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How do employers verify that job applicants have the degree(s) they claim?
Let's say someone is named John Smith applied for a job claiming that he was graduated from University X. How would an employer confirm that the applicant is John Smith, who also has the degree from University X? Wouldn't it be incredibly common for someone else to have the same name from the same department?

The employer likely delegates the problem to the university, by telling the applicant to arrange for an official sealed transcript copy, trusting that the university only makes those available to the real graduate.  What are the chances that two John Smiths are applying to the same company at the same time, and one is fraudulently claiming to be from University X at the same time that the one who actually attended and is applying to the same company orders his real transcript?

I don't know any John Smith... :)

@BioGeo I have only met one John Smith, but I have actually met more then 3 people with exact same first and last name.  2 With the same first middle and last and one person with the same birthday first middle and last name.  Names are a generational thing which I believe alters this also the birthday paradox.

Most of the time, employers trust that potential applicants have the degrees that they claim they have. When applicants apply for jobs, they are frequently asked to attest to the fact that everything they are submitting is truthful. There can be enormous legal and reputational consequences to lying.
If it emerges later, for any reason, that an employee lies about a degree, they run a very strong risk of being fired and having their reputation and credibility destroyed. In some case, fraud can lead to criminal changes. Because the consequences can be enormous, most people will not lie about something like the conferral of a degree.
In situations where employees needs to verify a degree, there are many options. Employers might request a copy of a diploma or a transcript from applicants (I was asked to do this by an Academic HR department at my current university to finalize my appointment). In some cases (e.g., when applying to graduate schools) it's routine for the degreeholder to request signed and sealed copies of academic transcripts that are sent directly from the registrars to potential schools or employers. Some universities and fields have automated systems that employers can use to verify that an applicant has the degree they claim.
Although it's possible that a university or department might have multiple students with the same name, you won't have two students with exactly the same experience. Two identically-named students will not likely have started in the same department at the same and ended at the same time (information that would normally be on a CV). Registrars will often have systems in place to ensure that they only individual students can grant access to their transcripts (e.g., by requiring less public information like a password, birthday or, government-issued ID number) which acts as another form of evidence.
If an employer was incredibly skeptical, they could just ask an applicant basic things about their experience in school. Who did they take classes with? Which professor did they have the best relationship with? Then send an email or call and see if things check out.

Many universities have a degree verification service. For example:
 Confirmation of University of Toronto Degree
The simplest way to eliminate the possibility of an incorrect match is to search using the student number. However, in this case the date of birth can be used as well. The surname, year of graduation, and degree are also required. Note it does cost money to check (20 CAD in this case).
There are also checking services which apply to groups of universities. Such as:
UK Higher Education Degree Datacheck

Every University has a degree verification phone number that employers can call and it only takes about 5 minutes. Just type the name of the university, degree verification into Google and the number will come up.
I just put the degree verification on my resume beside each degree. This way the hiring person can see that it is legit and they can call to verify.

Every university in the world??! Could you provide a reference?!

Such a service would run afoul of data privacy laws in many countries.


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Is it advisable to self-advertise in conferences being on the job market
While giving presentations in conferences or talks in research meetings, is it ok to self-advertise that I'm on the job market (academic or industry)? Is it advisable or does it make more sense to mention that during networking in teams?

At a mathematics conference, you can signal this non-verbally by wearing a suit :-)

Not only is it advisable, it's damn near required.

It is ok, but it may not be ideal.  Academia often frowns upon open self-promotion (more than it probably should, in my opinion), and flat out saying that you're on the market in a public presentation seems a little...well, "desperate" is too strong, but the next thing, perhaps.
Some thoughts about how/when/whether to do this:

Cultural nuances can vary in very subtle and localized ways.  If you are going to a big conference in your profession or field, there must be other people there who are on the job market.  Look to them and see how they are behaving: is anyone else advertising their availability in their presentations?  If not, maybe don't do it yourself without an especially good reason.  If so, look to the audience members and see how they're reacting.  A little face-reading will probably tell you whether people are happy to hear this kind of information.
Consider trying to disburse this information slightly less directly.  For instance, ending a talk with something like "Please come talk to me if you're interested in X [or, by implication, me].  I would be very interested to take these things further."  Then, when someone talks to you one-on-one or in a small group, you can work the fact that you're on the market organically into the conversation.
Whenever you go to a conference and you're on the job market, concentrate on making meaningful academic and social connections with people, especially potential employers.  Don't prioritize selling yourself directly.  If they meet you and like you and your work, you can follow up later by letting them know you're on the market.  And you should.

I think this might be a cultural thing. As the other answer says, this is quite common in parts of CS, and is not viewed as desperate at all. Of course, if your talk is the first time someone realizes you're looking for a job, you're doing something wrong :)

@Pete, thanks for the advice. Point (3) is the strongest way for exploring career opportunities.

In circumstances such as this, a little levity can help a lot. Outright saying

I need a job, please hire me!

is going to come across as desperate, melodramatic or tacky. Presenting it a little bit more humorously:

And if you'd be interested in a postdoctoral associate who can tell you about X, I may be able to help you out. . . .

Or something in a similar vein will not. You'll make your point, but it won't come across too negatively. Of course, if a potential advisor isn't amused by such a comment, this could be problematic—but I'd argue that someone who has no sense of humor whatsoever might not be a good advisor to have in the first place.

I have seen many people do this and I don't see any problem with it.
Does it help? This is much less clear. But it seems very unlikely to hurt.

Agreed. At least in the broader fields of computing and information sciences, this seems to be the norm. I have seen, in the bigger HCI/privacy conferences, job market candidates informally mentioning to folks from other similar departments that they are on the job market or, if that department has a call-for-applicants that year.

It depends a lot on your field. At least in business, it is very common to hear job market candidates start their talk at major conferences saying they are in the (academic) job market. It is not frowned upon and usually results in some smiling faces (probably driven by empathy) among the audience.
Although academia does tend to frown upon self-promotion, self-signaling is still useful; it will not improve your chances of getting hired by a particular company/university but it can increase your chances of more companies/universities knowing you are looking for a position and that they can approach you.
As others have already answered, you should be careful how to say this; I like the phrase "I'm on the job market this year" because it signals exactly that, you are at the stage in your PhD that you are looking for jobs, not desperate, just open.

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Dealing with misconceptions when proposing a new idea as an outsider to a field
I have some ideas related to computer architecture/electrical engineering on which I would like to get feedback from academics.
A professor at a university I visited has the belief that something I proposed is crackpot, and that I must be delusional for not accepting his arguments. I turned up out of the blue one day for the first meeting, which I suspect many "crackpots" likely do, and I suspect that this fact alone has made him tune out.
He has a very fixed mental model of the concepts being dealt with, and makes many assumptions that only hold in certain cases, for particular definitions of a concept, or for what has been observed so far but not tested in the context of the idea. An unfairly high standard of proof is then requested of me, when a much less clear-cut body of evidence, or less-rigorous tests lend support to my claim. Discussions with other people educated in the area are more fruitful, but the same fallacies that only apply conditionally are frequently trotted out.
I am not formally educated in the field, and he uses this during every part of the conversation to insist that only a learned person (professor or researcher in the field) has the ability or competence to comprehend the concepts properly (which is false), and that only such a trained person who has built themselves up from the bottom can develop and spot flaws in the difficult concepts entertained.
(This is not true, and I believe the following analogy applies to my situation: one can easily run or swim before they can walk.)
Competence doesn't always make you strictly better at something in the same way that one number is always bigger than another.
If I ask him to not dismiss these options and rebuttals out of hand, he simply says that everyone says that... Bozo the Galileo clown...  you're not right because you're laughed at. A strawman which I never implied - I am being laughed at (because I am right?) in spite of being right.
Since I'm introducing new terminology and modifying existing terminology (while trying to clearly explain what I mean by it) in some of these discussions, I have also been ridiculed for essentially describing something that few others understand, and accused of 'trying to sound smart and be the next lone genius' of the field. Without this new terminology, explaining what I mean by it gets clunky and easy to confuse with similar concepts already employed in the field.
What can I do to open some kind of productive dialogue or actually get heard out (should I talk about the details of the ideas here)? Publishing a full academic paper (as an outsider) and going through potential rigamarole during the process seems a poor option to me; though pointers would be appreciated if you feel this is appropriate regardless. I'm quite sure that I'm either right about this idea, or any errors in it have not been brought up yet and are in the more minute details.

You might be interested: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18491/i-believe-i-have-solved-a-famous-open-problem-how-do-i-convince-people-in-the-f

You might be interested in this then: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28054/responding-to-a-reviewer-who-misunderstood-key-concepts-of-a-paper

Hint: if you really are sure you are not a crackpot, think about how you could look different from all the thousands of crackpots out there. Every academic has run into many crackpots throughout their career and has learned by hard experience that talking to them is a waste of time.

Using terminology in a non-standard way very probably costs you more than it is worth. If your idea already is so novel that people are ready to write you off as a crackpot, I wouldn't give them additional ammunition by using different terminology from them, or, even worse, using the same terminology in a different way.

