other things outside of school and don't have much free time to hang around. Some are in boring locations with not much else to do, and some are in fun cities with many events and activities available outside the university. Some are in pleasant climates and some are in places that are very hot or very cold for some or part of the year.
All of the factors above and many more go into determining whether a given university, out of the thousands, is one where students tend to hang around outside.

He also mentioned that it is not unusual for a professor to gather students and sit on the grass outside and run a class.

It may happen occasionally (see example), but it is very unusual. I have never attended, taught, or seen such a class firsthand.
Here is an article with some more anecdotes.

He mentioned that the university environment is not limited to formal education (what is the case in Europe more or less).

If a professor decides to teach outside, it's still a formal class, not a social event.

I meant generally bringing the class to a less formal environment. On the grass was one of the possible examples.

@user42283 It sounds like you're still confusing "How a professor decides to teach his own class", "Social life on a university campus", and "University-wide policy on fun (if such a thing exists)." Those are three entirely separate things. A class outside on the grass has nothing to do with social life on campus or university policy.

@user42283: What counts as "less formal"? Is it less formal if you stay in the room, but move the tables away and put the chairs in a circle? Is it less formal if everyone is standing?

@O.R.Mapper yes it is less formal. It seems you guys have no idea about formality of Soviet professors. Naming a professor by his first name is a world of informality.

@user42283: Basically, same in Germany. Yet, I have, on rare occasions, seen people give their class outside. However, this happens very rarely, mostly because it's inconvenient and undisturbed spaces outside are limited.

I don't think it's "very unusual." I've been in classes where this has happened and I've seen it many times. It's usually small liberal-arts or language classes that meet outside. Any class that is more geared toward discussion rather than lecture can go outside. It's probably more common for TA-led discussion sections than for professor-led lectures but it can still happen.

I think in areas where the weather is usually nicer, this might actually be described as "common", and not "very unusual". It certainly happens, and I've seen it many times. I have had a few art/drawing classes outside, myself. At a university I attended, one music class was always outside if the weather were nice enough. Classes that require a projector or writing on a chalkboard, whiteboard, etc. might never be held outside, though.

In your first example all the students look about as annoyed as I would be if one of my lecturers tried to teach in a space with no desks....

@Daniel Heh, the first thing that came to my mind when I read the question was a number of physics lectures that took place outside. Southern California has beautiful weather most of the time and the outdoor spaces of the academic side of campus were plenty quiet during class time, so the professor would just wheel a whiteboard out along one of the paths and we’d sit on the grass next to the path.

@KRyan Was it a big class? Could everybody hear?

@Daniel Ah, perhaps “lecture” was misleading; it was what the school called “recitation” with a subset of the main lecture, probably 20-30 students. Physics classes alternated between the big lectures with everyone in them, and breaking out into the smaller recitations. Anyway, when we had class outside, I don’t recall any complaints about being able to hear.

My undergrad college actually has a huge outdoor chalkboard so that math classes and so on can be outside. My last class there involved ten of us talking about interesting probability problems on that chalkboard, combined with intermittent beer tasting.

At least where I teach (a small liberal arts college in the northeast United States), if you go to the courtyard on a sunny day in the spring you will probably see one or two classes meeting outdoors.
Of course, this is more common for small classes that don't need chalkboards or other materials.  I've taken upper-level math courses outside a few times, but it's a lot of effort to move a portable whiteboard outside, so it's not something I'd be willing to do on a regular basis.
Overall, I'd say that I agree with the professor you mention that colleges and universities in the United States are often thought of as academic communities, and their design often purposefully incorporates communal spaces for students and faculty.  However, I've certainly been to colleges in Europe that share this same design philosophy.  It may be less common in Europe, but I'm not sure that this reflects a different philosophy so much as practical considerations.  For example, it may be hard for a university in the middle of a big city to have enough space for courtyards and such, and universities in Europe often seem to be located in the middle of major cities.

To answer the question at face value: Yes, it is uncommon for professors to teach outside, or to take the class out of the formal area of the classroom. But it is not unheard of. I typically take my class outside once a year or twice if the class lends itself to group discussions and the weather is nice. I know that several of my colleagues do the same.

During my Computer Science degree in South Africa, one lecturer held a class out on the grass to run through some sorting algorithms - He arranged us in alphabetical order using a bubble sort, an insertion sort, etc, as a practical example. I would also call it uncommon, but not unheard of.

Nice example. I think that's a great example of where one can profitably do this.

American professors often feel free to modify their classroom environment in whatever way they feel will provide the best education.  For most large or highly technical classes, this means they don't change anything at all, because they feel a standard lecture environment will be the most effective.
In other classes, however, more of the learning is expected to be accomplished by discussion and other forms of student participation.  In these classes, it's quite common for a professor to modify the lecture environment to make it more informal, thereby attempting to make it a more comfortable environment for student participation.
The most common intervention is simply to change the arrangement of chairs in a classroom into a circle.  The professor then sits in a chair just the same as any student and facilitates a discussion rather than lecturing. Shifting to a non-classroom setting, such as outdoors, is less common but would probably not be considered particularly surprising by most American students.  In my own experience, two of my undergraduate classes frequently relocated outside, and it was probably a good idea for both of them.

As many other posters recognize, this depends on the university. It also depends on the professor's academic field and whether or not teaching students about this academic field requires the trappings of a classroom (textbooks, white/blackboards, lab equipment, etc.) or are suitable for open-ended discussion. This also depends on classroom size.
For one specific instance of a university for which this is common, at the one specific university I was a student at and also taught at, Auburn University (in the southeast United States) it is not "unusual" for liberal arts professors to do this. Most liberal arts classes consist of 25 students or less, and discussion may be a large part of the classroom.
Many liberal arts professors at Auburn teach a class outside on the grass once or twice a year, and a few will pick a day a week during the spring. The building in which liberal arts are taught has several courtyards as well as an expansive outer area with fields of grass surrounding it:

Another thing to keep in mind is that this university is located in a subtropical area and the campus is styled like a park with trees. "Tailgating" for college football (American football) is normal on the grounds on football weekends, and students are used to people picking a spot on the grass to hang out for a whole day, so a professor doing so for an hour isn't remarkable.

I have actually attended a university in Europe, and on a few occasions we had classes outside. I heard that there are some classes that do most or all their sessions outside (sometimes even at museums). I was a STEM major, so most of my classes required a large blackboard, so I didn't get to be in those classes often - I think it was a lot more common for classes like poetry, literature, language or philosophy.
I have also seen the same thing happen in the US. So the professor is certainly right in the sense that this happens, but not right to paint it as a US vs. Europe thing. Usually it's a question of how the campus is built. Old and rural universities have larger land grants and so end up with campuses resembling parks.
In cities, real estate is expensive, so newer universities or those built in the center will be just buildings, as you say there won't be much opportunity to do a class outside. Although for instance in a city like New York you could still be lucky enough to have a suitable park nearby, although whether it will be practical is another matter.

Most universities I have seen (including new campuses built by EU funding) are just buildings, because people believe yards are waste of money.

Unfortunately, a sad reality of our time. Hopefully those "people" will have had enough of concrete jungles one day.

No, it would not be "considered" unusual to run a small class outside, assuming a small enough number of students, good weather, etc.; but it's not something you'd see every day, or in every class, or even be likely to see in any class. I was never in a for-credit university class where the professor/instructor decided to do that, nor do I remember seeing a group that was obviously a formal class moved outside at any campus I ever studied at or otherwise visited.


text:
Is it considered a self-plagiarism to reuse (published) abstracts for talks?
When writing an abstract for talks at conferences, workshops, etc., I often wonder if it would be considered a self-plagiarism if I copied a few sentences from a paper that is already published. Sometimes those abstracts are "published" in one form or another (proceedings, workshop schedule in print and/or on the web, etc). What is a general guideline?
Can I copy and paste an abstract from a published paper I wrote, and submit it as an abstract for a talk at a conference? Or is it necessary to paraphrase my own writing?

If you are going to talk about a specific paper, I see no reason why your talk title and abstract can't be identical to those of that paper. I frequently do this.

