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How to obtain a percentile ranking for a journal? (i.e., top 30%; 30% to 50%)
My institution ranks scientific achievement according to some criteria when evaluating promotions, positions, etc. for its subjects (students, grad students, personnel, etc.) This is done by a rule book that is specified in the form of a bylaw and is administered by the ministry of science, therefore it is not local to my institution, but applied nationwide.
The passage about SCI journal publications states that journals are divided into three groups:

eminent international journals - a journal that in its subject ranks in the top 30% journals in ISI list publications
outstanding international journals - the same but for <30% and >50%
international journals - the same for <50%

The difference in "points" awarded for publications in each of the categories is rather large. I was wondering how I could determine which journals fall into a criterium from above?
I talked to the administrative service, but got no satisfying answer, i.e. there is no list of journals (which is understandable, as there are far too many subjects). They told me something along the lines: "These things will be evaluated when the time comes", which is, of course, not at least satisfactory to me.
I talked also briefly with the head of the department and he told me that he never really gave it much thought, I should publish in journals that suit me, the higher the impact factor and prestige the better of course, but in the end it isn't that much of an imperative, and that I should let the "politicians" and administrators worry about those tiny matters. I would, however, still like to know which journals I should favorite.
PS: the rule book naturally specifies similar criteria for various scientific publications (conferences, patents, books, etc.), but since I'm working on my first article to be submitted to a journal and I still haven't decided which journal, I would like to take things like this into account

Likely this is not the answer you want to hear, but I assume the administrative service you talked to is correct. If nobody really knows which journals fall under which of these (rather subjective) categories, it will not be feasible to in advance establish for sure way how much any paper you write will count in the end, when you are evaluated.
This is not nearly as strange as it sounds. Formal rules for promotion and the evaluation of research tend to live in the ugly grey area between bureaucrats who like things orderly, well-defined and, most importantly, written down, and the reality of science, where basically no two scientists will ever be able to agree on an absolutely consistent quality ranking of publication outlets. What usually happens is that some sort of nebulous rankings are defined without specifically ranking concrete venues,and then leave it to a commission of academics to decide ad hoc which publications fall into which category.
At my current university, we have similar nebulous requirements for PhD graduation. Essentially, it is required that students need at least one A-ranked publication. However, what is considered A-ranked varies considerably between different faculty, and is basically negotiated when graduation time is near. I assume requirements for tenure etc. are handled similarly.
Note that there are some initiatives that are trying to rank publication venues more formally, for instance CORE for computer science. However, these rankings are also far from perfect (or, for some fields, they are apparently downright terrible).

wow, unless "A" is determined very loosely that is a really tough graduation requirement.

As you mentioned the first factor is the impact factor, so, it would be better to be published in high impact factor peer reviewed journals.
As I am into optics, I may say that, for physics, Science, all Nature journals (Nature Photonics, Nature Communication, etc), Physics Review Letters, Advanced Materials, etc. may be included in the first category. The second category may include Applied Physics Letters, Optics Express, Optics Letters. etc. The third category are probably not well known international journals with low impact factors and maybe conference proceedings. If you are really into your field, I guess you know all important journals there. If you don't just do a simple search of the list of impact factors.
The second factor(which is more important for me) is the quality and novelty of the research, i.e. number of citations. Sometimes it is really hard for grad students, post docs or researchers to be published in the articles of the first category, because it is complicated and sometimes 'politicized'. So, don't think much about that but rather put an emphasize on the quality of the research without forgetting to try to publish in a journal with an impact factor as high as possible. If your publication has a lot of citations it means that it is a state-of-the-art research and you really have something to say in that area.

I've heard as well that it is near to impossible to publish in the first category at the beginning of the career, unless you co-author with more than one experienced "regular". Now that you mentioned citations, the mentioned bylaw makes oddly no reference to them. They seem not to contribute, although I can't say for sure.


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Should I reply to a non-automated email from the editor acknowledging manuscript submission?
Suppose I submit a paper to a journal which does not use an electronic submission system, so I just e-mail it to an editor.
When I receive an e-mail acknowledging the submission (no personalisation beyond [insert my name] and [insert the name of the paper] kind, but it seems not to be automated in any way except perhaps copy-and-paste), should I reply to it (to say thank you), or is it more courteous/established to just not reply?

I don't think there is any particular reason to write back, unless the editor sends a more personalized message or actually asks a question.  However, a quick note back will not be a problem either.

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Tips on how to format a manuscript in marine biology and physiology
I'm working on my first publication on work I did as an undergrad. My adviser from undergrad will be helping me edit and go through multiple drafts, but because I'm now at a different university for grad school I haven't spoken to him about this first draft.
I've looked at the publisher's website, but they were vague and provided only general comments about how to format the manuscript. I don't want to send my draft to my old adviser and have him think I'm an idiot because my formatting is different from the norm. (Perhaps relevant: this publication has to do with marine biology and physiology.)

What font is appropriate? Times New Roman 12?
Double spaced?
Do figures go at the end? Should I space my figures the way I want them spaced in the publication?
Do I include line numbers?

Side question: What is an appropriate length (in number of words/pages/whatever) for this type of publication? I know it depends on the journal, but it's hard to translate pages in a journal to typewritten pages. I'm submitting to a journal with an average impact factor.

The general formatting advice from @CapeCode is sound. Generic font (certainly not anything odd) and 1.5-2 line spacing is fine for the text. Tables and figures should go at then end. Many journals ask for figure files not to be included in the manuscript file at all, follow such advise. If figures are separate all figure captions go at the end of the manuscript file.
Regarding line numbers it is not a major issue unless the journal specifies something special. Some manuscript systems provide only PDF-files of the manuscript. Some reviewers then prefer to have the line numbers to locate their comments. If the journal provides the Word files then as @Cape Code states these can be more of an issue. So try to see if you can figure out what the journal sends out but in the end I do nto think it is a major issue.
In addition, I strongly want to push following any instructions for authors to the point. Make sure your use the proper reference formats and follow other journal formatting details. If no explicit instructions for authors exist then look at recent articles to see what styles the journal uses. A manuscript that follows the journal style looks more serious than a manuscript that does not.
As for length, I would say that 6000-8000 words incl. references is a reasonable size for a regular research paper in your disciplines, shorter is possible but longer should be treated as a warning. If you really want to know just count the words on a page and guestimate the total for the article, you will not be far off.

At this stage, content is what you should focus on. In most biology journals, formatting is done by the publisher. Thus formatting at this stage only serves the purpose of making your draft easy to read and comment on, so to answer your questions:

What font is appropriate? Times New Roman 12?

If your adviser usually reads on a screen, consider using a sans serif typeface (Calibri, Arial, etc.), if read on paper TNR is fine.

Double spaced?

Only useful for people who print it out and need space to scribble.

Do figures go at the end? Should I space my figures the way I want them spaced in the publication?

For the convenience of your adviser, you should include them where you think they are relevant. It's usually editorial management software that place them at the end (which makes reading draft cumbersome). Consider using a smaller font size for captions to help differentiate them from the body.

Do I include line numbers?

Can be helpful if you do not use interactive commenting tool (like the one of MS Word) it never hurts to have them IMO, make sure they are continuous, and include page numbers by all means.
Note: this only applies to internal circulation, you might need to re-format for submission following the journal's guidelines.

Most of these would depend on which journal/conference you are submitting to. For instance, IEEE and Springer each have their own style.

Unfortunately, your answer doesn't really add anything that it's already in the other answers.

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How to choose between multiple math postdocs offers?
I am trying to decide between some math postdoc offers, and I can't decide what is important for a postdoc position. I have talked to several senior mathematicians including my advisor, but they all seem to have different opinions. I just want to hear some more opinions on the following:

How important is prestige? Suppose that I have an offer from school X, which is fairly prestigious (something like top 10, which isn't a well-defined notion). Also suppose that I have an offer from school Y, which is not as prestigious but a better match research-wise. Suppose that the ranking of school Y is approximately n (again, not a well-defined notion). For which values of n should I choose school X over school Y? My goal is to become a tenure-track professor in a PhD-granting institution.
What makes a good postdoc supervisor? I can think of the following criteria: compatible research interests, being well-known in one's field, compatible personalities, generous with time, etc. Am I missing anything else?

On prestige: See this answer to a related question. (It's about theoretical CS instead of math, but I don't think the cultures are all that different.)

I mean that answer suggests prestige matters, but mainly because of the culture of prestigious departments and how it affects your work (the name itself is much less important). So n isn't necessarily 10. My guess is almost everyone here would say it depends on the disparity of the fit between the two schools. However, whatever the disparity I doubt very many people would choose an n>40 even if the disparity was extremely large. My guess is n is somewhere in the 10-20 range.

