text:
working on an open problem for the master's thesis, without any guidance or help
I am a master’s student studying mathematics (from Germany), currently writing my master’s thesis. In total, I have around six months to prepare, write and finish my thesis.
My advisor gave me an open problem to work on and he does not expect that I will solve it, but he expects that I am able to make new contributions on it, so that I have something new for my thesis. However, many established researchers in this research area are trying to attack this problem as well and for many years, but no one was able to proof even special cases or intermediate results until now. And my advisor doesn’t really know how to attack this problem as well, and this is one of the reasons why he does not guide me.
Already at the very beginning I told him that I’m pessimistic to be able to do this, but I just wanted to give it a try and I didn’t know that I have to work completely on my own. Now, I have tried it for two to three months, and all my attempts failed and my ideas didn’t work. Furthermore, my professional knowledge is still very limited, meanwhile I hit the wall and don’t know how to proceed.
I literally explained my advisor that I need his help and guidance to make some progress and I have told him all my attempts. The only reaction is always: He doesn’t know it either, and every time he just gives me another open problem (sometimes liked to the old one), without any idea how to attack these other problems. After trying the other suggestions, unsuccessfully, I decided to work on the first problem again (but still without any progress). I asked him again for help, and I literally explained him my situation that I'm stuck, and giving me another open problems is not that type of help which I need, what I need is guidance. But still no help..
Since I have to hand in a thesis this summer and there is no possibility to change the advisor, I really don't know what to do...
Do you have any idea or suggestion what I can do, or do you have similar experience? Or if it’s too opinion-based: what are possible ways to get out of such or similar situations?

Since you are so close to your desired completion date, I suggest documenting all of your work carefully (starting now!) even if you can't solve any of the problems.  Maybe they will accept it in the end.  I had a similar experience with my advisor, but had some luck in the end.  3/4-ths of the research in my dissertation was accomplished in the last 1/4th of my time as a student.

See if you can find someone to mentor you informally.  Sometimes the advisor of record is not much help....

all my attempts failed and my ideas didn't work At the very least, you could document your attempts and the reasoning behind your ideas, so that future researchers wouldn't have to repeat those.

thank you all. I will write down all the attempts and try to follow your advices, it's still better as to have nothing. I already tried to find a mentor, but the people working in this area either seem to be too busy and it seems to me that they don't want to help or they can not help me because they are too far away with their research.

First of all, your English is quite good, but as a fellow German I am well aware of the jokes about Germans excusing their poor English skills in high level prose. xD
Now back to topic:
I myself had to deal with an open problem during my master thesis, so here are some points I learned during that time that might help you:
(Disclaimer: As I wrote my thesis somewhere in between linear algebra and algorithmic number theory, some points might slightly differ depending on your field).

Mathematicians are only human. Yes, after sitting in lectures, with professors telling you all the brilliant results, it might seem as if a professor, someone who finished his studies in mathematics, might be some omnipotent entity that is always right. But that is not the case. That the problem you are working on hasn't been solved yet does not mean that it is impossible for you, it just means that the people trying it up to this point where not capable to do it. Maybe they hadn't enough time, maybe they hadn't gotten the right ideas, maybe it just wasn't tried by so many yet.
It seems to me that you are expecting your advisor to know the answers and just withhold them. But I'm rather sure he does not, he just doesn't know and wants to learn about it.
Even if you can't solve the problem, you can develop methods to help with it. For example you might implement efficient algorithms to compute many, many examples, which might then help you (if you have the time) or others to see a pattern and solve it. I don't know your topic, so I don't know if it would be best to use algorithms, plots,... to show results, but I'm sure you can come up with something.
You stated that your advisor does not expect you to completely solve the problem. That is in fact good. That means that even smaller contributions might be helpful. Can you get result for certain subclasses of the problem, can you solve some cases that are easier? Can you give relations and reformulations, e.g. "Problem A is equivalent to problem B, assuming condition C (thus I devote a whole chapter to the question when condition C holds)".
Find structural results related to your problem. For example say your problem is of the form "We have structures of type A and want to find the automorphisms between them" and you are not able to find these. Then it might still help to study the structures of type A, find other ways to see/write them, get any results on them that might then help someone else to find the automorphisms.
Prepare a time plan and discuss it with your advisor. For example you could say "I try to find results on problem A for another two weeks, if I don't find anything I will write down results on the structures (to at least have something to present) and after that look at these special cases: ... At (date) I will start writing down what I have up to this point, no matter how much it is."
If you have a well worked out plan, your advisor might be able to tell you what is important to him, which of the points should maybe get more attention or less.

thank you, Bemte. I have already tried to attacked and to follow these points (until now I am stuck on the most of these points due to no guidance). Nevertheless, you advice helps me a little bit, because this is a type of checklist for me which I can use if I will loose my way again.


text:
What should I put as my GPA for a pass/fail class?
I'm homeschooled, and I'm currently working on my high school transcript to apply to colleges. The form provided asks for a grade from A+ to F for each class. I don't know what to put as my grade for Driver's Education, a half-credit elective class with no definitive grade. On an old transcript, it simply says "PASS."
How would I convert this to GPA? 4.0? Something lower? Should I ask each college I apply to and send them different transcripts? I'm using the form instead of simply creating my own because one college requires that I use the form, whereas the rest don't appear to care.

Often on college transcripts P/F course grades and the course hours are not factored in to the GPA. Yes, the credits counted towards graduation requirements, but no more than that. Of course, this is usually why you are limited in the number of P/F courses you can take.

@JonCuster That much I'd managed to find on the Internet. Thanks for the comment though. That's why this form is troublesome, I do wish I was able to put P or F and have it not affect the GPA.

Pass isn't a letter grade at all.  Don't enter anything from the A-F scale; they are all inaccurate.  Check if "P" or "S" (for Satisfactory) are possible options.
Otherwise, reread the instructions for the application.  It may be that they don't want you to include "non-academic" classes like driver education at all.
If you don't find clarification, then contact the school that requires the form and ask them what you should do.
If you are computing your GPA by hand, then pass-fail classes are not included.  Disregard the class completely for the purposes of GPA; leave it out of both the numerator and the denominator.

I tried that. If I leave the GPA section blank, it excludes the course from the numerator and includes it in the denominator. I'll call the school tomorrow, thanks!

However, some schools use "Pass/Fail" for all first-semester or even first-year classes, which can include required courses for a major (particularly in the sciences).

Or indeed, I had an upper-level seminar that was Pass/Fail. It's not exclusively for "non-academic" classes.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Is there any reason not to use a shortDOI in an APA References section?
In the recently published seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the APA, a change was made to the citation style guidelines to allow authors to use shortened URLs in the References section, including shortDOIs. The change is discussed here with regard to shortened URLs, but shortDOIs are mentioned with only an explanation of what they are, not with guidelines on how to use them. The article does mention, however, that some journals may restrict use of shortened URLs.
Using a shortDOI seems like the best option in any case, since it occupies a fraction of the space of a full DOI. For example, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.03.032 becomes https://doi.org/ggcgpd. It's also far easier to enter the shortDOI into a web browser than the full DOI.
Is there any reason not to use the shortDOI service when creating a references list, either for a student paper or a manuscript for submission to a journal? Are there journals that give guidelines on when to use a shortDOI, since the APA manual simply states that it is optional when a DOI is "long or complex?" Are there other ways in which using a shortDOI might be problematic?

The shortDOI service will work for referring your readers to the source, but is not widely used, and its use is even discouraged behind the scenes. As of July 2022 the shortDOI site states it was updated in April 2013, which gives some indication of its current status. The problem with shortDOI is that it just provides an alias for (i.e. link to) the actual DOI, that has to be created and maintained on top of the existing service, and then transformed whenever used. This made sense for its original purpose as a link shortener for, e.g., emails and mobile messaging, but with other uses it results in duplicate paper identifiers that cause extra work for anyone maintaining indices of papers, for example. And since shortDOIs never got that popular in the first place, not all APIs/services support them.
Journals and other publication venues are recommended to not use shortDOIs, but to make shorter regular DOIs. See this Twitter thread or Crossref's DOI display guidelines (emphasis mine):

The International DOI Foundation created the ShortDOI service as an open system that creates shortcuts to DOIs. DOIs can be long, so this service aimed to to the same thing as URL shortening services. For example, for the DOI https://doi.org/10.7774/cevr.2016.5.1.1, the short form is https://doi.org/bwfc. Only one ShortDOI is created for each DOI, and the ShortDOI returns exactly the same results as the DOI. ShortDOIs are not widely used and are not really actual DOIs themselves, which is confusing. We recommend simply creating shorter DOIs in the first place. Learn more about constructing your DOIs.

Given the above, I'd suggest it's generally better practice to use the regular DOI in bibliographies. This is especially the case if the DOI is only used as a hyperlink rather written out in the bibliography. That said, I am not aware of any journal publicly taking this position. Few journals seem to mention shortDOI at all, but there are some that make its use optional. For example,  Workplace Health & Safety's author instructions state

When a DOI or URL is long or complex, you may use shortDOIs or shortened URLs if desired. Use the shortDOI service provided by the International DOI Foundation (http://shortdoi.org/) to create shortDOIs.