@knzhou: Every academic has run into many crackpots throughout their career … – While this may hold for some theoretical fields that have a certain appeal to crackpots, it is certainly not universal. I have only ever encountered one crackpot so far and that was through this very site (and thus not much related to my academic activity).

Saying "some of the common classifiers for concepts are a bit vague and maybe deceptive" is going to make people think you're a crackpot.  "A bit vague" and "deceptive" are wildly wildly different concepts, and you're conflating them as though they're similar.   I can assure you that experts in the field are not being deceptive.  Vague maybe, wrong maybe, but not deceptive.  That's a serious allegation that would require serious evidence.  By contrast, "a bit vague" is a pretty normal state of things, and most likely the concepts would become clearer with further serious study.

That sentence reminds me of the quote in the linked thread "It breaks what most people believe or what they have already proven" and what Pete wrote there applies here as well.

@sgf I might take your word for it. Would you have any suggestions for what to do then, perhaps a way to introduce said terminology or clearly communicate the ideas behind them?

@NoahSnyder You don't need to be malicious to be deceptive or intend to be deceptive, and what's deceptive for one person might not be for another. Wildly different concepts - but not mutually exclusive, and one can lead into the other. Unintentional deception of some people, due to vague terminology? In the field, just look at the definition of CISC vs RISC and how the distinction is used in their academic papers - some say a CISC has many complex instructions, x86-like and so on, and a RISC is load-store, simple instructions... and then you see a 'RISC' that's way fatter than a 'CISC' 6502.

@CorrectCrackpot I would be very careful to use the terminology of the field exactly the way it is used in the field. It is a very easy assumption to reach that someone who uses the terminology in nonstandard ways does so because they don't actually understand the field, and indeed it is a great heuristic for finding crackpots; and there is virtually no (personal) cost for any academic if their heuristic yields false positives: Nothing bad happens to you if you write someone off as a crackpot when they're actually right.

@CorrectCrackpot I'm not familiar with your field or with the terminology used in it, but in general it should be possible to make a point clearly no matter how you map concepts to words. If I'm in a field where we call cats "mountain lions", I should still be able to make any point I want about cats that I could make if we called them "cats". I'd just be extra careful to point out whenever what I say can't be extended to actual lions, and I guess it doesn't hurt to point out once or twice that the fact that my statements about cats don't fit in well with the typical behaviour of mountain...

... animals is due to the fact that mountains are not, in fact, the natural habitats of cats.

@knzhou It's funny you say that. I've been called arrogant, but I'm fairly sure I wasn't being. I've been asked to show humility, whatever that means to you or them. The trouble is, it was about something that I was 100% right about, and the other person 100% wrong:  'Well yes, I have this big idea, yes I'm proud of it, and before you call me a crank, recognize that I've thought about this far more carefully than you think I have, so if you think you've debunked me, maybe think again and check your assumptions.' So while I don't mean to rebuff what you're saying, it seems like a Catch-22?

Let's simplify your circumstance into two dichotomous possibilities: either your proposed "crackpot" idea is wrong, or it is right.  (There are of course other more graded possibilities, but this strict dichotomy will help me to give a useful answer to your question.)  If your idea is wrong then exchanges with these critics might help you to see why it is wrong, which can assist you to reformulate or abandon your idea.  If your idea is right (or at least, right enough to constitute progress) then your goal ought to be to demonstrate its usefulness in the face of this criticism.  This will entail making some demonstration that your idea explains some aspect of reality better than presently existing theories with which it is competing.
In regard to this latter exercise, I would suggest you consider adopting Milton Friedman's dictum that a theory is as good as its ability to make predictions about reality.  In regard to the construction and assessment of a theory, Friedman (1966, p. 41) argued that "[c]omplete “realism” is clearly unattainable, and the question whether a theory is realistic “enough” can be settled only by seeing whether it yields predictions that are good enough for the purpose in hand or that are better than predictions from alternative theories."  Friedman argues that people tend to be overly concerned with arguing about the realism of assumptions underlying a theory, when they ought to be more concerned with measuring the adherence of the theory to reality, via its ability to make good predictions.
In your question, you state that your disagreement with these learned men is in large part a matter of disagreement about whether various underlying assumptions hold in the context of the problem you are trying to solve.  Your critics hold certain assumptions that you say do not apply in the context that is of interest for your idea.  Assuming you are right, I will refer to these as the "false assumptions" of your critics.  If you are right about your idea, and it is more realistic than present alternatives, then it should be able to make better predictions in those contexts.  Thus, a demonstration of the validity of your idea would have three parts: (1) an argument against the false assumptions that you say don't hold in this context; (2) an argument in favour of your alternative idea, and why it is more realistic in the relevant context; and (3) a demonstration that your theory makes predictions about reality that are better than predictions made by theories using the false assumptions.
If you are willing to undertake the work to do this, then it will either yield a demonstration that your idea performs poorly, or it will yield a demonstration that your idea has merit.  As to the "standard of proof", obviously the more rigorous you can be the better, but if you can give a good demonstration of the practical/predictive ability of your idea, this will go a long way to demonstrating validity of the idea.
Finally, you are right to ignore arguments to authority, or other fallacious arguments that do not deal with the merits of your idea.  The fact that you are not educated in the field should not be entirely discounted, but it does not constitute an argument against your idea.

Without knowing the nature of your idea, or its context, it is hard for me to offer an opinion on what would constitute a good demonstration.  However, I have in mind something beyond a mere explanation of the idea ---i.e., some demonstration that this idea "works" in reality.

@Ben The strongest demonstration would be a working product based on, in whole or part*, the idea. Weaker demonstrations could be done by simulation (this in itself is hard to pull off) or rigorously proving that adding "complexity" to improve upon one area need not drag down the rest if carefully done. I see a likely challenge with 'describing reality' being the 'tested in the context of idea' issue, as there have been notorious attempts at similar ideas that 'failed'. *In this case the 'part' should offer some benefit related to why it was proposed in the first place.

@TommiBrander The tools that most would use for a 'decent', semi-rigorous demonstration are commonplace at any place that offers courses in the subject, but at the same time very expensive, clunky, and with a whole host of requirements. I might be able to get to use them to some extent though. This doesn't mean that there aren't other ways to do it.

It's very late but thanks for this answer, I have ticked it as I think it best answers the question. The false assumptions thing always seems to be an issue with those people though. Y'know, peer review process being opaque, 'crackpot vs non-crackpot' thing not always being so stark?

Many peer review processes are blinded, so there is no ability of referees to diagnose the "crackpottery" of the submitting author, save for the substance of the work submitted.

If it is double-blind peer review, and the author has taken care to scrub any references to their identity then yes. Single blind on the other hand allows the reviewers to know who the author is, but not the other way round.

I would recommend that you learn the foundations of the field in which you want to contribute.
To do this, I'd recommend taking a university course on the subject, if possible, and/or reading one or more textbooks. If you choose to read a textbook, I'd recommend that you (1) choose something conventional which is widely used in universities; (2) start from the beginning and don't skip anything; and (3) do as many of the exercises as is practical.
As you proceed, try to understand the professor's "fixed mental model" and the "fallacies that only apply conditionally". As Nietzsche said, "The thinker needs no one to refute him, for that he suffices himself." Be your own harshest critic and make sure you thoroughly understand potential objections to your theory. Try to think of every possible reason why your theory might be wrong.
If you do this, and you still believe your theory to be correct, you will have better odds of persuading others to take you seriously.
Good luck.

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How to treat the results of symbolic computations in a paper?
I am working with quite complicated (i.e., numerous) trigonometric functions. Let’s say one equation does not fit on an A4 sheet of paper. Rewriting the expressions by hand would be extremly tedious, but thanks to computer algebra systems, I managed to do a symbolic computation and arrive at something like f (0) = 1 (for the sake of the example) as a final and main result.
How can I explain such a thing in a scientific journal (in mechanics)?
A few possibilities, that I considered:

The calculations yield f (0) = 1

But I feel guilty because I did not make the calculation by myself.

Using ComputerProgram++, we showed that f (0) = 1.

But should I provide the code in this case?

but I feel guilty because I did not make the calculation by myself  then who did it? For the second possibility: see the answers here http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23237/why-are-papers-without-code-but-with-results-accepted/23263

@seteropere programmers and me, I guess.

In an engineering paper, it's not appropriate to have lengthy, non-novel symbolic computations in the body of the article. The requirement however, is that your readers are able to reproduce it in some way. Here are a few options:

Write all symbolic computations formally in an appendix to the paper.
If you obtained the results with a software (free or commercial), give the exact name and version of the software you used together with all the necessary parameters you used in the methods section. I don't think there is anything to be 'guilty' about using a faster, controlled way of solving maths providing you know what you are doing.
If you obtained the results with a piece of code, make it available in some ways (like a public repository or your institution's website). This can sometimes also be done by submitting it to the journal with your article, but few engineering journals host code.