The advisor matters more than the school.

It is the number of articles in prestigious journals in the end that matters, and the results. If you are a good match research-wise, then this is obviously better; I (hope) that journals do not accept to publish results based on the university ranking, but based on the result, so yeah..

@Paxinum: Not the number of papers.  What really matters is the quality of the work.

@JeffE That is why they have to be in good journals; only good work appears in good journals (I presume).

@Paxinum: You presume incorrectly.

@JeffE Hm, ah ok. But I have the (cynical, inherited from my advisor, I guess) view that people in the first selection only look at journal first, and then at the actual article.

nagniemerg is absolutely right that at the end of the day, your results will be much more important than a name on your CV.  I think being at a prestigious institution is very useful for getting a first look at your application (which is a f***ing valuable thing, as Rod Blagojevich would say); if the rest of what's there doesn't stand up, getting that look won't help much.
That said, I would think carefully about how sure you are that institution Y really will provide a better research environment.  Prestige tends to correlate (far from perfectly) with having an active department with a lot of seminars and visitors, which can often be more valuable than day-to-day contact with a single advisor.  Having higher-quality students and colleagues can make you a better researcher.
I also think there's a lot to be said for the uncertainty of life.  Maybe you'll go somewhere and whoever you were going to work with will get a job somewhere else, or have a baby, or go on sabbatical.  Maybe you'll start a collaboration with someone you don't even know exists yet.  It's all very hard to predict, and on some level you have to go with your gut.  You could do a lot worse than just going with the most prestigious option, but if other factors seem to point another direction, I don't think you should just ignore them.
EDIT:  I wrote this is a bit of hurry last night, and I realize it might be a bit unhelpful. However, it's honestly quite difficult to say anything general, and you indicate that senior mathematicians who know you and know what your options are cannot come to a consensus.  To me this indicates that probably you will not be able to conclusively figure out where is the better choice.  This is not to say it doesn't matter, but once the uncertainties are sufficiently large, one might as well flip a coin (or at least flip a coin until you get the answer you want).

At the end of the day, the quality of your research is more important than prestige.  I would go with the university that is a better research match.
As for what makes a good postdoc supervisor.  I think this depends completely on the individual and how one conducts research.  The two extremes are: hands off -- I have plenty of ideas and give me something to work on.
The best is a combination of the two.  This shows you are able to work independently and work well with others.


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What to do when you discover a mistake in the archived copy of your PhD thesis?
I've just defended my PhD in mathematics and started a postdoc. While working  on an improvement of one of the results of my thesis, I realized that there are several minor mistakes and a big bug in a proof that invalids a minor result in the thesis (about 3-4 pages out of 110). Unfortunately neither I nor my advisor or referees figured it out the mistake. Though the result is minor, it is announced in the introduction and the manuscript is on-line on an ArXiv-like server, so that I could publish a new version but not cancel the one on-line.
What is the best thing to do? Upload an errata? Upload a "revised" version of the thesis?  Publish a "revised version" of the thesis on my web-page?
Can this damage my future career, making me look not "reliable" as a researcher?

Did you write a monograph or a so called stapler (or sandwich) thesis consisting of a preface plus several publications?

it's a sandwich thesis. The mistake is in one of the preprints.

If it is a sandwich thesis, I guess that it's only reviewers who read it (perhaps except for the intro).

While not directly relevant, I have to ask: Why an arXiv-like server (and not arXiv itself)?

university put it on-line automatically, not me.

Did you talk to your adviser? What does he/she say?

he says not to do anything. Actually I don't know whether he says this for his own sake (I suspect he did not read at all some parts of the thesis) or for mine.

While not directly relevant, I have to ask: Why an arXiv-like server and not also arXiv itself?

What arXiv-like servers do not allow you to publish an updated version (the original version, of course, should be kept available for archival purposes)? I would suggest that nobody submit to these servers.

You could be cynical and take comfort in the fact that hardly anyone reads PhD theses after the associated defense.

Though I am not in mathematics (I'm a philosopher), I would only add that generally speaking, the PhD dissertation should be one of the worst papers you ever publish. That doesn't mean it should be terrible...it only means that it's the start of your career, and your writing--and your research--will get better with experience.
You could still go ahead and submit a correction, but at the same time, don't stress yourself out over it. So many doctorandi today think the dissertation has to be flawless, and that they have to make some ground-breaking, Nobel-prize-worthy advancement in their field for the thesis to be any good. This is simply not true. Look--you have a postdoc, the results of which will no doubt be more influential on your future than your dissertation.
Again, I'm not saying to not submit the errata. Rather, I just don't want you to lose sleep over the mistake. Don't be too hard on yourself.

+1 but I'm not sure it answers the question which is (as I understand it) "What is the best way to submit errata to an already-published thesis?"

This question actually reminded me that I had made some (minor) addenda/errata notes on my own thesis but somehow forgot to ever post them.  I should get to that!
Anyway, you definitely should correct the error; it's bad for mathematics if serious errors propagate.  It's a little embarrassing, yes, but it's not at all uncommon.  It will be more embarrassing if someone else finds the error first, and extremely embarrassing (and maybe starting to be career-damaging) if you have to say "Oh yeah, I knew about that, but never corrected it because I was embarrassed."
Before doing anything, I would suggest you spend a few days seeing if you can fix the error.  Maybe you can find a way to work around the gap in the proof.  Maybe you can adjust the hypotheses so that you still have a theorem, though a weaker one.  (Or maybe you can find a counterexample.)  Figure out what other parts of the thesis are affected by this error, and if they need fixing as well.
It can get confusing if there are multiple versions of your thesis floating around, so rather than trying to revise it, I would write up a short erratum note, explaining whatever you have learned about the error and its fix (if any).  You might as well also list any other typos or errata that you have found, references to relevant work that's been published (or discovered by you) since your thesis was written, and anything else you would like to add.
Post the addendum on arXiv.  Then, wherever your thesis is posted (your web site, the alternative preprint server you mention, the university's official site if possible), post a note saying "Addendum posted at arXiv:1234.5678".  If you can't add notes or comments on the site itself, but can upload a revised version of the thesis, just add a page at the beginning with a reference to the addendum.
(And I'll echo JeffE's suggestion: it would be nice to post your thesis on arXiv itself as well.  The "Comments" field would be a good place to reference the addendum.)

Mathematics has a great tradition of making mistakes and then fixing them yourself.  Having other people find your mistake is a little embarrassing, but fixing them yourself shows that you are dilligent, so stop worrying.
Whether you upload an erratum or a revised thesis doesn't really matter, as long as both the old and new versions are available.  (It's useful to see how things have been corrected, since mistakes are a good source of learning.)
Before you upload the new content, please double check that you really got it right this time.  If it is wrong a second time (or was right and now you made it wrong), you can start to look a little foolish.

If anyone would care, there would be a mechanism for erratas...
Even now, majority of the thesises is not available for the public. It is true for most science and most (even prestigious) universities. In short: no one reads them and no one cares.
If the mistake is something you published, I would care more about fixing the actual paper.

I had at least one error in my thesis (that I know of). As with yours, it was minor and affected even less of the paper. I found it when I was preparing a paper for publication. Fortunately, I was able to correct it, and the correct version was actually more interesting than the original erroneous one. I never corrected my thesis because the correct result was actually put in a journal article.
I've also had errors in print, a much more embarrassing affair. The mathematician who corrected it was very kind about it. I have not yet issued a correction, but it will appear in a forthcoming article, and quite a while after the initial error.
In my opinion, shared by some other responders, your publication record is more important than your thesis (unless you're a stratospheric talent). So don't sweat it too much. And, don't be reluctant to ask your advisor for advice (that's one of the reasons why he's called an advisor).


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How can I make my papers available on Sci-Hub?
An essential assumption of this question is that I own, without restriction, the copyright of my papers.  I am a novice Sci-Hub user.  How do I make my papers available to other Sci-Hub users?
Edit:  If your answer is to post the paper somewhere other than Sci-Hub, please explain how that leads to the paper being available in Sci-Hub.  I want to target people who only look at Sci-Hub for papers.

"Sci-Hub is a shadow library website that provides free access to millions of research papers and books, without regard to copyright, by bypassing publishers' paywalls," source: Wikipedia. "Sci-Hub obtains paywalled articles using leaked credentials."  So, it seems, Sci-Hub focuses on papers owned by corporations, rather than individuals.
There's surely less interest in providing access to papers owned by individuals, since those individuals can simply make their papers publicly available. Nonetheless, let us suppose that Sci-Hub takes an interest in making more works available. Then you just need to make papers available where Sci-Hub looks.
Even technical report repositories such as arxiv may forbid Sci-Hub from redistributing papers. So, there isn't much of an incentive for Sci-Hub to move into this space: They create trouble for little reward.
Sci-Hub could start looking at personal websites, but, what's the reward? The material is already accessible. Sci-Hub could also start allowing authors to upload content, but, again, what's the reward?
I don't really see why Sci-Hub would invest in making papers owned by individuals more accessible.  Their niche is elsewhere.

