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Published article with Inactive DOI
I submitted a paper to SciTechnol, I paid the article processing charges. The paper is now published on their website with a DOI which is inactive when checking on Crossref metadata and DOI.org  I contacted Crossref why is that, they replied that the publishing website has not paid their subscription fees to Crossref for a year.
Now, my paper is published but not traceable on SciTechnol.
Multiple requests to withdraw the article failed to bring any answers or replies from SciTechnol.
I am considering submitting the paper to another journal. Is that possible?
Is there a way to get this publication DOI active from my side ?
What are the ethical issues here? Can I take this publishing website to court to claim damages?

Thanks for the interactive discussion. I must say that I learnt a lot listening to you all.
I did not transfer copyright for this open access as I did not sign documents for that. Would this allow me to submit somewhere else since they turning a deaf ear to my request to withdraw the paper?
Searching the paper title on Google, it does come up (but not when using the DO The reason I wanted the active DOI is that it makes referring to paper easier. SciTechnol insisted that the DOI would be activated once I paid the APC what a cheating trickery.
I now read about this FTC ruling, what a revelation. Had I known about this or Beall's list, I would have looked away at that time.
Shayn from CrossRef emailed me back to answer that SciTechnol did not pay their Crossref subs, he made no reference to FTC ruling.
Now, since I paid with a Visa Card, I started a case dispute via my bank. At least to limit the damages

Scitechnol is a publisher, not a journal.

@FedericoPoloni Well, a publisher could be predatory on the whole, or did I get that wrong.

Did you transfer copyright?

@CaptainEmacs Sure. For instance, Beall's list is a list of publishers, not of journals. This was just a detail that does not invalidate the discussion.

To play devil's advocate: Why do you need a DOI?  Not having one isn't evidence that the publication doesn't exist, or that it isn't reputable.  Can you not provide a direct link?  Is the paper not discoverable through a Google search for the title?  Or is the paper not online at all?

I just want to clarify that SciTechnol's Crossref membership was not terminated due to their failure to pay their subscription fees.  It was terminated because SciTechnol is a subsidiary of OMICS, and Crossref terminated all OMICS members after the FTC ruling against them.

Thanks for your answer and welcome to this forum! Could you please specify in your answer that you work for Crossref, to clarify this potential conflict of interest situation? I see it is in your username, but usernames can be changed at any time, so it is preferred to include this information in answers.


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How are suitable epigraphs in books found?
Sometimes we see some scientific books (for example in the fields of computer science, game theory, ...) start their chapters (mostly the first chapter) with epigraphs from famous people, movies, an important event like famous conferences....
How the writers find these sentences? Since they are more or less related to the subject of the book's (or chapter) discussion, it seems that they can't be found accidentally by watching a movie during the writing process, or just the nice sentences be gathered during the time.
Is it practically possible to search on the internet for a suitable quote just at the time of preparing that specific writing/book/presentation? What should be searched for? Could anyone please give me some practical directions?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12565/what-are-your-thoughts-on-epigraphs-in-theses

@Anonymous Physicist: Thanks for your useful link that taught me the correct expression of my mean "epigraphs". But the discussion there is mostly about epigraphs are good for thesis or not, my question is how the are founded to be used.

"it seems that they can't be found accidentally by watching a movie during the writing process". Combinatorics and Graph Theory by Harris, Hirst and Mossinghoff has an epigraph for each section. The epigraph for the section on the Four Color Problem is "That does not sound too hard" by Princess Leia. This is one of the most pleasant book I read. The epigraphs are not the main reason for that, but it shows that the authors put a lot of themselves in the book.

To reinforce what others have said in answers: I found the epigraphs I used because I keep track of notable quotes in a notebook. But I also read a lot. And usually, I get an epiphany and the epigraph just comes to my mind, and I write down what epigraph I'd like to use for what topic/chapter.

“By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.”
—George Bernard Shaw

“A good quote is like the handle of the bicycle which has the power to take you onto the beautiful path of life.”
—Vikrant Parsai

“When I need to find a good quote about a topic, I go to quotes.net and enter the term I’m interested in into the search box.”
—Dan Romik

"I often cite myself. It adds space to my citations."

@FailedScientist Your comment is elevated from throwaway quip to greatness by your apt username.

"I often comment on questions I know little about. It adds little to the conversation, but makes me feel important."

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.
― Mark Twain

Read a lot and remember.  Write quotable quotes in a notebook if you feel you might be able to use them in the future.

We used to keep commonplaces, notebooks we'd jot down poignant quotes or thoughts or images, and spend time with them every now and again. But in the end it's as @JoelReyesNoche says: It all starts with reading.

When I wrote my master thesis, I found a couple of nice quotes. I picked one for my thesis. From this day on, I collected all nice quotes I read in a file. When my PhD thesis was almost finished six years later, it was a pleasure to procrastinate and review all collected quotes and selecting some for the beginnings of my chapters.

Alternatively try to remember and then frantically google for hours w/o end for the precise wording since you ended up forgetting.  But definitely a nice pastime, as @usr1234567 mentioned.  It also makes for more fun when reading

...conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.-- Castiglione

I guess people just know these quotes, because they read widely. Maybe I'm a bit cynical, but part of the allure of epigraphs is to show off one's rounded liberal education. So I don't think people actually spend much time searching for them. At least if they did, they wouldn't admit. It would ruin their sprezzatura.

I wouldn't be so cynical: in some books, epigraphs are clearly chosen to provide some fun.

@MassimoOrtolano yes, I like to believe that's why I used one in my PhD thesis.

Could be. Possibly worthwhile for you to explore your personal response.

@Aruralreader my point exactly. (On the other hand, I found the epigraph hilarious, but then again not appropriate enough to include in the resulting book.)

One strategy is to identify key words in your topic that are distinctive but can have multiple meanings, and search for uses of these words in sources that are nontechnical or in a different technical area. An approach like this is described in Section 22 of a terrific document and is much easier now than in those pre-WWW days:

Don [Knuth] takes great pleasure in finding a really good aphorism with which to preface a piece of writing...
So how are we to find that wonderfully apposite quotation with which to preface our term paper? Serendipity, said Don. Live a full and varied life, read widely...
Sometimes one needs to go about the search more systematically... The first secret, he confided, is Bartlett. There are numerous dictionaries of quotations...
When Bartlett fails, we can try the OED. This incomparable dictionary lists every word along with contexts in which it has been used; very often it prints a memorable quotation...
Some of the best quotations are taken entirely out of context. The economist Leontief had something to say about (economic) output; Don quoted him in his chapter on (computer) output.

The class where this was discussed can be seen on video!

I'll see your Bartlett and raise you a Brewer.

The author knows these quotes; has seen them, or heard them, and collected them over the years.  It seems to be "cheating" to have someone else find pithy quotes for you!

Thanks but why "cheating"? or why "to have someone"? In this question I didn't asked for the sentences in my branch. Maybe this misunderstanding is because of my last sentence in the question was. In that sentence I just wanted to say that I want a possible answer, not just an answer.
I suppose some of them can't be collected over the years. Because sometimes they are based on the topic of the presentation. Their numbers (their frequency) seems to be more than that just having this solution. Although this a a  solution.

@m123 it's "cheating" because quotes are usually something author personally associates with the content. It's not "here's a nice quote I found", it's "I really resonate with how [..] put it". It's nearly always something you have noted long ago as a nice quote. They are usually "on topic" because the author has read a lot on the topic.

I remember reading a wonderful book on computer algorithms called Algorithmics, in which each chapter was prefixed with a Biblical quote — from a translation by the author’s father. That was a neat way to do it. The quotes were relevant to the chapter, but in a way that was not relevant to the original use. “Let us talk of trees” is one I remember.
Beyond that, quotation dictionaries are a thing that exist. I have six on the shelf behind me. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations: New Edition, and The Oxford Dictionary of 20th Century Quotations are all organized by author; while The Macmillan Dictionary of Relevant Quotations, Quotation Finder (Collins), and The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations are all by topic. I have yet to find a single online source of quotations that I would trust — Wiktionary is probably the best. Most of the others have most quotes in multiple variants of slightly different wording attributed to several different people.

For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel. And if one can neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one? — Virginia Woolf, "To the Lighthouse" [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when referring to powerfail recovery.]

This probably did mean the person was well read back in the day, but not so much today. Google "quotes about ___" where ___ is a generic word that pertains to your chapter and switch to image search. (Why image search? Because then you don't have to click into the results to see the quotes.)
For example, "quotes about trees":
From "famousquotes123.com":

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. --William Blake

From "clickatree.com":

A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance. --Wangari Maathai

Further searching of "Wangari Maathai tree quotes" turned up "brainyquote.com":

Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. --Wangari Maathai

OK, trees are obviously an easy topic... What about lists? "quotes about lists":
From Pinterest (don't at me):

People who want to appear clever rely on memory. People who want to get things done make lists. --Peter McWilliams

From "quotemaster.org":

There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list. --Umberto Eco

The only difficulties here are formatting this post and choosing between the absolutely vast number of good quotes.

Yeah, that's a way to get quotes. But if you collect them over several years, and get some creativity because you frame them in a different context - then you have really nice epigraphs.