I was also able to find one journal that requests authors using shortDOIs: Cognitive Sustainability. Their Submission Preparation Checklist includes

Where available, URLs and DOIs for the references have been provided. Please use ShortDOI (http://shortdoi.org/).

Unfortunately that Twitter thread has been deleted. Great info though! Thanks.

@edallme Shame. These two responses in the thread are still visible https://x.com/DataCite/status/1043547381109800960 DataCite: "Original use case for shortDOI was similar to URL shorteners, e.g. social media. Problem is that this adds yet another URL that represents a DOI and has to be transformed." https://x.com/gittaca/status/1043917467800817666 Gittaca: "Yes that part is clear. Leaves me wondering why a DOI-branded shortener was necessary at all ... I was firstly asking "Why not?" to
mfenner's statement that "reference lists are not a good use case for shortDOI"."

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


text:
Will one flawed grade outside of my major from my freshman year affect graduate school?
I'm an English major and planning to apply to graduate schools. My freshman year I originally planned to be a bio major due to pressures from my family. I had to take chemistry and biology, which soon enough turned into a disaster. I dropped chem, but since I needed enough credits to be considered full time, I was forced to keep with bio. I ended up with a D- in the course. If it wasn't my freshman year, I honestly would have probably done better, but I was having a rough time settling into college with homesickness and depression. Aside from that one hiccup, however, the rest of my grades are As with a couple B+. So what I'm wondering is would that badly affect my application or even receiving scholarships?

I think this has been asked and answered, but I'm not sure exactly where.  At any rate, your experience is very common, and admissions committees know that.  Also, the farther back in time a grade is, the less it matters.

It is extremely unlikely that a graduate admissions committee/potential supervisor would look at your first year courses in any amount of detail. They are going to focus on the higher-level courses you take in later years, whether or not you do an honours degree/undergrad thesis, etc.
The only way I can see this affecting you is by lowering the overall average grade for your degree (measured in many places as a GPA). Many departments have a minimum GPA/grade requirement to be considered for admission to grad school. However, as long as you get consistently good grades for the rest of your degree, this little slip-up isn't going to matter much.

No, nothing to worry. Graduate committees understand that students have rough patches, and the first year of undergraduate is certainly a rough one for everyone. Rest assured that the majority of students have had a semester with problems in their lives. What matters is that you are on the right trajectory, as you apparently are. It makes it matter even less because it's not even in your major.
In my 4 or so years on the graduate committee, a single slip-up (or even a single bad semester) has never been an issue.

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


text:
What figure formatting can, should, or will be done by a publisher?
Background
When preparing a final version of a figure, it appears that some changes could be more easily made in a graphics software (gimp, inkscape, scribus, adobe) as opposed to R. Such changes might be done more efficiently, and more to the publishers standards, by the publisher. Apparently, the publisher uses some such software to makes final changes to the image anyway. Presumably, these changes can do it more efficiently and to their standards. Also, some tasks would be trivial or would be done anyway by the publisher.
Some tasks that I am currently doing to prepare figures for a journal article:

move / add text
change font
change line thickness
change background color

Something that would be neat to do:

integrate figures into text, in the style of Tufte:

Questions:

What formatting is commonly done by a publisher rather than an author?
Is it reasonable to make requests?
If so, what work will a publisher be willing to do?

For many years, the standard on the part of journals is to do absolutely nothing with respect to journal articles. Essentially all of the work in terms of preparation falls on the authors. Previously, figures had to be "camera-ready"; now, they "just" have to be publication quality. The journal production staff will not do anything, except potentially change the size of the graphic to better fit the column space.
You should check with the journal about the regulations on acceptable graphics; they should have them available for your review on their website. If there are questions about the use of graphics outside of those guidelines, send an email to the journal office.

In many particle physics journals the answer is they do nothing. You deliver a latex source file that uses their class and figures that meet their standards or they send it back.
And in all truth, I like it that way.

Also mathematics and computer science (and every other field that primarily uses LaTeX).

@JeffE I guessed that this was the case, but couldn't speak from personal experience.

In particular: http://jblevins.org/projects/spark/

I agree that this is a good approach, but rare in biology. Are there restrictions on the packages that you can use? Does the author get to decide on figure size and placement?

@David One of the fundamental features of LaTeX is the ability to separate content from layout. Making changes to a journal's layout (i.e., document class) is frowned upon. However, it is essentially impossible to restrict package use and layout changes. You can always copy and paste the contents of a package into your file.


text:
What to do when journal comments to rewrite the article?
What to do when a journal editor comments to rewrite (revise and resubmit) the article to remove similarities from another paper published in the same journal by our group. The works are different but the writing style may be same. In this case, is it recommended to submit in the same journal after rewriting or should I go for another journal?

Can you clarify how the journal editor decided about your article? Did they say (a) it's accepted but edit it to be less similar (b) it's accepted if you're willing to make the revisions, (c) revise and resubmit, or (d) we don't accept it but if you rewrite it we might accept it. / Without this I don't know how anyone can give a competent answer.

@virmaior it is in revise and resubmit phase.

Please edit your question to contain relevant information from your comments.

Relevant details added.

Obviously, the editor felt that your manuscript has too much overlap with another publication of you(r group). This may simply be indicated to them by a computer program which checks for literal overlaps with any source.
Often papers from the same authors suffer from such overlaps, in particular in the introduction section. However, this self plagiarism should be avoided, even if only by rephrasing the text. Duplication of content (even if rephrased) elsewhere (than in the introduction) is less acceptable and should be limited to the necessary minimum.
In any case you should add an appropriate reference to your previous work, for example "see also paper 1, where we have explained all this in more detail".

As a reader and user of academic papers, I find this custom really frustrating. I have wasted a lot of my time comparing two papers trying decide if a difference in wording is significant, or just to avoid using the same wording to mean the same thing in two papers.

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


text:
Conference submission along with submitting to arXiv
I am about to submit an article to an international conference (http://www.mldm.de/). I am thinking also to submit to arXiv as well. Is there any problem with this?

Which journal/conference/publisher are you talking about? Please provide more precise information.

@FuzzyLeapfrog http://www.mldm.de/. Edited the question to include the info.

The way journals handle arXiv submissions depends entirely on the journal. Generally, it should be allowed since arXiv is a well established service. The only way to know for sure is to read the FAQ/Terms and Conditions or ask the publisher/editor.

MLDM seems to publish the oral papers in LNCS, see oral presentations. LNCS allows preprints on arXiv: LNCS on Sherpa/RoMEO. See also the Springer Authors' Rights
If you want to submit for a poster presentation, you should contact the editor. I couldn't find their policies so far.


text:
Applying for post doc position when letter of recommendation from PhD advisers not available
I did my PhD in Electrical Engineering with supervision from three people. Very hard times during PhD as there was not much supervision from the three. Presently, I am working in an industry doing R and D, but look forward to apply for post doctoral positions. One of my advisers have told me he won't recommend me for any university in the foreign country, the second one is not reachable and the third is very rude fellow. In short, I wont get recommendation from any. What are chances for a post-doctoral position in a reputed university.
I have 3 international journals (2 Elsevier and 1 IEEE) and 3 conferences from my PhD work. I also have a Best Paper Award from one of the main IEEE conferences (EMBC 2014). I can manage reference letters from my masters advisers. Will recommendation from my masters advisers sufficient for applying to post-doctoral studies? Chances of getting a recommendation from any faculty from the university where I did PhD is very low.

I am in industry, not academia, but it surprises me to consider a postdoc position at any time other than immediately after a PhD.  "Research staff" is another matter.  I also think that if I were looking for a postdoc and a candidate had no recommendation from their advisor, it would be a really hard sell.

I think it is a very field dependent question, with a strong case by case factor. PD is generally not a glamorous job, so if you have useful skill set, I would expect several professors skipping the part. You may also want to have a better looking excuse than what you have now why those people don't give you a recommendation letter

Depends on the field. Still try the very rude fellow. Perhaps they are at least forthcoming? Also the recommendation letter maybe requested AFTER you have an offer depending on the country, which basically means your Master's supervisors would be game.


text:
Responding to reviewer comment
One of my research articles was in review and the reviewer has given a comment which is as follows:

"Thus this paper provides some useful information on the most appropriate approach to use when dealing with prediction, even if reported results are related to just one dataset, and the
  authors haven't provided any comment on the extension of the reported
  results to other similar cases."

A brief about my work is that I used a dataset from the industry that I am working and developed a model for a prediction problem. There is only a single dataset that the company has. In this work, multiple methods were tried including the conventional ones.
How do I respond to this comment? Can I tell that this is one of the possible future work that can be done?


text:
Old Cambridge examination: Draw, from memory, a wheelbarrow turned upside down
I came across the following story about the exams students sat in 1858 see page 4 here.

The following questions are taken from the first examinations set by
the The University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate in 1858.
The Junior papers were for candidates “under 16 years of age” and the
Senior papers were for candidates “under 18 years of age”. [...]
On another paper, candidates were asked to draw, from memory, a
wheelbarrow turned upside down. They were allowed an hour to do so.

I was hoping someone could provide more context for this wheelbarrow question. Such as, what was the purpose of the exam? Why was such an unusual question on the exam?