The reward would be that the papers are online in the same repository (and possibly with the best version).

"Then you just need to make papers available where Sci-Hub looks."  Where is that?

@user111388 At what cost?

@AnonymousPhysicist Publishers' websites. As explained, I don't see any motivation for Sci-Hub looking elsewhere, e.g., arxiv or personal websites.

@user2768: I am not talking about if this is feasable or not (I don't know). All I am saying is that I see an advantage in having it available on SciHub (also because the website could go down at any time). You are asking what the reward is and I answered

@user111388 Let me rephrase: I see no reward for SciHub, since the cost is too high. Of course, I'm speculating, I don't run SciHub. I don't question the benefit to users.

This does not answer the question.

SH/LG allow users to upload books & papers, although the upload interface can be tricky to find. The paper upload interface is at (currently): https://libgen.li/librarian.php

Welcome to aca.se, gwern! This is the closest thing that exists to a positive answer, but it's not quite precise: The interface you've linked uploads papers to the (somewhat unrenowned) magazine section of LG, not to SH. From what I understand, the former contains the latter, but not vice versa. For example, here is an unofficial scan uploaded manually to LG via your interface. It is not on SH.

That seems unlikely. The 'magazine' section is MagzDB, which is not even under the libgen.* domain names, and you can clearly see in your own link that it is labeled 'Scientific Articles' and further includes a link to 'Sci-Hub' so LG sure thinks that the paper got into SH... I can't say why the SH proxy-domain+DOI query combo doesn't work, other than that there is a lot of brokenness around SH in 2021 specifically, on top of all of the usual UX/UI bugs it's always had.

The "sci-hub.se/(optionally https://doi.org/)DOI" query works for all articles that SH has saved, so I'm afraid it has not saved ones uploaded to LG, even if they were uploaded before 2021.

I can confirm that uploading to LibGen's Scimag was the correct solution when that was still possible. But shortly after SciHub announced that it is no longer accepting new articles, the upload page for Scimag stopped working.
Even today you can see that any article available via Scihub is also on Scimag, and vice versa as long as the DOI is entered correctly in LibGen's metadata. With the current embargo SciHub is effectively functioning as a simplified interface to download from LibGen's Scimag.

First, congratulations for defending free access to knowledge.
As for the question itself, as @Lighthouse Keeper said, the question should be reformulated. Since what the SCI-HUB proposes is to making accessible the scientific texts closed by paywall. So, at the first glance your text isn't targeted for this tool. However you could upload your work to the initiative libgen (a cousin to SCI-HUB).
However, something that were not said yet is you can publish in Open Access Journals. There are some journals that are really good - just be alert to the predatory ones.
**
In addition, I have seen some researchers that leave their publications linked on their professional pages. Here are trade-offs to do. Get a DOI and recommends the use of sci-hub or publish on your own website (GitHub etc) without DOI.
But in any way, encouraging their colleagues, students and others to use the sci-hub and defending the free access to knowledge you already have an immense contribution.

"you can publish in Open Access Journals"  I tested this and Sci-Hub does include papers from at least one open access journal.

@AnonymousPhysicist Weeding out Open Access Journals surely isn't worth the effort

Most Open Access Journals in my field charge a lot for publishing. That's not really an alternative with our limited resources where we can't even buy computers to write our papers on!

Sci-Hub is not like arXiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, viXra, GitHub, FigShare, Mendeley, ResearchGate and Academia.edu, where you upload your own papers.
People do not upload their own papers to Sci-Hub. They publish papers in journals and Sci-Hub then makes the PDF copy of such journal papers, available for free.
If what you want to do is make your own paper available for free, I would suggest to use one of the platforms mentioned in the first sentence of this answer (except for SciHub).

Sci-Hub obtains paywalled articles using leaked credentials. So if you want to get your papers onto Sci-Hub, just follow this procedure:

Publish them in journals that your institution subscribes to.
Donate your institution credentials to Sci-Hub. If you can't do this legally, "accidentally" fall for one of the phishing emails Sci-Hub regularly sends.

They will do the rest.

Your #2 is unethical. Sorry, this is bad advice. You don't have authority to "donate" the credentials. Doing it "accidentally" is, of course, dishonest.

@Buffy tell that to einpoklum (check out their comments on my other Sci-Hub related answers). It's a topic I am sick and tired of. One might be able to tell how sick I am of the topic from this answer too, actually, since it suggests doing something illegal to help something that's also illegal.

It's as simple as step #1 if the journal is well covered by Sci-Hub. Most are, but some are not. If this is the case you can upload to LibGen and that will make it available on Sci-Hub within a few days. Donating your personal credentials is completely unnecessary.

I don't think I have ever received a phishing e-mail that I could associate with them. How do I recognize them from the other normal ones?

@FedericoPoloni I think the point of a phishing email is that you cannot identify the sender. So "accidentally" fall for every phishing email you see that's after your institutional password, and eventually one of the attackers will sell your credentials to Sci-Hub.

I too have never seen a phising email from sci-hub and the legal cases don't suggest that it has been part of their strategy.

@CrimsonDark the "accidentally" is in quotes for a reason. One does not even have to say it is from sci-hub, but from some random scammer who stole their ID and gave it to sci-hub.

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Gap year before post-doc?
I have been in a rush to accomplish academic goals since I remember myself. Started my PhD right after undergrad and did my Masters on the same time. Now I am about to submit my thesis and feel kind of burned out, having spend so many years in a far from perfect working environment.
Academia has always been my goal (I like both teaching and research and I am not interested in industry), which is why I started a PhD on the first place, but I really feel I need a big break to think clearly of what I really want before applying for a post-doc. I also read this somewhere: "The rest of your life you are going to be a scientist. This could be your last chance to be something else. Take it."
So I thought a "late gap year" would be ideal for me. I would get to travel, which I love, volunteer in wildlife conservation and in schools of developing countries and take some time to clear my mind, so that when I am back, I can take the right decision for a post-doc and be totally dedicated in it.
Up to now I have a decent resume with a 5th paper in preparation (including first-authored) and several international conferences, fellowships and awards. However, I am very concerned on the impact such a gap would have on my CV, since I want to apply in high reputation universities/institutes, where competition is fierce.
Should I tell a future PI I did a gap year and if not, what would be the appropriate excuse for a year off? Also would this gap have an impact in future job-seeking (mainly for positions in academia)? Finally, I am also worried about the reaction of my current PI (who has been asking me lately, which lab I am planning to apply for a PD) when I tell him my plans. The last thing I want is a reference letter from an angry PI.
*EDIT*My field is Molecular Biology. I performed my PhD research at several European countries and I am flexible with post-doc positions (Europe/Israel/US/...) depending on the projects available.

If you can swing it, you are likely better off to defer graduating for a year and then return to "complete" your already finished PhD. This way the clock doesn't start.

As usual, if you include information about geographic location (both the current one and the one(s) in which you intend for the future) and your field, you can get more specific advice.  Advice which is generalized across all the world's academia is at times extremely superficial.
I will speak from the perspective of American academic mathematics.  In this subculture, taking a full year off before starting a postdoc looks bad: the competition for postdocs is extremely fierce right now.  For every postdoc position there are at least five other people who wanted that position but couldn't get it.  So employers really want to give jobs to people who are sure that they want them, not those who are feeling "kind of burned out" or "need a big break to think clearly of what I really want".
If you take a full year off instead of applying for postdocs, then unless you have something amazing to show for yourself at the end of that time, the year off will definitely hurt your applications.  Whether or not you can actually do work during a "year off" seems highly field dependent: in mathematics this is certainly possible; in laboratory science this seems much less feasible.
Here is some advice that I would offer you:
1) If you want to take some length of time off, try to secure a job upon return before you take the time off.
If this happens then in some sense you do not really have an employment gap, and that will look much better on your CV.
2) Consider taking a smaller amount of time off than a year.
A year is a really long time to put aside one's career.  In fact many people would have trouble supporting themselves (especially if they have families or dependents, which I guess you do not) over such a long unpaid stretch.   It is also more than enough time for your academic skills to atrophy.  In some academic fields (pure mathematics not so much, although in some subfields this could still come into play) a year off is enough to make your entire research program less fresh and cutting edge.  Anyway, imagine that you are competing with many talented young people who spent the first year after getting their PhD working their butts off.  Do you really want to spot them an entire year headstart?  As other people remarked in a closely related question: whether it is fair or not, you should imagine that a big clock in the sky starts ticking the second you receive your PhD.  From that point on, people will be evaluating your work not just in an absolute sense but relative to the time elapsed from that point.  Adding in an extra year makes almost anyone's profile look much less strong.
I think you should consider taking a shorter amount of time off: either a semester or a long summer.  As the American academic calendar runs, you will have a built-in vacation of about three months just by virtue of being an unemployed PhD over the summer.  I really enjoyed this time: I moved into an apartment downtown in the city where I grew up but hadn't spent more than a few weeks at a time for my entire adult life.  It really was refreshing and recharged my batteries.  However, it also depleted my savings: by the time the new semester rolled around, I really needed the paychecks.
If you need much more than three months' break from a career, you should ask yourself: are you sure that this career is really for you?