In papers themselves, there is absolutely no reason why you should ever copy any previously published text (including yours) without explicit acknowledgment, along the lines of "The background material in this section is a nearly verbatim adaptation of Section 3.2 of X".  Assuming you make it perfectly clear what you have copied and from where (not hiding this information in a note later in your paper, for example) and you have permission from the copyright holder, then this is ethical, while it's not ethical without these conditions.
Of course talk abstracts are not quite the same.  Let's assume we're talking about relatively ephemeral abstracts.  I.e., they might appear on the web or in the conference program, but they aren't carefully archived, citable contributions to the research literature.  (This distinguishes them from "extended abstracts" in CS conferences, which are actually short research papers, and there may be other intermediate cases.)  These sorts of abstracts generally don't list any references within the abstract, and they aren't considered published or treated nearly as formally as published material.
In mathematics, I doubt anyone would get upset about recycling a paper abstract for this kind of talk abstract.  Customs vary greatly between fields or sorts of abstracts, so you should seek advice from colleagues in your area, since "someone on the internet said it was OK" is not a compelling argument.
If you are worried about self-plagiarism, you can simply append something like "(adapted from the abstract of paper citation)" at the end of your talk abstract.  However, that might stand out in its formality.
It's probably a good idea in any case to rewrite the abstract at least a little, since a talk abstract has different goals from a paper abstract.

In general, do not copy from your previous publications. At the same time, I would say that the severity of "self-plagiarism" depends on what you copy. If it is a description of a tool or site, it is not very problematic (after all there may be only so many ways to describe it). If you copy conclusions and items of creative importance then I would say it is more severe. I personally rewrite everything just because I am fine with that, even site descriptions. At some point I will have to go through and see if I unknowingly copied myself in those trivial sections at some point.
So in short, don't copy, rewrite. Who knows, you may find that you improve your formulations that way.

I completely agree.  Whenever I am particularly enamored with the way I said something in the past, reflecting on why I am having a hard time rephrasing it is always illuminating and the idea often comes out much clearer in the rewrite.

"If it is a description...it is not very problematic" - in my field, descriptions are very important and knowing whose description you are using (including if it is your own) is very important...though I can see it being less important in the hard-sciences.

@earthling Maybe you could expand on that point in a reply? Would be quite useful to know about different fields and various cases. (I guess we should indicate roughly what we work in e.g. theoretical, experimental etc.)

@PeterJansson Unlike a lot of people on this site, I teach business management (far from a hard science). Examples of definitions include words like 'quality' or 'innovation' which have vastly different meanings depending on whose talking about them.

Uhm... discipline specific tag missing??? In economics, you can often see an acknowledgement like "I would like to thank [the list of 15 specific people, may be a Nobel prize winner or two thrown in], audiences at [10 universities in which this talk was given] and [4 more international conferences] for their helpful comments". So an economist won't even get what it is that you are asking; presenting the same stuff over is their daily business.
Generally, I think it is basically your own self-discipline and commitment to moving research further with new work (as opposed to just selling your name with one or two successful papers that everybody keeps wanting to hear about). I usually present the same research two-three times, which means copying and pasting the abstract, but once I hit all the major audiences with it, I move on to something different.

Can I copy and paste an abstract from a published paper I wrote, and submit it as an abstract for a talk at a conference? Or is it necessary to paraphrase my own writing?

This depends very much on who holds the copyright to the published work you're copying. Some publishers may give you the right to reuse the text however you see fit. Others may not be so liberal.
But in general, the longer the snippet you want to reuse, the worse the idea it is.

Downvoted — Plagiarism and copyright are completely orthogonal issues.  One can violate copyright without plagiarizing, and one can plagiarize without violating anyone's copyright.

I think self-plagiarism will also often be tied together with copyrigHt issues. Not pointing out the possibility would be irresponsible.

@JeffE: It's true that one doesn't violate copyright law by self-plagiarizing text where one holds the copyright. But if copyright has been transferred to a publisher, such re-use is a violation of copyright law if not explicitly arranged for.

@silvado: True but irrelevant to the posted question.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
Dry erase boards: glass vs. white board
I've been tinkering with the idea of installing several glass boards in the lab & offices instead of white boards. They look cool, and seem to erase better. But I do not have extended experience using them.
What are the pros and cons of using glass boards compared to white boards in general?

Various opinions and answers have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.

When I was a grad student, I mounted a 1x2 meters glass plane in front of a white wall at my place. It was great for scribbling stuff and for large drawings. I also developed the habit of drawing on the glass doors at my previous lab, because the closest whiteboard was in another room.
The big advantage: glass is very smooth, you will never have stains accumulating like on a white board. No matter how zealous you or the cleaning staff is, white boards are a bit porous and the material deteriorates with time (UV radiations, etc.) and becomes even more porous, making it harder to clean up.
For the same reasons, if you inadvertently use a permanent marker instead of a white board marker, it's easy to clean it up. Finally, existing glass structures also provide large surfaces for drawing.
The disadvantages: lighting (back lighting, shadows, etc.) can impede reading what you wrote. It helps if the glass is placed immediately in front of a white wall. Also, the cleaning staff might erase your brilliant ideas overnight because they were instructed to clean all windows.

+1 I also used the windows next to my workstation to write on for some years and never had any problems cleaning off the dry erase marker 100%.

@CapeCode I'm suspecting there's some personal experience behind that last line.  My apologies. :(

When I was a grad student, we had offices on the 4th floor. We used the windows as whiteboards. One day the departmental administrator came by, saw the windows covered with equations, and flipped out: "Do you have any idea how it costs to hire a crane to wash these windows?" We tried to very gently explain that we only wrote on the inside....

Permanent marker can be pretty easy to erase if you simply write over it with a good dry erase marker (i.e. one that actually erases as opposed to smears).

@Corvus: ROFL. Great example of administrative doofus-ness

I find actual whiteboards easier to read than plain glass due to the see-through nature of glass. Some places have glass walls that face a hallway or glass windows in their office doors that people use as writing surfaces with dry-erase markers. That can be fine, but the fact that you can see through the surface can be very distracting when writing/reading the "board".
Regular whiteboards can be hard to keep clean and should be regularly wiped with a wet cloth or paper towel, in my experience, and then dried with a clean cloth or paper towel. This seems to keep them readable and usable longer than using a dry-erase board eraser which seem to do a poor job of removing the dry-erase marker dust. This is very similar to what places with good janitorial services do with their chalkboards (i.e., wash them frequently). I don't know about the long-term issues cleaning glass which has been used with dry-erase markers, but I assume the issues of getting the marker dust off are similar. Wash them to clean them.

About chalkboards: it is best to have them be "seasoned" by having enough chalk imbedded in them so that new marks go on smoothly and erase smoothly. Except for absolutely-top-of-the-line blackboards, a newly-washed blackboard is goofy to write on, and very hard to erase. So, in fact, not so much washing by custodial staff, is my preference.

Well, there is that question. I don't know or have enough experience to answer.

@paulgarrett: You would be unhappy in Germany!  The standard there seems to be that there are chalkboards but no ordinary erasers; instead each lecture hall has a bucket of water, a large sponge, and a squeegee.  The lecturer is expected to use these to wash the board every time it needs to be cleared.  Of course this means the board is unusable for a minute or two until it dries completely.  But it never gets seasoned at all, and so you couldn't really erase it properly with an eraser even if you wanted to.

@NateEldredge, yes, I'd heard about this. At Oberwolfach it did not seem uniformly to be the case, mercifully. :)

Ad paragraph 2: I've droped those pesky felt (?) erasers you get with the boards and use a microfiber cloth designed for cleaning windows now. When slightly damp, it perfectly cleans even older whiteboards that took some beating.

@NateEldredge At my (German) university, we have a) sinks and b) squeegees in >95% of all lecture rooms. Definitely chalkboards, though.

@Raphael, the ones I have are made of a carpet of little short hairs, maybe 0.5cm long each. Not very effective.

I recently found that a microfiber towel also makes a great chalkboard eraser.