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Post-doc in Iran. Would you suggest it? Where are post-doc offers at Iranian Universities published?
I am an Italian Ph. D. candidate in Linguistics and I am in my penultimate year. My research focuses on nominal structure in Southern Italian Dialects, Balkan and Indo-Iranian languages.
I would love to work on a post-doc in Iran. Does anyone have experience on doing one in Iran? Would it be considered valuable experience? I am afraid of stereotypes in general, even though here in Italy the situation is different from the United States and we have an overall positive consideration of Iran.
I've already traveled to Iran for long periods and I am about to go back this summer, so there is no questioning that I like the place, and that it would be good experience for my knowledge on the Indo-Iranian family.
Apart from these questions, does anybody know about how the hiring process for post-docs works  in Iran? I have made many searches, but most universities do not have a page for job offers.
Very long question. For now, thanks everyone for listening. -)

I would not suggest to anyone, unless it is the only possible option.
First thing, I think it would be hard for a western to live in Iran, considering the human rights violations of the regime, not having freedom of speech, restraints on women, homosexuals and alcohol and many others. Before seriously considering such a move, I would try to contact some westerners in the institution you're considering and asking about their experience.
Second thing, most of the universities in Iran are public and as you're considering a job, rather than just a research visit or a conference visit, it means you're being employed by the Islamic republic. This is a big difference.
This sole thing, may get interpreted as you being supportive of the regime and its actions, and can jeopardize future positions in the academia (US/UK/Israel for sure, and probably some other allies like Canada or Australia), and may lead to some visa issues/questioning in the future. It is true that there are many Iranians in the west, and Sharif University is a great university for undergraduate studies whose graduates continue moving to get education in the best US institutions, but those are Iranians, not people who had a lot of options where to do undergraduate studies and most of them fled the country without looking back the minute they can.
It might also disqualify you in the future to work in some work that might require clearance (if you consider doing state-department/security related stuff in the future, as you have extensive language knowledge).
You've mentioned that you studied Indo-Iranian languages, so why not look at some better places? India? Azerbaijan?
If you know some Arabic, there are all those branches of fancy US institutes in the Emirates and Saudi-Arabia? Maybe those have departments about Indo-Iranian languages as well? (my first point applies there as well, but my second point is not very relevant).
P.S. I'm pretty sure that even in Europe, the general consensus about Iran would be mostly neutral to (some) negative, most definitely I would not describe it as positive.

this is absolutely NOT true, I am not sure why so many upvotes.

While I somewhat agree with some of the views expressed in the other answer by Persian_in_the_USA, I have some opposing views to discuss. I will answer your question based on my experience with fellow peers doing postdocs (Computer Science) in Iran and I will also assume you are looking for a temporary appointment as a post-doc and not a long-term career in Iran.
First of all, regarding the social and cultural differences, it's up to you to decide how much it actually affects/bothers you. Reiterating the assumption of a short-term employment, you have to ask yourself the following questions:

How hard is it to live for 2 years without alcohol or pork?
Do you need to wear a hijab (are you a woman)? and if so, how much will it bother you to continue wearing one in public for the duration of your stay?
Will the legal situation regarding homosexuals affect you personally?
Will the deficiency of freedom of speech, especially in political matters, affect you personally or professionally?

Secondly, although most prominent universities in Iran are public, equating a research role in a public university to "working for the regime" is quite a stretch, if not completely absurd. The difference between working in Linguistics at a university and working on governmental and/or military departments are quite clear, especially when you consider that almost all prominent universities in Iran are public.
I agree that this occupation might cause some questioning regarding Visa issues later on, but if you had a concrete and professional reason for your stay, I doubt it will prevent you from entering/working in western countries (keep in mind that many people who were born and raised in Iran untill their adulthood are now living and working in western countries without a problem).
Regarding the last part of your question on how to find such research positions in Iran, I believe the most promising approach would be to contact senior faculty members at the universities you are targeting. Such positions in Iran are not as common as in places like the US, which is why your are having no luck on official university websites.

Just a data point, but a former colleague has married an Iranian lady, and he works for the American embassy. He's German.

Tehran University of Medicine have online application for postdocs.

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Does it matter if I present in a PhD interview a topic which is partially unrelated to the PhD one?
I have a PhD interview coming up on organic chemistry in a few days. As part of the interview process I have to give a short presentation regarding a research which I am currently undertaking. However the current research is more related towards bio-organic (more biology). Does this matter if I still present a topic which isn't exactly in the organic field?
I should however stress that I am a chemist and done a lot of organic research for my undergraduate but for my masters I took a different turn but now wish to return to the organic side.

Better, write to them in mail your situation. They must have already judged from your submitted profile about your present works. Is not it?

They do know based on the CV and cover letter I submitted, however I am worried this aspect would greatly affect the way they see me as a potential candidate.

If you keep thinking about how would they see you, you can never do good in your presentation. So, just prepare your presentation  based on your present work, and keep stressing that you would do the organic work. Probably, you could emphasize on any work that you had done earlier.

I wouldn't keep stressing it. Just introduce your talk by explaining that you changed fields for your masters but intend to return to organic chemistry. Then concentrate on explaining your current research as clearly as possible.

Alright, I will contact them just in case but thank you for the advice

I was offered a job in a sub-discipline that I was not a specialist in.  Everyone knew this; I was quite truthful about the situation.  If this should happen, think carefully because much extra work will be expected on your part.  I take it as obvious that you should be and have been honest throughout all this.  However, you still must evaluate very carefully what to do if the job-offer is too far removed from your field-of-study.  From:  One who has been there.

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Cheated on an exam when I was eight years old. Should I tell graduate admissions?
I cheated at a language exam when I was eight years old. I finished early and noticed that I had accidentally left a dictionary in my drawer. I double-checked my answers and promptly got caught.
The incident is probably unverifiable at this point: The physical evidence is long gone; the teacher probably retired; the school probably didn’t keep records or has already destroyed it. I might be the only person on the planet who still remembers it.

Should I mention this incident when being asked about academic integrity in job interviews or similar?
Should I tell graduate admissions?

I suspect the answer is no since it was so long ago and I was eight years old, but I’m afraid I might be rationalizing.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

As noted in the comments, actions committed long ago as a child are (and should be) entirely irrelevant to graduate admissions.
It is well understood that children do not have same ability as adults to comprehend the consequences on their actions.  As a result, many legal systems wipe a child's record clean of most or all juvenile offenses upon reaching adulthood.
I would thus similarly argue that any academic offense predating your undergraduate education should generally neither be reported nor considered in an application for graduate school.

"Any academic offense predating your undergraduate education" - I'd say graduate school might be entitled to be interested if you cheated at A-levels, Baccalaureate, Abitur, NEWTs, etc (typically taken when one already is an adult, or about to become one in a few months).  But for sure, cheating at primary school is irrelevant.

Cheating on one's NEWTs is a rather impressive thing to do, I imagine.

@aaron It would take a Riddle or a Dumbledore to do so, but on the other wand, they wouldn't need to.

The accepted answer is absolutely correct, but I'd like to make a point that I don't see anywhere else. Do you personally think that the incident in question has any bearing on your current academic fitness? I'm going to venture a guess that your answer is a solid "No".
Looking at it another way, were the situation reversed, would you care if an applicant to your program cheated once when they were 8 years old? Once again I'm going to have to guess your answer would be "No".
Frankly I bet that nearly everyone has cheated on a test or homework or something in their youth (I know, I know, citation needed). The only way that could have any relevance now if if that one incident became a pattern that followed you throughout your education or other parts of your life. I can personally say that I helped a couple friends cheat on tests in high school, and got caught once, but it never followed me into college because at that point I started taking education seriously and dropped all of my old bad habits like cheating, not studying, etc. When I was young I simply didn't care. As an adult, lack of caring can easily lead straight to unemployment.

Well, maybe nearly everyone, but not everyone. ;-)

I'm sure there are a few exceptions out there... But I've never known one :-] Maybe all my peers are degenerates

Have fun getting the citations  :D

I do not recall cheating in my youth.  People cheat on "high stakes" exams for reasons that should not apply to elementary school students.  If an elementary school student is tempted to cheat, then the elementary school is not a good place.

@emory - or the student has underlying issues that should be addressed and the school has not discovered this yet.

@KevinDTimm Exactly. In my case it was because school was so boring that I simply didn't care and was just gliding through it. Once a teacher finally recognized that in HS, I got a kick in the butt that turned me into an instant straight-A student

This answer is about the US educational system.
While the answer for your particular situation is simple --at the age of eight, for a minor offense, no one will be bothered about this-- I'm going to write a fuller answer to cover possible future questions about this general topic.  I will include information about the undergraduate admissions process, because it is better documented, and because it will be useful for comparing and extrapolating.
There are some situations where a student's discipline record could be scrutinized by an admissions officer, but:

Students' discipline history is more interesting to admissions officers at the undergrad level than at the grad level, since undergrad behavior problems are more of a campus issue than grad student behavior problems.

Generally, academic and discipline records prior to 9th grade are washed away with the tide; generally, only high school records are reflected in the high school transcript sent to colleges (see, for example, https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/48282-suspension-in-middle-school.html).