To see how well they could draw? It's just a guess, but take into account that in the past—and in a not-so-distant-one—handrawing, and especially technical drawing, was frequently considered an important skill.

@MassimoOrtolano still a useful skill now - one that I possess and one that both my sons (polymechanicien) have learnt and use every day, and it is not just drawing but reading and understanding the drawings.

@SolarMike Absolutely. I studied mechanical drawing at middle and high schools, and it helped me designing mechanical devices for my experiments along the years. I also studied electronic drawing and I'm appalled that my electronic engineering students cannot properly draw a circuit (switches seem particularly troublesome) and cannot recognize certain components when looking at professional schematics.

Maybe an attempt to reduce cultural bias --- this question would be a bit easier for lower-class students who had actually seen the underside of a wheelbarrow :-)

@AndreasBlass. Perhaps not in 1858?  And not this Board, which if my memory serves me, was set up to examine pupils at state/local schools. There was another Cambridge Board which provided examinations for "public" -that is private, upper and middle class - schools; it would  be interesting to explore their syllabuses.

The original question appears to be here:

III. 2 Drawing from Memory
[One hour allowed for this Study.
The Candidates may add any amount of shadow that they think necessary to the full expression of the subject.]
The Candidate is required to make a careful drawing, from memory, of a wheelbarrow turned upside down, with its wheel and legs in the air.

Some scrolling reveals that the prefixed numbers correspond to "the subjects in the regulations". We find that, for students under 16 years of age, the relevant numbers correspond to (bolded for emphasis by me)

Part III.
Students may also offer themselves for Examination in

Geometrical and Mechanical Drawing
Drawing from the Flat, from Models, from Memory, and in Perspective.
The Grammar of Music.

So this section of the examination was optional. For students under 18 years of age, part II includes an optional section G, which is described as

Section G.
Drawing from the Flat, from Models, from Memory, and in Perspective; and Drawing of Planes, Sections, and Elevations.
Design in Pen and ink, and in colour.
A fair degree of skill in free-hand drawing will be required in order that a Student may pass in this section.
Questions also will be set on the history of principles of the arts of Design.

In conclusion, I think the purpose of the question isn't related to mechanical drawing (which would've fallen under III.1) but to test more artistic drawing skills. It's also worth noting that it's a very broad examination - covering fields such as religious studies, English, Greek, etc. - seemingly intended to determine placement of students:

After each Examination the names of the Students who pass with credit will be placed alphabetically in three honour classes, and the names of those who pass to the satisfaction of the Examiners, yet not so as to deserve honours, will be placed alphabetically in a fourth class.  ...

In other words, the context in OP's link (a math assignment) is very different from the purposes of the exam where the question showed up.


text:
What to do with a likely collaborator who is not answering mails?
A few months ago, I contacted a person who conducted research in a topic that could easily be combined with my own work.
For this reason, I sent him an e-mail exposing my research and why it could be interesting to collaborate, taking into account his results.
He answered me and showing interest in the work (that is what I read between lines). Furthermore, he recommended me some literature.
When I read about half of the documentation, I sent him a mail with the insights I got and several of my publications, justifying my points.
He answered me again, discussing some points and glad to have my work pending to read.
I finished his readings and I sent back my impressions. He continued the discussion and excused himself because of not having read my papers.
After two months, I have no reply from him. What should be my next step towards the collaboration?

They are quite similar, however, I consider more useful the answers to this question.

Chris Voss in his book "Never Split the Difference" suggests the following approach: just write "Have you give up on this?". It is very effective for getting an answer in situations like this.

Presumably your prospective collaborator expects something more tangible than email discussions to come forward soon. So far, what you describe sounds fairly typical - material and ideas are exchanged, and papers are read (or not). However, at some point this needs to move into a more concrete direction than "discussions". That is, you are now in the phase where the pedal needs to hit the metal - somebody, presumably you, now needs to come forward with a concrete action plan or at least steps towards such an action plan.
Otherwise, if the discussions still remain on an abstract level even after multiple months and many emails being exchanged, I could understand that your collaborator fears that they may be wasting their time in this.
So the next step if you want to go forward with this would be to set up concrete next steps: arrange a planning call or even a visit, and then come up with concrete research methods and a methodology to address them. Particularly, be explicit about what you expect from the collaborator - the fact that they were not able to read your papers until now suggests they will be unable to contribute a lot of time, and it is better to clarify how they can contribute early rather than mid-way through the project.

I feel it is important to understand what the power and group dynamics are in such a collaboration. Why is everybody in the project? Who expects to get what out of it? Who is pushing / leading the project? Who has how much time to contribute, realistically?
These questions are all fairly different depending on whether you and your collaborator are students or senior academics. That is, if you as a student cold-mailed a senior professor the collaboration will ultimately have  different dynamics than if both of you are students, or both of you are similarly-senior academics.

Thanks for your answer. In my case, I'm a PhD student and the other part is a senior professor, that's why I imagine that my role is "to pave the road", right?

@siserte also, a lot of academics I am aware of won't really take seriously any email from PhD students unless the supervisor is CC'd in the email. There are cases of PhD students trying to get help from someone else and then claiming the work as theirs, thus if you want to have a serious discussion, I sugest CC your supervisor, even if they don't contribute to the discussion

Meaningful collaboration requires a serious investment of effort.  In interactions with a colleague, there is a massive difference between:

"Your work is interesting enough to spend 15 minutes skimming materials and providing feedback, and another 15 minutes looking through your eventual publication for useful nuggets."

versus

"Your work is critical enough to the progress of my work to spend 100+ hours working together on a collaboration leading to a new publication."

From what you have reported so far, it sounds like this potential collaborator is more at the first level and not the second. Remember that most people doing significant research are approached quite frequently by potential collaborators, and simply cannot work with most of the people who might be interested to work with them (or who they might be interested to work with!).
I think that you need to stop and ask yourself not, "What would I gain from working with this person?" but "What would this person gain from working with me?"
Moreover, are you sure they wouldn't get nearly as much value just from reading and incorporating results from a publication you make on your own? If there isn't a clear and valuable answer to these questions, it might be that there won't be a collaboration at this time.  You could even ask that question (politely) directly and with a concrete action attached, something like:

"Based on our discussion so far, do you think it makes sense for us to try to work together on a project at this time?  If so, can we set up a time soon to talk about specific plans?"

This is a hard question to ask, because you might get a "no," but that "no" will be valuable because it will let you move on.  Worse, you might also get a "yes" from somebody who has a hard time saying no, but then they don't actually invest in the collaboration, and you also need to be able to recognize that and move on.
Finally, it's important to realize that even if you don't get the collaboration that you hope for, lower levels of interest and interaction can also be quite valuable for your career: even if this person isn't collaborating with you, they may well be genuinely interested and read your work, cite you, pass your work to others, become a good contact in your professional network, etc.

You are right, not to get the collaboration is not the end, and at least, he has known my work, even if only for the title ;)

The way I know these folks, he is a writer type, not a reader type. In other words, nobody is going to read your junk unless there is a damn good reason to do so.  Find this damn good reason and communicate it or you won't get anyone reading your papers.  After he reads your work, take it from there.
Before he says he has read your papers, act as if you don't have any collaborator.
The step after his confirmation - if it ever occurs - could be setting up a plan including the responsibilities of you two and the deadlines.
Now, if you are a PhD student, and the other part is a senior professor, don't count on him reading anything: he is more on the level of managing research and less on the level of doing research. (Exceptions exist, and I know some, but they are not prevalent.) Instead, say that you understand if he has no time to read your papers. Then, ask him to suggest a potential collaborator who does have time, perhaps from his environment.  A PhD student who is at the start of his career and has not decided about the direction could be a better match. Another choice is someone who badly needs publications.

Good point! "ask him to suggest a potential collaborator" However, in previous experiences, it seemed implicit that statement, being the addressee the one who proposed it.

@siserte If it was indeed implicit for you, it's ok. However, a senior prof might have no time to even think about all possible implicit statements.


text:
Can I add my current supervisor name in a conference paper if he pay for me the conference fees without taking a consent from my ex-supervisor?
I have completed my master‘s degree work one year ago under supervisor A, and now I am doing PhD under supervisor B.
I have presented a part of my master’s degree work and included supervisor B’s name in the abstract since he paid the conference fees.
I have not requested for a consent from supervisor A about that and now supervisor A seems to be very upset and wants to complain.
Please advise me what should I do now?

Paying fees under no circumstance ever in any discipline equals authorship. My advise is remove them both unless they are coauthors

Arno has covered the fundamentals pretty well. In terms of what you should do, in what stage is the work? Have you presented already? Will there be published proceedings? If it is not too late, you should attempt (with the consent of both supervisors) to change the authorship on your slides (easy) and the abstract (much harder). Simply write to the organizers, explain the situation, apologize for the mistake, and ask for a correction.