Just ran across this, but +1 for the less time. I effectively had a "Gap Quarter" between graduating and starting my postdoc due to getting funding in line, finishing things up, moving etc. and by the end of it I was going stir crazy.

I actually know of a tenured math professor at Columbia who took three years off before grad school. Not quite the same situation, but I really think the case varies greatly from person to person. Postdocs can honestly just occur for the simple reason that your PI actually wants to work with you.

First and most important point: Taking a breather for your emotional well-being is much better than feeling remorse, fatigue and possible burn-out later.
Other than that...

A lot of people have "gap" in their academic activity by working in industry - which can be a lot longer than one year. Women often have gaps when giving birth and taking an extended period of time to care for their (or should I say our?) newborn children. And there are other kinds of gaps. So even if these gaps are not the highly-regarded norm, they're still a de-facto norm.

We're not all robots who care about nothing but immediate fast-track academic rat-racing. Will you get penalized for this when seeking a post-doc? It's certainly possible; but are you sure you want the "advantage" of appearing to be someone who's under stress to perform all day everyday and can be leaned upon a lot?

It's likely that during your year off you will end up doing something that you could be proud to present as what you've done during that year.

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


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Is it ethical to ask colleagues to write a review of my book?
I have published a monograph and now would like to see it reviewed by a/some journal(s) in the field. Given that there are many other books they could publish a review on, they might not find a reviewer who is interested (I have already contacted them).
So I was thinking of asking a colleague to review the book (I have collaborated with him in the past, but we're not at the same institution). Is this ethical? Presumably he would be somewhat less likely to voice criticism than someone who doesn't know me personally. (Although this criterion would exclude a whole lot of people)

If I was your colleague, and I reviewed the book and told the world that it is rubbish, what would you do? The reviewer must be absolutely one hundred percent free to express their opinions of the book, no matter what they are.

On the other hand, if your book is the best one ever written, and the reviewer writes just that, as soon as the world finds out it was your colleague, your reputation is gone.

I wouldn't say 'gone'. It would still depend, IMHO, on how objective the review was. If the book is indeed good and the review says so, anyone can verify the claims. Then, the fact that you guys know each other is irrelevant...

@gnasher729 many fields are so small that finding reviewers that do not know the author would be near impossible.

It's not exactly "unethical", but may not accomplish what you want, if/when it becomes publicly clear that a friend of yours wrote the review... and, indeed, people may think worse of you upon discovery that you arranged the situation. That is, as other people have noted here, there is a sort of implicit understanding (?!) that books reviews have some impartiality to them...

In the book fields I am familiar with there are two types of reviews. The first is the traditional peer review which is used to help decide if something is publishable. The second type of review, which I think you are asking about here, is a summarizing review.
Finding peer reviewers to judge the if a book should be published should be left up to the editor. If the editor asks for suggested reviewers, you should provide suggestions. In this case, having previously collaborated with the colleague, the editor may see this as a conflict of interest. If you suggest your colleague, you should be upfront about the prior collaboration
For reviews that summarize the work, if you know a publisher that takes unsolicited reviews, and you want a review there, then it is fine to ask people you know if they would be willing to write a review. Knowing, and even being friendly with, someone is not generally considered a conflict of interest. The issue is that the person you want to ask is a former collaborator. This might be seen as a conflict of interest. You can still ask the colleague and mention that you do not see the prior collaboration as a conflict of interest. You might want to suggest the collaboration check with the publisher prior to writing the review.

If someone reads a book review in a journal, they expect that this review reflects an unbiased assessment of the academic qualities of the work in question. The key word here is unbiased.
In your described scenario, it would be the author who suggested that his or her book was reviewed in the first place (+1 potential bias). In addition, the respective reviewer would be one of the author's choosing (+1 potential bias). Finally, the reviewer would be a former collaborator (+1 potential bias).
So, there are three potential points of bias. None of them inevitably has to lead to a biased review: the book might be suitable for a review article in that article anyway, the chosen reviewer might be the candidate anyway that is most fitted for the task, and the final review might be in itself fully fair and objective.
On the other hand, if you suggest your own work for a review article, it might receive more attention than it normally would (and perhaps deserves). If you invite a particular person to write the review, you might be choosing someone who you can assume to agree with your work, perhaps because they work within the same theoretical framework as you do. Researchers from other camps might be less favorable of your book, but they are not given the same opportunity to voice their concerns in their review article, because they never were invited to write one. If the reviewer is one of your former collaborators, they might be more forgiving in their evaluation of your work than actually warranted.
The reader doesn't know that all this is going on behind the scenes. On the contrary, for all what they know, none of the points exist which have the potential of biasing the review, because usually it's not authors who invite reviews, it's not authors who choose reviewers, and usually there should not be a relation between reviewers and authors (at least if the field is large enough). The readers don't expect any of these things, and they therefore cannot take them into consideration when reading and evaluating the review. This is a situation that I consider quite unethical, because information that is crucial for the readers is unavailable to them.
In order to alleviate the situation, you should insist that the review contains a disclaimer which minimally states that the reviewer and the author are former collaborators. In my opinion, it should also reveal that this particular reviewer was suggested by the author.


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Applying for jobs without significant publications: is it worth the pain and what to highlight?
I'm in a conundrum.
Due to a change in areas half way through my PhD, I find myself at the end of my training with no significant publications. I have one in press, and several in prep so in the next year I should have 3-4 if all goes well. I'm also at a top ten university in the US and have good recommendation letters etc...
My issue is: I need to get a job as soon as possible in Europe to be with my partner. I have applied to both post-docs and to some assistant professorships at smaller schools in his city thinking I should at least try but I'm feeling seriously under-competitive where the norm in my field is at least three papers by graduation.
I have an option to stay on as a grad student for a 6th year at my institution, but it would have to be remotely (as I will move to Europe anyway) and frankly, I don't want to have to do that (both because it's too hard to do research and I make little money). But it is a safe option, and might give me time to write up all the backlogged data I've recently acquired.
So my options are to take an extra year with very little pay and apply later, or apply extensively and effortfully to jobs that will probably reject me, though there is a small chance I'll get one.
In your experience, will people even consider PhD's with very few pubs, or impending pubs, and if so, are there things I can do to make my application look more competitive, e.g. should I explain myself (I don't want to make excuses though) or highlight grants and presentations?
Or should I just cut my losses and suffer through living abroad with no money and taking the extra time I would have spent applying to a million places to write up a bunch of papers and then try again next year with more confidence and competence, and maybe landing a better job?
Thanks!
UPDATE: I ended up getting short-listed for five institutions, two of which are top-tier, and ultimately was offered two assistant professorships and one post-doc. I am sure I would have been better off with more pubs but I'm glad I ended up applying for reach jobs as ultimately I think I ended up with some great choices, met a lot of people in the field, and most importantly, got a job!
Thanks for all your input.

FYI I started an answer to your question but gave it up because I knew so little about your specific situation that I felt I was only talking about myself rather than saying anything I had a reasonable expectation might be helpful to you.  (It would be nice to know: what is your field, where in Europe you will be going, what kinds of academic jobs you might be looking for...)

I am on a search committee right now (at a small, teaching-focused, state school). People without publications made it through to the phone interview stage, and a couple were judged "good enough to bring out if we don't have anyone better" and the reasons they weren't judged better than that had nothing to do with research. However, we had there were people who came across better. Moral of the story: the job market is tough and you'd better shine in as many aspects as possible.