What types of high school discipline records might be a concern for undergrad admissions?
According to an article in Education Week,

At a typical high school, a minor offense might result in you being reprimanded by a teacher or told to sit out in the hallway. Repeated minor offenses, or a slightly more severe offense, might result in a detention or an on-campus or “in-school” suspension.
If you get in trouble and you receive one of these punishments, it’s generally not something that you’ll need to report to colleges. However, if your offense merits more serious consequences, it’s a different story. This might include off-campus suspension, expulsion, or the involvement of law enforcement. If one of these has happened to you, you’ll need to report that on your [undergraduate] college applications.

College Confidential interviewed undergraduate admissions officers for an article about the effect of high school suspensions on college admissions.  The take-home messages I took from this article:

If an applicant believes a particular incident will be disclosed as part of an educational application, a separate statement of explanation can be appended to the application.

As the article's introduction states, "There is life after screw-ups, even for elite-college aspirants, but [...] honesty about an infraction--and the lessons learned from it--is always the best policy."

As one of the admissions officers interviewed said, "Colleges understand that students are people (just like admission officers), capable of making mistakes or bad judgments."

In a 2016 study, the Center for Community Alternatives (CCA), a nonprofit organization in New York State, found (see summary, full report):

73% of colleges and universities surveyed request the high school disciplinary record;

89% of those who request it, use it in their decision making;

50% of high schools surveyed disclose disciplinary information to colleges in at least some cases;

63% of high schools surveyed don't have written policies guiding them in disclosure decisions.

(Note for undergraduate applicants who might be reading this post: Under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), parents of minors, and adult students, have the right to inspect their educational records.  One can informally or formally attempt to get certain records expunged.  Also, the CCA published a helpful guide in 2013 for handling disclosure of criminal records when applying for college.)
Bottom line:
Administrators at educational institutions are aware that young people's brains are immature, and they know that if they tried to restrict admission to people who have never gotten in any kind of trouble for anything, campuses would be sparsely populated.

Depending on context, yes, I think you could.
If it's a box to tick on a form, I'd leave it as 'no'. They're not interested in what you did as a child, it's not relevant, and there's no opportunity to explain yourself. However, if asked in person, I'd be inclined to tell them. No-one is going to hold something you did when you were eight against you and telling them about it gives the impression of scrupulous honesty on your part and builds trust between you and the interviewer.

+1, I am less inclined to believe somebody who claims that they never cheated than somebody who states that they only ever cheated once at the age of eight (assuming that both statements are given with equal believability).

@NajibIdrissi: It depends on the tone. Such a statement can (and has to) be delivered with conveying the knowledge that it’s not actually relevant to the question but without mocking the interviewer.

@NajibIdrissi: And if OP is asked what country they come from, they can also say that when young they played the role of a French person in a school play? – That’s not even remotely comparable. — at best that's just wasting everyone's time – The time spent to say “only once, when I was eight” instead of just saying “no” is negligible. Remember that such an interview usually serves to get to know the person, not to replace a questionnaire.

Sidenote: It’s certainly better to answer briefly like this than saying “no” after some hesitation.

@NajibIdrissi I would assume that anyone with a passing hint of wit is perfectly capable of communicating both that they cheated on an test at eight, and that they're aware that this is hardly relevant. It is more humorous anecdote than deep revelation.

There are some industries where admitting mistakes when you do not need to can be a fault.  Some industries may look at this as being too open and a risk for sharing information that they would rather you not share.  I wouldn't say it's safe to assume that; but there are possible negatives.

@NajibIdrissi If you miss out on a job with someone so lacking in humanity that they can't cope with this, I'd consider it a win.

@Najibidrissi Also you seem to have misunderstood the word 'wit', it does not just mean 'funny'

If asked in person I'd hedge my bets by asking with a smile, "Does primary school count?"  If they seriously reply "yes" - though I have no idea why they would - then tell them.

Clearly, the answer is a no.
I hope this doesn't sound too harsh, but a graduate admission committee would probably be more surprised that you felt the need to ask this question on a public forum instead of reasoning it out yourself. It shows a lack of understanding of conventional social norms.
What's next? Asking if it is necessary to ask permission to pee during someone else's presentation?

If someone has a question that we might find a "stupid" question, how is it helpful to chide him for asking?  The person is already suffering with self-doubt, let's not make it worse.

No. Reasons:

Most of the people don't even remember things that they did or happened to them at that age. So it is quite extraordinarily that you remember this. Some people have extremely good memory (I am one of them, unfortunately, so I can recall details of some things from decades ago). So, average person would probably not have an issue like this, because simply they would not think about this. It's something I learned during my life, it was sometimes difficult to accept that I was the only one holding a grudge, for example. So, the "I don't remember" is not only a good excuse, for many people it would be a fact!
People change. There are reasons why there is different set of laws that apply to juveniles even when serious criminal acts are involved. This is also the reason, why court records of juvenile offenders are sealed or destroyed. The issue of you cheating at 8 years of age is immaterial for your admission, however you think of it. If it is immaterial whether you robbed a bank or seriously wounded a classmate, why would be cheating in 3rd grade be an issue? Be serious.
You were a child at the time. Not only that juveniles are subject to different rules, children are in most jurisdictions exempt from any criminal punishment for all but the most serious crimes (e.g. murder, and even that for the purpose that they can be mentally evaluated in a correctional facility). The fact that you stole a bubble-gum from a store when you were five does not count either, just to be blunt & clear.
You really are overthinking this. Perhaps, just like me, you are cursed with detailed memory. Get used to forget such things, life will become much more pleasant.

You probably should.
If it bothers you, you should tell them. Our silly childhood embarrassments are a sign of deeper psychological injury that we cannot forget. If you want to tell them about it, that means you decided it's time to grow up from childhood and leave the past behind

A graduate admissions application is not the place to be seeking psychological closure. (And academia.stackexchange is not the place to be diagnosing psychological problems.)

Your conscience is working. Just confess to a respectable person in earnest, and next on forget it.

I would absolutely recommend the OP do something to address this issue, as it seems to be bothering them more than it should. But I would think an academic adviser or another peer would be better than the board of admissions, since it's not their job to validate or invalidate the way OP feels about it.

Deep psychological currents cannot be analysed by "academic" and "right" approach. It is not about rationality, the feelings are always absurd and incomprehensible to logic but always have meaning. If the person feels he should do it, do it. It is not a closure, please don't dramatise, just some silly wish that has to be fulfilled.

"(And academia.stackexchange is not the place to be diagnosing psychological problems.)" - If it helps the person feel more confident during the admission process, why not?

And calling it a psychological problem, would just be another overreaction, it's just an innocent quirk of mind that's it


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Post-master’s education opportunities?
I am about to finish a master’s degree in data science/analytics. (Yes, I realize these are all the rage now, but let’s leave that alone for now.)
I have enjoyed the program and have learned quite a bit. However, I feel that overall the program is a survey of analytics/ML/AI techniques and there was little opportunity to truly dig deep into any of the topics that were covered.
I would like to find a way to continue my formal education and perhaps do some research, or at the least do a much deeper dive, into a more narrow field of study. However, I don't believe that a PhD program is right for me. I'm a father, a husband and a full-time employee. I'm not willing to give all of that up to pursue a PhD. (In retrospect, perhaps a thesis option in the masters program would have been appropriate, but it's too late for that.)
Is there something out there that's between a master's degree and a PhD?

Have you considered a part-time or distance learning PhD?

Maybe a part-time research assistant position.

In some countries the is a "half PhD" option, one common name is a licentiate. I've also seen a PDEng.

I'm kind of in the same boat - I'm getting an M.S. Analytics but I'm in my first semester instead of my last and I am just so... undecided. Second masters? (edit: multiple advanced degrees is not as uncommon as you'd think) Ph.D? Statistics or Computer Science? On the bright side you shouldn't have any trouble getting good recommendation letters if you want to go the formal route.
I'm eyeballing UT Austin's upcoming online Computer Science M.S. via EdX (estimated 10k tuition total but hasn't launched yet). There's also the pricey but IMO high quality earn-your-way in Harvard Extension School where I'm eyeballing the Software Engineering Masters. A lot of our alumns and even PhD's I know really like coursera.
One strategy I use because I'm poor is scope out the textbooks in use at the programs I want to be in and just read them. It's almost 2019 no one can stop you from learning :)

I will answer your question in a few ways. First, I applaud you for your self-awareness because that's extremely important in your pursuit of personal and professional goals. Secondly, I have worked in higher-education for the past five years or so and have experience with this particular case. In your case, you could reach out to your local university and see if you can take courses as a visiting(non-degree seeking) student. Or you can see if a certificate in your field is offered at the graduate level. If you're not seeking to take the next step in academe, you can pursue a certificate. A certificate will give you additional knowledge and possibly a raise in pay in the work-force.
Also, it may be possible that your employer will pay for additional coursework (tuition reimbursement).
It is quite possible that you could network with people in your field, in your area and begin working to gain experience.
I'm currently at the beginning of my doctoral program in Education Administration and I am seeing the importance of placing yourself in the right crowd of individuals. You will learn a lot and gain a lot of valuable information when you are leveraging your education with people that are at your level or beyond.