This being said, it's very uncommon to see symbolic maths solved with software in the engineering literature (I don't think I ever read it in any paper). Generally either the concept is well-documented and does not warrant a formal proof in the context (e.g. don't copy the Fourier theorem every time you do an FFT) or it's application-specific and should be written formally.

TY for your point of view. I think what disturbs me is to make a mathematical proof rely on a computer program... but it probably should not. All the problem is "knowing what you are doing". I'm not sure I actually know what I'm doing when I ask Mathematica to calculate 2+2!

@anderstood I think it's field-dependent; I've heard for pure math that you shouldn't generally rely on a computation conducted by closed-source software (because you can't review it for bugs; same applies for other software whose correctness is not verified) that isn't easily verifiable with other means (so a pure math paper wouldn't rely on "Mathematica said so" as a key element of a proof).

@cpast 'Mathematica said so' in unacceptable in any field. Obviously OP is not writing a pure math paper.

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What are the consequences of withdrawing an abstract from a conference?
I have submitted an abstract for a conference using some preliminary results. I read all the advice about how to write an abstract with no results and I didn't lie in my abstract—I just presented the results I had in hand and discussed the value of the data that I would acquire in the future without making any specific claims about the conclusions I would draw. The abstract deadline was about 6 months before the paper deadline, so I had anticipated acquiring more data that I could write about in the paper and make it a strong contribution. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances (lab caught on fire, experiment exploded, computer with all my data was wiped by an EMP and velociraptors ate my backups, or some other more mundane reason) the data that I anticipated having is not available and I won't be able to write the full paper.
Many conferences have a "No paper, no podium" and "No podium, no paper" policy, so in those cases one of the consequences of not submitting the paper is that it will not be published in the conference's proceedings and I won't get to present it at the conference. For other conferences, this may vary.
But what are the other consequences (to my career, to future publication of the paper) of withdrawing the paper at this stage, either by not submitting anything or by contacting the program chair and withdrawing?

First, I should mention that the "no paper, no podium" (and vice versa) only applies to conferences where proceedings are published. For many conferences, this is not the case—including many conferences in physics, chemistry, engineering, and applied mathematics that I regularly attend.
In general, if you have to withdraw a paper because of whatever reason—visa issues, experiments not working, or kidnapped by aliens (etc.)—it will not have that much impact on your career. The effect will increase, however, the more papers you withdraw, and the more trouble that you cause the conference organizers as a result. If you let them know well in advance that you're not going to be there, they can try to organize some sort of replacement for you, which, although suboptimal, is better than having a "hole" in the schedule. On the other hand, if you wait until the morning of your talk to withdraw your talk, you will definitely tick off the organizers, which may have an effect on your ability to present in the future (at least at that conference, or others the organizers work on later).

RE no paper no podium: Its actually a conference in engineering that I'm referring to specifically with that policy :-) But I agree, many also do not have this policy... I'll edit the question a bit


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How hard is it to succeed in research after an adviser's death midway through PhD?
TL;DR: How hard would it be to finish out a Ph.D. and have an effective early career (as a pure mathematician) after my adviser has unexpectedly passed away? My department does not have any tenure-track faculty able to take on students in my field at the time, but two postdocs in my field have offered to help, and the department has offered to fly me to visit researchers in my field. I am currently in my fourth year at a U.S. university.
I read this similar question, but it seemed to address practical plans for going forward more than the costs and benefits of doing so. What I'm looking for is advice on how difficult it would be to have a successful career and/or finish the Ph.D. in a reasonable amount of time, in addition to talking about what options I have.
I am a pure mathematics Ph.D. student in my fourth year. My adviser recently passed away unexpectedly, and my department does not have anyone else in his field who is able to take on students. He was a great loss to all of us, as he was a deeply intuitive mentor as well as an excellent researcher. Before my adviser's passing, I had anticipated 1.5 to 2.5 more years to Ph.D.
In the next six months or so, my department has offered me the option of working with a couple of postdocs (in my field) at my current institution, as well as flying out to occasionally meet with more senior mathematicians at different institutions. It is unclear whether the department will hire another researcher in my field anytime soon, especially one who is not fresh out of a postdoc. The department is currently uncertain if there will be tenure-track faculty there who could advise me anytime before I graduate. The department tends to offer at least 6 years of funding to Ph.D. students.
I currently have enough material for roughly one paper, but I feel that I still need guidance to finish my Ph.D., and I felt like I was really benefiting from weekly/biweekly meetings with a single adviser. My adviser helped keep me confident and excited, as well as explaining difficult techniques and offering new approaches to proofs or counterexamples.
I have heard some people advise on transferring institutions at this point, though my department does not recommend that. In addition, some people have pointed out to me that an adviser is an important early-career research collaborator, to the extent that it is difficult to do good research early in a career without having them to collaborate with or ask questions of.
If my time to Ph.D. is going to be lengthened significantly, I would like to know that going forward, as it would help me make decisions about whether to transfer, etc. So my question is: how hard would it be to finish out a Ph.D. and have an effective early career without an adviser in the traditional sense?

This post is very relevant to my interests as well. My advisor is really getting up there in years and I'm slightly worried about this happening. His health isn't the best.

Where are you in the world, and how much more time would do you expect to need to complete your PhD?

This has been flagged as some users feel that this is best asked in Academia.SE. Apparently you feel that it takes a mathematician to answer your question. There are quite a few math people active there, so it is likely that at least one of them will comment. The question is not really about math, so the argument for it being off-topic here is quite strong. Also, whatever advice any one person can give you may not be applicable in your country/institution. Therefore your question is probably best answered there. I initiate migration with the extra bit of advice that you should:

I just feel like someone should say it: I'm sorry that your advisor died unexpectedly.  He sounds like he was a great help to you, and I'm sure you are not the only one who misses him and is put in a worse situation by his untimely demise.

(cont'd) 1) Add some details: Where are you from? US by default, but this is a necessary piece of information. 2) Explain why the answers to the related question don't help you. You already try to do that, but can't hurt to stress the differences in answers that you hope to receive. 3) How many years of funding have you got remaining? My experience is that most places offer 4(5) years worth only, so if you get one extra year that should do it. This may affect, e.g. your prospects in transferring to another university.

they should assign another advisor to you and allow the extension to finish the PhD thesis.

To stress the positive in a difficult situation, you have the opportunity to have contact with some senior people elsewhere. If the relationship goes well, one or more may assume a mentorship role, particularly if her/his work had close connection with the work of your supervisor.

For what it's worth, I known personally someone who went through the death of his advisor during PhD, and that managed to defend and later get a job as associate professor in a university ((he works in a field close to fundamental math, in France)). So this is doable, at least in some cases.

Your department has offered to fly you to visit researchers in your field. Do you or the department have specific researchers in mind, perhaps co-authors of your supervisor, or others whom he spoke highly of?

@kitty, as I said, there are no advisors in the department in my field able to take me on at this time, and the department says they won't know for a while whether they'll hire someone able to take on students soon.

@AndreasBlass, yes, we have researchers in mind.

I am sorry, user7380.

The unexpected death of someone close to you is a tough situation; more than that, it is one of the archetypical tough situations throughout human history.  The obvious -- but not easy -- general answer is that you need to either become more self-reliant, find other people to satisfy the needs and desires that were being met by the departed party, or some of both: some of both sounds healthy to me.
It sounds like your department is trying to work with you to meet your needs, which is great.  My first comment is that's an ongoing process, not a one-time decision or fix.  How are you supposed to know right now what accommodations are needed or optimal?  You can't.  You should identify specific departmental personnel and make clear that you will be checking in with them periodically about the situation.

I have heard some people advise on transferring institutions at this point, though my department does not recommend that.