The whiteboards we have are easier to read than the glass boards, even though the latter have a white backing etc. Whiteboard markers do not mark in the same way. I was using both kinds of board today with the same pens. On the whiteboard, the ink is darker. The students could read both, but it was a small group in a small room. Writing on the glass board is more of a struggle than the whiteboards - not horrible, but the difference is distinctly noticeable if you are using one one moment and the other the next. The whiteboard definitely is easier/clearer.
In the newest rooms, we have glassboards on three walls. This creates a great deal more glare than whiteboards would. This can be a bit uncomfortable and colleagues of mine have mentioned getting headaches from the light. This is despite the fact that these rooms also have newer lighting systems i.e. spotlights and panels of diffuse light rather than the older strip lights.

I'm curious. Have you tried chalk markers instead of whiteboard markers on those glass boards?

@Raphael No. I don't even know what they are, to be honest with you. We just have white board markers or chalk.

They are used by restaurants and such to write stuff on glass. Amazon has some; maybe you want to try?

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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


text:
Is consent required to record audio of a conference talk in the US?
Do I need a consent to record audio of a presentation at a scientific conference in USA (provided that the conference does not explicitly prohibit such recording)? I'm guessing since it is not a private conversation, it's okay to record it.
This question is out of curiosity. I do not actually have clear intentions of recording talks.

I don't know the relevant laws, which may vary between U.S. states, but I wouldn't focus on the legal question.  Regardless of whether you have the legal right to make a recording, you should not do so without the speaker's permission.  If someone asked me, I would probably give permission, but making a recording without asking feels creepy and inappropriate.  If you go around doing this in academia, it's likely to be viewed as unprofessional, and some speakers will become angry.
Even if you ask, people may wonder why you want a recording.  (Are you stalking the speaker?  Are you going to scrutinize the recording to try to find misstatements?  Are you working on competing research and trying to document exactly what was said in your competitor's talk?)  If you have a compelling reason to make a recording, it's worth explaining why.  For example, perhaps it could help accommodate certain disabilities.  Otherwise, you can certainly ask, but it may come across as a weird request.

+1. It's not just the speakers but the other audience members whose consent is needed -- the recording is likely to capture questions people ask the speaker and even private conversations that happen during the talk.

Yes, I was mostly asking about the legality and how it would be perceived among peers. Thank you.

In general, most large conferences in the US prohibit unauthorized audio and visual recordings of conference presentations. Smaller workshops may not explicitly do so, but you should not take this as blanket permission. As Anonymous Mathematician suggests, many people will wonder why you want to record their talk.
Now, if you have a compelling reason to want to follow up on a presentation later, the best way to do this is to contact the presenter after the session, and let her know that you'd like a copy of the presentation, if possible. This is usually preferable to making a recording, which could in principle get you into trouble if "caught."

Yes, I am aware that some conferences explicitly prohibit recordings of any kind. I do ask for slides to the presenters. :)

My comments were also directed to future readers, who may or may not know that.

I appreciate it. :D

This answer needs a source - I'm aware of some that do, some that don't and some where the policy changes from year to year.


text:
Points to consider when deciding whether to get married during a PhD
Marriage is a recurrent topic in the lives of most PhDs. The meagre pay and the burden of responsibility could make marriage in the middle of PhD look like a terrible idea. But on the positive side, marriage gives one an intimate companion in a long and bleak journey. The pay hurdle could also be overcome if the partner finds a job.
While eventually it is a personal decision for the couple based on their commitment and readiness, what are the points to remember when one thinks of getting married in the middle of a PhD?

What do you mean by 'the burden of responsibility'?

Can people explain the close votes either here, meta, or chat. I think the question can be answered in an objective manner and the discussion can be kept to a minimum. I think it is one of the most prominent social questions PhD students have.

@DanielE.Shub Every close vote automatically comes with an explanation why. In this case, at  this moment I and one other person (and hopefully soon three others) have voted that: "As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance." I think that's pretty explicit.

@EnergyNumbers hopefully someone will step up and edit the question to be better and not just close. I am aware of the predefined explanations, but they are pretty broad. I was hoping you might elaborate on the reason for closing beyond the predefined text. As I pointed out in my previous comment, I think an answer can be based on facts and expertise and the debate and discussion can be kept at a minimum.

Marriage? PhD? You will have hard times my friend

@seteropere:  Why do you think that?

@seteropere: evidence?

@TaraB : I think that is one of the reasons this questions should be closed... I don't think that there is one research showing that "marriage during a PhD: how many have suceeded".

The question only asks for points to keep in mind when making the decision. This is not about whether marriage during PhD is good or bad.

@Bravo:  Then I think retitling it would be a very good idea!  The current title says the question is about whether it's a bad idea.  I can imagine it might be more acceptable to some people if it were called something like "Points to consider when deciding whether to get married during a PhD" or something like that.

@TaraB: Thanks for the suggestion. I have made the change.

interesting question any good luck for your PHD and best wishes for marriage :)

Relevant question.

Could you clarify the point about companionship? Why would a husband/wife by more a companion then a boyfriend/girlfriend with whom you are in a stable relationship such that you would marry them? Also for the pay hurdle - what's the difference here?

If you've found the right person to marry in graduate school, what's the alternative?  Getting married as a postdoc or tenure-track faculty member is also difficult, since you still have a lot of career pressure and uncertainty.  It won't go over well to say "I love you, but let's wait until I have tenure to get married," since that's way too far in the future, and I don't see any real advantage to saying "let's wait until I'm a postdoc."
Before marrying a non-academic, it's important to make sure they understand some of the basic parameters of academia:

The job market is incredibly competitive.  Harvard probably won't hire you even if everyone agrees you're really smart, and getting a job at a less prestigious university is not a form of career failure.  Indeed, just the opposite is true: any career progress in academia is a success that should be celebrated.
There is a national, and even international, job market with universities in many locations, but that doesn't mean you can choose where you want to live.  Instead, it means you need to apply everywhere and take what you can get.  Unless you are really lucky, having an academic career may require living somewhere you do not consider desirable, and you won't even be able to predict in advance where that might be.
Having a successful research career requires a lot of work, but it's a little different from many demanding jobs because the work is mostly self-imposed.  You need to do it, but nobody is specifying what, when, or how.  This can lead to resentment since everything you spend time on seems like a choice, rather than an externally imposed requirement.  So you need a partner who is not inclined towards jealousy over time commitments.

If these issues are not an obstacle, then it's reasonable to get married whenever seems appropriate.

"It won't go over well to say "I love you, but let's wait until I have tenure to get married," since that's way too far in the future, and I don't see any real advantage to saying "let's wait until I'm a postdoc."" Exactly right! Do industry workers wait until they are in a high position before getting married?

Anecdata: my father says he finished grad school faster because he was married and had children. He worked harder during the day because he didn't want to stay around working at night; he wanted to go home and see us! It also gave him a more long-term-oriented sense of pressure/drive: I can't goof around and take eight years for this degree! I have to graduate and get a job and take care of my family! Now he has two PhDs and seven kids. :)

For the actual question (“ what are the points to remember when one thinks of getting married in the middle of a PhD?”):

If you are a woman, and live in a country where you are expected to take the surname of your husband, make sure that doesn't interfere with other people's ability to keep track of your publications. (Some women I know, though they use their husband's name for daily life, use their maiden name for academic purposes. That or using both surnames.)

Honestly, that's about the only academia-specific or PhD-specific real advice I could think of. Everything else is just, well, the usual stuff:

Planning a wedding can become really time consuming. Organize efficiently, or delegate, or simply choose to do something simple. (Elope?)
The honeymoon may be tricky to arrange, especially if your spouse has high expectations (some people would expect the happy couple to take a 3-week vacation starting the day after the wedding, which might be hard to schedule).

And obvious reference:

For the rest of the question, the only thing I have to say is: oh man, you've got to get your priorities straight!

What do you mean exactly by the final comment?

About the honeymoon:  How is this going to get any easier after the PhD?

@TaraB I recently married and aiming to do the honeymoon after finishing the PhD but before starting a post-doc.

@gerrit:  I guess whether that is a good option depends on the point of the honeymoon.  For us it was more about having time to get used to being married before settling back into everyday life (we didn't live together until we were married), so having the honeymoon later wouldn't have been the same.

(Also, it may happen that you end up with no time between your PhD and your first postdoc.  You wouldn't want to turn down an amazing offer just because you had planned to have time for a honeymoon in between.)