Disclaimer: this question is seriously underspecified. For a reasonable answer we would probably need at least the city you are looking for, your field, your qualifications beside publications, etc.
That being said, I feel that the Assistant Professor market in Europe is insanely dry in most fields, and, honestly, getting an Assistant Professor position directly after your PhD graduation is very unlikely even with an extremely good CV. If your CV is not absolutely top-notch for your field, I am afraid applying is largely a waste of your time. On the other hand, at least in my field, getting a PostDoc is often comparatively easy and uncomplicated, and reasonably payed in many places. A PostDoc is also a really good time to write up a backlog of publications and improve one's CV, so maybe this is what you should be shooting for.

Sorry about the lack of specification. My field is Psychology but I am applying to business schools as well. And I'm applying in the UK (London, to be specific). And yes INSANELY dry market. I do feel like it's a bit of a waste of time, but I've had at least one advisor encourage me to apply widely just in case. I would actually be super happy with a post-doc because it would give me time to work on pubs, but those seem even harder to come by than lectureships. I've only found two funded ones that have been advertised over the past month.

Don't know anything about Psychology, but in Computer Science PostDocs are mostly not advertised at all in Europe. You just talk to professors with funding directly (or, even better, let your contacts talk to them).

In my subdiscipline of computer science, postdocs are everywhere. If you're not seeing enough postdoc opportunities pop up, spread out the network a bit more - sub to more mailing lists, tell professors that you're looking for a job and for them to keep you in mind if they see a position, etc. Good luck!

You can also get a postdoc by applying for grants. For example, there is something called Newton International Fellowships, for people who did their PhD outside the UK.


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How might being disciplined for participating in a non-violent protest on a public college affect my academic career?
I go to a government-owned school that has certain policies regarding a student's speech, namely:

That speech shall not be discriminatory/offensive.
That on-campus protests take place only at a "Hyde Park" location in the student center.

Suppose I decide to form a protest and violate rule #2, and perhaps unintentionally violate rule #1, incurring a disciplinary action of record. How would my doing so affect my ability to pursue a degree at a different school?

Probably not at all.  Most academic institutions support freedom of speech.  However, this depends on the goal of the protest and the type/location of the hypothetical institution.  For instance, I imagine some religious institutions might not hire someone who had protested for abortion rights.

These policies are at the same time repressive and ridiculous.
First, because the fundamental principle of protesting is causing  inconvenience, annoynance, displeasure - so a designated "speech zone" is the same as "protest where we don't notice you and it doesn't matter".
Second, because any speech that management doesn't like (or that a student group which can put pressure on management to repress speech doesn't like) will be defined to be offensive. It offends them, after all.
Thus the only thing that happened is that you were involved in organizing a protest. If the regime in the state you live in is highly repressive, then maybe that means you'll have trouble getting into another school (although I kind of doubt it); if it isn't, then you won't.
Note that these policies are extremely repressive and are in my opinion contradiction of  fundamental academic principle.


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Importance of paper download statistics
In an editorial on the topic of Sci-Hub, Marcia McNutt (Editor-in-Chief of Science Journals) lists a few reasons why Sci-Hub may be bad for scientists. One of the drawbacks she lists is (emphasis mine):

Authors do not benefit from download statistics, for example, which are increasingly being used to assess the impact of their work.

This surprised me, as I have never come across any mention of download statistics being used to measure the impact of papers / scientists. Are download statistics really being used in any meaningful way when assessing the impact of scientists?
I'm also asking because sites like ArXiv does not provide download statistics, and neither do other secondary publication servers (university paper repositories, private homepages, ...), which would hurt the impact rating the same way.

Sounds like journals are running out of arguments to defend their paywalls.

The thing is also that most download statistics are quite utterly useless, at it also counts search engines crawlers and downloads by non-scientific people. Also, you don't want to put this information on your own CV, as it is extremely easy to manipulate. And if you can't use it on your own CV, it is not very useful in a portofio of "impact measuring" tools.

The argument is a ludicrous one, defending a parasitic system that should have been buried a long time ago, and written by an individual with a blatant conflict of interest.
In theory there exist some attempts to measure scientific impact from download data. Example.
In practice, nobody cares, partly due to the fact that there are many ways to get an article without incrementing the counter. (and also because we already have enough stupid metrics).

I figured as much, but wanted to give the argument the benefit of the doubt. Thanks for confirming my suspicion.

As @Franck notes, people can access a publication without incrementing an official journal counter. These include: (a) pre-print server, (b) personal website, (c) institutional repositories, (d) sites like ResearchGate, and (e) indexing services that provide paid and independent full-text access such as EBSCOHost. Sci-hub simply adds one more source where download statistics are not linked to the original publisher.
So, any estimate from the journal will be an underestimate of total downloads. Adding one more source is not going to make much difference. And more generally, it should have a fairly uniform effect. In general, you are likely to interpret download statistics "normatively". I.e., To what extent is an article getting more downloads per year than a typical article?  A general downward factor on official downloads does not prevent such normative statistics. There's also another reason why normative interpretation is key. The definition of a download itself is poorly defined. I.e., does it include people who scroll the full html listing? what about a person who downloads the same article more than once? What about indexing services? etc.


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Does publishing a monograph with Springer in computer science have any academic value?
I was recently invited by Springer to publish a book: I proposed a table of contents, it was internally (in Springer) reviewed and accepted to be published as a monograph. I am at the stage of finalizing a first draft.
The content is mostly based on previous peer-reviewed publications (around 15 journal and conference papers in the computer science domain) along with more introductory material, state-of-the-art survey, and use-cases.
Is there any academic value in publishing a book that is based (approx. three quarters of it) on existing (peer-reviewed) material?
Also, as I am considering applying for assistant professor positions (I am currently working on contract basis), I would like to ask how is this book monograph viewed at by hiring committees? Is it considered vanity or a plus?

The title of this question doesn't match the question in the text. The part about hiring connittees' views on books is answered elsewhere on this site, iirc.

@JessicaB: the third paragraph matches the title.

@StephanKolassa No it doesn't. The title asks about Springer and comp sci. The third paragraph asks about existing material.

@JessicaB I am not sure what you mean.

@xLeitix My interpretation of JessicaB's comment is that the question title is about publishing Springer and comp sci book (un-peer-reviewed) while the third paragraph is about publishing a book (3/4 based on peer-reviewed) materials.

I saw the title of this question and had no idea why someone would question the value of a Springer book in computer science. Neither being published by Springer or being on computer science makes the value of work questionable. When I looked at the text, I found that the question was really about whether the material of a book having already appeared elsewhere stops it being valuable. It seems to me that the concepts 'Springer' and 'computer science' are peripheral to the question, rather than being central (which is what the title suggests).

Thank you for your comments, just to clarify my initial thought: in order to write a book, one "cannot" start from scratch, there must be some published, peer-reviewed work to begin with, so as not to have an atrocious (as Stephan puts it) book. So, I guess the material "has" to be pre-existing to a certain degree, although I realise from your comments this is not always the case. So the question regarding its academic value remains, whether the book is based on existing material (my case) or not.

@NajibIdrissi: No, "book" doesn't automatically suggest monograph. Most books are not monographs, and some monographs are not books.

Is there any academic value in publishing a book that is based (approx. three quarters of it) on existing (peer-reviewed) material?

If well done, this seems like a useful book to me. Bringing together various related papers, adding some expository material for readers not yet intimately aware of the field, providing some perspective through use cases ... why not? Remember that in CS, the point of books is almost never to have original material. Books in CS are meant as a collection / introduction to a topic, not as a venue for new research contributions (that's what we have conferences for).

Also, as I am considering applying for assistant professor positions (I am currently working on contract basis), I would like to ask how is this book monograph viewed at by hiring committees? Is it considered vanity or a plus?

Springer isn't a typical vanity press outlet, so I can't see a hiring committee outright discarding your publication there. I guess it will be a small plus (or a bigger plus, if the book turns out really good and becomes better-known in the field). However, your actual original research will probably be much more significant.

+1. However: "Springer isn't a typical vanity press outlet" - I am currently reviewing a Springer book that is atrocious, having evidently neither had any peer review nor a competent editor or typesetter. I'll agree that not everything that Springer publishes is vanity, but the Springer label alone does not guarantee quality (maybe it did in earlier times). The book would need to stand or fall on its own merits.

@StephanKolassa Certainly. But nobody will look at a Springer book in the CV and assume by default that it will be a terrible vanity book (unlike some other publishers).

@StephanKolassa, I guess if you suggest strong rejection of the book, but it will be published, then your point about Springer quality is correct. It might be that the atrociousness of the book was not evident to non-experts?

@al_b: it's already published, and I am reviewing it for the book review section of a journal. It's quite possible that non-experts are fine with the book, but that's the point: I once thought that a Springer book would be vetted by experts and I could trust its contents. In this case, my review will essentially attempt to warn people away from it.