I have already presented the work. Now there are several small things my supervisor B has added to my work. I am not sure whether that can help me to justify adding his name

If someone has no input whatsoever on the content of a scientific publication, they should not be listed as a coauthor. In some fields, this input may be indirect, but merely paying money never establishes coauthorship. Based on your description, it seems that B should not have been listed as a coauthor at all.
Any submission for publication needs to be done with the consent of all coauthors. Adding a coauthor is a significant step, and should not be done without the agreement of the established coauthors: So if A is established as a coauthor, you should talk to A before adding B as a coauthor.
(Edit, as Nate Eldrige pointed out in the comments): One musn't list someone as a coauthor in a publication without their knowledge and consent! If B consented to being listed as a coauthor, and indeed had no input at all on the project, this is misconduct from his/her part, too.

If B did not know about this: The straight-forward course of action would be to apologize to A and B and then to contact the conference organisers to amend the conference proceedings accordingly.
If B knew about this: In addition to apologizing to A, you should seriously reconsider whether B is a suitable PhD advisor.

Note that while authorship is an inappropriate way of recognizing funding sources, it should be possible to phrase the usual funding acknowledgement fine print in a way that includes recognition of conference fees/travel expenses.  e.g. "This presentation made possible by the financial support of ... (list grants at masters institution AND new supervisor)" instead of "This work funded by the following grants (list only grants at masters institution)"

Additionally: regardless of other issues, you should not have listed B as a coauthor unless you had his permission to do so.  And if you did get B's permission, then he acted improperly, because he should have known that contributing money does not entitle him to authorship.  If that's the case, you have a bigger problem: you are the student of a possibly unethical advisor.

On point 1: It is definitely common in Engineering to have a supervisor listed despite not obtaining any input beyond funding from him/her.... (at least in the UK)
Obviously a supervisor who had some input would be listed/named.

@DetlevCM I believe the common assumption behind that phenomenon is that the supervisor has envisioned the overall project when writing the grant that then provided the funding. I don't believe I can buy a coauthorship in an accepted way in any academic discipline by just paying for someones trip to a conference.

@Arno Well, not by necessarily funding just the conference but the entire degree (if we are talking about a PhD) with no further input, then yes.
As to envisaging the overall topic... ehm, most definitely not in some cases. In fact, in my (former UK) University it was fairly standard to give the student a topic and tell him to find something to work on... Depending on the topic 1-2 supervisors out of 3 may have some input or even none at all.

You cannot add someone's name to a paper if he or she has not contributed substantively. I wondered how B agreed.

Standard procedure in some fields (e.g. engineering) - your supervisor is named even if he/she just supplied funding, at least in engineering in the UK.
Especially if people are at a PhD level, you aren't exactly in a position to challenge them unless you want a fight for the rest of your degree.

That's true if they supplied money for the research (and therefore probably also provided a research context / some of the ideas, however indirectly).  But not just travel money.


text:
What is the difference between cumulative dissertation and regular dissertation?
The university is asking me whether or not my PhD thesis is a “cumulative dissertation”. I’m wondering what the difference would be for the university. By cumulative, do they mean stacking the published/submitted papers?

See also: What are the main factors that mean Humanities PhDs get published as books?

Cumulative dissertation is probably a literal translation of the German Kumulative Dissertation, which denotes a thesis by publication, compilation thesis or article thesis, i.e., a thesis which typically consists of some peer-reviewed publications, an introduction, and a conclusion.
The alternative to this is a monograph thesis, which is written separately as a coherent monolithic work and whose individual chapters are not intended for being read on their own.
The requirements on such a cumulative dissertation differ between universities and even faculties, so you have to look into their rules for those.

Thanks for the useful information but here is the question: what is the other possible form of dissertation? because to me it seems all phd dissertations include summary of the published/submitted papers.

The alternative is to write a book, a single manuscript with chapters that together form one cohesive argument. So there is something more than the staple that holds the individual chapters together. In that case the chapters are not individually publishable as articles. This is popular in discipines that favor writing books over writing articles.

@MaartenBuis: It is also still quite common in some countries and universities. For example, the vast majority of theses at my faculty (science and mathematics) are still monographs, despite the fact that the involved disciplines being focussed on papers.


text:
How to address email to a professor who prefers informality?
How should I address an email to a professor who hates being called "Professor ___" or "Dr. ____?" He has made it very clear to students that he prefers to be referred to by his first name in person, but I have been told time and time again that one should be more formal when writing emails. Is this always true, or should I simply follow how he prefers to be addressed in person?

With rare exceptions, if someone tells you that they want to be treated a certain way, you should treat them that way, no matter what anyone else says or thinks.

If you are very worried about it, in your first email you can use the polite and very English "If I may" so:

Do you really have to use his name at all?  I seldom do, with people I know, just starting with something like "Hi",

Email already comes with To: and From: fields, so salutations and signatures are anachronisms.

To be more formal in written communication, stop using ‘email’ as a count noun.

@JeffE Just out of curiosity, could you name such an exception?

Related question of mine on Workplace S.E.: https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/95932/how-to-respond-to-request-to-use-a-first-name

@Henrik "Please take this gun and shoot me in the face."

@KeithMcClary The extra effort to greet someone within the letter was already matter of courtesy before email was invented. (Snail-mail has "from" and "to" fields, on the envelop.) It's just that these kinds of courtesies have become less emphasized.

@ Keith McClary: Though not all email addresses are the person's name.  In my CS department, faculty email was firstname+initial@cs.school.edu, students were initial+lastname, unless you were friends with someone who could change it.

To add to the great answers below: One thing is addressing the professor who prefers to be addressed by his/her first name, but it's another thing to talk about the same professor. E.g. I would say "Hi, Mary" when I meet the professor, but "I met professor Smith" if I mention it later. Also, when I mention other academics, I mention the formal title, so she knows that I'm doing the same about her, eg. "Mary, what do you think about the new paper from professor Saitō's group?"

One of my professors has the same thing. He likes to be addressed: "Dear Lucky,"

If the professor explicitly says not to call him by his last name, then don't. It would actually be more impolite to ignore his request in order to conform to some abstract "formality" rules.
However, even if you are addressing your professor by his first name, you can still preserve some degree of formality. Some common norms include:

do not use slang
avoid excessive contractions (e.g. use have not instead of haven't)
use your full name in the signature
be polite

In general, the rule of thumb is to be respectful and professional in your communications. Sometimes that includes addressing the person as "Professor X" or "Dr. X", but it does not have to. Just make sure you sound polite!

Agree, except for the part of use your full name in the signature - at least when you know each other, there is no need to add your surname, in my opinion.

@Mark On the contrary. I always use my full name on the off-chance there's another Sean the professor I'm talking to is working with.

@SeanRoberson Seen this way it makes sense. My first name isn't very frequent.

@SeanRoberson yes, but as long as you have a school email and the school email system tells the professor who you are, that doesn't really matter either.

Professor X ... Now I'm thinking about posting a question regarding the relevance of politeness in the context of telepaths.

Haha, I once had two students in my class with the same first and last names.  Fortunately, they had quite different handwriting; so in my record of their assignment marks, they were known as "John Doe with the curly writing" and "John Doe with the square writing".

As a non-native english speaker, I wasn't aware that contractions were seen as informal or impolite

@MechMK1 : In my view, they aren't. One would only use the full form in writing for emphasis or when trying to be ultra-formal (I certainly wouldn't "avoid contractions" when writing to a professor I didn't know.

@DawoodibnKareem : I was at uni with "Clever Sue Pierce" and "Pretty Sue Pierce" (the latter referred to herself as "Thick Sue Pierce").

@MartinBonner I would only split up contractions when I want to emphasize the negation. "I assure you, I did not support this desicion", as an example

My name is Bob Brown.  I share it with about a zillion other Anglophones.  There are ten zillion Bobs and at least that many Browns.  If there is any possibility of confusion, use both names.

@MartinBonner  I was at school with Diane Darling and Diane Love.  They were in the same dormitory room, and so shared a phone number.  "Is this Diane Love?"  "No, this is Diane, darling!"

Rules exist to serve people, not people to serve rules. The default is formality, because if you don't know how someone wants to be called, then formality shows respect. If you do know how someone wants to be called, them calling them that shows respect. Don't confuse the means for the end. Formality is the means, respect is the end.

This may be the best answer, especially at a conceptual level.

+1 I saw a many once declare that he held doors open for women, whether they liked it or not, because his mother taught him to. He obviously missed the point of the lesson.

@EllenSpertus to tell the truth, I do not get the point of holding doors open or of purposely not holding doors open.

I would suggest that you use the name/term/concept that the professor signs his initial reply to you with as the introduction to follow up e-mails. This approach ensures that you are always correct and formal in your initial contact and can be informal in the subsequent contacts if the reply allowed you to do so. See the following e-mail headers/footers as an example:
Original Contact
Dear Prof. FancyPants,

...

Kind Regards,
Hopeful Grad Student

First Reply
Dear Hopeful Grad Student,

...

Cheers,
John

Your Reply
Hi John,

...

Cheers,
Andy

I hope that the above illustrates how I would treat your situation.

Replying with the person's signature is generally the safest bet anywhere unless you know otherwise.

I agree with this one.  Please call me 'Santa' from now on.

One problem with this is that often professor's won't give you a signature you can use for future contact. For example, professors who sign with just an initial ("-B") or initials ("-BXJ"), or more commonly, if they just don't sign their name at all. Or if they sign with their full name, etc.