@TaraB for the honeymoon, exactly what gerrit said… or because once you're in a long-term job, you can more easily shuffle your vacations around or save some for the occasion

@TaraB regarding priorities, I was reacting to “on the positive side, marriage gives one an intimate companion in a long and bleak journey”… I never heard someone thinking of getting married because that would help their thesis :)

@F'x:  "I never heard someone thinking of getting married because that would help their thesis":  That really is not at all what the OP said!

@TaraB Of course.  Every situation is different.  Perhaps we'll postpone it to Christmas.  Is waiting a while unusual, really?

@gerrit:  Yes, every situation is different.  It seems that waiting a while for the honeymoon is not at all unusual, but I think it defeats what was originally the main purpose of the honeymoon.  Often these days couples will have been living together for quite a while before getting married anyway, so then it's different of course, but since the OP is from India, I think there's a high chance his situation would be closer to mine.

why this ? "Usually entered by foolish young people without a job" So this means people who don't get any job go for a phd?

@TaraB +1 to the honeymoon comment. We put off our honeymoon until "after I defended". A year into a postdoc later...

+1 about the name change issue. We scheduled our marriage for right before my wife published her second paper for exactly this reason. (Doesn't sound too romantic, does it?)

To make the text more generally applicable, I suggest simplifying "If you are a woman, and live in a country where you are expected to take the surname of your husband" to "If you take the surname of your spouse". An expectation of any kind may complicate things, but the general condition for the described issue is replacing one's surname. (And although I am aware it needs to be taken with a grain of sault rather than as precise knowledge, the comic of course refers to localized customs rather than being strictly generally valid.)

Having gotten married more or less exactly in the middle of my PhD, I would say emphatically no, it is not a bad idea at all!  (I expect you just meant 'during' by 'in the middle of' though. =] )
Regarding the 'meagre pay': at the time my PhD scholarship was about twice as much money as I had ever had in my life before, so I felt comparatively wealthy.  We were not interested in having a lavish wedding anyway, but we did manage to afford a very nice wedding with 80 guests, paid for out of money saved from our PhD scholarships.
Of course PhD students might not be similarly well-paid in many countries (we were in the UK).
As for the 'burden of responsibility', I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, so I'll ask a question in a comment and wait until you reply.
Points to consider:

You will potentially need to lower your expectations about what kind of wedding you can afford, but if the point is to achieve the state of being married, I don't think that's a big problem.  You can always throw a big anniversary party at some point later when you have more money.
Potential name change (as mentioned by F'x):  If a name change is going to be involved, it can be very convenient to have this happen before one has any publications, which is a lot more likely to be the case during the PhD than afterwards.  (I did change my surname, and had no publications yet at that point, so there is no problem with using my new surname for academic purposes.)
Honeymoon:  There's a lot more chance of getting enough time off for a proper honeymoon during a PhD than once you have a job, although this is going to depend completely on your supervisor, of course.  [Added because of F'x thinking the honeymoon could be a problem:  My supervisor allowed me a month after my wedding.]
Companionship, as you mentioned:  This is obviously especially relevant if you are from a culture/religion where living together before marriage is not usual.  Definitely having 'an intimate companion' during the PhD journey (not that mine was that long or bleak - but my husband's was more so) can be a huge help, and I don't see any reason for a couple to wait until after a PhD to get married if they are ready now.

I may add more later if I think of anything else.  There is more I would say if I wasn't trying not to stray too far into 'discussion' or 'off-topic'ness.

Thanks for the answer Tara. By 'burden of responsibility', I referred to the extra bit of responsibility which comes with marriage. For example, as a bachelor, you could choose to go hungry for a night. After marriage, it is not your decision alone and if you cannot go hungry, you need to spend time on cooking. There are additional things which could eat one's time after marriage - or I supposed so (I don't know for sure myself :P)

@Bravo: "There are additional things which could eat one's time after marriage..." you mean one of these? :-)

@Willie: Wow, after Bravo's discussion of hunger and cooking, I mis-parsed the quote as "There are additional things which one could eat" and it made your link rather... startling.

I don't understand the part about companionship: Presuambly, when you ask whether you should marry you already have a companion, so what is the difference in comanionship then?

Love is nice and all, but you want to make sure your career decisions do not result in resentment for either you or your partner. There are two big issues with marriage/relationships that I think are unique to academics and especially relevant for PhD students since they are just starting down the academic road. It is critical that your partner (whether he/she is an academic or not) understands that as an academic we often chose to make substantially less money to take a high stress level, time-consuming job. Many people find that a difficult decision to understand and it can lead to stress/resentment. The second is that until tenure, academics often have a series of one or two year jobs with periods of unemployment in between and cross country/international moves. Rarely do we get to decide where we get to work.

"Academics often have a series of one or two year jobs with periods of unemployment in between and cross country/international moves." This is true, but it is also unfortunately true that most tenure-track jobs are in places with limited 30+ dating scenes.

@Anonymous good point. I left out ALL the good points of getting married (academic specific or not).

Marriage is only a momentary distraction of what one might presume to be a state of cohabitation both before and after.  There may be some ancillary health coverage and/or tax benefits as a result.  Other factors would dominate the decision.
A baby or babies on the other hand would likely either significantly slow down the completion of the Ph.D., or put a big strain on the relationship.  That perhaps would make for a more interesting question.
Cohabitation could and should be a benefit while pursuing a Ph.D. with lower living costs and reduced time spent on mundane things through the sharing of chores (cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, etc.).  But you don't need to be married for that.  Of course, the significant other would need to be tolerant of the time not spent with them.

One might not reasonably presume, actually.

"A baby or babies on the other hand would likely either significantly slow down the completion of the Ph.D., or put a big strain on the relationship." - More than during a postdoc? Or when you're a fresh PI? I've already written elsewhere, I decided for a PhD baby exactly because I don't see that it gets easier later. And I certanly haven't experienced work or relationship problems from it.

@Ana: Agreed. The deciding factor isn't whether one is in a PhD or PostDoc or TT position. It is whether one expects to do one of those positions outside of the United States.

@WillieWong - Ah, indeed. My contract got extended for the duration of maternity/parental leave and the dad got time off as well.

Like I said, the baby thing would make for an interesting question.  I'm sure that there are a lot of opinions and varying experiences on that.

First of all, I do think, this is a boat question. Aren't those concerns about career and pay valid for all early-career knowledge workers (i.e., people in non-manual occupations)?
But to answer your question, as somebody who married in the middle of PhD, I think I have evidence, a sample set of size 1, which allows me to conclude that doing so is a good thing.
Many young people nowadays ask questions (as you do) What are the reasons to marry/have kids/etc. in my situation? When is a good time to start a family? There is never the right time and there almost never is a good reason to change your life in whichever way. You should ask differently. What are the reasons not to marry/start a family now? Why not to start family right now? Things will never be better than right now. You think that being a post-doc you will have more time and less stress in the career? Or when you will be assistant professor? Or associate? Or full? Yeah, you can wait till the time when the waters calm down. Good luck starting family when you are 80 (if you will be lucky).

Better ask your to be wife/husband, if he/she agrees with your thoughts?
No matter how well we justify, if your partner does not agree to a thought! no one on the earth make him/her agree to the same(with some exceptions).
Take his/her consent in detail with all possible conditions after marriage with PhD.
If he/she approves than follow the same as receive approval(I believe it will have some conditions)
Neither PhD is easy nor marriage, both requires good amount of efforts for success.

actually life in PHD and life after marriage is not easy :P


text:
Software to make illustrative videos explaining a research topic
What are some good (preferably open-source) software for making illustrative videos to explain one's research? I am currently looking for software to make a small video on my research topic that could complement presentation slides. The video may not delve into all technical details, but should summarise all technical content in a compact and entertaining way.
One source that I know of is Videoscribe (sample video), but I have not tried it yet. Are there other/better alternatives, especially open-source?

This question appears to be off-topic because it is a boat-programming question that's not about academia

@CharlesMorisset [avp.se]

Not free or open-source, but my institution offers licenses to Camtasia Studio, which seems to be the best package out there for slidecasts/screencasts.
Educreations is a a comparatively much simpler - and cheaper - tool that allows you to create videos but doesn't play as well with slides.

You can find here the free or open source alternatives to Camtasia Studio. You may also be interested in the free or open source alternatives to Sony Vegas Pro.