Whether  they recommend it or not, you can leave at any time, and -- with a deceased thesis advisor -- an absolutely clear conscience.  So if you know of a faculty member at another institution that you think would be an ideal advisor, feel free to explore that right away.  It sounds to me like you don't, and I'll continue under that assumption.
Your department's recommendation may well be reasonable....but do you understand why they're making it?  I would hope that by saying this to you they have some degree of planning for your successful completion of a PhD.  You say a little bit about this, but not enough: they offered for you to work with postdocs, but you say that there are no faculty in your field.  That's a bit ambiguous: are these postdocs in your field, enough to help you finish your thesis?  I'm guessing they must be at least close, because if not you could get a tenure-track faculty member who is not in your field.
I think you should talk to these postdocs and get a sense of whether they could help you finish your thesis.  If so, that sounds like a good option for your situation: basically they become your new thesis advisor, and the fact that they are not tenure-track at that institution is not so directly relevant, so long as they will stay there until you graduate.  (Look into that!)
For the majority of students in pure mathematics that are not in the home stretch of their program, being without a designated advisor at their home institution would leave them terribly adrift: a few plane trips here and there will not cut it.  Recently I was on the committee of a student whose advisor left the department soon after she started working in earnest on her thesis topic.  They kept in close contact through weekly skype appointments and a faculty member in a related field stepped up to become her official thesis advisor. I watched this happen and would say that it set her back a full year.  In the end she did graduate, get a good visiting position, and now seems to be doing extremely well.  The moral is that ultimately it is all about the student: this was a real test of her character, and she passed with flying colors, but gosh it was hard, even hard for me to watch.  (And I must tip my hat to my departed colleague as well: he was still closely involved with the student the whole time, infinitely more so than he was obliged to be.)
I would say that you in particular sound like you really need a new advisor.  Don't stick around at your home institution without someone stepping up to that role.  (And certainly don't wait around for them to hire someone else!  Unless they can tell you right now who they want to hire next year, in which case you should ask to spend the intervening time at the present institution of this person.)
You ask about how academia works without having an advisor to mentor you post-PhD.  To be frank: by asking for a quantification of the marginal difficulty of the deceased advisor and in other ways as well, your question is telegraphing that you have an uncertain commitment to a post-PhD academic career.
An academic career in pure mathematics is hard for everyone, and thinking that the key to success is close post-PhD contact with your advisor sounds closer to wrong than right to me.  I will admit that I had a fairly extreme situation: my former PhD advisor is one of the great mathematical luminaries of our time.  He gave me the help and guidance I needed as a PhD student.  But I have never collaborated with him, and since graduation I haven't asked him any mathematical questions.  We remain on perfectly good terms (I have his phone number) and have professional interactions like two mathematicians in the same field, but once I got my PhD he became my former advisor (though that is still a critical role: e.g. it involved writing a lot of letters on my behalf!), if you take my meaning.  One of my oldest friends got a math PhD.  A few years later, his advisor died in a tragic bicycle accident.  So that meant the end of the mentorship, and I remember discussing the awkardness of the situation with him for several years after.  My friend is now the chair of the math department at his university.  Again: ultimately it is all about the student.
To sum up: as others have said, this may well be a traumatic situation for you.  Take it as such, give yourself some time to grieve and to let things sink in.  While you're doing that, involve your department in your plans to complete your PhD there or elsewhere and to find at least one new mentor.  When you do find a new mentor, see if you can regain mojo you might have lost during this tough setback.  But if you really think of mathematical research as something that you need someone else's guidance and energy to pull off, I would recommend that you complete your PhD and then look elsewhere for a career: either a teaching-intensive job or something else entirely.  The main benefit of a research career in mathematics is that mathematics is frickin' awesome and spending your life doing it makes you a rock star.  There are other benefits, but none that stack up against the sizable costs.
Added: You speak as if you might not even finish your PhD.  For someone who's four years into a math PhD program and already has enough results for a paper, I think not finishing the degree ought not even to be an option on the table.  The more I think about it, the more I wonder if your natural emotional reaction to your advisor's death is playing a role in your thinking.  Trust me on this: everyone wants you to finish your PhD.  It's a cliche to say "That's what your advisor would have wanted", but it's probably true, right?

Thank you for the answer! I think that emotional reaction is certainly playing a role in my uncertainty; I also have heard some "doom and gloom" forecasts about the ability of students to succeed after their advisor's death, which probably played the largest role in my fears. I definitely don't think of mathematics as something I need someone else's guidance to do forever; I just currently feel like I need some guidance to complete my thesis, and I have heard from others that many people collaborate with their advisors significantly after graduation.

In academia, as everywhere, life happens.
Fortunately, a lot of people understand this.
It will definitely be harder to succeed when your advisor has passed away than if your advisor had lived.  I suspect, however, that it will be much easier than if you had a falling out with your advisor, which has been addressed in a number of different questions on this site.
It sounds like your institution is doing the best it can to offer you options for getting new advising, and that those options are not so bad.  It is also the case that you are reaching the point in your program where you would in any case need to start reaching out to build strong relationships outside of your home institution.  Where your advisor might once have helped bootstrap your connections, you have instead your institution's offer to help you meet with other mathematicians.  This is a big juncture in your life and career, and everything changes.  Despite the fact that the original quote is false, a crisis really is both danger and opportunity.
Also, make sure to take care of yourself.  You just had somebody close to you die, and that might affect you in a lot of ways, including interfering with your ability to work.  If you aren't already doing so, I would suggest proactively starting to see a counselor to help you navigate any psychological challenges that may come up: even if you don't feel you are having troubles now, they may start and it is better to catch them early, rather than having troubles that you might attribute to your new advising and then realizing six months down the road that it was actually your reaction to the death.

This is a good answer. Also, +1 for "make sure to take care of yourself." That's very important advice.

Totally agree with this. The question doesn't sound like you're/he's to shocked (this is not meant offensive in any way), but this could come later on. Don't let your PhD be ruined by this, it seems the university is okay with it if you take your time.

Thank you for the tips, especially the psychological ones. I'm currently seeing a counselor and have techniques for dealing. It has been somewhat difficult to proceed with research, but I'm able to kind of just slip into it and forget for some time.

@user7380 I'm glad that you're getting support: there's going to be no easy path through, but there's no reason that you can't make it with sufficient effort and good support.

First off, I am so sorry for your loss.
Disclaimer, my field is not mathematics.
That being said, adviser plays a dual role, expert and mentor. In their technical expert role, he or she works closely with you to guide you through the difficult problems. In their mentoring role, they take care of you being motivated, dealing with the stress, advise on how to be a member of research community, how to present yourself etc... Ideally, and most often, one person full-fills both roles. But not always.
So, maybe the postdocs plus an external expert, can fulfill the technical advisement role. But then also, ask the department for a faculty mentor. This person might not be as familiar with your work, but can offer you general and close support. Huge part of being a successful researcher is to be able to explain your work to someone not very familiar with your area. The sooner you start practicing that, the better. This is also a time of opportunity for your personal growth, on taking more responsibilities under unfortunate circumstances.
As far as your future goes, remember that the postdocs will become more experienced, and will be able to give you letters or references, along with the your mentor. All of them witnessing your resilience in overcoming this major setback at this hard time will speak volumes of you, and how you tackle problems.
But then, my field is not mathematics.

Your advice is 100% on point for a student of math.

The first question that I would ask of the department (in particular the head of the graduate program or the department chair) is whether or not there is some faculty member who would be willing to act as your formal supervisor (perhaps in conjunction with another research advisor from outside the university) on your current topic.  It may take some time (weeks) to get an answer.
If the answer is something like "Yes, professor X has volunteered to take you on.", then you should talk to professor X to see how it would work.  Professor X might be willing to do his best to advise you on this topic even though it's outside of his area of expertise, and that would be a very fair offer.  Of course you would have to decide whether you'd be willing to work with an advisor who wasn't as well qualified as your previous advisor. If professor X is only willing to advise you as you start over on a topic in his area of interest that would be a very different situation and you would have to decide whether to change topics or move to a different program.  If the department has difficulty finding a faculty member willing to act as your advisor, then I'd say that it's definitely time to move on.
Our department had a similar situation a few years ago with a faculty member who was supervising an MS student in cryptography.  The student was only a few months from completing his MS thesis when the faculty member died.  Although this was far outside of my area of expertise, I stepped in and together with the other committee members, we got the student through.  It was hard for both me and the student but the student was clearly better off finishing the thesis in this way than picking a new topic and starting over from scratch.

It is definitely a setback, but should not be disastrous if your are flexible. I see two major issues. If you follow the path they are setting you on with postdocs providing your primary supervision a infrequent meetings with a more senior person, I would worry that you will not get the support you need and will result in a serious setback. My guess is that at 4 years in and having a paper worth of results, that finding a new supervisor at another university might be possible. This would set you back in you would need to physically move and change research directions a bit, but apart from the lost time, my guess is your thesis might actually come out stronger.


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Is it acceptable to round up my GPA on my resume?
I'm currently a college senior and I'm working on updating my resume.  My GPA is a 3.46.  Is it acceptable/ethical to put on my resume that my GPA is a 3.5?

It is frivolous. [more characters...]

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about updating a resume for a job search, not about academia.

it is about academic credentials though

After you round up to 3.5, you should round-up again to 4.

Why would you care?

@longerstep Actually, I believe it is about reporting credentials in a work context. For that reason, I don't think it is about academia.

@earthling: I will overrule this—replace "resume" with "CV" and the question remains valid. Or replace "updating my resume" with "my graduate school applications." The question is relevant.

@aeismail I will defer to your judgment. One of the keys for my judgment was the tag "job-search" as opposed to "admissions."

No, it is not acceptable nor ethical. Write the exact GPA to prevent unexpected consequences and reduce your future worries about it.

One might argue that you should round it down to 3.00. Report it as is would be the best.

If you want to save a few bytes you could write it as √12 (but really, don't).

No.
Just report the GPA as it is listed on your report / certificate.

What about a GPA that's reported to many more digits? 3.46251?

I rarely have seen official reports where this happened (pretty much all reports I have seen had 2 digits). University always have some rule of "rounding" GPAs. If it is still about your CV I would still use the complete GPA, or, if you really want to round round at a position where you would round down anyway(e.i., to 3.46). However, if you have to fill a form that only allows 2 digits but your official GPA is 3.462, put 3.46 in there. If you have to use 3 digits out of your 5, I would still use 3.462 (noone will care if it is .462 or .463 anyway), except there is an instruction how to round.