@6005 Dear -BXJ, dear 6005, … :-D

@MadPhysicist "unless you know otherwise" which is exactly the case here.

@Mast. Actually you don't know what the professor's signature is. I bet it's the informal name he wants students to use though.

@6005 My understanding is that that is often a way to not signal that a person is OK with more informality while also not having to sign emails as "Sincerely, Professor/Dr. X" -- social norms for how one is addressed by others and how one refers to oneself are different.

In general: Do not be scared and do not think too much about it.
Professors are people as well and often they are way more interested in the content of your mail than in formalities. Especially when they have a lot of work, they do not even have the time to judge how you begin your e-mails ;).
Here is a cartoon how much time professors need for e-mails and how much time students need:

http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1047
You're on the right side and overthinking the formalities. Your professor is on the left side and just reading the important parts of your e-mail (so make sure that you do not hide your question in too much text) before replying.

who hates being called "Professor ___" or "Dr. ____?" He has made it very clear to students that he prefers to be referred to by his first name

It seems he did not make it clear enough to all of the students. If he hates it and makes it very clear, it sounds even desperate! Please, do him the favor and address him as he prefers:
"Hi John" or "Hello John" or "Dear John"
That's what he explicitly prefers. And btw. as soon as you are around researchers (grad student and higher), you will address most people you meet at conferences etc as "hi FirstName".
Professors are humans as well. General rules are nice but do not hold every time. Here is one of the exceptions.

If the OP wants a little formality, I'd use "Hello John" rather than "Hi John".  I might even write "Dear John," - but then I wrote letters starting "Dear Mum," in my youth.

But that's the point! It's not about what the OP want's, but what the professor wants. Still, true, he can also use "hello" or "dear".

There are dozens if not hundreds of questions an this stack to which the answer can be summarised as: "professors are human".

If you are very worried about it, in your first email you can use the polite and very English "If I may".
So for example:

Dear Sarah (if I may),  I am writing to you to ask about...

It signals your commitment to formality, but also takes your Prof's preference into account. If they sign their response with their full name or say something like "of course you may!", you're set.

This kind of language always strikes me as overly formal and awkward writing in modern english, I really try to avoid it because it doesn't make the best impression. But I've never really found a better alternative.

There are possibly two issues here. The first is accommodation of the professor's wishes. As a default, address him however he wants. It is better to be respectful than formal, as all the other answers point out.
The other (possible) issue (pointed out anecdotally in @RadishQueen's answer), is that students may feel very uncomfortable addressing a professor like that. If this is indeed part of the motivation for the question, the solution is never to disrespect the professor, but you can always mention to him that it makes you very uncomfortable to address him so informally. He may decide to ignore your feelings on the matter or come up with a reasonable compromise. In either case, respect the professor's wishes.

As a programmer, the vast majority of most of emails I send in a professional context are of the following format :
Hi Tom,

...

Kind regards,

John Slegers

At least in my sector, pretty much everyone uses this format these days, whether communicating with clients, with subcontractors, with our boss, etc. At least in the IT sector, formal emails are the exception rather than the standard.
As a student, I'd inclined to be a bit more formal when contacting a professor in at least my initial email, but not in your case. Considering he explicitly expressed his desired to be referred to by his first name in real life, I would not be any more formal in my emails to your professor than I am in my corporate emails.


text:
Is a revisiting review bad?
I need to know what it means when a paper starts with: “Revisiting [topic]”
I read enough on a topic to write a survey paper, and I want to publish it in a conference to get feedback and discuss it with the relevant community. I want to publish it as soon as possible, because if I don’t, somebody else will.
However, it might be the case that in the future, I can find more relevant information and my insights will develop (as I will continue researching the same topic in the future), which might extend the survey I propose. Is it okay to publish another ‘revisiting’ paper with an extended survey? Or does this leave a bad mark on the publication and the researcher? I do not want to delay publishing because it may be hard to reach a point where I am 100% satisfied with my knowledge of the topic. But I might be wrong and I should publish only when I reach this stage.

Research is rarely the final say. If you wait for a paper to be perfect you may never publish.  IMHO, revisiting usually applies to something that got attention in the past and then was quiescent.  For instance, I once published on compressing memory pages to fit more application memory in DRAM not disk. Wasn't the first and very much not the last: the same conference seems to publish a new paper on the topic about once every 5 years.

I don't know if I'd say "bad" but much hinges on the sense of revisit (and your definition of bad). If revisit means to repeat the paper for no reason just to reminisce, then yes that's bad. If "revisit" means things have changed surrounding the experiment or thesis that dramatically reshape the claims it makes, then that could be "good" (depending on what you mean by good)

A survey paper shouldn't just be the result of 'I did lots of reading'. There are two key types of survey I've come across. One is when some major result has been proved, and so it is time to do a 'round up' drawing together all the different ideas that go into it and with it. The second is when you've done lots of reading and have something useful to add as a result (ie the paper contains new research, on some level, as well as survey material).
I would say the issue isn't whether you 'revisit' something, but rather whether you try to publish work that doesn't add enough to the literature. No-one is going to really mind if you freely release an extended paper as an eprint for those who want to read it. On the other hand, trying to get published two separate papers that are nearly the same is not going to look so good.


text:
Can I get into an Australian PhD program in computer science without a masters degree, with a dual BSc degree?
I am following a dual degree program in my home country (Sri Lanka). One degree, B.Sc in Computer Science will be awarded by an Australian University and the other degree which is a B.Sc (Hons) in Software Engineering will be awarded by my home country University.
Will I be able to get in to an Australian PhD program without doing Masters with these two degrees?

PhD program where? Since many (most?) US PhD programs do not require a master's degree, you should be able to meet the requirements of a US-based program. I can't say what will happen for European programs that require a prior master's degrees.

I'm looking for an Australian PhD program

And your home country?

My home country is Sri Lanka

I am an Australian PhD student. Most of my fellow students do not have a Masters.
My university lists the requirements for a PhD here
Of particular note:

1.1.4 To be eligible to apply for entry to a Doctoral program, an applicant must demonstrate the capacity to undertake research at the Doctoral level by the attainment of at least one of the following:
(i) A Bachelor’s degree with at least Second Class, Division A (Honours) in a degree program that included a total of at least a semester of supervised project work, the results of which contributed to the Honours grade;
(ii) A postgraduate qualification which included: (a) supervised research component(s) of at least one semester or equivalent and resulted in the production of output(s) graded at the equivalent of Distinction or better, and (b) at least one research methods subject;
(iii) A Research Masters degree, where at least two thirds of the degree consisted of a supervised research component and resulted in the production of a thesis or equivalent;
(iv) Enrolment at this or another Australian university in a higher degree by research for the equivalent of at least 0.5 EFTSL with demonstrated satisfactory performance in the supervised research component(s);
(v) A combination of qualifications, research training and experience, considered equivalent to the above by the Responsible Academic Officer in the Enrolling Organisational Unit, e.g., senior authorship of at least one peer-reviewed publication plus completion of an appropriate research methods subject.

Most of the time people who get in appear to have either first class honours or some published research. I have seen domestic students with a lower GPA work with a supervisor to publish some research in order to be accepted into the PhD.

We also recently admitted a PhD student from the United States at my Go8 Uni with no masters, but he had research components and good recommendation letters.

The answer will depend on your grades or GPA.  If you finish with First Class Honours, then you will have no problem getting into a PhD degree in Australia.


text:
Is it possible to get admission to masters for theoretical physics with a bachelors in electronics engineering?
Can I get into masters for theoretical physics without having a bachelors in physics or maths? I have a bachelors in electronics engineering, and I can get a recommendation from the physics department for the admission.

http://physicsafterengineering.blogspot.in visit this blog it might be helpful

Absolutely. On a Masters course you will meet people from a wide range of backgrounds. In fact, one of my physics students has just been accepted onto a Masters course in computer science.
Having said that, you may struggle to get onto a good course if your grades are not strong. Since you will have a lot of catching up to do, those running the Masters programme will need to be persuaded that you're hard working with good potential. You will also probably need to demonstrate that you've already made an effort to study theoretical physics (e.g. discussing in some detail the topics that interest you in your application).

I have kept up the standard knowledge of quantum mechanics, the classical mechanics and the classical electromagnetism at an undergrad level. will that suffice?

@BinoyNambiar that's certainly a good start. It depends what you wish to work on though. Condensed matter? Particle physics? Quantum information? Cosmology?


text:
Which is preferable, to go to graduate school at same school as undergrad or to go to a lower-ranked school?
I've heard from people that generally, it's a bad idea to go to the same school as your undergrad to get your graduate education.
However, in the situation that you get into only your undergrad school and a few much-lower ranked grad schools, what would be the better school to pursue?

Please [edit] your post to clarify (1) whether you are referring to masters or doctoral level studies, (2) what field of study, and (3) what the end goal is (instead of "which is better," ask "which is better for X")

In my discipline (chemical engineering), very few departments admit their own undergraduates. The only exceptions is when they are pursuing a terminal master's, or if they applied but failed to get into a "better" or "similarly ranked" school. (Neither of these are "universal" policies, by the way!)

I've heard from people that generally, it's a bad idea to go to the same school as your undergrad to get your graduate education.