Outside of what Lauren has suggested (auditing higher level courses, attaining a certificate, and networking with others in your field), I'd suggest a few more things.  You mentioned that your program provided an overview of a number of subjects, but didn't go into a lot of detail.  I'd start by assessing my weak areas and look for opportunities to build on those.  If your coursework was heavy on theory and light on practical skills like programming, you might consider coursework or private study in that area.  You don't necessarily need to pursue a certificate to do it, but it does provide documentation of your effort.
What are your interests and do they align with any of your instructors?  If so, you might approach them about assisting them with their research or how you might extend research they've done in the past.  If you are interested in getting published, be sure to iron out what would constitute authorship and how you can fulfill that prior to starting.  Perhaps your interests are not academic -- find an open source project that you can help out with.
You might consider what have you built lately.  If there's an area that has your attention, there's nothing better than trying it out.  Besides, a project in your portfolio shows that you can do something and is sometimes better than having a degree or certificate.  If the majority of your portfolio comes from your work towards your degree, depending upon the complexity of it, you may want to put more effort here.  Also, do you have a GitHub account and is your work there?
Ironically, I'm asking myself these same questions.  I'm also in a Masters degree program for Data Science and set to graduate at the end of this semester.  Would also like to go on for a Ph.D., however, I have other obligations that are just as important.


text:
Rules for using an electronic text as the texbook for a class
I have just completed my PhD in Mathematics and accepted a job as a visiting assistant professor. The course I am assigned to teach allows me to pick the textbook I wish to use.
I am currently looking for lower-cost/free textbook options for my students, and I have found a textbook that I really like in the SpringerLink database. My school’s library has a subscription to this database which give students access to an electronic copy of this book free of charge. Are there any rules which prevent me from assigning this as the textbook for the class and giving them the option to download it for free through the library?

Whether they can download it for free depends on the deal the library has for that book. Whether there are rules about which book you use depends on your institution.

You should contact the library at your new institution to ask whether this is allowable under their contract with Springer.

You should also ask your future department chair and your future department secretary.

I think that Jessica B's comment should be reposted as an answer. There might be possible "gotchas" if the subscription has a restriction on the number of times a work can be accessed, but this sounds like it could be a great option for many students. Possibly this is exactly what your school had in mind when purchasing the subscription.

One would hope this is exactly what a library subscription to the book is for.

Check with the institution, but also you might be able to receive this information from the bookstore and/or librarian (especially if there is a Mathematics-specific librarian). Some institutions impose rules on what percentage of x materials can be used in your course instruction. For example, an institution might require that 20% of course material pull from a resource that is not a downloadable PDF. These policies vary across institutions, though unsure about individual disciplines.

@theoreticool: Huh, are there really institutions that have such rules?  That would surprise me.

@NateEldredge Yep, for intellectual property purposes. Again, it might vary by discipline because some fields pull from full texts more than others and surely discipline use texts for different purposes. For context, I’m not talking about “available for ebook” texts, but more so, you cannot use a .pdf excerpt of someone’s book for your class and let it count for a vast majority of course material. If your institution has a council that routinely reviews everyone’s course syllabi, they’re the ones who would be able to tell you more info than myself.

Well .. one idea is to assign the book as the textbook then notify the students that they should get the book via buying from amazon ... or that your library has access to Springer resources free of charge for the students. University students are adults that can make their own decisions.
As the course coordinator you are not selling the book, and it is not your responsibility to hand in a book to each student. Students can: buy the book or use free resources on their own progeratives. Students are not liable, since they are just accessing your library to view already available resources.
As long as you do not directly post content such as homework questions or chapter text from the book or directly share such content in any way, such as on the course website or as handouts, you are not liable. You are just assigning a book as recommended textbook and notifying the students their options. Students are also not liable since your library enables them to access free material they wish to view.
I also just want to give an example of clear violation. If you buy the book and make a pdf out of it and share them in course site (does not matter whether public access or not) that would be a breach of copyright.

There is one additional consideration not covered in existing answers. Others have addressed possible ethical and legal constraints that I don't see as applying here.
But there is also the issue of fairness. Do your students all have suitable devices for the available formats? If not you need to deal with it, perhaps by choosing a title that also exists in print.
In fact, some students (myself) might prefer a print edition instead of or in addition to an electronic version. For an important course this can be a big deal. Electronic versions are likely to become obsolete in future. In 25 or so years your print version is still available if you desire to keep it as I have done with important books.
Print and electronic versions have different advantages, but also disadvantages. Consider those in your choice.

If they all download said book and then the book gets leaked and shared bypassing the library by your students in such a way that it ends up on multiple free websites while having electronic stamps of your library, it will be pretty bad. The publishers might view it as a malpractice to put it mildly. The best option is to consult with your colleagues, the library manager, and possibly, with people from the Springer portal you intend to use so heavily. I would not be too concerned since the students have access to the library and are actually encouraged to use its material, including said portal. If students somehow violate rules or share/spread copyrighted material without permission, they are solely responsible unless you yourself participated in such a malpractice. The probability of such a bad outcome approaches zero here. Many students would actually want to buy the hard copy version of said book. And the Springer publishers should only benefit. So I would not be too worried but you have to talk to your colleagues and to the library manager to make sure everything is “in line”.
Your idea of solving the problem for students is commendable. I would further say that giving students a couple of options (recommending at least two good books that are in line with your course) will also be a good idea. They will benefit from different approaches, especially if one book is more advanced/comprehensive and the other book is slightly shorter and easier. For main two semester courses it would be good if most students had hard copies of the textbook. For graduate courses, it’s good to recommend more books and expect students to do more research-like work.
Apart from all that, I would not neglect other publishers (e.g. Pearson) who create a lot of great textbooks in various fields. Yes, many of such books are expensive and new editions often appear on the market at exorbitant prices. However, it’s not necessary to always stick with the latest (expensive) edition making it tough for students to buy a hard copy. The other extreme is to completely discard all more of less pricey options i.e. to ignore even previous editions of expensive texts at discounted prices. I mean if we don’t buy and don’t recommend such books (most of them are very good), how are we to create them and improve on them? Please note, I’m not saying that Springer books on math are not excellent. They are.
Bottom line: Are there any rules which prevent me from assigning this as the textbook for the class and giving them the option to download it for free through the library? – No, unless you give your own access to the students or spread your personal copy among them or your students do something to that effect.

"If they all download said book and then the book gets leaked and shared": Don't worry. Everything from Springerlink ends up on Genesis from day 0 already, it seems.

The first statements that warn about bad things happening are not necessary. The instructor must to point to the link at the library rather than provide a direct link for downloading. As the source for the subscription, the library has the responsibility to present the copyright information. How students handle the copyright rules is their responsibility, not that of the instructor.

@darij grinberg, yes, exactly. Almost everything gets leaked and copied everywhere, not only Springer math books -- almost all books of all types.

Are there any rules which prevent me from assigning this as the textbook for the class and giving them the option to download it for free through the library?

The most important rule which prevents you from doing so is the copyright law. It allows the fair use of educational material only for nonprofit educational uses in the classroom. Scholarly publication and copyright in networked electronic publishing, 1995, page 9 Perhaps a small small example. If a third party can publish a printed version of the textbook and earn money with it, and this is no longer possible because of somebody else misuses the license of Springerlink for publication purposes, then it will become a legal case.
It is important to know, that vendors of electronic publications are not selling their products but licensing them to the library. That means, the vendor can decide what the correct usage scenario is. Electronic collections and wired faculty, 1997 What librarians and teacher can do is to look at the issue and work together to resolve it. Aggregation or aggravation? Optimizing access to full-text journals, 2000

What do you mean by "misuses the license of Springerlink for publication purposes"? Isn't student access for study reasons one of the intended uses of Springerlink?

The question is asking about using a work which the copyright holder (presumably Springer) is licensing to the university, including the students, in exchange for money. The details of the contract between Springer and the university might be relevant, but fair use isn't.


text:
How can I get the DOI of a paper from its title?
Is there a way to get the DOI (Document Object Identifier) of a research paper when its title is available?
I am preparing a reference database I could not get the URL of all the references. So, I tried to search online but could not  get to anything. I will appreciate if anyone uses such tool/website or has any idea.
EDIT
I am sorry but my problem is little bigger. I need to automatically (not manually) get them from the websites. Of course, I do not want to do it for more than 50 papers if that is legal/allowed.

solutions can be found on stackoverflow and scicomp.SE. And its fit on this site has been addressed on meta.academia.se

By the way, unfortunately you should expect that no technique will be completely reliable, which is why we need DOIs in the first place.