I agree with the other answers, which say that you shouldn't round a GPA of 3.46 to 3.5.  Here's the reasoning I see behind this:
One scenario is that someone may be using a sharp cutoff (for example, a graduate fellowship that requires a 3.5 GPA).  Then fine distinctions could matter, and everyone will be better off if your ineligibility is discovered early on.  I consider sharp GPA cutoffs foolish, but unfortunately they are not as rare as they should be.
For anyone who is not committed to such a cutoff, there's no significant difference between 3.46 and 3.5, and logically it shouldn't really matter.  On the other hand, there's a psychological difference, of the same sort as the difference between $9.99 and $10.00.  The reason why rounding to 3.5 is appealing is that it crosses a psychological threshold that sounds better, but that's exactly why it's problematic.  You don't want your resume to come across as manipulative, and that's what 3.5 looks like to me.  I think "If your GPA were 3.52, you would report the extra digit to demonstrate that it was over 3.5, so a reported GPA of 3.5 means it's more likely something like 3.46.  This candidate is probably trying to manipulate me by rounding the GPA to make it sound better."  I wouldn't reject someone over GPA rounding, or consider it truly dishonest, but I wouldn't read the application as cheerfully or charitably as I might have otherwise.
For a more dramatic example, rounding 3.96 to 4.0 will look even more manipulative, since 4.0 has the special significance of meaning straight A's.  I don't think anyone cares as much about 3.5 as a threshold, but it still signifies more A's than B's.
Note that rounding down is probably not in your interests either.  If you round 3.44 to 3.4, then people may still assume you are rounding up from something like 3.36.  It might not look as bad (since 3.4 is a less noteworthy threshold than 3.5), but you are still better off sticking with 3.44.
So how many digits should you use?  If your school reports an official GPA, then I'd recommend using the same number of digits they use.  Two digits is pretty standard, and I don't recall having seen more than three.

I disagree about it being "honorable" to round down.
3.46 should either stay as is, or would round up to 3.5.  Anything over 3.45 would not round down.  Basic math.

Ethically, it is always best to round down slightly. If your GPA is 3.46251, I would specify it as 3.46. There isn't a big difference between 3.46 and 3.47, but 3.47 would be embellishing slightly, and that is not honorable.
It would be honorable to round it down to 3.4, but it has the air of fact falsification to round it up to 3.5.
The only possible case, where rounding it up to 3.5 maybe would be acceptable is the hypothetical case where you must choose from several options such as 3.0, 3.5, etc.


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Can a 3 years PhD make an independent researcher ? Or how many post-docs after PhD to be an independent researcher?
I am doing research more than 3 years. I was admitted in a 3 years program, now in the last months of the program. I fell I have a long way in the field to be an independent researcher. But most of the post-docs in my department and in my group don't seem to be in the direction of a independent research. Many of us PhD students and post-docs look like more high level technical staff.

How many post-docs [...]?!!

That doesn't sound normal to me.

What doesn't sounds normal ?

I think, changing the title of your question to "What qualifications does a PhD graduate need to become an independent researcher?" helps you to improve your question.

I think your suggestion is very good, but for a new topic. The 3 years system can have its advantages, that is another discussion, but how well it is reaching its objective. Actually, what I do every day is to qualify myself as independent researcher.

I am not sure what exactly you mean by "independant researcher" - a business venture or having the pleasure to research whatever you like while doing something else for living.

Any degree where the institution which grants the degree acknowledges that you can do research independently. In some places PhD is the only such degree, but not in other places. For example if a PhD is meant to take at least 5 years as it does in some places sometimes there exists a "baby PhD" degree or similar you can take which is shorter but of course also not equally prestigeous but still demands to have passed some PhD courses, been accepted for a few papers and judged to be able to do research.

As a PhD student, I think you are doing an original research, so should be developing a new method, model, formulation, etc so that you can solve many other problems or cases by means of your own formulation. Even, by your model, you should be doing some verifications and find results others found in their publications. So, during your PhD you are being prepared to do independent research.
I think becoming independent in every phase of life should be assessed based on the person's abilities and the outcome of his activities.
If the person can find/understand the things he has to do without help of others, consult his problems with others, does what he has to do to reach his goals and finally finish his jobs/projects and has an income; then he can be considered an independent person.
In academic world, the case does not change so much. If the student can review literature, read books and papers and understand them, find a new problem to solve, start to work on the problem and consult his problems with another person; and finally submit and publish his paper in a journal; then he should be considered an independent researcher.
Despite the thing in your question that you mentioned how many post-docs is needed to become independent researcher?; I don't believe a person need many post-docs. Even, some researchers do not have any PhDs and they do perfect researches. The important part of doing independent research is the art of problem solving. And this may be gained by no PhDs or by hundreds of post-docs! So, I encourage you to successfully finish your PhD, and try to learn how to solve your academic problems and how to get them published. After you graduate, you will be able to do research by your own too.


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Can work experience overcome bad undergrad grades for admissions to masters programs in Germany?
I did my graduation in Electronics and Communication engineering, and now I am working as a software engineer for more than two years.
I have this problem that during my graduation I failed in a few subjects like analog electronics and organization behaviour. (Yeah!! It sucks that I kinda failed in Analog and Organization at the time, but now as I have experience working, I feel that they are very interesting and knowing there practical applications)
I cleared them in the following year, and passed my graduation all clear in the 4 year period.
I have three questions

Will I get into a high ranking German university?
Will the work experience count?
What else can I do to improve my profile.

The answer to all your questions depends on the university. There are only some rough standards which needs to be implemented by the universities.
If you consider computer science at my university the state dictated that one has to have a good bachelor to enroll in the master courses. Now there are two possibilities: Either you have a grade better than 2.5 (which is a B- in the European grading system and considered barely good) or you have to give reasons why your bachelor is weaker and then a committee has to decide whether you are allowed to enroll. But I know that other universities and even other departments at my university have other rules.

The answer also depends on the field you want to specialize in. The top 10 place for theoretical cs may be different from the top 10 for software engineering and some of those might have a lower grade requirement than others and some might allow a motivation letter to compensate for half a grade (this is the perfect place for mentioning your work experience). Just find out which universities you're interested in and look at their admission requirements.


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Chair of my committee keep adding and changing ideas
I am trying to defend my proposal and I have a very inefficient professor as the chair of my committee. He keep adding and changing ideas consistently. I get the feeling that he doesn't really know the details of my work. During discussions with him, he picks up some elements and asks me to add ideas and tasks that aren't applicable.
I am afraid that if I confront him (e.g. why his idea won't work, or what I don't like about it), he will take it personally. I spoke with one of his students and was told that he had picked a topic for her, which later on, an expert in that field deemed invalid.
He seems to be more interested in new topics that sound fancy or complex. The good part is that he is not very interested in the work itself or the result. What I mean that if I just want to please him I can through some of his ideas somewhere without much effort and he will be happy. After all, the ideas he picks are not within his area of expertise and he doesn't know much about them. But I can't do this for my proposal because it is hard to explain them to the rest of the committee members.
Any advice,

Proposal for what - starting your PhD? (that would make it easy to switch supervisors, because it doesn't sound like you want him to supervise your next several years of research)

Yes for PhD, however in US students start defending the proposal after finishing the required courses and passing the qualifying exam. As for me this is my fourth year and i haven't defended my proposal yet.
And I am not sure if I can change him because I don't have much option, the school don't have much facility.

One of ideas I am considering is attaching a structured evaluation form for each member to use as a checklist and not go back to something that was previously approved

My advice is that the dissertation, and therefore the proposal, are the student's work.  It is the student's responsibility to pick a topic and execute it.  Faculty are not usually trained in project management so the student may need to act to keep the faculty member on track.  For example, you can tell the faculty member that their ideas are very interesting, but you need to complete your current project first.
More specific to your situation, a fourth year student should know more than their advisor about the student's work.


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What do potential postdoc advisers seek in research statement letters?
I am putting together my application for a postdoctoral position in theoretical condensed matter physics. The position is not a fellowship and is a regular postdoc position. If you have gone through the process of applying for such positions a number of times, or, even better, if you have reviewed such research statement letters, what are the main points that are sought/you seek in such letters? Specifically, should I put more emphasize on my PhD research to demonstrate my "depth of knowledge" on projects I have worked on (past research), or dwell more on things that I want/am capable to do (future research)?

I am curious, what is the difference between regular and fellowship postdoc position?

Fellowship ones are considered more prestigious and are offered in a fewer places (e.g., MIT, Harvard, KITP, UCIC, PI,...). The postdoc fellow will not be required to collaborate with any of the permanent members of that institute and have more freedom in terms of what topics they want to conduct research on. They are also longer, often three-year long.

No, but in the ''regular'' one also, there must be some fellowship?

Technically they are all called PDF (Post-Docotral Fellowships), but the way they're advertised is slightly different. For those that I refer to as fellowship postdocs there is no mention of being obligated to work with any one or a group of people. It comes down to how autonomous the post-doc will be.