When it comes to the "value" of a book for a hiring committee, the value does not have to be soley academic. A significant part of the job of an (assistant) professor is usually teaching. If your book can be used in an (advanced) course, then that could be an advantage.


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What should a regretful student who is caught plagiarizing do to move forward?
I'm a high school student also enrolled in a computer science class at a local college, and earlier this week I noticed that my grade for the class had dropped. I checked the online gradebook after noticing this, and there was a 0 for a programming assignment I had submitted. I sent my professor several emails (instead of asking him in person because the college is currently on break) asking why there was a 0, and he responded after a few days by telling me to wait for the disciplinary committee to contact me regarding the assignment.
And only after sending my email did I remember that I had taken bits of my program from an online one written for a problem very similar to mine--and it even used techniques we never learned in class. It was months ago, when I was really overloaded with work, and I thought I was safe because I paid to access the code online. And a lot of my friends who were full-time undergraduates seemed to be overtly cheating pretty often.
And only after he responded did the full gravity of the situation sink in on me: I had plagiarized, and there was no excuse. I had used someone else's work without much remorse while I was doing it, lacking moral responsibility just like a sociopath might. I did something might ruin my life.
At this point, I'm panicking and desperately need advice. I feel terrible, and I'm finding it hard to concentrate on my work for high school or even sleep. I had an amazing opportunity to pursue something I really loved at a higher level than most people my age, and I completely blew it. And what's more, I might not have the chance to do it again now.
I was recently admitted to my dream college Early Action, and it was the only college I applied to. But now I'm afraid that I'll get rescinded because I'll probably be dismissed from the college I'm currently enrolled in, and even if the disciplinary committee doesn't let my dream college know directly, it probably has a way to find out.
And even if I don't get rescinded, I'm worried that I'll need to send this information to all of the grad schools I apply to, or if not, they'll just have it anyway.
I know there's not much I can do until I hear back from the committee, but what should I do right now and after I hear back? If I'm brought before the committee for a hearing, what should I do? What are the chances I'll be rescinded? Will this prevent me from getting into a good grad school?

Related: I was caught cheating on an exam, how can I minimize the damage?, but that student was not quite so regretful

Also related: Didn't pay attention to rules and created an illegal note card for exam?, but in that question there was no disciplinary hearing

I hope you find the answers to the previous questions helpful, though they may not apply directly to your situation. If nothing else, I hope they will help you understand that you are not the first student to have made this mistake, you will not be the last, and it is a mistake that is serious, but rarely life-changing.

If I get rescinded, it very well could be life-changing.

I don't know what "rescinded" means, but if you mean "dismissed from the university," it would be a highly unusual consequence for a first offense.

I don't know what educational system you are in, but at a US university it would be very unusual for a student to be expelled (dismissed) for a first plagiarism offense.

I indicated in the first sentence of my post that I'm a high school senior enrolled at a local college. I was caught plagiarizing at a different from the college to which I gained admissions as a full-time undergraduate.

I'm worried not that I'll be dismissed from the university but that my part-time enrollment will be revoked, as well as my admissions to another university.

I don't think either of these are as unusual, but they're pretty life-changing. It pretty much means I won't be going to college.

Does your high school know that you're taking the programming class?  Does the college you got accepted to know that you're taking the programming class?  When I was in high school I failed a class on real analysis, and I just never told anyone.

"I thought I was safe because I paid to access the code online" Paying for answers is like paying for sex.  If they'll sell them to you, who knows how many others they might have sold them to?  If you want to cheat on homework you should do it with partners you trust.  (That being said, the best strategy is abstinence.)

The college I got accepted to knows I'm taking the programming class because I listed it on my application, but my high school doesn't necessarily know.

Is the problem really plagiarism, or merely cheating (looking up the program somewhere, without designing it yourself)? If you had cited the source and modified the code, would the situation be any different? Did they really catch you on the basis of the similarities between "bits of the program you took elsewhere", or rather because your program used techniques you never saw in class ("he probably had someone else do his homework")? How much of the (final) program did you copy/paste (i.e. is it one or two subroutines, or does it cover the whole structure of the project)?

It covers the whole structure of the project

You should find out if the incident will be listed on your transcript.  I think that is the only thing that gets sent to colleges

You sound quite naive about what constitutes plagiarism or academic wrongdoing at the university level (in particular the thought that paying for the code makes it okay or even less likely to be caught is pretty much exactly wrong).  But this naivete is quite well explained by the fact that you're a high school student.
It's great that you realize that you did something seriously wrong: I agree with you.  But you're not a sociopath: rather, you are a teenaged minor, and your behavior is well within the normal operating parameters of such entities.  Many (perhaps most) minors do at least one really stupid thing that if they were an adult would get them in real trouble.  But unless their actions cause irreparable harm to others, the adult world tends to be forgiving: there has to be a time in which you can make mistakes and learn from them.
I think it is very unlikely that your actions would cause the university in which you've been early admitted to rescind its offer.  This is on the border of being so unlikely as not to really be worth worrying about...but someone in your situation is going to worry.  Here's how to allay your concerns:
You should go to your professor and explain very calmly and honestly everything that happened.  Your position should be that you are thoroughly repentant and will not contest whatever penalty to your course grade you have received.  You have just one concern: you don't want the academic dishonesty to appear on your transcript, because -- be honest -- you think that might jeopardize your collegiate career.  If it comes to it, you should make clear that you would rather get a failing grade or an unsatisfactory withdrawal from the course.  (This is a difference between your situation and that of most normally enrolled university students.)  If the professor is not willing to agree to that on the spot, then you should talk to others -- in particular, to your parents -- about how to proceed next.

Note that the professor has already forwarded the matter to a disciplinary committee, so he probably doesn't have the ability to agree to anything on the spot - though he may agree to recommend a specific course of action to the committee.

@ff524: Well, first of all, recording the incident on the transcript may not even be an option on the table, and the professor may know that.  Second, the degree of of the professor's involvement is highly variable depending upon the college/university.  At least at many universities, the disciplinary hearing is a kind of mediation between the student and the professor.  So if the two agree on the outcome, it's a short meeting.  (I will admit that going straight to the committee without talking to the student first is not the most encouraging sign.)

I would have visited my professor during his office hours, but the university's out of session for winter holidays. And I pretty much blew any chance to get my professor's sympathy by emailing several times when I saw my gradebook and saying I didn't know why I had a 0

There are also situations in which, supposedly, the instructor has no discretion about whether to report or not, the idea being that exercise of such discretion may involve biases... That is, non-reporting of cheating/whatever may get the instructor "in trouble"...

@paul: Yes, supposedly.  :)

:) ... The "supposedly" may become operational if more than one student has misbehaved, and one who was punished discovers that others were not, etc. Then the university may have set it up so that on quasi-legal grounds the instructor is positively at fault, since the univ "has a policy...", and then the univ may not defend the instructor against grievances.

This professor is also very no-nonsense about this and there are over 400 students in the class. Do you still recommend that I email him with a full confession and an apology? Or is it too little too late--and the email would also be self-incriminating. Should I wait instead to hear back from the committee?
But like I said, the more I have to wait, the more it's killing me

@user5593: The fact that you have to wait until the new academic semester sucks, but it is a fact.  In my opinion this is an "in person conversation".  For now, an email saying thanking him for getting back to you and letting him know that you would like to meet with him as soon as possible seems to be in order.

@paul: In my opinion the fact that the OP is a high school student provides a justifiable window for treating the case differently from students enrolled in degree programs at the university.  Whether the university will see it that way is up to them, but I'd be surprised if no one there had any compassion for the OP.

True, being under-18, e.g., in the U.S., etc.

An important part in your situation is that you understand the seriousness of what you did, and that you regret it.
I would think that a disciplinary committee, while it probably will and certainly should take a disciplinary measure against you, also probably will and certainly should mitigate that measure if they are convinced that you sincerely understand and regret your action. The good news is that there is a wast array of possible measures, as giving the lowest grade, giving an official blame, public or not, etc. You should expect something, but there is no need to anticipate something dramatic. Do not relax too much though, that might reflect badly on you.

A first offense will generally not get you kicked out. I speak for my own institution but probably most others have a similar policy. Probably the worst that will happen is that the zero grade will stand for that assignment. It's when students habitually plagiarize that they get into real trouble. Just learn from this mistake and don't let it happen again.

You sound like you've punished yourself plenty too on this issue.  We all make mistakes.  Own the mistake and use it as an opportunity to grow personally and professionally.


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Can one include already published papers in a monograph thesis?
I am writing my phd thesis in a monograph format.
The monograph consists of several chapters, some of which have been published with co-authors, however, the thesis as a whole is a stand alone piece with each chapter connecting to the previous one and is on the same topic.
If I indicate that "part of this chapter are published in ..." but write the thesis a coherent whole, can it be considered as a monograph?