Reposted from StackOverflow:

Here are three options
CSV upload to crossref.org
CrossRef allows you to upload the linked csv directly, and then
  performs a text query here: http://www.crossref.org/stqUpload/
However, only 18 of the 250 queries (~7%) returned a doi.
XML Query
Based on the answer on SO by Brian
  Diggs, here an attempt
  that does 95% of the work - toward writing the xml-based query, it
  still has a few bugs that require some deletion using sed. But the
  biggest problem that my "session timed out" when the query was
  submitted.
the xml syntax includes an option to use fuzzy matching.
the doiquery.xml contains the template text in @Brians answer; the
  citations.csv is linked above. (using R, a sample csv can be found on
  I have posted the first few lines of the table on google
  docs,
  or the csv
  version
  (not all records have a doi))
library(XML)
doiquery.xml <- xmlTreeParse('doiquery.xml')

query <- doiquery.xml$doc$children$query_batch[["body"]]

citations <- read.csv("citations.csv")

new.query <- function(citation, query = query){
  xmlValue(query[["author"]]) <- as.character(citation$author)
  xmlValue(query[["year"]]) <- as.character(citation$year)
  xmlValue(query[["article_title"]][["text"]]) <- citation$title
  xmlValue(query[["journal_title"]]) <- citation$journal
  return(query)
}

for (i in 1:nrow(citations)){
  q <- addChildren(q, add.query(citations[i,]))
}
axml <- addChildren(doiquery.xml$doc$children$query_batch, q )

saveXML(axml, file = 'foo.xml')

CSV to XML Converter
Creativyst software provides a web based CSV to
  XML
  converter.
Steps:

Enter columnames in ElementID's field,
"document" in DocID field
"query" in RowID field
Copy / paste csv in "Input CSV file".
Click Convert

Also, see this related question:
  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9880808/shell-script-to-parse-csv-to-an-xml-query

This crossref page allows to directly input text query instead of uploading filey. To check for only a few papers, this is convenient.

So you can do this easily using e.g. Web of Science, and probably other bibliographic databases available through your library.
If that isn't an option, a little google search lead me to the DOI website FAQ, and question 3 is yours. There are 8  registration agencies for DOI, and no single way to search across DOI using document metadata. I tested the free crossref service and it was unable to find one of my articles because that journal doesn't use the crossref agency. One of the other agencies has that information, but you might have to search all of them to find it.
Finally, I tried Google Scholar, which will work if the article in question has reference information available online. That depends on the publisher.

I also had the same problem with crossref that I tried before posting  this question

I think Papers or Mendeley mentioned by @aeismail are the way to go - they claim to collect metadata automatically.

The R package fulltext allows you to search DOI's given a title:
library(fulltext)
res1 <- ft_search(query = "Estimating Summer Nutrient Concentrations in
        Northeastern Lakes from SPARROW", from = "plos")
res1 <- ft_links(res1)
res1$plos$ids

[1] "10.1371/journal.pone.0081457" "10.1371/journal.pone.0030492" "10.1371/journal.pone.0049220"

Resources like Web of Knowledge should have information on the DOI's for any titles that have them available (which should be "all of them" for anything that's been published in the last few years).
Tools like Papers or Mendeley should also be able to "harvest" DOI's for published papers.

In response to your edit: both Papers and Mendeley should be able to retrieve the metadata for you using the title, unless the paper has just been released (as it might take a while to be archived by various search engines).

I tried but with no success. I will be grateful if you or someone can tell me a website where we can also fetch/download  the link to the documents/references. I will do my search again and not use the existing reference file

Easier, code-free:
At this time, on the CrossRef homepage, there is a text-input field "Metadata search". It says:

Search CrossRef's database of 71 million records for authors, titles,
  DOIs, ORCIDs, ISSNs, FundRefs, license URIs, etc. You can even paste
  entire references into the search box and discover their DOIs.

I have tried it out only for one DOI of which I happen to know that a record exists in the crossref database.
You can also use the CrossRef search site and paste the title of the paper there.

As J. Schneider mentions, you can use "works" field query from crossref api. (take a look at Richard Feynman example). It returns a JSON file. You can extract DOI from it.

As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please [edit] to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.

As the author of pysotsog I am recommending that library. It searches wikidata at this time and will use other bibliographic databases such as crossref, dblp, library catalogs and so on in the future it's intended to use general search engines as well. The concept is to be a specific search engine for scientific content see sotsog search strategy.
Here is a command line example for the title "We Need a Magna Carta for the Internet" by Tim Berners-Lee with the DOI doi=10.1111/NPQU.11475.
sotsog We Need a Magna Carta for the Internet
We Need a Magna Carta for the Internet(Q55693402):✅
Paper ➞ We Need a Magna Carta for the Internet:
  wikiDataId=http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q55693402
  doi=10.1111/NPQU.11475
  publication_date=2014-07-01 00:00:00
opening https://scholia.toolforge.org/work/Q55693402 in browser

There is also a demo available at http://sotsog.bitplan.com
 which points to the scholia page of the relevant article.
In simple cases like the one above you can directly search wikidata and use the wikibase-cli command line tools for it by searching for the DOI property.
First step - find the paper wikidata entry with a full text search
wd search We Need a Magna Carta for the Internet
Q55693402  We Need a Magna Carta for the Internet

Query  the DOI
wd query -s Q55693402 -p P356
10.1111/NPQU.11475

Update in 2022: Easiest for me was using the website, where you can just copy and paste your references: https://search.crossref.org/references
I also looked at a few python libraries to interact with the crossref REST API, e.g.,
https://pypi.org/project/habanero/
https://gitlab.com/crossref/crossref_commons_py
The libraries were easy to use in general, but it was not straight forward how to get the DOI based on a title and there were not really any good examples for this task.


text:
Is there (or should there be) a website to record errors in papers
There are several questions on this site about errors in papers and even the errors-erratum tag. I'm specifically thinking of mathematical errors, where there is an unambiguous mistake, like a wrong sign or wrong physical constant. I have come across ~5 of these in the past month.
Is contacting the publisher really the best way to correct these? Sometimes papers are old and it seems unlikely that a new PDF will be generated. Would the academic research community find it useful to have one canonical site that made it very easy to submit errors and corrections. Then, when reading a paper, one could check the site with the DOI or title and see if that paper has an entry. I am considering making such a site, but wanted to check with other academics if it seems like a worthy endeavor, if a site like this already exists, or if there is a reason it does not exist.
I realize this is an opinion question. I know these types of questions get closed, but this is still the best site I can think of to ask the question, so hopefully I get some good replies before this gets downvoted.

Is there such a website? and Should there be such a website? are two separate questions, in my opinion.

A site which has some ambitions and potential in this direction is PubPeer, which aims to be a general "online journal club", but which has also become a place to dissect papers for errors and possible fraud, particularly in biomedical areas.  It is thus one clearing house for discussing errors in papers.
Interestingly, they also have apparently set up a system that allows you to use a browser plugin to easily dual-post your comments on PubPeer to comments on the paper at the corresponding journal's site, which may also help with putting pressure on editors to actually make corrections...

Yes PubPeer is the one I thought of closest to this. But it is limited membership, and since I haven't yet published in one of their journals, I cannot submit comments.

I'm pretty sure that you can comment anonymously...

YES! Perhaps this is the solution. Previously they did not accept anonymous comments. I cannot make an account though, since I'm not an author on an approved publication.

It is likely to limit false claims/defamation that can cause stigma even if unfounded. I remember an A.SE post where a PhD was stalked by his old reviewer past graduation and criticized for everything.

Yes, on that subject, if people want to raise awareness of this site, I encourage them to up-vote its entry in the comunity promotion adds

As far as I know, the journals or publishers which publish a paper accept errors/erratums on their published papers. So, if the errors and mistakes are too problematic, you may look for errors in the journal in which the paper is published. If you can not find such papers on errors of a previously published papers, you may write an erratum on the paper you find errors in. Also, if the errors are minor; such as grammatical mistakes, punctuations, citations, etc. you may write to the editor of the journal or it's publisher and tell them about such minor errors. They may correct such minor errors.

Is there a website to record errors in papers?

If I want to answer your question; I have never seen a journal or website in which the errors of papers are published. But, I have seen journals accepting and publishing erratums on papers they have published before (depending on their policies) which I encourage you to search the journals'/publishers' websites for such papers.

Should there be such a website to record errors in papers?

There are many journals and papers published in every branches of science. That would be a huge work to track errors in the papers. I am not so familiar with website design but I think that there should be very efficient system of moderation in such website. Also because, readers can find erratums on major errors of papers in the websites of the journals or publishers; and minor errors are not that much important to be tracked in a separate website; I personally do not find creating such website productive or helpful.

Based on other Q&A on this site, a sign error which introduces a 10% change in a result of an equation is not reason enough to get an Erratum accepted. But it is useful for other readers to know about it. I find errors in old papers too - Either I'm the first (strange), others don't report, or editors don't fix. A new method to list errata may improve the current situation.

@mankoff I think that answers to your question vary based on different opinions. Although I find your idea of creating such website so alluring but I personally do not find such website helpful. This is my idea and it may be wrong. Also, not always users find new and creative ideas helpful or efficient. If you think that your idea does worth giving a try, go ahead and design your website (think perfectly about your idea and design it to work efficiently). If researchers find your website helpful they will use and enjoy the services in your website. Just stick to your dreams and creative ideas.

It's been my experience that electronic journals are much more friendly to correcting errors than traditional, print-based journals. That's because print-space is at a premium and it costs them money to print an erratum to a previously published article. So, in the minds of the traditional publishers, they have to justify the cost of the erratum. Electronic journals, like the one I am the editor for, don't have to worry about that. We can just go into the file, edit the word and save the document and the problem is fixed.

The practice of not archiving the original version sounds sketchy to me. All-online journals I'm familiar with keep the original article and publish an erratum. Also, I have never heard of a print journal refusing to publish an erratum for costs reasons. In which field is this happening?