This is turning out to be news to me! Is there also a post-doc position where you are not obligated to work with (i.e. collaborate with) any one? Like sit at home and do whatever you want to do and we'll pay you for that.

Sure, if you can publish one your own without any collaboration go ahead. You will be respected even more, as long as you don't publish garbage. Fellowship postdocs are reviewed annually. Regular postdocs are (formally) expected to devote 50% of their time to work on the topic that they are given by the person who hires them, but practically it is more like 100% of their time.

Thanks for the info. Just out of curiosity, can you add a link to even one of these, either here or in chat? (This is not a jab, just out of curiosity. Thanks)

You're welcome. Here is the link to MIT's Pappalardo fellowship. Another good example is Harvard's Golub fellowship. UIUC, KITP, CalTech, Princton, PI,... offer similar fellowships. Instances of typical postdoc positions (in condensed matter theory for instance) are almost all of those posted here.

Check also this question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5511/how-to-contact-a-potential-postdoc-advisor

Some of this depends a lot on field and laboratory, and I don't know the customs of physics.  As somebody who has dealt with this question in both biology and computer science, however, let me give you some thoughts:
Since you aren't aiming for a fellowship, you're probably going to be supported by a funded project of some sort.  That means the PI you'd be working for promised their funders they would get somebody do a postdoc-sized piece of work on Topic X.  Their biggest concern is thus likely to be whether you are the person who can do that. Accordingly, when I'm thinking about postdocs, the properties I'm looking for are:

Flexibility enough to shift from their Ph.D. topic to the topic of the project, which is pretty much guaranteed to be different.
Autonomy, creativity, and maturity enough to tackle their part of the project without much hand-holding.
Productivity and responsibility enough to deliver research progress at regular intervals.

Formulate your letter accordingly, showing what you have accomplished, that you are capable of formulating a research vision, and that you have interests outside of your research vision.  The goal is not to sell yourself, but to be interesting enough that it's worth the PIs time to talk to you in person, which is where the real decision will be made.
In fact, however, you are best served if you can skip the letter entirely and approach potential PIs in person at conferences or other meetings.  Get introductions from your advisor if you can.  Practice your elevator pitch (explaining what you'd put in a letter in just three spoken sentences).  Speaking as a PI, a whole lot of postdoc jobs ultimately originated by PIs talking at a meeting and one of them saying, "I've got this great student who's graduating, and I'll bet they'd fit well in your lab..." or the other saying, "I've got this grant starting next year and there's a gap I need to fill..."

+1 The other thing that stands out is if your current PhD advisor sends a message to a potential postdoc advisor. This is how I landed a postdoc, and these are incredibly rare in my inbox. (Heck, I got one of my PhD students a postdoc position this way too.)


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What is the maximum depth of subchapters one should use in a paper?
I have a tendency to overcategorize things when writing a paper. Currently I’m working on my thesis and I’m concerned with my level of subchaptering. Right now I’m already down to x.x.x.x and I fear going down a level deeper would look bad. I think it adds to the overall clarity of the paper to categorize everything and would allow for more efficient lookup later on, but it’s not clear to me to what degree this should be done. Are there any general best practices? Are there any rules of thumb you use?
My faculty does not have any clear policy regarding this.

What did your supervisors say? What conventions have previous theses in your department used?

I have sent an e-mail to ask about the conventions in past papers. I think, however, they will give an indication of their personal preference, not what a good paper should have. That's why I wanted to get the opinion of others.

possible duplicate of Can the word "subsubsection" be used in a thesis?

^ I'm not sure to what degree the above is a duplicate. Most writing can be restructured to fit within an "x.x.x" (3-level) scheme logically, maybe with a very occasional dip to 4 levels. I've never seen five levels of headings before, and I struggle to believe that such a level of compartmentalization is necessary or logical.

@Moriarty: Leslie Lamport, in his two papers on how to write a mathematical proof, recommends quite a deep hierarchy, noting that this is easier using some kind of hypertext than dead trees. Sometimes, I'm tempted to follow his advice.

Personally, I love deeply nested sub^n-chapters.¶  One fun thing to do is to start reusing titles and references, so as to get infinitely deep section headings.  After suggesting such, I am no longer welcome at the math department socials.

Many, if not most, journals specify a maximum of three levels. In a book where the chapter is the top level, four may be ok considering each chapter can be as extensive as a paper. The problem of having too many levels is that the headings disrupt the reading. A good sign of this is when you end up having one heading per paragraph. If that is the case, you can probably remove the lowest level of headings and try to make the resulting segments of text flow by inserting bridges that makes paragraphs into a coherent text.
In my experience having read numerous student reports, theses and articles, three is a good goal. It is rare that a fourth level adds much in terms of structure apart from perhaps helping the writer. In fact, I often recommend students to keep a more detailed list of headings to enable them to see the structure of what they are writing but under the pretext that only a maximum of three should remain in their final version. I stand by that recommendation.

Thank you. Could you provide me with a link to this policy written out? I could propose my faculty to adopt the same policy.

"low level" heading can be put in the margin so they don't disrupt reading.

@esper You could give your advisor the link to this answer :)

@AustinHenley Thanks, that sounds like a good option!

Not in the case of the person answering, but, in my experience, often these kinds of rules of thumb are statements by supervisors who are not the most motivated and not deep in the subject matter, who just superficially want a thesis that is easy to understand. Most of the time that is also found in their research. It's like the discussion of the 130 kmh speed limit on German motorways: generally not wrong, but it also limits people who don't feel like dawdling on empty motorways at night at only 130 kmh instead of 250 kmh.

I find that a good heuristic for structural depth is visual and conceptual navigation.  If you think of a paper as a collection of (reasonable length) paragraphs, then for ease of navigation its structure should generally be a balanced tree with roughly 2-6 subunits at each level.  Bigger than that, and it starts being hard to navigate, smaller and it starts feeling unorganized or pointlessly subdivided.
It is also important for each level of the structure of a paper to be a relatively even partition (possibly excepting the introduction and conclusion, which may be much smaller).  If you find yourself with some sections much bigger or much smaller than others, then you may want to rethink your structure (e.g. should "Results" and "Discussion" be separate, or combined into "Results & Discussion").
Put the balancing and branch restriction heuristics together, and you've got a natural control on depth.  One exception: some journals require a particular set of section headers, which may force the top layer of your tree to be unbalanced; you can still apply the heuristics for subsections and beyond, however.

Four is okay. Five is getting a bit dubious. But six!? Please, not ever.

@Moriarty I'll argue it can be within the bounds of plausibility, particularly at the top level or in a very large manuscript.  Three, of course, is a wonderfully resonant number...

If you think that a deep structure adds to clarity, then it is ok to use it. I think, a thesis (PhD) should be fine with x.x.x.x.x. If your supervisor finds otherwise, he should tell you about this - or ask him.
A good supervisor will not just write: max structure is x.x.x.x. Instead, he would give you recommendations on where to change what and why - based on his opinion and maybe his experience (which is only reliable if he has written more than a master thesis a year before you).


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Can I use someone’s answer from a StackExchange site in my publication (journal paper)?
I think the answer is no but I want to know more details about this.
Suppose, I asked a very complicated question on one of the Stackexchange sites (e.g, Mathematics) which relates to my research and I got a good answer from someone. I modified that answer or reframed the answer in my own words, but the idea is not from me. I now want this part of my research get published in a journal.
Should I contact the person who answered my question and get agreement or whatelse should I do? I think I cannot directly submit this work to a journal with the idea for the answer on Stack Exchange, right? So if I want the result get published, what I should do?

I suspect this is a duplicate. But just to be clear: are you saying that all the novel work would have been done by someone else? Or that you're just citing someone else's work as part of your own novel research?

And here's the post it might be a dupe of: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/7335/96

I have cited Stack Overflow questions.

At least one of my StackExchange questions has more citations than at least one of my formal publications.

Personally, I'd try to contact the other person and see if they'd co-author with you.   Rules for citing varies with discipline -- some only allow formally published items to be cited, and would consider this to be 'grey literature' (which might be acknowledged in footnotes rather than the references list).  AGU considers anything posted to the internet to be 'published' and therefore, counts as 'previously published' and you're not allowed to submit an article on it.  You might want to look to see what the standards are in your field for referencing websites and/or e-mail conversations.

You should consult the Stack Exchange Network Terms of Service and read through the section 3. Subscriber Content which concerns rights of the material posted on the site.
I will specifucally reiterate the following

In the event that You post or otherwise use Subscriber Content outside of the Network or Services, with the exception of content entirely created by You, You agree that You will follow the attribution rules of the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license as follows:

You will ensure that any such use of Subscriber Content visually displays or otherwise indicates the source of the Subscriber Content as coming from the Stack Exchange Network. This requirement is satisfied with a discreet text blurb, or some other unobtrusive but clear visual indication.

You will ensure that any such Internet use of Subscriber Content includes a hyperlink directly to the original question on the source site on the Network (e.g., https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12345)

You will ensure that any such use of Subscriber Content visually display or otherwise clearly indicate the author names for every question and answer so used.