@Trylks I suppose it would be good for OP to include their OS, because being a Windows user myself, the linux-only options are always a bit of a hassle. Thanks for the lists, though. They're helpful!

I've tried some free alternatives to Camtasia - they were not worth the hassle for me - malware, poor instructions, zero support, etc. Camtasia was a good investment for me.

A friend of mine who is very good at academic video-making says he only uses iMovies these days for video editing. He uses QuickTime to capture screen and audio recordings when he needs to.


text:
Will PhD rejection return to haunt later?
Suppose a student applies for PhD at a university and his application is replete with problems: average academic record, poor SOP, so-so recommendations, etc and he is rejected outright. He gets an admit at another university, does very good work and completes his doctorate successfully. Now he deems himself to be a fit for a faculty position at the university which rejected his PhD candidature.
Will his past mistakes come back to haunt him? Will the university dig up his PhD application and count this against his faculty application? Or will he be judged by his work during the course of the doctorate alone?

What was written down on an application years ago will generally not come back to haunt a faculty candidate later. However, actions that might have been taken on a faculty visit—or in later interactions with faculty members at a department—could have repercussions.
If the reputation that someone builds is being a person who "doesn't play well with others," that will be a tag that follows that individual for the rest of the career. It can make life a lot more difficult, because that person will have to work a lot harder and be a lot more successful than someone who is able to interact with current and potential future departmental colleagues in a civil and cordial manner.
But what's written in an application? Unless it's fraudulent, it shouldn't have a bearing on future ability to get hired somewhere.

Speaking from direct, personal experience: NO.  Once you're admitted to a PhD program, your undergraduate record effectively ceases to exist.(*)
First, professors' memories are just not that good.  It's been five years since you were rejected, and we reject many hundreds of applicants every year.  Why would we remember your application?
Second, at least in the US, rejected applications are probably destroyed/deleted a few months after all the decisions are made, to conform with federal privacy laws.  So it's unlikely that anyone could dig up your old rejected application even if they wanted to.
Third, hiring decisions are being made by a different committee than admissions decisions, using very different standards.  Graduate admissions committees are looking for strong research potential.  Faculty recruiting committees are looking for strong research, with the potential for worldwide impact.  If you've actually done good research, why should we care whether you looked like you might not have been ready to do good research five years ago?
(*) With one exception: Since I hit the job market, it's become much more common for deans to request undergraduate transcripts, presumably to check whether the candidate has the right academic experience for teaching.  But I've never heard of a faculty candidate being rejected because they had a weak transcript.

I cannot understand deans asking for ug or even grad transcripts for a faculty job. Makes me wonder if they even have a clue

A note on the expiration of old data: it depends on country, in Canada it seems to not happen. I applied and was accepted to X for undergrad, but chose to go elsewhere. When I decided to apply for Masters, I applied and was accepted to X, but they still had my records from my undergrad application! It caused minor problems since my citizenship status had changed in the 4 years between applications. Apart from this bureaucratic stuff I don't think there was any other effects.

Good point; edited to clarify.

I've never heard of this happening at all. Most people don't have that kind of memory, and even if they did, it's irrelevant. I know of at least one person who was

rejected from high rank school X for UG
rejected from X for grad school
got a faculty offer from X (and turned it down) :)

Applicants who apply with poor credentials (low grades, no experience, etc.) are judged at the time of application based on their current credentials. Unless either them or the admissions committee does something exceptionally stupid during the interview process, the subsequent rejection/admission is simply a sign of how good of a fit the person is at that time. In the same way that a grad school application does not "guarantee" a future professorship post, a grad school rejection does not automatically imply automatic future rejection for other positions.

It could - if they learned that you committed fraud on your application, which could potentially reveal character problems down the road (and which is not easily forgivable).
Now, I had some pretty painful rejections from programs that had openly courted me pre-application, and they really hurt not only because I'm in a small field, but also particularly because I'm not the type of person who people easily forget - I was very possibly one of the most unusual applicants in the entire history of earth & planetary science graduate school admissions, and I intentionally made each of my applications extremely risky (stuffing as much information as I could humanely stuff into them, and taking great care to link them to all of my social media profiles), because I knew that I was fighting an uphill battle (due to my GPA and Attention Deficit Disorder). While it turned out to really help with Brown (where I got a top student fellowship too), it probably annoyed the hell out of most of the other schools.
But in the end, I think it will all be fine, because at worst - everything I did can be attributed to immaturity or poor judgment - all of which can be improved with time and with actual publications in the future.


text:
Dressing etiquette for interviews in academia
Are there expected dressing norms at faculty interviews? Will a casual tee-jeans be discouraged?
In the same vein, what is expected when a student visits the campus for an interview?

While its not mandatory to wear a suit for a faculty interview, it doesn't hurt, and may actually be expected in certain disciplines. Best to ask around beforehand. I've never heard of a dress code for student visit, but something semi-formal doesn't hurt.
As a general principle, it doesn't hurt to be more dressed up than necessary. The reverse can often be embarrassing. But as with most such thing, the departmental culture is the most important factor.

The general principle stated here is exactly right.  Within reason (e.g., not a tuxedo), the worst case scenario for dressing too formally is that it will be amusing in a charming way, while not dressing formally enough may offend someone.  For example, I think 90% of mathematicians would have no problem with a faculty candidate wearing a T-shirt and jeans, but I wouldn't recommend that anyone do that, since you do have to worry about the remaining 10%.  And I think dressing informally would be a big mistake at a business school interview.

Short answer: Be the second best dressed person in the department.  (Even in math departments, there's always some weirdo who wears a tie every day.)

It is also very easy to remove your tie and jacket if you find yourself in a casual environment. Or to, say, remove then after the talk and before going to dinner.

As an addition to @dmckee's comment, if you go out for dinner with someone for your faculty interview and they say, "It's okay, the dinner is casual, you don't have to wear your tie" then I do recommend that you do as they say and do that. :)

Do not forget that, in addition to meeting the department, you will probably have time scheduled with a dean and maybe a provost or vice president for academic affairs.

@AllenSeay Academia is not the business world. Obviously. The short, prejudicial answer is that the more professional someone looks, the more they're trying to impress you with their appearance, as opposed to their actual work.

@JeffE that's a rather extreme position for which I'd need citations :).

@AllenSeay The less prejudicial answer is that just like every other society, mathematics has its own social norms, including its own dress code, which do not coincide with the social norms of the business world.  As in every other society, people who flout those social norms are weirdos, by definition.

The best advice for any interview dress code is, one standard of dress higher than what you would be wearing if you got the job.  eg  if jeans and a t-shirt is what most people wear around the office, then business trousers and a shirt is fine for the interview.  If its  business trousers and a shirt, then for the interview a suit and tie.

For industry interviews, I have a similar but slightly different take - wear what you would wear for the most formal daytime situation that could occur on the job for which you are applying. In some cases, that may be more than one step more formal than normal around-the-office.

The only single right answer is that it varies.
However, there are methods that you can use to establish what the right answer might be in the particular case you have in mind.
Here's my method.

As with pretty much all human contact, the person you meet will have norms and expectations, conditioned by their culture, their quirks, the organisation they work in, the physical location of the organisation, your gender, their gender, your age, their age, and so on.
There is no general answer as to what those norms and expectations are, so research the specific person, organisation and country.

That's half the story. The other half is:

what impact do you want to have?
Do you want to meet their expectations, or challenge them? The latter is high risk, but with potentially high reward.
How do you want to project yourself to them?
How strong is your position - are you going from a position of strength, or one of weakness?

And if in doubt, wear the clothes that are smart clothes within the business world (rather than the academic world) in your own culture.

Exactly right.  But keep in mind that there are academic cultures in which a clean T-shirt and jeans qualify as "smart business clothes".

@JeffE and those are the only academic cultures I can live in :)

@Suresh: ...until you become department chair.  (Bwa ha ha.)

@JeffE - thanks, I've edited to clarify what I meant by "business culture".

@EnergyNumbers: I agreed with your answer before you edited it.  I don't any more.  Some academic cultures view anyone who wears a tie with deep suspicion.