How did your advisor answer this question.  (You did ask your advisor this question, didn't you?)

If the question is whether my co-authors agree that I include the chapters in my monograph the answer is yes. My question is about rules regarding the monograph. I cannot find any information on the internet about the specific rules of writing a monograph. What I would like to know is whether I can include chapters that were written with other people.

@gize The "specific rules of writing a monograph" differ from university to university, and sometimes even from department to department within a university. There is no general answer to this question. As it stands it's unanswerable because you don't state your university and department. (And if you did state your university and department, the question might be closed as being too specific.) You have to ask your advisor, or some other knowledgeable authority in your department or division.

Thank you @Pont for the answer. Let me rephrase it a bit then: what is your impression? Does your university accept this? Or is this considered to be standard practice? What is the definition of a monograph even?

Ask your advisor.

@gize (1) My impression is that there is no general rule. (2) I don't know whether my university would have accepted it, since I did not publish before submitting the thesis and thus never needed to ask, nor do I even know whether the policy would have been the same for all departments at the university. (3) I don't think it's standard practice, simply because as far as I know there is no standard practice. (4) As far as I know, there is no full and formal definition of the term "monograph" which is officially endorsed by all universities.

Does this answer your question? Writing Thesis: Copying from published papers

This is common practice in a PhD thesis in the sciences.  Sometimes it is required that chapters in the thesis be published.

I understand that this is common practice for cumulative theses, but the question is whether it can also be done in a monograph if I integrate the chapters.


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Do universities have a comprehensive reference document for all their policies and regulations?
As an organization, a university has various types of regulations (academics, disciplinary, etc), which are separately documented.
Do (at least) large universities prepare a comprehensive book containing the code of laws of the university in different sections. I mean a reference book addressing all regulations of the university.
For example, when there is an official conflict between two parties, using that reference to justify their actions, instead of dealing with section documents.
If yes, could you please reference them for review.

Some don't, or rather - some have these in multiple documents, with some of the documents not easily accessible to students or junior / adjucnt faculty. That's what it was like in my Alma Mater anyway - and it's a 90 year old university with ~10k undergrads, 2.5k M.Sc. candidates and 700 Ph.D. candidates.


text:
Which email address should a student use in a publication?
So my student and I are writing a paper, my question is:  Among firstname.lastname@student.institution.domain vs firstname.lastname1@gmail.com
which sounds more professional?
I personally submitted a paper back when I was a bachelor student using my gmail address, although I had a similar student account like the one above. But my supervisor back then advised me not to use an @student account
In this related question, a reviewer mentioned that he tends to have a negative a-priori when he sees an author of a paper with a gmail address (he admits that it should mainly be about the quality of the work, but he can't help it)

Why not consider a third option? Your student may be able to get another email address that looks more professional and can be used indefinitely. For instance, many professional societies offer addresses to their members.

Nobody cares about your email address. Only the content of the paper matters.

i didn't find anything bad about an institute email account, why ask?

university email always looks better

Isn't this a duplicate of E-mail address to use in publications?

@JeffE; I agree up to a point.  Don't use sexytime69@yahoo.com

I don't really understand most of what I read below. I think it should never be bad to tell it like it is. I just got a paper accepted (in a top journal) which has two authors, the other being a student of mine, and he chose his @student account as his email. It never crossed my mind that we could be at a disadvantage because of this. The point is: do you want to hide that an author is a student? Why? Students can do both atrocious and amazing things, and the world knows it.

It depends on many things, which I tried to order by descending priority:

Possible journal policy: in most cases, they don't have one
Possible employer policy: my own institution forbids the use of gmail.com addresses in lieu of our professional ones, because of a national policy forbidding use of commercial email providers for state-paid positions (prohibitions which my institution extends to students)
Which email address you'll keep longer: students email is temporary, but gmail.com may also be (it may not be hard to imagine that, in some near future, you become infuriated by Google's (or any company's) behavior and close your account). On that note: if you graduated from some institution, you may get a permanent alumni email redirection, which may last longer than all those individual accounts.
Which email looks more professional: smurf19@gmail.com sure doesn't do any good for your reputation.

It was difficult to choose a best answer.. I chose this one as it is short, organized and covered most of the points suggested by others. But I'd also like to add the solutions suggested by sr3u: "using an alias from a professional society (e.g. acm.org, ieee.org, ams.org etc..)"
and by Faheem Mitha: "Create a custom email, including buying ones own domain, and paying for custom email hosting for email addresses of the form yourname@custom.domain"

It is actually quite easy to imagine being infuriated by Google's behavior and closing your account. In fact, I encourage readers to do just that, given Google forwarding your data to the NSA (as per the Snowden revelations), and many other breaches of privacy and forms of mass surveillance.

Let me suggest a different direction (even though it doesn't directly answer your specific question):

Don't put your email address on the paper.

(obviously, put whatever you want for the correspondence when submitting the paper).
When I was a grad student, my advisor forbid me to put an email address for us on any papers unless it was required by the formatting guidelines. We just left out email addresses altogether, for the following reason:

If someone wants to find you, a simple Google search will turn up an email address that will be at least as current, if not more current, than the address on the paper.

"But what if my old website is still active with my old address?" you might complain. That's your own fault for not policing old websites. If you have switched institutions, your new website should quickly rise (or will eventually rise, anyway) above your previous sites, cached pages notwithstanding.
Will there be false hits because someone didn't find your up-to-date email? Sure. I'll argue that just as many times the email you put on the paper will be different than the one you currently use.
The fact is that email addresses change, and what you put on your paper may not matter in a year, or two, or twenty.

Is it always the case that "a simple Google search" will turn up a working email address? What about common names? It is true that a well maintained web site, with a working/current email address and current list of publications, should rank highly on search results, though many don't have such a thing.

@FaheemMitha more often than not you know more than just the name of the person you are looking for. Smart keywords yield better results ;)

@FaheemMitha ..."though many don't have such a thing." This is a good reason to ensure you have at least a minimal web site that highlights your name, past affiliations, and papers. Then make sure you Google yourself (preferably without being logged in to a Google account, as that seems to re-order search results and many times "knows" who you are). Your page should eventually show up in the first few hits. If it doesn't, tweak the title, key words, etc. until it does.

"If you have switched institutions, your new website should quickly rise (or will eventually rise, anyway) above your previous sites, cached pages notwithstanding." - unless you switch to a position that does not publish pages for individual employees (e.g. when transistioning from academia to industry, which does not mean that your interest in doing research suddenly vanishes without a trace).

A university email address that I had long used become unavailable in 2011, so I faced the decision of what to use for publications, and indeed what email addresses to use in other places.
My main criteria was that I wanted a permanent email address, and I wanted maximum control over the email address, including reducing the possibility that others are reading/storing my email, and the option to change my hosting if I was unhappy with it while not having to change my email. Changing email is a real drag, and I think it is a good idea to use a permanent address for publications if possible. If someone is contacting you regarding a paper, and it bounces, it is possible whoever it is will just give up. Your prospective correspondent may try to search for a more current address, but why make it difficult? If you have a common name, searching may be more difficult.
The main issue asked in the question is what is more professional. Personally, I think this is a minor issue. Maybe some journals care, but I don't see why they should. They should be more concerned, in my opinion, whether you will be contactable by this email long term. Unfortunately, in many cases it is not possible to update publication email addresses afterwards, even online, so that makes it doubly important. Email to my old address (which I stopped using in 2011) now bounces, which is unfortunate, but I can't do anything about it.
There are many choices available out there. They include:
1) Free corporate email addresses. Google's gmail is a popular example in this category.
PROS: They are free. It is permanent as long as the provider does not close up shop or close your account for some reason.
CONS: They are not university addresses.
      Someone is probably going to read and possibly sell the contents of your email. Otherwise, why would they give away something free? Also, if the email hosting is hosted in the US, the NSA may store your email. As we know from recent news revelations, for gmail, we can assume that both Google and the NSA are going to be going through your email, or at least keeping it.
      You have little or no control over the quality of the hosting. Even access may be problematic at times.
2) University address (possibly using alumni accounts)
PROS: University address, which is generally a good thing for academic publications. The NSA might still sniff through the email, but it is unlikely the university will, though who knows these days?
CONS: Little control over the quality of the hosting or other parameters like the amount of storage allowed. If you want to change to another host, you will have to change the email. Possibly not permanent (for non-alumni addresses). If you don't work at the university any more, they will probably eventually shut down that email address (again, for non-alumni addresses).
3) Create a custom email, including buying ones own domain, and paying for custom email hosting for email addresses of the form yourname@custom.domain.
PROS: Complete control over the email hosting. If you don't like the hosting, you can change it. One hopes a paid hosting company will not sniff through the email, though again who knows? For US hosts, the NSA is still a concern. It is a permanent address as long as you own the domain. You can make the email address easy to remember and to tell someone over the phone. Mine is extremely easy. Also, you can use anything_you_want@custom.domain; i.e. you can choose whatever username you want.
CONS: Not a university address. You have to pay. However, the charge is not excessive; I pay $10.00 a month, and this is on the expensive side. There are cheaper options.
As you can guess, I went with option 3.