You will ensure that any such Internet use of Subscriber Content Hyperlink each author name directly back to his or her user profile page on the source site on the Network (e.g., https://stackoverflow.com/users/12345/username), directly to the Stack Exchange domain, in standard HTML (i.e. not through a Tinyurl or other such indirect hyperlink, form of obfuscation or redirection), without any “nofollow” command or any other such means of avoiding detection by search engines, and visible even with JavaScript disabled.

Apart from the specific points in the Stack Exchange Terms of Service, normal courtesy and etiquette involves always providing credit where credit is due. Even if someone posted information saying it is free for all to use, it would be appropriate to at least acknowledge the contribution by that person. In the (I assume) hypothecial case you describe in your post, contacting the person would seem like the best approach. First off, it is better to be safe than sorry, Second, by contacting the person you can avoid misconceptions or misunderstandings to accompany the post into your work and the integration fo the original idea into your work can improve. If the person upon your contact says, run with it, then fine but then you know.
So apart from avoiding to break the stated rules it is always good to contact the source and be open about the intended work or use if you work on material to be publically available through publication or otherwise.

I don't really understand the downvote here. But still, you can maybe be a bit more specific in what has to be done exactly? Like how the citation should look like in BibTeX?

@tohecz I think you'd just have to follow the style guide of your journal for citing a URL. Any attribution requirements that cannot be fulfilled within the style guidelines could be added as a footnote or in the acknowledgements section.

Thanks tohecz, the no-comment downvotes are truly non-constructive. I have added some more specific points beyomd the "rules" since the answr is, in my opinion, really partially a question of etiquette.

@tohecz: in the context of Math.SE (as mentioned by the OP), as well as some of the more "academic" SEs (physics, MathOverflow, etc.), there exists a preferred citation format which gives you a BibTeX incantation to copy. Then you can just count on your BibTeX style file to do the rest.

Copyrights and licenses and such are completely irrelevant here; they protect form, not ideas. If you discuss a problem with a colleague (no matter how and where, whether it is a conference coffee break or a StackExchange question), the same rules of research ethics apply. If both of you made major contributions towards a paper, both of you are coauthors. If both of you agree that the contribution by the colleague was a minor one, acknowledgements are in order. If you build on something published elsewhere (whether it is a journal article or a StackExchange post), you cite the source.


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How do you refer to someone whose title has changed?
I am writing a personal statement for a PhD application and I’d like to refer to my previous lecturer.  He was a Dr. at the time he taught me but he is now a professor at another institution.
Is there a neat way of referring to someone like this or do I have to go with something clumsy as:

I was taught by Dr. X (now Prof.) on his course about Y.

Has X's doctorate been rescinded? (Is that even possible?)

At least in some schools in the United States, "Professor" is used to indicate a faculty member who doesn't hold a doctorate, so maybe be a little careful. Also, you get rid of a lot of clum when you dump the passive voice.  "Dr. X, now professor of high-energy magic at... inspired me when..."

@200_success:  Yes, doctorates can be rescinded.  A search for "doctorate rescinded" finds several.  One has to have screwed up pretty badly, though.

The person is now a professor, so refer to them primarily as that.  If you are concerned about confusion, you can add the additional information in the sub-clause, where it reads more smoothly:

I took course Y from Prof. X, while he was a [lecturer, postdoc, whatever] at [instutition]"


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Are hand-drawn figures appropriate for physics or engineering journals?
Hand-drawn figures in papers were common in the old days. If I use hand-drawn figures (generated e.g. with the software Paint) for illustrations, will that result in a rejection of my manuscript?

I remember seeing this paper when it was published in 2018: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.97.075405 Haven't seen any more recent papers with hand-drawn figures in journals I pay attention to.

If I use hand drawn figures (generated with e.g. desktop software paint) --- Interestingly, this is NOT what a "hand drawn figure" had always meant to me. To me, a hand drawn figure is when you draw with pencil or pen on a clean/empty standard size sheet of paper, but allowing the use a straight edge, compass, and other "desk drawer" devices for straight lines, circles, etc. Sometimes you might trace over a figure from another source (e.g. an octahedron) if you have little drawing skill.

@DaveLRenfro Indeed.  My mother is a technical illustrator, and I commissioned her to draw a figure for my PhD thesis.  It is hand drawn, but very skillfully and professionally so.

What kind of figure do you mean? Will you just use a "paintbrush" or "pencil" function in Paint, or will you use the menus to insert rectangles, lines, arrows, text, etc?

In my previous comment I was very close to the comment character-limit so I didn't include the following, but perhaps it's worth mentioning anyway. A hand drawing in which nothing else is used (e.g. no use is allowed of a straight edge, compass, or other "desk drawer" device) is called a freehand drawing.

Technical illustration, as discussed by @XanderHenderson, is a wonderful (and now rare) skill.  For a literal toy example, see this question, and my answer in which a comparison is made to modern computer-aided design software.  The pen-and-ink technical drawings of many old textbooks are often still the clearest illustrations available in monochrome.  Many of those would have been done using a drawing board with perpendicular rulers.

As a reviewer I would question why a figure needs to be hand drawn, but would not necessarily complain if it didn't look like garbage.  When you reference "software Paint" do you mean you plan to use the software to insert auto-generated blocks/ellipses/etc. and label them accordingly, or do you plan to draw lines etc. with the mouse?  The former is probably acceptable, the latter would be a challenge.  Clarification is needed.

Having still witnessed a phase where computer generated graphics began to be produced with expensive plotters (and software drivers you had to write for them), there were elaborate stencils for the most important forms and you would use them to guide your hand which held a high-quality ink pen produce the desired image. Yes, it was hand-drawn, but it looked exquisite (once you managed to avoid smudging or blotching things). So, properly hand-drawn diagrams are not what you think it is. When you use computer tools only to fall back to scratchy scribblings, that's a step back, and a big one.

Figures of low quality have an immediate impact on the perceived quality of the entire contents.  There is a reason why experimentalists and sometimes theorists make nice figures: they are eye-catching and memorable, if only for the first few critical months of high visibility following publication.

Relatedly, I saw a science colloquium circa 2015 which eschewed PowerPoint and instead was entirely chalkboard-based. I don't think anyone thought less of the speaker. The talk was rather good!

This paper has an apparently hand-drawn part of Fig.1a

@Anyon doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.97.075405  Thanks for the reference though I don't see any reason this handwritten figure should be the way it is, it should be replaced by sth generated by some computer program.  Surprised this paper can be published.

@AndR  It's hard to tell if the chemical structure is hand drawn in fig.1a

@feynman Well, I'm not entirely sure it would fly if you or I were to try publishing such a figure. A retired 79-year old giant of the field such as the (now) late Mahan may have been given some extra slack.

Whether we like it or not, verdicts on publishability from editors and reviewers are consciously and subconsciously affected by non-scientific aspects of a manuscript like quality of English, typesetting, and quality of figures. This is justified to some extent as the diligence scientists put into these things broadly correlates with the diligence they put into their research. (Some readers may be affectionate to the vibe of a theoretician who doesn’t even touch a computer to create illustrations, but I wouldn’t speculate on this.)
Therefore, you usually want your manuscript to be at the best you can achieve with reasonable effort in these respects. Because of how humans work, this particularly applies to first impressions, and your figures will be one of the first impressions most readers get of your paper. Finally, this effect is self-enhancing since readers expect you to be aware of this and therefore may be particularly sensitive to anything of sub-par quality.
Now, for every hand-drawn plot or diagram¹, there is one done with a plotting software or vector-graphics program that is at least slightly better in terms of readability, clarity, precision, etc. And it only becomes slightly if you mastered this skill, despite it being rarely taught nowadays. I therefore would suggest that you spend at least half a day trying to create your figure with a plotting software or vector-graphics program. If this seems like a lot of time for you, remember that you can re-use this skill for your next figure and learning how to make a good hand-drawing takes as much time². After this, compare your results to your hand drawing and submit whatever has the highest quality – ideally according to other people like co-authors, colleagues, etc.
It’s very unlikely that your manuscript will be explicitly rejected for using a sub-par figure (be it hand-drawn or badly computer-generated), but it’s possible that this was tipping the scales or pushed a reviewer’s mind in the bad direction.

¹ Very rarely, a comic or similar is a good way to illustrate a scientific concept, even in a paper. These may work better when hand-drawn.
² A second big advantage of using these tools is that they make it much easier to change figures when needed.

"Whether we like it or not, editors and reviewers are consciously and subconsciously affected by non-scientific aspects of a manuscript like quality of English, typesetting, and quality of figures. This is justified to some extent as the diligence scientists put into these things broadly correlates with the diligence they put into their research." The reason why people care about the "quality of English, typesetting, and quality of figures" is not at all that it supposedly correlates with something else.

@AdamPřenosil: I edited to clarify the context. Of course, there are other reasons to care for these aspects, but these do not affect the decision or recommendation whether to publish a manuscript or not, which is what this question is aiming at.