The word "generally" is commonly used in two rather different senses.  The first sense is "typically", "most often".  The second sense -- perhaps more common in mathematical and scientific writing -- is "always", or "in the largest possible scope which might be applied".  The quoted advice is valid if "generally" is construed in the former sense, not the latter.  To briefly explain: on the one hand, there are advantages to acquiring a diversity of experience.  "Great University X" will do its business in a way which is slightly different from "Great University Y".  Experiencing this is very valuable, because if you stay in academia you will probably be affiliated with several more universities, different from each of these.  If all of your student experience is at a single place, you will have subconsciously internalized the universality of your experience, and you'll be in for a rude awakening when you learn that what is obviously best to you is not the practice in your new environment.  Then too, by going to different great universities, you meet different great people (many of whom will know each other and will be in transit to/from other great universities), both students and faculty.  This is also very valuable.
On the other hand, there are situations where it is most advantageous to stay where you are.  For instance there are sometimes personal, family or financial considerations.  Even neglecting these, there are times that the university you attended as an undergraduate is truly the uniquely best option for you to continue your studies, or the best option among those available to you.  If you are an undergraduate at UCLA, if you want to study analysis, and if you did not get admitted to Berkeley, MIT, Chicago, Princeton or Stanford, then staying where you are sounds like an excellent (perhaps optimal) choice academically.  If you've already done successful research with a top faculty member at your current program and you truly want to continue that research most of all: yes, think seriously about staying right where you are.
The other answer says that graduate school rankings is "a little ridiculous".  While I don't really disagree, let me try to put a finer point on that: grad school rankings are ridiculous if you take them too seriously, and especially if you regard them as a strict linear ranking.  It does not matter that US News and World Report currently thinks that MIT is the best mathematics department in the US whereas in past years it used to think it was some combination of Harvard / Princeton / Berkeley.  It would be more honest and more helpful if they simply recorded that these departments and several others (Chicago, Stanford,...) are in the uppermost echelon of graduate programs in mathematics.  Asking whether Harvard is better than Stanford is ridiculous: it depends upon what you're studying.  (If you want to study analysis, don't go to Harvard unless you know you want to work with the one faculty member there who does that.)
Students should be thinking of departments in terms of echelons.  Within a given echelon, ranking is not helpful.  However, barring some truly exceptional circumstances you want to go to a program in the top echelon that accepts you.  As a corollary to this: if your undergraduate institution is in the top 10, and every other program you've gotten into isn't in the top 30, then yes, I think you should stay where you are, unless you have a very good reason to go to a lower-ranked department (best reason: there is a superstar there that has agreed to work with you).
Finally though I have to say that I find it slightly odd that the OP has apparently gone to a top department, been admitted as a student to that top department, but not at any other department of comparable quality.  That suggests to me that her application is not as strong as it could be, as those who know her in real life apparently value her more highly.

Thanks for your response. This is merely a hypothetical situation - I am currently only in my sophomore year. However, I know a number of seniors from my school who were only accepted to our school for grad school, and was wondering how to weigh one's options at this point.

@jj172: If the number of seniors that you know is more than one, I would strongly wonder whether something strange is going on.  What field are you in?

I'm doing Computer Science but the seniors I know are in physics/applied physics

Hmm.  Caltech is certainly a top school in these areas.  It seems curious.

well there is always a bottom 50% in any class... while I'm guessing they weren't necessarily down there, it might explain why these kind of things happen? who knows. lol

@jj172: Of course, there are Caltech students who are less than stellar.  What's strange is that they are then being admitted to graduate school at Caltech.  I wonder (in fact I have no direct experience with Caltech whatsoever, almost uniquely so among American Universities of its caliber) whether this has something to do with the insularity one often sees at smaller schools.  For instance, at many very small liberal arts colleges it just so happens that much of the faculty there were undergraduates at the very same college: what a coincidence...

@PeteL.Clark. It's not a coincidence but it might be family, personal reasons, etc., instead of just insularity. A small college might get its own students back in as faculty because among a certain high level of very qualified candidates, only graduates of the college with a personal affinity would chose to move to the small town and work in the small school.

@Benjamin: Hiring people who especially want to live in a small town in which most other people don't is not exactly the opposite of insular.  Also in the current job market it's hard for me to imagine a SLAC that has few people interested in working there.  Nevertheless my comments are certainly very broad and shouldn't be taken too seriously.

@ChrisWhite Cool, thanks for the info. I'll look into it!

In a forced choice, I'd go to the same, rather than inferior school.
"Diversity" is a good idea when you can get into a comparably good school, or better than the one where you did your undergraduate degree. Then you will get a choice of viewpoints that will (hopefully) make you a broader, more qualified candidate.
These advantages (mostly) disappear when your additional choices are all worse than what you have. This is what master investor Peter Lynch called "diworsesification," which you might not want to do.

I've heard from people that generally, it's a bad idea to go to the same school as your undergrad to get your graduate education.

I think the underlying, and unmentioned, assumption on this statement is that you should not go to the same school as your undergrad, but rather you should go to a BETTER one. This would be consistent with my experience that many, possibly most, faculty at departments that consider themselves to be the best, do not often recommend their students to take a step down to study elsewhere (and if you consider yourself the best, everywhere else is lower).
That said, graduate school ranking, especially for PhD studies, is a little ridiculous. More important than the rank of your university, school, department, is the reputation of your primary advisor. But even that is not nearly as important as the quality of your research. While better ranked schools/departments/groups tend to have better faculty and resources there is considerable variation.

Thanks! What do you mean by "you should not go to the same school as your undergrad, but rather you should go to a BETTER one"? What if your undergrad school is already one of the best in its field? And in the case that you don't get into any graduate schools with a equal or better reputation, is it not really worth it to pursue higher education at lower-reputation schools?


text:
Research Posters - Do you put home university logo when you did the research at another university?
I am currently doing research at a school that is not my home institution. When I create a poster board for this research, do I put logos of both the school where I am doing the research as well as my home institution? Or do I not mention my home institution at all?
If appropriate, where do I mention my home institution on this research poster?

Is your home institution currently paying you? If so, that definitely counts as supporting your research.

I would put the logo of the funding agency (NSF, NASA, etc.) and the logo of the university where you are doing this research. If your home university isn't involved in any way, then you're probably fine excluding it.

My home university is paying for about half of the research costs, and the place where I am doing research is paying for the other half. In that case, would I include my home unversity logo? Thanks for your response.

Yes, I would put both.

Since you are doing research at that university and are funded by the other university, you should put both logos. Moreover, you should also put the logo of other funding agencies if some are involved in your project.  You may also write an acknowledgedment such as "This projected was funded by NSF grant #12345" to indicate the specific grant that funded your project. Besides, if you have co-authors from other universities, you may also put the logo of their universities. Finally, you could also decide to not put any logo, and write the university affiliations and funding information as text, and it would also be fine

You have a couple options:
1.)It would be fine (and visually better) to have one logo. But which one? Well, it is appropriate to have the logo of the University/Institute that you are doing the research with. It is their faculty that you work with and contribute. You can then list your home university and other funding agencies in a "special thanks" section at the bottom of your poster.
2.)You don't want to even chance doing anything uncouth, so you can put all logos Oprah style. You get a logo! And you get a logo!
Special Case: before leaving someone out be sure that there isnt anything in your contract or funding agreement that says "If I give you money, you will list my logo"


text:
What is the etiquette for asking a professor I don't know to suggest universities for me?
Because of the current political situation, I cannot apply for a PhD in the USA. There is a very remarkable professor on a U.S. university and I want to ask him to suggest for me other universities that are good to be considered.
I want to know your opinion about this.
And, if you agree, how can I state my request?

I would be very hesitant if someone I did not know asked me my opinion of other universities. I would be happy to answer if it was someone I knew.

If I am assuming correctly that the professor as well as the universities you are seeking are good in a specific subfield that you are interested in, you should add this to the question

can you help me in writing my request?

I would advise against it.
I don't think most people have in their heads a list of "good universities in my field".  When advising students who they know on where to apply for grad school, they try to recommend schools based on everything they know about the student, their interests, talents, constraints, etc.  For a student who they don't know and have never met, this would be hard to do effectively, and I don't think most people would really be interested in trying.
If you send such an email, I suspect you will either get no response, or a brief "Sorry, I can't help".
Instead, I would suggest that you talk to a faculty member in your field at your own university, someone who knows you well and whose opinion you respect.  They would be a much better source of advice for you.


text:
Conclusions section in a letter: To give a peek into new findings (not reported in letter) or not
Perhaps because this is my first letter, that I am writing independently, I don’t have a good grasp of the amount of significant results that need to be in the letter, to be published in the journal.
Because this is a letter, I cant just go all in to describe every possible result we have obtained, so I only showed a small portion of the results.
While, in a certain light the results shown in the result are small, extrapolating it to a larger problem, the results are way more significant.
For example, in this letter, I present the first model for a certain device. I experimentally validate the model and show the variation of a certain parameter on the performance of the device. A 10% variation in the parameter has a 10% impact on the performance of the device. However, the 10% is a hard-limit, and you cant really optimize that parameter beyond ~10%. However, there are a multitude of other parameters which can be similarly optimized, and I have obtained theoretical results showing >50% and 1000% theoretical improvement in the performance of the device based on 2 performance metrics.
However, going into details of these individual parameters and their optimizations is almost impossible in this short letter.
I know that conclusions are not supposed to have any results, but are supposed to discuss the implications of the results. Can I consider the broader results (50% and 1000% improvement in theoretical performance), as implications of the current study? Can I report this performance improvement in the conclusions section (without giving too much details of the study), as a study we have done and mention that we are going to report it in future publications?