+1 for own domain. Best approach if you are worried about validity of the address in the future.

The problem of university addresses getting stale because the linked accounts are not available/active can also happen with other accounts.  Gmail may be a bit more sensible than most, but I have suffered for using hotmail.com (Microsoft always knows best, including when to delete all your old saved mail wholesale without telling you).
If your student is a serious scholar, I recommend using an alias from a professional society (acm.org, ams.org, ieee.org, etc.) instead, which can be redirected to whatever actual account one currently uses.  My old grad school address of firstname-lastname@university.edu also has stayed for years, first as a pointer to my school e-mail account (now of course gone), and now as an alias for my work e-mail address that I use professionally.  Your school may have some such option also, check with some local IT guru there.

In general, an institutional account looks more professional than a personal account. However, because of the transient nature of most student accounts, you may want to consider having your student open an account using firstname.lastname@gmail.com format, especially if their current gmail user-name happens to be something like smurf19@gmail.com! This account should then be used for all academic/professional correspondence with individuals and institutions outside your university. (Obviously your student still needs to use the @student.university account within your university.)
Of course, also check the policy of the journal to which you are submitting. If they require an institutional email account, then this is a moot point.

I am publishing at a conference this month, and was surprised to see instructions to authors say email addresses are required and specifically urging industrial authors to use a more permanent address, such as @acm.org.  ACM is a CS professional organization and I do agree that it looks better somehow than, say, gmail.   I don't think that applies only to nonacademics, and of course a change in address is especially likely for students.
I agree with other answers saying email addresses have no place.  The right info to include is an orcid to permanently disambiguate each author and provide a link to their current contact information. This looks ugly in a printed paper but should be on the site where it is published.

Might have something to do with the fact that you have to pay a membership fee to use an ACM address?

ACM was just a suggestion. You wouldn't join just for the email but if you're a member, you can get a long-term email address that is likely more stable than an institutional one. That being said, I opted for a company address because it was easier to use first.last@company.com than to enumerate each address. Oh, and because nobody cares....

Or perhaps I misinterpreted that reply. If you meant ACM is better than gmail because it costs money, I don't think that's it.  I think it is more about it being like a guild ... it is sort of an institutional address rather than a personal one.

No, I was worried mainly about the lock-in ("I'm not interested in ACM anymore, but I can't stop paying my yearly subscription or they'll take away my e-mail address"). Also, if this was an ACM conference pushing for authors to get their own subscriptions, that seems even more questionable.

Actually IEEE, which has a similar service.


text:
How to build relationships with professors in such a way that results in good letters of recommendation?
I know a lot of questions are asked about letters of recommendation, but I was unable to find anything on this site or the internet in general that spoke to the particular issue of how to build the sort of relationship with a professor that results in good letters of recommendation. I get that you should of course do pretty well in the class and participate and go to office hours and be generally easy to work with and stuff (and ideally do research with the professor), but apart from that, is there nothing more you can do?
I know some might be eager to answer that you shouldn't be so mercenary about it (i.e. you should just organically be interested in the material and the professor and the good letter of recommendation will follow), so allow me to provide an example where this did not work out. I got a letter of recommendation from my favorite professor in college, which for some reason I was able to see (it was about a decade ago, so I forget how; I had waived my right to see it). Even though I thought he liked me (I went to office hours multiple times; I had two classes with him, both of which I did well in; he encouraged me to go for a fellowship; he even went out of his way to see a play I was in), the letter was the most basic "this student was in my class" sort of letter you could possibly imagine. It was such an incredible slap in the face.
Maybe he was just a jerk and that's that. Maybe I should have asked for a "strong" letter of recommendation (which I didn't know at the time was what you were supposed to ask). But regardless, given the vagaries of human relationships on top of the limitations of your own abilities, how is it even possible to get a strong letter of recommendation?

Being cordial does not imply lying (or exaggerating) on a recommendation letter. Perhaps your professor genuinely did not believe you were a top student. In order to get a good recommendation letter you should make sure that the person you ask has a high opinion of you professionally - having been previously praised for your work might be a good indication.

If that's the case, then why did he encourage me to apply for a fellowship? Why, later, did he encourage me to submit my thesis to a competition? But fine, even if he didn't think I was all that great, how can one be a more "top" student than getting an A in a class? Are we just supposed to be the greatest genius since Gauss?

Getting good grades does not guarantee being a good worker. The way I got good letters of recommendation was by asking professors that I had worked with (research projects and such) rather than those in whose courses I did well. Chances are, in a big class your professor might not even remember if you did well in the exam.

I see. Also, this suggests that instead of asking our professors for help when we need it, we should only ask questions that are as advanced as we can handle, even beyond the scope of the class. Would you say that's the case?

Sorry, one more question: I doubt I'll be able to do research with three different professors prior to applying to grad school, let alone 3 different professors who think I'm a top student. Am I just SOL?

You can contact professors in your department asking if there are small projects you can work on related to their work. In my final year I got to work with one prof. on small lab stuff, did my final year research project with another one, and set up a class experiment for another one. I asked for letters of recommendation from the first two guys and got excellent ones. I guess the key is to build a personal working relationship with your professor. A professor that doesn't know how you work might be reluctant to recommend you.

I see. I was told by a professor that I wasn't ready for research yet (I'm in my first year but applying to grad school next year because I'm a postbac plowing through prerequisites), so I'm doubtful, but I guess it's worth a shot. Thanks for the suggestion.

Strong recommendation letters come from professional relationships, rather than personal relationships.  Of course, the two are often related, but if a professor hasn't seen much more than getting an A in a class from a professional perspective, then they can't say that they have.  A wise and helpful faculty member will warn you of this fact in advance, but faculty are human and many may not be wise enough or  helpful enough to give an appropriate warning.
The canonical answer, of course, for getting a good recommendation to grad school is to work with a professor on an actual research project.  What you actually need, however, is for a professor to be able to speak to your potential to become a good researcher.  Even working on a research project will not necessarily demonstrate that, if your role is as a cog in somebody's machine (a friend once worked on a research project as an undergraduate where her job was literally to grind rocks into powder with a mortar and pestle: the project was awesome, the job they wanted done was not).
What does research potential really consist of?  In my experience, research potential means:

Creativity in approaching difficult or ill-defined problems
Initiative enough to accomplish hard work work independently
Skill enough to solve complex problems effectively
Intelligence and background enough to acquire new skills when needed
Social skills enough to do all of these things as part of a team (semi-optional)

There is another excellent way besides actual research projects to demonstrate all of these as an undergraduate: project-centric classes.  Many graduate or upper-level undergraduate classes have an large optional or required capstone project.  When you take on such a project, it gives you a chance to do something really cool, above and beyond the base minimum.  With a good project, you can demonstrate all of these qualities to your professor and provide both the evidence and the motivation to write a really good letter.

Thanks for this. That makes sense for grad school, but what about non-research-related scholarships? Same stuff applies? (Also, these responses help me now that I'm in a field that does research, but just by the by, the professor I mentioned was an English professor, and if research was even a thing in the English department, I wasn't aware of it in all the years I was there.)

@user124384 My experience is primarily in research-related areas, but what I said also applies to most other ventures as well, so I would expect there to be some applicability to the non-research world too.

If I may ask another question, I'm only in my first year of studies. How could anything I do in research be possibly impressive/creative/skillful at all? Also, how can we learn how to be creative/skillful in research apart from just being a natural genius? I guess ideally the professor would show us how, but given the fact that I was never told that research was the magic ticket to decent letters of recommendation, I assume I'm on my own on that count, too.

@user124384 Typically, you learn how to effectively do research either by working with mentors or by trial and error.  But you can demonstrate research potential in the form of creativity, skill, initiative, etc., in accomplishing any open-ended task.

@user124384 there's really no substitute for doing things. A friend of mine started doing intern stuff with a faculty member his freshman year of college. He worked hard, learned a lot of stuff early on, and by his junior year was actively contributing to research. You'll learn how to do these things by doing them -- ask if your professor has a project you can work on, and show you can make progress. Or at the very least, that you can ask questions about your roadblocks that allow you to get around them.