“We’ve found by experience that people who are careless
and sloppy writers are usually also careless and sloppy at
thinking and coding (often enough to bet on, anyway).” — Eric Raymond

"the diligence scientists put into these things broadly correlates with the diligence they put into their research" Not that I doubt it, but is there any (non-anecdotal) evidence to back up this claim?

@ Wrzlprmft: I think you’re missing @AdamPřenosil’s point.  These aspects (at least quality of English and quality of figures) can seriously affect the scientific quality of a paper — a bad writeup of good research is still a bad paper — and as such they can absolutely affect referee/editor judgements, and rightly so.

No ... but if your figures look messy & unprofessional, you can expect a stream of requests to improve your figure(s), from all three of reviewer + editor + publisher. The publisher might even offer to have professional illustrators redraw it for you, for a fee.

The publisher re-drawing it may get some important details wrong.

@GEdgar It's possible, but there's always a proofs stage where one can get the publisher to redraw it.

The publisher might even offer to redraw it for you, using professional software, for a fee. – I would find it much more important if the publisher used a professional or competent illustrator. Also, we live in a time where a skilled user can produce excellent software with freely available software, and hence software availability is not a relevant issue for this.

@Wrzlprmft I don't understand your comment. The publisher employs illustrators (these are the people who, e.g., come up with journal covers). Also while the software is certainly out there, not everyone knows or wants to know how to use them (like the OP).

@Allure: I agree and that’s more or less exactly my point: It should be about the illustrators not the software. Yet, you are writing about the software, not the illustrators.

@Wrzlprmft I still don't understand your comment. Of course free software exists, but if my experience with EMSes is anything to go by, they're less powerful than the paid software. Besides, the sentence currently says the publisher both redraws it (requires illustrators) and uses professional software.

@Allure: EMSes are probably an entirely different beast in that respect. The publisher redrawing something does not even imply that they are using professional illustrators (in the sense of being experts not that of being paid for it). My point is to write something like “The publisher might even offer to have professional illustrators redraw it for you” instead of “The publisher might even offer to redraw it for you, using professional software”.

Your example of Paint is often used as a shorthand for poor quality figures, though it has improved since it gained that reputation. There's still no reason to use it.
In general, diagrams should be created using vector drawing software.  Free (open source, also cross-platform) tools are very good.  I recommend Inkscape though for an easier learning curve, LibreOffice Draw is good and even the tools built in to Word and PowerPoint can do some basic figures. Visio is supposed to be good if you have a licence. Inkscape in particular is also very useful for modifying PDF output of graphing software (annotations, highlights, etc.).
You'll really feel the benefit of using vector graphics if you end up reusing (and probably modifying) your figure for a poster or other large format; in general editing figures for reviewer comments is far easier when you have lines and boxes rather than just pixels.
There are sometimes cases for raster graphics but even if journals require raster formats this is best done as an export step from a vector master file.  If you do have to work with raster files, you can do better than Paint, using GIMP (free) or Photoshop (expensive).  One reason to prefer these is their tools for drawing straight and orthogonal lines, but they also make it easier to more at sufficiently high resolution for printing.
Whatever tools you use, learn how to draw lines that actually connect to each other, and are horizontal/vertical rather than just off.  There are plenty of tutorials online.
Good figures take some work, especially at first, and it's worth picking up the skills early on in your career.  As this is a paper (as opposed to a thesis) you're likely to have co-authors.  I assume the main burden of the paper figures falls on you, but there may be some help (advice, demonstrations of the tricky bits) available from more experienced colleagues; I've done that often enough.

BTW this is from an applied physics perspective, with some background in engineering

Or just draw it directly in latex, tikz obviously comes to mind.

@infinitezero I've been known to do that too, for some things (such as flowcharts and some circuit diagrams, or hybrid circuit/block diagrams).  For other things I might export from CAD software.  But I left out both of those options as including a lot of extra learning and being further removed from starting point.

@infinitezero I love LaTeX and usually hate WYSIWYG, but for diagrams meant to be perceived by the human visual system, a visual editor is often better.

wrzlprmft's advice is sound, but has in my opinion an important caveat, which I will illustrate with two examples.

I learned today that Roger Penrose, famous mathematical physicist of quantum mechanics and general relativity and also geometer, is famous for using hand-drawn illustrations in his work: open-access example from 2014 here. His geometric intuition is considered a major part of his scientific success, and his method of illustration could play some role in that.
A couple of years ago I got to listen to a beautifully hand-painted lecture by Lillian Pierce, a professor of mathematics at Duke University. The presentation was an important part of the experience.

If you can produce artwork of that quality—retaining all the necessary features of the science/engineering while adding to the overall manuscript—then by all means do so! But I think it's quite a bit easier to create figures of acceptable quality with a computer; my own visual art skills are certainly not up to the task.
Note that "created by hand" here applies equally well to digital artwork created with MS Paint, GIMP, Inkscape, more expensive tools, and so on. The difference is whether it's created artistically/"freehand" or programmatically (e.g., in TikZ).

It may be true that some researchers are artists (and I know some) but most aren’t, or at least not good enough to have their hand drawn figures of sufficient quality for a journal.

There is some really good hand drawn work in science communication as well. If that style is something you aspire to, it's probably worth looking at what works and what doesn't,  starting with visual note taking for your own benefit, then using it in collaborative work and seeing how well it's received. Even if you don't get to the point of publishable illustrations (I know I couldn't) the ability to sketch ideas clearly during a discussion is very helpful in science

One of my favourite mathematicians still only uses chalk for his presentations, and at the end of the lecture the whole board is covered in a balanced, neatly spread, logically structured, succinct summary of the whole even though subsequent items have been written in various places (so not filled the board left-to-right-and-top-to-bottom). I would never attempt this, I can't even figure out my own notes let alone inflict them on the public.

That's kind of an odd example of Penrose's drawings, because they seem to be slides for a talk and aren't the professional quality drawings found in his books. You can find some examples of the latter if you skip your way through this talk of his: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1O4XPAU5m4

@elutionary for your open-access example from 2014 by Roger Penrose, I think most of his hand drawn figures should be replaced by those generated by software. There is simply no good reason for those hand drawn figures.  If we write papers or books like this we won't be able to publish unless if we were him.

The best thing to do is to consult the submission guidelines for the journal in question - e.g., Physical Review. I have never seen anything prohibiting hand-made figures... in fact, until a few decades ago most figures were submitted this way, alongside the handwritten or typed manuscript. Today many journals switched to accepting mostly (and often exclusively) online submissions, so that figures would have to be submitted as a file, with sufficiently good quality to enable further processing.
What has to be kept in mind is that figures would be seen by reviewers - if their hand-made nature impacts negatively on their readability, this will be pointed out. One also has to keep in mind that it may affect the impressions of the readers, when the paper is published. Of course, this can work both ways - increasing the reader's understanding and pleasure, if the illustrations are beautiful and to the point - e.g., illustrations in Zagoskin's and Mattuck's books are well-known in the community (like respectively Feynmann rules! and Self-consistent Kondo dog.)


text:
Are you supposed to disclose all stimuli that your participants have been exposed to?
I am a master student in psychology in the US.
I performed a study in which the participants had to read a story and should recall it afterwards.
Now I am writing a manuscript where I only analyze parts of the participants’ responses to answer my research questions.
This puts me in a dilemma: Should I explain the whole story stimulus in my paper or just focus on the parts that I analyzed?
My supervisor suggested that I should not mention the unanalyzed parts of the story at all because that will distract readers and take away the focus of the paper. However, I'm thinking what if this paper is published and someone ask for the stimuli to replicate the study, and then find out that the stimuli is different from the way I presented in the paper. It’s like I’m hiding something from them. I worry this may lead to a retraction of the my publication. I’m very new to academia and my supervisor sometimes is not very on top of things, I don't think he cares much about what I do. So I want to make sure I do the right thing and ask for your advice.

This reminds me of some of Feynman's remarks on what he called Cargo Cult Science. Fields such as psychology suffer(ed) from faulty scientific methods, where studies omitted, or failed to consider entirely, potential confounding variables and other alternatives.  Studies of how mice navigate through mazes that had their colors/scents changed were messed up because the mazes had no roofs, and the mice could just memorize the ceiling/light patterns, etc.

I understand your point. I realize a lot of graduate students and profs try to get more than one publications from one project, so sometimes the quality of the paper would be undermined. But this is the reality, most of people in academia are publication-oriented, which always leads me to doubt whether I should keep staying in this field.

Psychology is not my field, but your concerns seem valid to me. As a reader of your work I'd want a fairly complete picture of the experiment that was done.
However, you don't need to discuss everything at the same level of detail. A synopsis of the parts you don't focus on is likely enough to satisfy your concerns without distracting readers from what may be more important to your purpose.
In other words, the overall description can be broad, but not deep. Then focus on what you want to say. Arguably, the fuller description could come in an appendix/annex to the paper. Or if a fuller description of the experiment has been published you could just cite that.
If I think that the "unexplained" parts are more important to the outcome then I, at least, have a basis for discussion, rather than having just been misled.
But, again, this is advice from an outsider.