Many of the Open Access/Digital journals allow the editors and journal managers to maintain a "version history" of the file so that the current/correct version is the one that's on display, but the older version is still accessible. This is not new technology, Sharepoint and some versions of Windows have this ability as well. As for the cost reasons, I'm only going by what I've heard from other authors who had erratum rejected, primarily in the social sciences.

And yes, most electronic journals will still publish an erratum as well, but unlike print versions, they can correct the source file.


text:
What to do if I cannot complete my Masters dissertation tasks?
I am doing my masters in the UK and at final stage of my dissertation. First I will have to confess that I regret that I selected this dissertation as it is something which I failed to get a clear idea about. I don't know if it is because I cannot understand the ideas that my supervisor is trying to communicate with me.
First my target was to implement an algorithm (I was given only a specific field and asked me to select an algorithm) using a language that I had never used before. I used to meet  regularly and given research papers to read to clarify any doubt I had. There was no support in the implementation other than the research papers. Also no one to guide  on the computer language I needed to use for the implementation.  By June, I was stuck a little bit in the implementation and when I expressed some doubts, I was told there is not enough time for implementation now as I am not able to understand it so take an existing software which implemented the said algorithm and create some performance improvements.
I spent a lot of time, more than a month for just setting up the work environment and understanding how that software works. I am not very confident to speak out so I thought I will eventually get a hang of it. After a thorough research I realised that the said software is widely used all over the world and has been optimised in all possible ways already. But it was already too late and at the end I am left with almost nothing but some failed trials. Now the deadline to submit my masters dissertation is in a week and when I spoke to my supervisor about the limitations of the software and why I cannot optimise it last week, I was given  a new research paper to read and asked  to try their approach.
I learned a lot in this research, many algorithms, some new software, computer languages etc, but it was not focussed. I don't know what I will write in my report as the project is supposed to be a study with evaluation and testing to show as a proof to my conclusions. I have already written a literature review of 35 pages and about 10 pages about the software I am trying to optimise. I cannot submit just that and I don't think it is a good idea to continue new trials now as I may not be able to complete writing my report (which needs to be around 60-65 pages) with just one week left.  I have distinction from the marks for my course units and all of the effort I took for an year will go in vain if I fail the dissertation as it has 50% weighting. What can I do to make sure I will pass my dissertation? Please advise.
NB: I know it is a long question, sorry about that. I felt I need to write the context to explain my situation.

Postscript:
I continued and completed my thesis with all the failed trials. Added some sections in the thesis comparing the different approaches I tried, findings based the trials and some suggestions for future work. Even though I was paranoid till the results came out, I passed with distinction.

Why not talk to your advisor and ask for extension? What's the problem with graduating a few months late?

@scaaahu I am not sure if you are from the UK, but you tend to only get given extensions for work in the UK if you have extenuating circumstances (such as illness or bereavement). For my undergraduate disseration, I was given a week's extension because I was off sick with a really bad ear infection, but this had to be formally approved by the head of department and was nothing to do with my supervisor.

I agree with scaaahu here. If your work is not good enough for a dissertation, you cannot present something that is not good enough. So, an extension is the only thing you can do.

Next time, ask for help much sooner.

@scaaahu there is no option for extension

So what happened? I'm interested in knowing what happened with your thesis.

@grad_student i completed my thesis with all the failed trials. Added some sections in the thesis comparing the different approaches I tried, findings based the trials and some suggestions for future work. Even though I was paranoid till the results came out, I passed with distinction :)

@newbie You should edit your post and include that update. Congratulations :)

First of all, I fully agree with the points Nahkki made - take some time to reflect those points!
From a practical standpoint I see different options (some depending on your university's regulations:

Ask for an extension. But honestly, I would not expect a very good outcome. I would say you'd need at least 2-3 additional month to create something worthy.
Fail and restart. Sounds bad, but in most institutions you are having a second chance and you can start from scratch. Look for a topic which is better aligned to your interest and maybe look for a different advisor. It might be better to study a bit longer, but have a good thesis.
Try to get through with it. In my optinion the worst option, but if you just want to graduate quickly, it is an option. Make it a literature work, compare existing approaches, ... Many advisors are not willing to let their students fail (they fear legal issues, personal disappointment, bad reviews, ...), so it might work.

But one thought on option 1 & 3: When I employ someone, I just briefly read the marks and the general bla bla. I usually want to talk about their thesis, what they did and why it was great. This gives the best impression on the future performance of the person.

i am trying the 3rd option. trying to include all my failed trials and write my conclusion based on them.

The unpleasant reality is that it is entirely possible that you may not pass your dissertation. In fact, given what you've written here, I would be surprised if you did as of right now.
Graduate level work is hard. I mean if research were easy everyone would be doing it right? And so some of the things Graduate students need to learn early in their career is time management, planning and asking for help as needed. In an ideal world your advisor would have caught your floundering much earlier in the process but academia, as life, isn't always ideal. A good rule of thumb is if, by the halfway point of your timeline(so 1 year into a 2 year Masters for example) you don't have a solid plan for accomplishing your goal that includes timelines, goalposts and a plan to catch up on additional material you need... then you have a problem.
By June, then, warning bells should have been going off in your head. I have some sympathy(everyone has to learn this stuff on their own at some point) but not too much. Part of graduate level Computer Science work, at least, means figuring out languages and implementations on your own. It sounds like you were looking for something a little more guided, more like undergraduate courses, but that's not how it works for Graduate level research. That you are a week out and just now casting about for a solution, that you, after running into the exact same problem when asking for help too late in June, just now found out that you could not implement improvements on a preexisting software suite... these are massively problematic. Ideally after the issues in June you should have chosen low hanging fruit for your last ditch effort of improving someone elses' suite. The first thing your lit review on that software suite should have contained is a list of potential pitfalls or limitations of the software and rough ideas on improvements.
Now that's all rather negative. I've written it because, from what you've written, you seem to not get what the fundamental problem has been for your research experience. All that being said there may still be solutions but it's going to be hard work.
It sounds like these implementations(different softwares) are focused on a particular field or topic. An option, a hard to do going to take overnights for the next week, option would be to do benchmarks and comparisons of currently available software. A study of the limitations and weaknesses(and strengths) of currently available software can be a viable topic. That it took you a month to set up the environment to run the software you were trying to improve means that this would potentially be very hard for you to do in a week. An option is to take the software you have now and run exhaustive benchmarks and analysis on that specific software.
I'm not suggesting this as a 'run out and do it now!' sort of thing. Honestly even the most on-the-ball student who has had no issues would be hard pressed to write a decent dissertation in a week. That's a student who has all of their data. But a passing dissertation is a possiblity. Your first step is to go talk to your advisor as soon as possible. Explain the current situation, explain a potential solution(exhaustive benchmarks on a particular software or comparative benchmarks between different software implementations) and, finally, explain what you are going to do to make sure that the day before the dissertation is due you won't have another emergency situation like you have right now.

thanks for the detailed answer. so i will most probably fail it as i fear..anyway i will have to give it a go :(

@newbie: Do your best. The piece of paper is awesome, true, but you've learned a lot and it's not going to be the end of the world. Take the lessons you learned and go into the future ready to kick it's butt!

sure. i will.  Even now I dont think just saying 'I dont know' or giving a complicated research paper if I ask a doubt is a good approach by a supervisor. With a little guidance(which all my other classmates are getting from their supervisors) I usually excel in all the tasks that I have undertaken till now. This is the first time I'm in such a clueless situation. So thought maybe someone here will give some motivation and some ideas, which didnt happen.These answers made me even more depressed.


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How can I be up-to-date on recent papers, practically?
I'm just starting my PhD, and during a sort of informal journal club, my professor told us that we should always try to read some new papers in our field (high energy physics, and general relativity and quantum cosmology; hep-th and gr-qc on arXiv). How does one practically do this? On the arXiv "new" section? Via the arXiv newsletter, with its terrible formatting?
I would be surprised if there aren't any "latest cool things in this particular area of physics" with easy-to-read formatting: an Instagram post, a podcast, or even just a rich text email.

On the technical side, there's http://dailyarxiv.com/ that provides a nicer interface for the list of new submissions on arxiv for a certain date range.  Then there's https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/ which reformats pdf to a somewhat more mobile-friendly format.

Frame challenge: as an overworked PhD student, passively staying on top of "developments in my field" beyond active literature searches related to the studies I am performing seems like a huge workload even though it is just 15-30 minutes per day reading titles and looking through abstracts. If I spent those 15 minutes working on my thesis instead I'd probably finish a lot sooner. My 2¢, don't know if it deserves an answer.

Does this answer your question? How to stay on top of recent literature?

My advice:  Try to read one key paper that you can use as a reference to build your research and dissertation on (your dissertation must be novel but it also must relate to past research) and try to understand it really well.  If relevant, program up the algorithm or equations if you can.  I also tend to agree with @FerventHippo's comment as well.

What's hep-th and gr-qc?

@AzorAhai-him- they are short ways to say "High Energy Physics - Theory" and "General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology" used by the arXiv website

I don't see why the "terrible formatting" of the arXiv newsletter would be a real hindrance. It's not pretty, but it doesn't get in the way of quickly scanning the preprints, and you'd be spending most of your time on those preprints themselves which interest you.

Remember that you aren't the only one who wants to know about new papers. When you find a particularly interesting one, mention it to your fellow grad students.  And if they do the same for you...