At the SLAC where I used to teach, there was a circulating story of a job candidate who showed up in a t-shirt and jeans. They were summarily shown the door.
This is even though it was a pretty casual place -- I wore a t-shirt and jeans most days during the warmer months.
Dressing nice without looking like you are going to a funeral,  the prom, or a beach party is the tricky thing -- especially for women. Men can wear a dress shirt, necktie, and casual sports coat. Women have fewer dressy options so we tend to default to pantsuits.
Final thoughts:

Dressing more formally than is the norm means that you misread the university climate or that you might have been nervous and overcompensated.
Dressing less formally than is the norm means that you misread the university climate or that you might not being thinking seriously about the position.

Given the dangers of the latter, it's clear that dressing too formal is safer than dressing too informal.

At the SLAC where I work, we had a male job candidate around 2018 who did his interview wearing jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt. All the other male candidates I had ever seen wore a suit. He did an amazing job and got a job offer. No one mentioned his choice of clothing at all. I think that's the way it should be.

If you know who the person(s) you will meet with are, try to find photographs of them on their faculty pages.
The way they want to be seen by other people is usually pretty close to what they expect of you.

First of all, I'd be unlikely to ever evaluate someone based on what they wore for an interview.  But second of all, insofar as I did, more points go to the dressed down person than the dressed up one -- after all, people who dress up might expect me to do the same, and I most certainly do not want my department to become a place where there's any pressure to look "professional".
Though to be fair, I followed the above advice of "one step up from usual" when I went to interviews myself -- my daily wear is a tee-shirt and jeans, so for interviews a I wore a shirt-with-buttons and jeans.

people who dress up might expect me to do the same - what? why would they expect that?

this is an empirical fact; see all comments and responses above from people who think it is a bad idea to come to an interview underdressed.  in any case, someone who dresses down to an interview is certain not to be a person who would ever complain about my tee shirts; someone who dresses up for one may or may not be.

I thought formal and smart suit would be a sign of giving the respect to an interviewer whatever (s)he prefers. It's interesting that some people can think of that as kind of persuasion to do the same and losing points by doing so. I'd vote down if I could.


text:
I gave up on a PhD because of time management, shall I try a second time?
Background
A year ago I gave up on my (first attempt at getting a) PhD because I could not stand the needed time management.  I am a mosaic autist but I do live with it without major issues.  My only apparent problem is that I get emotional very quickly at anything that goes differently than planned, i.e. I do not like surprises and I recover (emotionally) very slowly from surprises.
Do not get me wrong, I have been often praised for my talks and seminars.  I have worked in industry for years and I can live independently alright.  The only thing that I always need to do is to plan things in advance, and plan them extremely thorough.  I need to admit that questions and answer sessions after a talk are pretty difficult, but I can manage with enough preparation.
I gave up at my first attempt at getting a PhD after a year in.  After that time I got so emotionally distressed I could not continue.  This happened dues to simple disorganization of the environment I was in, for example:

I needed to change office three times during that period;
switched (university) email systems two times;
all courses for the PhDs were announced with only two days of antecedence;
courses were canceled with hours of antecedence if there were not enough people attending;
reports were not scheduled, my supervisor literally popped in my office and asked for a report within a week (not once, a couple of times);
some (internal) talks were to be prepared on an short (a day or two) notice.

(By "courses" I mean small lectures available to the PhD students as Learning to use the Library or Statistical Methods, and yes they were mandatory)
I understand that a PhD is a training exercise, where one learns to do research.  Therefore learning different things, performing talks and writing reports are things that I definitely need to learn over the course of the PhD.  I just could not perform any of it with a decent performance because my mind was distressed with things appearing and changing too fast.
I did raise the fact that I need a more stable environment with my supervisor and with the administration.  Yet, the only answers I got were along the lines of: If every other PhD student can deal with this you can deal with it too.
I gave up just before my 1 year report.  I really wanted to write there:

I did almost no research work because you did not allow me a moment of breathing to do any actual work!

(Of course, I did not write that)

The Question
A year has passed since I gave up on my PhD.  Recently a friend of mine which does a PhD in a different institution showed me a programme topic that I would love to work in (a very similar topic to my original PhD).
My question is.  Is it common for PhD programmes to be disorganized and everchanging?  It is very likely that I will find an unstable environment in the new institution?
My original institution (which I explicitly omit the name here) was within the top 100 of several world rankings.  And my (possible) new institution is way below in these rankings.  I need to admit that I do not believe in these rankings, but, nevertheless, I am very afraid that my previous endeavor may repeat itself.
This all happens in the UK, in the field of computer security.

Career note: I am not planning to follow an academic career.  In the field of computer security it is common to get to a PhD and then work in research labs that perform bug hunting and security analysis.  Labs that are not part of academic institutions in any way.  It is true that a PhD is not strictly necessary for such positions but it is very common (some 70% of people working in computer security labs do have a PhD), and I would like to advance in that career path.

Visit the institution, ask around, see if the working environment is better. A lower-ranked institution might be less demanding, but you never know. Also consider studying in another country with different culture.

@shane - Hm... I am not really willing to follow an academic career.  Computer security is kind of special because it has industry labs where most people do have PhDs.  It is an industry career path but it pretty much requires a PhD these days (I cannot tell if it is a good thing or not but it is the reality, as far as I know).  I have updated the question a little.

@adipro - That is an idea I had not thought off.  Studying in another country with a different culture does seem to be a very good thing to try.  Many thanks for that.

I vote for a UK part-time phd!

I understand that a PhD is a training exercise, where one learns to do research.

In a way, your misunderstanding is that you think that doing a PhD is strictly training you how to do research. I think it is more accurate to say that a PhD trains you to be an academic - and dealing with this kind of "instability" is part of that, the same as learning to do university teaching, dealing with the administration, networking, presenting at conferences, and all the other things professors do.
As for whether you are likely to see the same issues again in your new PhD, I think they break down into two categories:

I needed to change office three times during that period,
  switched (university) email systems two times,
  all courses for the PhDs were announced with only two days of antecedence,
  courses were canceled with hours of antecedence if there were not enough people attending.

I am sure that many, if not most, universities are better run than that, and I feel you have a good chance of not experiencing that in another university. Even better, since you know somebody in your new PhD programme, you can ask her or him whether any or all of the above examples also happen there.
More problematic are the latter items on the list:

reports were not scheduled, my supervisor literally popped in my office and asked for a report within a week (not once, a couple of times),
  some (internal) talks were to be prepared on an short (a day or two) notice.

This is exactly how, in my experience, the vast majority of research groups are organized, and if something like an ad hoc report to your supervisor, which is in the grand scheme of things rather trivial, stresses you emotionally, I fear that you will indeed not be very happy in academia.
Let me give you some examples from my own PhD:

Close to all my thesis meetings were ad hoc. The usual pattern was that I was getting coffee (the machine was next to my advisor's office), and my advisor would "incidentally" come out of his office and ask me how my thesis is coming along. I think I had 3 scheduled meetings with my advisor during my entire PhD.
On multiple occasions during my PhD I was at conferences, and my advisor figured out that he could not be in a side meeting that he promised his input for and sent me instead, often with less than half a day of advance notice and no preparation except for a pat on the back. In one or two cases, he even forgot to tell the other meeting participants that he would not be coming, meaning my first order of business was telling them who the heck I am and what I was doing there.
My PhD advisor once went to a project review meeting, for which I prepared (parts of) the material for him. Despite asking for it I never heard feedback, so I assumed it would be ok. The night before the meeting, 17:00, when he looked at the material the first time, he discovered that it was not at all what he expected, and I ended up redoing large parts in an all-nighter.

Unfortunately this will also not really change once you rise to higher levels of seniority - I am now a senior postdoc with my own research group to lead, and my work life still consists of plenty of surprises that need to happen right now. Some examples:

On the ~ third day of my current job, I was asked to fill in the next day for a lecture unit in a topic I had 0 expertise in because the head of the department had to leave to an urgent meeting.
I am currently working on a very important personal grant application that is due in a month. I loudly proclaimed to everybody that cared to listen that I really wanted to focus on this in the next month. Despite, I have been asked to lead an audit for a multi-million dollar software project, been taken to multiple surprise meetings for a transfer project that my department is running, and have been asked to give a one-hour talk next week in a high-profile event that my department is organizing.