Anybody who can provide some insight?

It sounds like the depth of your findings are at odds with the letter format. If you want to talk about the full optimization across all parameters in detail I would consider an alternate format for publication.
That being said, one of the prominent journals in my field (JASA, whose full author guidelines can be found here) provides specific guidance for letters to the editor that supports your mentioning additional results that will be expanded on in future publications:

The work should have a modicum of completeness, to the extent that the letter “tells a story” that is at least plausible to the reader, and it should have some nontrivial support for what is being related. Not all the loose strings need be tied together. Often there is an implicit promise that the publication of the letter will be followed up by a regular research article that fills in
  the gaps and that does all the things that a regular research article should do.

Note that this is just one journal in one field, and the expectations of the journal you are submitting to may differ.  I would recommend looking at your target journal's guidelines before proceeding one way or the other.


text:
In a short letter, should I mention what I am going to be explaining in the next section, at the end of each section?
I am writing a 3-page letter. Space is limited, so I am trying to find out whether I can eliminate additional words.
I noticed in most academic paper, the introduction ends with explaining whats going to come in the methods, results and discussion.
Then sometimes at the beginning of the methods section, some authors (not all) state whats going to come in the methods section and then goes into more details.
At the end of the methods section or beginning of the results section, some papers go into what’s going to come in the results section and then goes into details.
Similarly, for the discussion section.
I understand from reading online, that’s it’s a good idea to give an idea of whats going come in the methods, results and discussion sections at the end of the introduction
(http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTWsections.html#introduction).
However, is it customary to summarize each section (something like a mini-abstract) at the beginning of each section/end of the previous section?

"it customary to summarize each section [...] at the beginning of each section/end of the previous section?": Generally speaking, I'd consider it redundant and I'd avoid it, but there are  people who like to be redundant ;-)

You want your reader to be able to figure out what's in the paper without reading through all the technical details, and then going through the trouble of synthesizing what you've written to figure out the what the paper means. If you want your paper to have any impact at all, you need to put an executive summary somewhere in it.
Whether you put all the details of the summary at the end of the introduction, or put a less detailed summary in the introduction, and expand on the details at the beginning of each section may depend on the author and/or the field. It may be that in your field, people expect summaries at the end/beginning of each section, and will look for them there.
But if you're careful about what you say and how you say it, you don't need to repeat details from the introduction at the beginnings of the section, so putting the summaries at the beginning/end of the sections shouldn't use much extra space.


text:
How to format the name of an R package in thesis?
In a thesis, when referring to an R package (a statistical software), how should I write it?
Should it be italicized/treated like a title?
Or just like any other word. The package name is not a "normal word" so it seems out of place to just write it like
"...using the R package XYZ."

Why not using the convention employed in the R documentation (package names are typeset with a bold font)?

Also remember to include what version of R and package you used.

You may be overthinking this. I think the text version is okay. You may or may not emphasise the package name but the reader will get that it is a R package from the sentence, so the rest is a question how you like it better yourself.

As far as I've seen there isn't an agreed-upon convention here, but people often distinguish package names with a different font than the regular text.  A monospace typeface (e.g. \texttt{ggplot2} in LaTeX) or bold font is common choice.

In LaTeX, you can do this by adding the following to your preamble. Something like this:
\newcommand{\pkg}[1]{{\normalfont\fontseries{b}\selectfont #1}}
\let\proglang=\textsf \let\code=\texttt

\begin{document}

Then you can refer to R as \proglang{R}, to a package
\pkg{packagename}, and to a function as \code{functionname}.

\end{document}

The OP didn't mention they were working in LATEX.

@AzorAhai-him- That is correct! I just assumed OP is writing a thesis and using R; therefore, in the science field, where most of the thesis is written in Latex!

@AhmadTalafha I don't think you can say most of the sciences use LaTeX - most of math, maybe.

@AzorAhai-him- While it is true, check out this post https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/940/what-professions-use-tex-latex-besides-cs

@Libor Google Docs is great! For Latex, check out Overleaf, it is a collaborative cloud-based LaTeX editor used for writing, editing and publishing scientific documents.

@AhmadTalafha Sure, but there's a lot more to science than math, physics, and linguistics ;)

In R, use the citation function and inside the function use the argument package and then put the name of the package you wish to cite in quotations. Below is an example of the code.
citation(package = "NAME OF PACKAGE HERE")

You can copy the output to place in your document in the references.
For in-text citations, you can follow APA recommendations for citing software. Below is an example

The Foo package was used in the analysis (Version number; Author last name, year).

The question isn't about how to cite the package, it's about how to format the name of the package when referring to it in text. e.g.: "We use the foo package to parse the data and..."


text:
What does "the authors must present insightful implications based on their experimental outcomes" mean?
I am advised to revise my paper about a novel clustering algorithm. From the responses of reviewers, I have this question:

"the authors must present insightful implications based on their experimental outcomes."

I haven't understood what the reviewer means? Does he ask about a real case study, because I applied my algorithm only to benchmark of the UCI Machine Learning Repository? Available: http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets.html.

what use is it? or maybe closer, what are the implications of your findings?

Seems like a question better suited for English.SE than here

Without reading the paper and reports, I can only guess, but it sounds to me that they are asking "Why do your experimental results matter? What do they tell us?"

Yeah, that's how I read it too.  The referee just overdosed on buzzwords.


text:
Is it necessary to send a corrigendum? Does it make my paper look ugly?
I have a paper which is accepted without any minor or major revisions in a good journal (lucky me). It is fully published. Since I had no chance to revise it, many small mistakes slipped into the proof. During proofreading I tried my best to catch any mistake and correct it. But these were two problems: 1) There were too many small mistakes so at least one of them slided my attention. 2) I couldn't ask the copy-editor to remove a whole "sentence".
If I had the chance to revise it, I would easily fix that up. But now the erroneous sentence is there in my beloved paper. It is now fully published (as online and hard copy). I am tempted to send a corrigendum on that paper, saying that the line is incorrect and should not be there. But on the other hand am afraid that it would make my paper look not-perfect or even ugly.
Do you suggest me sending a corrigendum? Or should I wait until someone notices that and writes a letter to the editor and then I answer in a reply to that letter, saying that "yes you are right, that sentence should not be there in the first place"? And if no one noticed that, I leave that error alone.
Which other ideas do you have about this?
Thanks a lot.

does the error affect your results or conclusion in any way? Does it prevent anyone from repeating the work and ending up with the same conclusion?

Thanks. Fortunately no. I have stated some method of measurement incorrectly. I have stated the routine method for measuring something, while we had actually used another method (which is again common). The original method is as well reported some paragraphs above!! Existence of that sentence would not damage any results or conclusions at all, but does not accord with reality and also with the original method which is reported in a couple of paragraphs above!! This is what I am concerned about. So what do you think? I might ask the same from journal's editor too. But would appreciate ideas.

And no it does not prevent anyone from repeating the work. That measurement can be done in any of the two ways (both reported in my paper!). And both would give the same result.

You know, reading it again I saw I have not even suggested that incorrect method as something "used" in our study. Although it might incorrectly imply so, but the sentence is written in a way that it is not indicative of the "use" of the incorrect method by us. So I think I should leave it, as it has no harm. Not even incorrect.

"""Whilst it may be damaging for an author to have an article with errors in it, it may also be harmful for them to have an article with errata."""

Given your clarifications 1, 2, and 3, I would suggest leaving it alone.
The modern trend is for the corrigenda and the errata to be used more for "serious" stuff, and less so for "cosmetic" changes. The guideline, for example, given by the American Physiological Society is:

if the author determines that it is scientifically necessary

While Nature uses the following definition for a corrigendum:

Corrigendum. Notification of an important error made by the author(s) that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the paper, or the reputation of the authors or the journal.

Unless the venue in which you published your work states otherwise in their publication guidelines, a stray sentence that is not factually false, does not invalidate your claims, and does not impinge on the efforts of other researchers to reproduce your work is likely not "scientifically necessary."
Even if you insist on perfection, you should also be aware how corrigenda are viewed by other researchers in your field. If in your field the prevailing view is that corrigenda are used for "scientifically necessary" changes to your article, then you need to be prepared to answer questions about your correction in the future (usually of the form, "Why is there a corrigendum issued for your paper? Are you sure it doesn't change your conclusions?")
Lastly, a minor point is that if you published in a journal which charges publication fees, quite often your corrigendum will come with a not-so-small price-tag also.

Many thanks. That made my day! Actually it is trivial but I am perfectionist and that sentence sounds stupid in the middle of a good paper (so a threat to my own reputation and also for the journal's rep)(of course a tiny trivial threat). On the other hand, it is so small that a corrigendum would be a waste of one paper. But about the reputation of the journal, I am not sure. I don't know if a small error affects reputation of the journal or not. A small error that nobody has recognized thus far (my colleagues, editors, reviewers [it is accepted as is])...