While the suggestion in other questions to use Google Scholar might be good in other fields, I take from your question that you are in hep-th/gr-qc. In this case, keeping up with new postings on the arXiv is the way to go. Anything worth your time will be posted to arXiv and this is generally the first place it will appear (Google Scholar alerts tend to be at least a couple of days behind the curve).
I personally just follow the daily digest e-mails. It is easy enough to do, and the mail sits in your inbox as a reminder that you haven't read the arXiv yet that day. However, there are more fancy solutions. One some of my colleagues are very enthusiastic about his Benty Fields. Besides simply reading the daily digests in a nicer format, the site can track your interest and recommend papers you are likely interested in. I've tried it for a bit, and found it was very nice. Nonetheless, I have reverted to just using the plain digest e-mail, as they fit my daily work flow better.

Google Scholar alerts tend to be at least a couple of days behind the curve - I also follow the arXiv (math) rather rely on than Google Scholar, but is this really the main reason for you?  Is seeing a paper a few days late that big of a deal in your field?

@Kimball, I think the difference is due to a social effect not the "research gap" of 1 day. On the day a paper appears people will say: "Hey have you read this paper. What do you think?" It is nicer to not always be the one who isn't in the know.

@Kvothe I agree it's good to be able to discuss papers on the fly, and sometimes this situation arises, but my experience is usually when people bring up new papers, either they've been public for a little while, or I know about the results from talks/word-of-mouth already.  Maybe this is a difference between math and physics?

@Kimball Yes, this ends up being more of a social thing than a research thing. E.g. if you want to congratulate someone in your network on getting a nice paper out, it works better the day of, not a week later.

I come back a month later to remark that I've fallen in love with Benty Fields. Now all of my group uses it for JC purposes: I find it much easier to read than arXiv and much less invasive than Google Scholar email.

One strategy that I can recommend: find your advisor/advisors on GoogleScholar, click Follow and tick the boxes "New citations" and "New articles related to this author's research". Google will then send you email notifications with papers that tend to be the most relevant to you.
Later, as you identify other important names in your field, follow them too.

+1 | GoogleScholar #Follow #NewCitation #NewArticle

I just check my field, math/combinatorics daily on arxiv.
No newsletters or emails, just check as if it was a news site.
I read perhaps 2-4 abstracts every day, and add the interesting ones to a todo list.
Once I have some time, I read a bit more carefully, and add the results to a website I manage. This process has helped me immensely.

Is the website public, and if yes, do you mind sharing it?

+1, individual field and subfields have their own options, by their own people. Sorry, but what runs in my field/subfields won’t help you in your subfields. We have quasi-personal/professional blogs where new papers of interest are posted regularly… in fact, that’s the point of those blogs. We also have a paper repository (the ADS,  at  adsabs.harvard.edu ) that really helps by auto-listing and auto-linking the referenced papers, and inversely, the later citations that reference a past paper. Too bad if your field doesn’t have an equivalent.

@Neinstein Sure, it is at http://www.symmetricfunctions.com

I've also found the arXiv daily mailings to be terrible; most the papers are irrelevant for me and the formatting isn't very pretty. My solution is to use RSS feeds to filter out the content I actually want.

Download an RSS reader on your device (I prefer QuiteRSS)

Set up filters using different keywords, authors, etc. via the arXiv search API. Here's an example of an RSS feed URL that filters this way:
http://export.arxiv.org/api/query?search_query=((all:boson+AND+(all:stars+OR+all:star))+AND+(cat:hep-th+OR+cat:gr-qc+OR+cat:hep-ph))&sortBy=lastUpdatedDate&sortOrder=descending&max_results=100
The above link would find the 100 newest papers on hep-th, hep-ph, and gr-qc with the keyword "boson" and "star"/"stars" somewhere in the title or abstract (you can also filter by author, date, and so on... see the arXiv documentation for more options). Add these types of links to your RSS reader.

If you wish, you can also just subscribe to the daily mailings over RSS (without the filter functionality) using the instructions here.

As an added bonus, you can also keep up with your favourite Stack Exchange posts via RSS. Most published journals also have RSS feeds you can use.

RSS is my go-to method as well. Makes it very easy to filter out stuff of little interest, flag interesting works for follow-up, and read things on your own schedule. (Of course, it is also easy to build up a backlog of papers to read...)

Thunderbird works as an RSS reader as well (though very poorly documented and with an unintuitive user interface). One can organise/group the RSS feeds into different folders/inboxes instead of having either all RSS feeds mixed up or having to check each RSS feed manually (did I say this powerful feature is very poorly documented?).

Zotero doubles as RSS reader, too. One advantage is that this allows you to directly copy any articles of interest into your own bibliographic database. One downside is that it's impossible to export one's subscriptions. Another downside is, surprise, poor documentation.

As mentioned in a comment, I honestly find Google Scholar the most useful. You can search by tag, i.e., label:theoretical_nuclear_physics, search the profiles of favorite authors in a field for the latest publications, or most cited ones, and explore new research fields using labels, etc.
Other than Google Scholar, I find Research Gate also a good source of information, it's sort of like the Facebook of Academia.
Moreover, it's good to create a list of the most popular journals in your field and utilize their web pages (for example Physical Review Letters is a good source of top-notch physics research).
Finally, if you like coding, you can even create your own web scraping tool!

I'd like to add four possible paths that others have not mentioned yet.
First, all ethical (Musk) issues etc. aside, at least in some fields, Twitter is actually a very good way to stay up to date on the current literature. Follow the important figures in your field; many of them will regularly post about their own preprints or comment on other people's work. In some fields (probably most pronounced in machine learning), this really is where much of the field's conversations and controversies happen. During the recent partial Mastodon migration, a colleague complained that he's been seeing significantly less interesting papers since moving away from Twitter.
Second, conferences! Going to them is obviously ideal, but it can also just be a very good strategy to occasionally skim the program of high-quality conferences in your field for interesting papers.
Third, while Google scholar alerts have been mentioned (I use them), I actually find those to be less useful than simply going through the list of recent publications of people by whom I've read a great paper. Chances are high they have a few other great publications on the subject already from the last few years, but it might be quite a while until they produce new work in this area.
Fourth, there are now various customized paper recommendation systems. Typically, you can enter a few papers you consider relevant / interesting, and then they will periodically send you updates with new work you might consider useful. Some examples include SemanticScholar, ResearchRabbit and LitMaps; new competitors are popping up all the time right now.
Every kind of arxiv or journal newsletter I ever tried basically just had an awful signal/noise ratio, and I usually stopped using them quite quickly.

Yes, +1 to conferences. You should, at minimum, be cognizant and up to date on the relevant conferences of your own field. Even if you never go, check the proceedings after the fact- and if possible the programs beforehand, if posted- to stay current on the topics that are on your field’s ‘floor’, and the names that appear. Certain names will keep appearing (for a reason, some good, some bad), and new names tied somehow to a paper or talk you find compelling might be noted for future reference.

For arXiv, there's the subscription option to section of interest: receive regular daily listings of the abstracts of new submissions by email

hep-th
gr-qc

You create filters in your email client to pipe to a folder. You can check the folder periodically in your email.
PS: hopefully subscription isn't what you implied by arXiv 'newsletter'.
Kindly give @kamilazdybal Google Scholar's new citation approach a try.
[For Noting]

How to find a list of most influential or cited papers in a given branch of math?
Should you publish a rejected conference paper on arXiv?

Sadly, the subscription is precisely what I meant with newsletter. I will give it another go, but personally, the plain text format is very confusing and does not help me focus, so I was seeking another way.

As an upgrade to arXiv, there's arXivist. It lets you select papers on arXiv that are relevant to you and then ranks papers of the day based on how likely it thinks they'll also be relevant. It's by no means perfect, but already after a few votes it does a decent job at separating the wheat from the chaff. It can also send you the top picks of every day to your email account, which I find useful for making sure I don't miss an important paper just because I didn't check arXiv that day.

Yes, in my field (aero/astro), there is ADS, which has a “similar papers” function for any given paper. In fact, “similar papers” might actually be too good, because it can easily turn into a time sink/rabbit hole if you don’t stay on track.

I'll keep it real with you. I'm an econometrician. I specialize in synthetic control analysis and general causal inference. Part of what I do is keep up with new developments in SCM. Every single day, I go on Google Scholar and search ' "synthetic control" "causal" "lemma" "abadie" '. I then swap lemma with Theorem.
It is not the best way of course (I can think of other ways), but it helps me follow the developments in a narrow area of econometrics literature.

What is SCM? Supply chain management?

SCM = synthetic control method?

Ha, a board of people in one Silicon Valley building can steer the course of your career… and profit from the metadata they harvest. At minimum, I’d suggest some Plan B source, to prevent possible blind spots from relying on a sole source.