(of course, all of the above are exceptions rather than the rule - most days I get to work and do exactly what I planned to do this day; however, I got the gist from you that these kind of unexpected workloads could ruin your concentration for more time than what they actually take)
So, to answer your titular question:

shall I try a second time?

If you have found an industry job that does not lead to this kind of emotional stress, I would suggest you think long and hard before leaving it. I will be personally very surprised if you find academia to your liking, based on what you described.

Thanks, that more optimistic than I thought. I forgot to add to the question that I am not trying to enter an academic career (now edited/fixed).  It is just that computer security labs (which are industry organizations) more-or-less require the applicants to have PhDs.  I cannot judge whether that requirement is sensible or not, it is just something I probably need to go through if I want to work in proper computer security.  I am currently working as a contractor because management career paths are a no-go for me. I'd argue that I'm trying to get a PhD as an industry path advancement.

My question is. Is it common for PhD programmes to be disorganized and everchanging?
Not as much "disorganized" as much as dynamic, changing, and "academic".  The world of academia is very focused on academia.  To an average person, it may seem disorganized.  I've experienced that getting faculty together is like herding cats.
It is very likely that I will find an unstable environment in the new institution?
It will be "academic".  Here's an example.  As I was doing my graduate thesis paper, I'd submit it, and the advisor would want a word change, for example from "huge" to "gigantic". I argued with the advisor and another faculty that this wasn't editing or helping just being nit-picky.  The other faculty told me to just do it, as getting done is just a series of flaming hoops to jump through.  So, I make the change.  Next draft wants me to change "gigantic" to "huge".  Grr... So, I went through a process like that for a couple of  months.
"shall I try a second time?"
"Do or do not, there is no try."  This seems fitting.  Since a PhD is a long-term commitment, takes a lot of patience, costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time during the term, it is not to be undertaken by an answer on the internet.  It is your decision.

What is your motivation to do a PhD? I guess the only thing you really need a PhD for is an academic career. Otherwise with computer security I don't see how you would benefit having a PhD to the point that it would offset investing all that time and patience.
Furthermore, there are no guarantees that a program that looks fairly structured on the outside and in the current moment won't also turn into a complete mess.
In the end however this is up to you: you need to think of the trade-off in terms of time, salary, stability, and any other factors that influence your satisfaction at the workplace.

Heh, actually your username is a good definition of my motivation to a PhD.  Career advancement in computer security is mostly into management, which, for the same reasons as the PhD failure is a complete no-go for me.  i.e. I was frustrated with the career path. Computer security labs (and exmaple) are the other option for a carer path.  Although not related to academic institutions such labs expect people with PhDs, which is what I was (and more-or-less still am) aiming for.

@grochmal: Possible approach for someone not interested in learning how to be a professor (I assume you're already top on the technical track at your current employer, because all more senior positions are in management): 1. Your experience should be able to get you an interview at some of the larger labs, where the leadership roles require PhD but the rank-and-file researchers do not. 2. Prove yourself in that environment, publishing and working your way up as high as you can.  3. Your achievements in that research environment will be as meaningful to the lab you want into as a PhD would be.

@BenVoigt - This should be an answer.  It is the only one that notes that there are researchers without a PhD (and yes, there's a good deal of those).  Your comment is petty much what I am trying to go towards since the time I posted this question/

@grochmal: I feel like it's a good answer to your situation, but not to the question you asked.  I would not be addressing, even in the slightest, "My question is. Is it common for PhD programmes to be disorganized and everchanging? It is very likely that I will find an unstable environment in the new institution?"  If you do ask a question about a career track leading to a prestigious research group with colleagues who hold PhDs, when you don't have one yourself, leave a link and I would write an answer.  Note that workplace.stackexchange might be a better site for that question.

@BenVoigt - Damn, you're 100% right.  That's what I get from thinking about something I wrote 5 months ago.  Many thanks anyway.

It is probably a cultural thing. In the Netherlands where I study, everything has to be planned months in advance. I have monthly status meetings with my promotors scheduled year in advance and I have a weekly meetings with my supervisor every week at the same day and time. Courses, lectures or some mini talks/seminars are also usually planned cca 6 to 12 months in advance. Even beers with your colleagues has to be put into your agendas first.

It is actually very good to know that that madness is not everywhere.  I know where I'm moving to when brexit hits hard :).  Thanks.


text:
No confirmation after resubmitting a paper which got "Revision Required"
My paper submitted to a Springer journal got "Revision Required" and a comment on what type of revision was required. I completed that required revision and I want to re-submit the revised paper. On the journal's site there are options for file uploads. I uploaded all files and pressed complete. I didn’t got any submission mail nor any other confirmation. I see there is a file attached after login. I also attached a file to the “Add Discussion“ section.

Just ask the journal.

It takes same amount of time to contact the journal as it does posting here. But the journal will know the answer. Don't be shy!

Thank you.......

@user2705196 yes sir your were correct after 2 days status changed .

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


text:
How do I go about writing a review?
I'm an agronomy major who's performing additional academic work as way of increasing my chances of getting into grad school.
This semester I'm going to be writing a literature review regarding plant breeding in ornamental plants using references from 2007 to the present year. The emphasis will be in breeding methodologies ((1)mutagenesis, (2) genetic transformation) and (3) biodiversity.
My professor has done extensive research in genetics but this is also the first time he's advising a student in writing a review. Out goal is to make it as publishable as possible.
I've already obtained multiple articles but this is my first time writing a review. Can I get advice on how to start or how to plan my creation process?

First, you'll need to identify what kind of reviews you're planning to write. Just to name a few: critical review, integrative review, literature review, meta-analysis, scoping review, systematic review, etc. The methods differ somewhat regarding the types. For example, if you're writing a systematic review, then you'll need a much heavy focus on how you searched for the articles and how you sorted/selected them.
Second, most reviews are question-driven and according to the types, the specificity of the questions also differ. Scoping reviews may have a looser definition of questions while meta-analysis and systematic review may have a set of tightly defined questions.
In other words, it's likely not something we can introduce on a Q&A website like here. As a "review" varies so much that can be as quick as an afternoon of search or a five-year PhD project.
What I'd recommend:

Identify about 5-8 review articles in your field that you'd like to model after. Most reviews are pretty apparent in terms of what type of reviews it is. But if you're unsure, talk to a librarian.
Read up about that kind of review. There are books (like Booth's Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review) and guidelines (check www.equator-network.org) on how to carry out the search, arrange ideas, and present your interpretation. Again, your library would be a great start.
Consider working with someone who had experience in writing a review. They can help you with revising subtle things like how to tabulate the data to make them digestible and useful, and how to present your findings, etc.
Budget a lot of time.
Develop a system of keeping good notes and bibliography. People have used index cards, highlighters, Evernote, etc. to keep their thoughts and their quotes clearly laid out and discernible from each other. Bibliography management software is also a must, as there will be intensive referencing.
If you have tuition remission/support, consider register for a course in your school on literature review. Most of these courses require students to have an independent project (you may petition for one if there isn't.) That way you can get to work on your topic and obtain guidance and input from the course instructor. I think 13 to 14 weeks of weekly effort should get you a very strong draft. (According to your school policy you may want to give the instructor a heads up and seek approval on using your research topic, though I don't see any conflict here.)

What I'd privately recommend:

Evaluate if you truly need a review. While I understand it sounds logical to "read up and write about the field" before you joint in. It's true that it's easy to read a lot of articles about a field, yet it takes time/experience to be able to tell the intricacy among them. So, most reviews take a much, much longer time to write compared to, say, writing up about an experiment. If you don't have much time before the application, consider at least another shorter paper such as a part of your PI's research that you are involved in as a side project.
I am not at all familiar with agronomy, but I'd guess that the topic may be already too broad for some kind of reviews as it covers all "ornamental plants." Dissect the sample articles you got and examine how the authors specifically model their question statements.
Most common newbie mistake is writing an annotated bibliography. If the review reads like "A says a, B says b, and C et. al. says c," chance is it's not being done quite right.

thanks for the input, I'll edit the question. It's a literature review.

Also, this is already part of a class I'm taking. I already have my degree but I can still apply for an advanced degree (not quite a Master's program but similar).

Great overview!