Maybe I can email the editor and talk to him and ask him does he consider this sentence a small unimportant error or should I send a corrigendum? About the fee, no the journal charges no fees at all. So a corrigendum would not hurt my pocket. :)

This journal publishes so rapidly and is very busy. They receive tons of manuscript. So I am confident many other published papers might have such small issues (especially those few which are accepted as is).


text:
Paper review: The editor is from the same university as the first author and asking for a meeting
I was asked to review a paper for a rather important Journal in my field (engineering discipline). The editor (professor) who assigned the review to me is based at the same university as the first author (PhD student). The two do not come from the same chair, but the university is quite small and it is likely they do know one another personally.
Furthermore, the editor suggested a meeting to discuss my opinion on the manuscript in person. He is currently in my area. Since I know him from conferences it would be difficult to decline his meeting request.
So now I am not sure if this represents a conflict in interests or if I am being too paranoid here? If this is critical, how should I react?

"the editor suggested a meeting to discuss my opinion on the manuscript in person" - does this mean that you and the editor are also from the same university? Or will you meet at a conference or similar?

He is in town for a workshop. We know personally from conferences. But I am hesitant to accept his meeting request.

There are two questions/issues here: (1) editor and first author from same university, and (2) editor proposes to meet reviewer in person.  I think those are two different questions.

@gerrit True. Also after reading the answer below I only now realize that the latter may be actually more serious.

Being from the same university may or may not be an issue (it's hard to judge without knowing more details).  Asking to discuss a manuscript in person, however, is a huge red flag.
Communication about manuscripts should pretty much always go through official channels only, thus keeping an accessible record of the complete decision-making process.  Only in dealing with exceptional situations (e.g., plagiarism, negotiating transfer to another journal) is there likely to be any communication outside of these channels, and even then it should be written down.  This is to protect both the integrity of the process and also everybody involved---authors, reviewers, editors, publisher---since both acceptance and rejection are capable of ending up quite contentious.
The fact that this editor is asking to talk with you in person before you've even written your review sounds extremely dubious to me, and would cause me to decline to review for reasons of unprofessionalism.  There may or may not be anything incorrect going on, but it's at least evidence of a rather callous sloppiness that I would not like to be involved with in any way.

Thank you for directing my attention to the "red flag". I like the suggestion from @Floris since I am still not fully sure if something is wrong here.

If it should turn out that this is an actual attempt to manipulate a reviewer, wouldn't you consider contacting someone from the Journal? In my opinion it is an important Journal in the field and they should have highly professional editors.

Is it too late to tell the editor you have not yet had time to review the paper and you will give him your feedback in writing? It is not your job to call out what may or may not be conflict of interest - but you can preserve the integrity of the process by submitting your review in writing only. Unless you already did and the editor wants some clarification. It is conceivable there are no ill intentions here, just clumsiness, but you are right to be cautious.


text:
Corresponding author
I am an undergraduate student in the field of information technology. Recently I worked on an academic project under a supervisor. We want to publish it. My question is: Does the person who submits the manuscript to a journal become the corresponding author of that paper? That is, if my supervisor submits the manuscript, will he become the corresponding author by default? Can’t he refer the correspondence to me?

By corresponding, I meant the author to be contacted in the printed publication. That is, my supervisor can refer the correspondence to me, though he is submitting the manuscript. Am I right?

my supervisor can refer the correspondence to me, though he is submitting the manuscript. Am I right? – If you mean referring the role of corresponding author as denoted in the published manuscript, we cannot answer this; it depends on the journal. If you mean refer specific e-mails to you, your supervisor can do with those e-mails whatever he wants.

As @Wrzlprmft indicated, the question is indeed related to What is the explicit meaning of “corresponding author”?. In the terms of that discussion, you are not at this point corresponding author, and what you would like is to be listed in the published paper as contact author.  In my experience this is possible, if the corresponding author agrees. Convince your supervisor that you should be listed as contact author and I do not see why the journal would object.


text:
Does citation refer to paper or authors?
I imagine this question is asked before, but I could not find the answer.
This is the example sentence that got me wondering:

Gneiting and Ranjan (2013) generalize/generalizes these findings and state/states that ...

Should I plural verbs (generalize, state), as if I am referring to the authors, or should I use singular verbs (generalizes,states) as if I am referring to the paper itself?

Papers don't do things; people do.

I guess there is no definitive answer, but I would use "state". From what I learned from my supervisor, the citation should not interfere with the original sentence. And the sentence is "Gneiting and Ranjan generalize these findings and state that..."
(My supervisor also disapproved of it when someone used "[XY] stated that ... ".)
Also, I can't remember ever seeing it the other way.
Just make sure that you have the same form for "generalizes" as well ;)


text:
Is it normal for a supervisor to never talk to you or give you any direction?
My master’s supervisor talks to me once every six months and is uninterested in my research unless I have a half-written paper with a working model already.
There are also no post-docs or assistants managing the students or providing alternative guidance. It is only a professor. And he has about five master’s students and PhD students each under his supervision.
Is this standard operating procedure? I thought I would have more guidance.

No. It is not normal.

Definitely not normal .. you won't finish.  change advisor!

Who supports your work? Who gives you a direction for research? Please elaborate how you are supervised IN TOTAL. For my PhD, for example, I spend very little time with my professor but I am in close collaboration with one of his postdocs.

I added more details to my question. Basically, no one supports me in my work until the work is done.

Do you have a second supervisor? This doesn't really sound appropriate at Masters level.

No I do not have a second supervisor. I never knew this was possible.

I have receive loads of support as a Master student. But I was lucky to have a decent advisor, invested labmates, and a competent co-advisor. Things have however changed: ex-advisor retired, ex-coadvisor gone bitter, ex-labmates not in academia, that lab is today run by a bad professor... This is why I cannot state if your situation is common or not today. But I can tell you it is bad.

No, this is not standard.
One of the main purposes of a thesis is that you learn how to perform research.
While there is some learning by doing, without supervision you are very likely to at least do one of the following:

misunderstand the task or the topic,
miss some important existing work when getting familiar with the field,
make mistakes that could easily be spotted by somebody experienced but may cost you a lot of time or make a lot of your work worthless,
focus on rather uninteresting aspects and miss interesting discoveries,
produce bad writing (and thus having to rewrite it entirely before submitting).

This is probably the first time you work on a larger subject. Nobody can expect you to do all these things right on yourself. And even if you do everything right naturally, proper guidance could make you better utilise your talent.
I thus recommend that you do (if you haven’t done it already):

Talk to other students or the student union to get an idea what exactly is common at your institution.
Talk to other students in your advisor’s group about their experience. Perhaps the others have the same problem and you can address it together.
Actively seek feedback from your advisor.
Consult with your examination rules and the responsible people at your department for ways to switch your advisor, get your advisor to do more advising (ideally anonymously), etc.

Thanks for the advice. I will try to be more proactive in my relationship with him. I will also reach out to other students to get their take on things. I just feel sometimes I spend hours looking into something that I have no clue if it is relevant or not.

While I definitely support the advice given here, I also recommend the OP to thread very carefully. I have a friend who went through a similar situation as a PhD student and as soon as he approached his supervisor on this, thing slid downhill. Supervisor got gruntled and made his stay hell, and also made sure nobody else around would take him.

I cannot state exactly how common this is because I'd need more experience. However I am a 3rd timer postdoc who took my PhD 8 years ago, and I have worked in 5 different labs in 3 distant countries. I know many people. I tell you this:
This is not acceptable. You are not in a good place.
After digesting this fact you must come up with a strategy and some plans. I have no idea of where you are, nor how things actually work at your institution.
I am currently in China, and from what I've seen and heard, around here such ambiance more common than it should, and a student will not find direct support out it. However if you're in some reputed traditional institution in Europe, perhaps you can find representative personnel like suggested by @Wrzprmft above.
The following facts should be considered:

Your "advisor" is waiting for you to feed his CV with data/papers;
Such kind of person is generally at an institution where this behaviour is allowed to continue;
Mind that a Master student is typically seen to have little "value" and power by a supervisor and institutions;
Depending on your personal plans, you may be able to find a much better life elsewhere.

I recommend you decide whether you're willing to stay or leave.
If you decide to stay, consider getting another advisor (if this is locally tolerated/possible). Otherwise face the fact that you'll have to find your own way and survive & manipulate your pseudo-advisor until the end of your course (2y?). Usually if they get what they want (some data and papers) the maggot will stay out of your path. If you're the kind of independent researcher, this may well prove quite good for you, but chances are you'll come up with bad quality data and crappy manuscripts. And perhaps become as good as your "boss" in the future...
If you decide to walk out, take advantage of the fact that this guy is just sitting, and use the local structure and contacts to probe your options. It will be easier to approach (carefully) better prospective advisors and contractors elsewhere through your institutional address. Think about career options (industry, other fields), take some online courses on transferable skills. As soon as you've made your choice or things go sour (e.g. you're caught looking elsewhere) find the smoothest way out of this trap.
Good luck.