(Specifically replying for hep-th mentioned by the author.)
I would say that the daily arxiv read habit becomes more useful after a few years in the field by which time you understand what papers are roughly about and whether they are interesting for you just from the title, abstract and author names. Once you know what the current state of the art is, it can be a good way to keep up to date on the most recent developments.
The problem with looking at these at the start of your PhD is that these papers containing the newest developments will build on other papers and will assume you are already familiar with a lot of the "most important" papers.
Therefore I would myself instead recommend reading a review on a subject you want to study in depth (probably the subject of your first research project) and read that along with the important papers cited in it.
I would also expect that your supervisor would give you a list of important papers to read and you should read those along with the papers cited in them which you will likely also will have to read in order to understand them.
After this you will likely be able to recognize, understand, and appreciate the newest papers appearing on arXiv in this specific sub field.
As your domain knowledge grows this way you can try picking up reviews on slightly different subjects and this way slowly expand the areas of high-energy physics that you understand enough so that it actually becomes useful to read new papers on the arXiv on these subjects.
(Of course a great alternative for reviews as a starting point are lectures at your university or at summer school's and such.)

"I would be surprised if there aren't any "latest cool things in this
particular area of physics" with easy-to-read formatting: an Instagram
post, a podcast, or even just a rich text email."

I have never really heard about such a thing. There might be popular science things that are absolutely terrible which I would advise you to avoid. For real research I don't think this exists. I think you are overestimating how big any specific sub-field in hep-th is. There will be maybe a 100 people in the world working on the things you will work on. Not exactly enough to build critical mass for a social media audience. There are some blogs that are somewhat popular but they obviously don't discuss all important papers (probably even none within your subfield). I usually hear about http://resonaances.blogspot.com/ although I think it is closer to hep-ph. There used to be a somewhat popular blog by a very controversial ex string theorist but I think it was taken down.)

I would recommend SciRate, which is a website where readers can give a "Scite" to papers they enjoy and it will list papers based on the number of "Scite", from high to low.
Compared with reading papers on arXiv directly, SciRate can provide you more information about how other people think of a paper. If you see a paper with more than 10 "Scite"s (which is already a big number considering the number of active users for this website), you can believe that paper has great significance and is definitely worth a look. But a paper with few or 0 "Scite" doesn't mean that it's nonsense: It might be a bit specific or deep for people to understand it very shortly, or the research topic doesn't overlap much with the most users' research field (I feel the users of SciRate have more math-based research taste in physics). Actually, I have seen many papers published on PRL didn’t get any "Scite" when they first came out on arXiv.

What is "Scite"? Some jargon used on SciRate? A sort of voting on papers on SciRate? Site scite.ai? S + cite = scientific citation? Something else?

Not to be confused with SciTE.

A citation index? scite = s + cite = smart + citation.

It sounds interesting. But I just tried it in my subfield within hep-th. Due to the low number of users I think it does a rather poor job of identifying key papers. The most "Scited" paper has 4 Scites. If me and one friend would sign up and Scite papers we liked we could on our own more or less pick the winners. Moreover, it suffers from the same problems that citations usually suffer from. The audience that the paper appeals to makes much more of a difference than the importance of the paper within the field.

@Kvothe You can select the timescale to be a bit longer (e.g. 1 month) to gain more information. I admit that hep-th is less "popular" on SciRate compared with quant-ph though.


text:
Are there universities where one can submit a PhD thesis without having to attend a doctoral programme?
My situation is as follows. I used to be enrolled at a British university in a social sciences PhD programme. This was a decade ago. For various personal and professional reasons, I did not manage to complete the programme and eventually dropped out/was ex-matriculated. I however continued working and publishing in academia, on individual research papers, but also on my thesis.
The thesis is now almost completed. I was hence wondering whether there are still universities in Europe, where one can enroll, pay tuition and within a fairly short amount of time (e.g. two semesters) submit a full PhD-thesis without having to do a "classic" three year doctoral programme? There is also the possibility of a cumulative thesis submission in Austria and Germany, that I am aware of, however, I would prefer to submit the thesis as a whole.
I would appreciate any suggestions.

Please edit the question to limit it to a specific problem with enough detail to identify an adequate answer.

Have you approached your original university, and perhaps your advisor, for help with this? Some places might be willing, if rules permit, to make some accommodations.

I've seen the votes to close, but I think that there is a simple answer, that should be given: Yes, at a German university there is no need at all to attend a PhD program. However, you need a supervisor and the necessary qualification  (a master's degree in the respective field). You do not even need to be enrolled at the university. Finding a supervisor will probably be difficult, as you really need to find somebody who is willing to do the work (even if your thesis is almost finished, the supervisor might want to read the thesis first before they are willing to act as formal supervisor).
That said: It basically never happens that somebody submits a PhD thesis at a German university without having collaborated with some faculty member there. So while this technically answers your question, it may not solve your problem.

If I read the rules in Germany correctly, a doctorate can be given for a previous "body of work" not a dissertation. Not exactly a "stapled" dissertation, but to recognize an already accomplished researcher.  I don't have a reference handy. Sorry.

Your answer is correct (+1), but I would like to emphasize the last paragraph. Most supervisors actually want to supervise their PhD candidates in one way or another. You would have to be very convincing to be successful. PS: I hope my edit is correct, feel free to roll back if appropriate.

@Snijderfrey Thanks for the edit! Good catch!

@Buffy This varies from place to place. Some places may allow a "stapled thesis" as a dissertation, other don't.


text:
Abstract published but no link to full paper
I just came across this publication (link below) in the AHA journal. it has a summary/abstract of the research but no link to the full research paper. Would anyone be able to explain the reasoning behind this.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/str.49.suppl_1.180

There's no full paper associated to that abstract, because it's a conference abstract, not a paper abstract. If you go up one level from that link you'll find:
International Stroke Conference Oral Abstracts
That is a collection of the abstracts of the works presented at that conference. This is common in some conferences: authors submit only a short description of their work, typically half or one page long. In the past, these submission were typically collected in a book of abstracts which was given to the participants at the beginning of the conference. Nowadays, abstracts are more commonly distributed in electronic form.

Note that the presentation may well have covered material from one or more recent papers by the author.  One can search for those papers.


text:
Unnecessary figure permission... issues?
I need to submit my PhD thesis for archiving (online and physical), and a copyright-related question dawned on me.
I used a figure from a book in my introduction. It is a very standard materials science schematic of crystal systems that is present in virtually every single materials science book in some shape or form, as it illustrates one of the founding principles of the subject.
I couldn't manage to extract the image in good quality, so I actually redrew it myself. I rearranged it, relabelled it, and changed the schematic up a bit. I'm not even sure a reference and copyright notice would have been necessary at all at this point, to be fair.
However, I did nevertheless request and obtain clearance from the Copyright Clearance Center with minor editing privileges, and I included the permission statement in the caption. I also stated I redrew, and relabelled the figure, and stated a modification I made to the schematic itself.
However, I now realised I missed stating a couple of additional modifications I made to the image.
Now, there are two things:

Will having a potentially unnecessary copyright permission statement be an issue? Or would it be better for me to remove it otherwise I might have issues (not sure what issues you can have for being overly cautious to be fair)?
If I leave the statement in, will the fact that I didn't state the additional modifications made be a problem (considering I probably didn't need the permission in the first place)?

You have gone way beyond what's required for fair use. Thanks for that. You have nothing to worry about.

Thank you, great to know.

I can only confirm Ethan Bolker's answer. Your cares for fair acknowledgement are very appreciated. For my own thesis, a simple statement in the caption ("Redrawn from John Doe et al., with authorization") was deemed sufficient by my committee (and they were on the "picky" side of the spectrum).


text:
Empirical method without any solid theoretical background
I am working on a paper after peer review and struggling to address one of the comments that states "empirical method without any solid theoretical background". It is a paper about machine learning algorithms applied to a specific field.
Please, any ideas or suggestions on how to address this comment?
I reviewed my methodology section and brought more formalism to the design decisions. Additionally, I am working to address all the aspects of reproducibility as the answer to question Guidelines for communication of machine learning methods in empirical research papers.

Is it your understanding that you are using standard ML procedures?

@AnonymousM I'm struggling to frame my understanding on how to give a solid theoretical background for an empirical method.

@Buffy, yes I'm using common practice on this domain, also based on my related works.

Then my best guess is that the accepted answer is correct. The reviewer knows the domain but not ML processes (and maybe is a skeptic). Talk to the editor.

We have nowhere near enough information to tell you anything for certain. But given what you write, I will make a couple of assumptions:

With "specific field" you mean some substantive subject like migration or labor market
You are a specialist in Machine Learning, but not a specialist in the specific field
The reviewer is a specialist in that field, but not in ML

If that is the case then the reviewers comment probably means that (s)he misses a description of the theories for that field (e.g. why do some people migrate and others not), and a discussion on what your results/methods can tell about these theories. In that case more formalism and improving your methodology section is not going to help. In that case you will probably have to bring in a subject matter specialist as a co-author.
Again, this is based on very little information and a lot of assumptions.

This was also my first guess about the situation. However, the editor might be able to resolve it without bringing in another author. It would depend on the journal and the expertise of the editor.

Thank you very much @Maarten Buis. I am tending more to hypothesis 3 (based on other reviewer' comments). I will do my best and let the editor decide as pointed out. Additionally, I found a nice publication that discuss about the experimental works, and also this tweet... It is an ongoing discussion for works with ML.

My answer rests on all three assumptions being true, not just one of them.

@MaartenBuis thanks. I had not considered hypothesis #3 previously, and this gave me insight into Buffy's comment. Regarding #1 and #2 it is not the case (and there is a background section to address both).