Please excuse me for recommending my own work, but I've done quite a bit of work to address the problem: "I need to do a literature review. How do I do it? And once I've collected a bunch of articles, what do I do with them?"
In brief, I recommend adopting a theory-mining approach. That means to explicitly look for theory in the source articles and then to synthesize the theory as the contribution of the review. What I mean by "theory" is very simply "A is related to B". This is distinct from literature reviews that simply summarize what people have said about A; that is not theory. Theory is about explaining how and why phenomenon A is related to phenomenon B. In my academic field (information systems), I have found that this focus on theory is the most useful thing that can be done with literature reviews (in terms of citations by other researchers). So, in your case, for example, you might explicitly focus on literature that studies which breeding methodologies effectively result in certain desirable characteristics. Although my literature review approach focuses on social sciences, I believe it would be relevant in a case like yours.
I have two main relevant articles to recommend:

The View from Giants’ Shoulders: Developing Theory with Theory-Mining Systematic Literature Reviews: this describes the idea of theory-mining reviews and focuses mainly on theory
A Guide to Conducting a Standalone Systematic Literature Review: this provides more practical details on how to actually conduct a general literature review


text:
How do I choose the right papers to write a review paper?
I'm writing a review paper. I'm in the field of computer science.
There are many related papers in my research area. Some are good, some are not.
I'm planning to include only Q1-papers based on Journal Citation Reports
But, does this enough for the paper?
Should I include other papers in Q1, Q3, Q4 and conference papers too.?
If I include all, it will make my review paper really long especially when I create a table to summarize all related papers.

This seems like a content-of-research question.

@AnonymousPhysicist nothing to with that. It's a serious question on how to choose high-quality papers for a review article.

If you're intending to conduct a systematic review, PRISMA is a widely used checklist in the medical sciences which could be useful (disciplines differ of course): https://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b2700

@RuaraidhDobson In general, should I include all related papers or I have to filter?

In a systematic review you try to find as many relevant papers as possible using an in-depth search to answer a specific research question. It takes a long time and requires at least two people to review each paper. A rapid review methodology may be more useful to you (but again this is specific to each discipline): https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-015-0465-6 . Your university library (if applicable) may also be able to help - librarians know how to do this!

@RuaraidhDobson I doubt computer scientists will find that familiar.

If there was an easy algorithm to determine, which papers are important for a topic and which are not, we would not need review articles. A list of Q1 articles with short descriptions can be automatically generated from a citation database and the paper's abstracts. There would be no need to put it into a separate publication. Your primary job as author of a review article is that of curation. You should consider all (or at least as many as possible) papers on a topic, select the important ones and put them into a coherent thread based on their content alone.
It will likely be skewed towards the highly cited, because they are highly cited for a reason. But the point is, if a paper is good and advances the topic, I want a review article to tell me about it even if it only ever appeared as a preprint and hasn't really been cited by anyone. Equally, if it appeared in the best journal, is cited by hundreds, but is only tangentially related and doesn't really offer any new insight into the topic, I don't want to waste my time looking it up just because it was mentioned indiscriminately with the others.

Can you summarize what you were saying in one sentence?

The short one sentence summary would be: "The right papers are decided by content, not by metrics." Or, more direct: "Your approach is fundamentally wrong, abandon it."

Different literature reviews have different purposes which my determine what kinds of articles they look for. But for most literature reviews, a systematic literature search should include ALL possible sources and there is no justification to include only articles from "top-ranked" or "elite" journals (such as the Q1 that you referred to). That would be saying that it is unlikely for articles in other journals to have anything interesting to say related to your topic, but you have no logical reason to expect that. Your reason given, "If I include all, it will make my review paper really long", is not an acceptable excuse. Any such review article would likely be rejected for publication by any journal in Q1, Q2 and even Q3.
Moreover, in computer science specifically, you absolutely must include conference articles since much of the best original research is published there.
So, what do I recommend for computer science? If you search only in the ACM Digital Library and including anything and everything you find there, then your literature search would often be considered sufficiently comprehensive for the computer science domain. However, some specialized domains might need additional database sources, even in computer science. (If you want to be really exhaustive, you could add arXiv for grey literature [preprints], but that would probably not be required.)

Only on  ACM Digital Library? How about other publishers?

Whether the ACM Digital Library is sufficiently comprehensive is definitely subfield-specific.  In my subsubfield (computational geometry/topology), the ACM DL is not even  close to comprehensive.

@JeffE: Thanks for your comments; I have edited my answer accordingly.


text:
What is the key difference between the term "Research Gaps" and the terms "Literature Survey" or "Literature Review"?
The difference between the terms "Literature Survey" and "Literature Review" is covered in this question and answers. But how do they differ from "Research Gaps" in the context of a research proposal?

The difference between "Literature review" and "Literature survey" is small, if it exists at all - people may use the two terms to mean the same thing. It has been discussed in this question.
A "research gap" is an area of research that has not yet been done. You may identify a research gap by doing a literature review or survey.

Thank you very much for the clarification.


text:
Can I include other students' master thesis in the literature review of my master thesis?
Can I include other students' master thesis in the literature review of my master thesis? These master thesis that I found are published in Google Scholar and other online libraries/archives.

Your user name is fun, of course, and I don't recommend changing it, but to some here it might be bait. Welcome to the site.

@Buffy thanks! haha I know, I named it out of frustration I had on StackOverflow where people kept downvoting my questions no matter how accurate or detailed I tried to be.

I'm a bit curious why there would be hesitation doing so @dontdownvoteme.

Yes of course you can. Sometimes they must be cited in articles as well.

@Aruralreader that's because in the past projects of my master degree we have used other students' reports as "Related Work" and now I was confused if this is considered a Related work or Literature review.

@dontvotemedown, thanks, I see.

Actually, it might be essential to do so. Especially if you draw on or extend their work. You need to cite anything you use, of course.
Moreover, a literature review, if it is to be complete may need to draw on things that are "visible" even if not formally published. You may, however, need to make it clear that some such things haven't been peer reviewed so the reader needs to take some caution in accepting their results.

If the thesis is relevant, then yes, you can certainly include it. If the thesis disseminates important and original findings on the topic you are surveying, then you should definitely include it.
I once read a peer-reviewed book-chapter by a professor that cited a master's thesis (the thesis was neither by the professor himself nor by a superstar).


text:
What books to review for this journal?
I wanted to do a book review for a journal. I enquired the editor whether a book review for the journal is commissioned by the editor or anyone can write. He answered anyone can write and included the following in the mail.

We normally invite authors to do the review of the book that we
receive at the office.
Could you name the book you want to review?
Best wishes

I am highly confused by what he meant 'the book that we receive at the office'. This is a Taylor and Francis journal.

The journal gets sent free copies of new books by the publishers, based on the content of the journal. If you want to review one of those, you suggest yourself. The problem seems to be knowing just which books they may have received...

@JonCuster: Thanks for the prompt reply. Ya, I don't know how to find out the books the journal might have received. Any suggestion on how to figure it out?

If you know the topics of the journal, and follow announcements (or get sent them) of new books from publishers of those topics, chances are you could hit on a few fairly easily.

@Anyon: I checked. The journal does not have books received section.

To me, the statement:

We normally invite authors to do the review of the book that we receive at the office.

sounds like a commissioned review, in the sense that the journal/editor is inviting relevant authors to review a particular book when they receive it (presumably promotional copies distributed by the publisher to generate interest in purchase).
I'd interpret this as saying that receiving unsolicited submissions of reviews is not the typical way they do things, even if the email did say it happens.
That said, the text you quoted is not grammatical, so it's likely the email was either written hastily or by someone who is not a native English writer, so it may not be fruitful to closely analyze every particular statement for deep meaning.
You could ask for clarification, but it probably makes more sense to just follow the directions given to you: if you want to review a book, let the editor know which book it is you'd like to review. They'll go from there and let you know if they're interested or not.

One way to do book marketing is to send books (or more commonly, catalogues, since sending books is expensive) to journals and ask them if they want to review it. This is probably what the editor is referring to, and "the office" is his or her office at their institution (as opposed to the local Taylor and Francis office).
You could ask them for an electronic catalogue, the name(s) of the publisher they are in contact with (and you will search the publisher's website yourself), or you can just name the book you want to review and see if they have it.