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Should you place accents on letters in academic writing in English?
Is there a standard practice in academic writing regarding the use of accented letters when the underlying language is English? I'm specifically thinking of the word naive, which often has a dieresis above the i, but I suppose this is applicable to other words.
I would prefer to not use them since it's simpler and seems somehow less pretentious to me.
Also, is there is a difference between dissertations and journal articles?

As far as I know, there are many style guides and dictionaries that does not recommend using these accents. Thus, you are free not to use them in whatever you publish yourself and have the copy editor worry about it everywhere else.

@Wrzlprmft: Many style guides and dictionaries that do not recommend using accents?! Can you cite a few of them, please? Moreover, in languages which use accented letters, removing an accent can completely change the meaning of a word: e.g., in French, à is a preposition, but a is a verb. Do you really want to be misunderstood? Or being considered sloppy? By the way, BMS, modern typesetting systems allow you to write accented letters without many difficulties: how many times do you want to write naïve in an academic paper?

@MassimoOrtolano: Merriam Webster: naive, cliche, Gaussian. Moreöver, this question is explicitly about the English language. I am far from dropping recommending diacritics in other languages (I have once taken some effort to have a Romanian author’s name spelt with ș instead of ş in a citation), I am not even recommending anything regarding English, just reporting.

@MassimoOrtolano I'm in physics, and I type Schrodinger often.

It's perfectly correct in English to just write "naive". But it's good manners to include accents in peoples' names, at least when these people do so on their own papers.

@BMS: I thought your question was about the English language and not about proper names?

@BMS: The letter o with umlaut can be replaced by the digraph oe, so you can write Schroedinger instead of Schrodinger (see e.g. this discussion on German.SE).

@MassimoOrtolano: But only if it’s impossible to use ö, which, as you correctly remarked earlier, rarely is the case nowadays.

I am fine with that level of "pretentiousness". I feel using letters beyond the scope of unaccented a..z in a published document is just as "pretentious" as using capitals in a text message or an instant messenging message. It's not something extra that you add to stand out, it's something normal that you keep doing, even though many others might be too lazy.

How is this question specific to academia? Does it seem likely to you that academia would have different standard spellings to any other branch of formal English usage? Why would you spell naïve differently in an academic paper to how you'd spell it elsewhere?

@TRiG: Academia has its own conventions and rules for its proper type of documents, such as papers and other types of publications. Questions about these conventions are fully on-topic. Other types of documents may have different target audiences and goals, so I can imagine that a commercial product description would favour a "flashy, modern" way of spelling that conveys "simplicity" over a "precise" way of spelling that conveys "thoroughness", as it may be found in academic papers.

@MassimoOrtolano: While Schroedinger is better than Schrodinger, I'm sure the man would have been very much angered if you used either instead of Schrödinger. There are also cases where different names are possible, like Müller and Mueller, and changing the first one would destroy the distinction.

I believe naïve is more common in the UK, while naive is more common in the US.  Asking about "English" may not get you a useful answer.

@NajibIdrissi: The use of diaereses is hardly unique to French; English uses the same mark for the same purpose in words like "cöoperation" and "cöop".  Even though such words are often written "cooperation" and  "co-op" [the hyphen being necessary, in at least some contexts, to distinguish it from a dwelling for birds] I would consider the use of a diaeresis to indicate that "naïve" is two syllables to be perfectly reasonable in English.

@NajibIdrissi Words like jail, ail, fail, mail, and so on, do use the combination.

@NajibIdrissi: ai is typically a dipthong, which (at least) in English isn't considered two syllables. It's not pronounced the same in "bait" as it is in "naive", but fortunately English doesn't give a flying fairy about phonetic spelling, so there's no need for decoration to distinguish the different sounds of cough, bough, bought, through, though, hiccough, rough. You just learn 'em ;-)

Anyway, I don't think this question is, in the end, specific to academia. All the comments and answers seem to boil down to just whether "naive" with that spelling is or is not an admissible English word, with no reference to it being any more or less admissible in academia than any other formal writing. And of course the note that academics are courteous people who try to represent names correctly for their original language/orthography, which while true is irrelevant to the question about cases where the underlying language is English :-)

@supercat The diaeresis indicates the start of the next syllable, so it's "coöperation", not "cöoperation".

@hvd: Mea culpa.  Actually, the typography I've seen which I prefer would center the diaeresis between the two letters, but I don't know if there's any nice way to render that in Unicode.

Please take extended discussion to [chat].

@Anonymous your comment, if pasted as an answer, would be the only reasonable one so far.

Do you like reading papers with misspelled words, grammar errors, uncertain syntax, badly formatted equations, unreadable graphs and unclear pictures? Probably not.
Modern typesetting systems and careful proofreading allow writers to avoid, as much as possible, the above unpleasantnesses and, moreover, allow them to typeset all sort of characters. Furthermore, macros and shortcuts can be defined for quickly repeating difficult words. Thus, with modern typesetting systems there's really no excuse for not using diacritical marks, regardless of practices which date back to an epoch when typesetting systems were not as flexible as modern ones.
Academic papers and books are not only read by native English speakers, but by people from all over the world, where a missing accent can be cause of confusion or, in case of many missing accents, considered a sign of sloppiness (which typically does not put the reader in a favourable mood), especially if the accent is missing from a proper name.

This is perhaps a bit harsh with respect to words like 'naive' for which diacritical marks are not strictly necessary.

@E.P.: It's not my intention to be harsh, but I have a strong position on this. Indeed, naive is just an example which, moreover, cannot be misunderstood for another term. But cliche is not cliché: not only are they pronounced differently in French, but they also have different meanings and this can be a source of confusion. Then, if in the same paper or book, I find naive, cliche, Schrodinger and Thevenin (instead of Thévenin), I might wonder how much care was put into writing.

I'm perfectly in agreement with Schrodinger, Thevenin and cliche being quite jarring to read. However, certain words have been incorporated into the English language and acceptable forms include both with and without diacritics. The word naive is one such example, as are premiere and role. Would you expect authors to differentiate between the masculine naïf and the feminine naïve throughout?  - Just to say that there is indeed a line after which diacritics can be omitted.

This answer demonstrates a misunderstanding of how words pass from one language to another. When a word from one language is considered fully incorporated in another, it is good and proper that its spelling is modified to match the usual spelling conventions of the target language. Which, in English, is to not use diacritics. When English words are incorporated into French, the opposite occurs and diacritics are added. See, for example, pénalty, which in French is only used in the context of sports such as football, and thus has a different meaning from the English word penalty.

@fkraiem: several English dictionaries have incorporated French words with their original spellings only. Look, for instance, at cliché or à la carte on dictionaries like Oxford or McMillan: they recorded only the original spelling (Merriam-Webster's  reports, instead, also the alternative spellings cliche and a la carte). So, it seems to me that what you say, though not incorrect, is not generally recognized.

I personally always use them, mostly since my last name includes a dieresis, but most style guides only tell you to be consistent: either always use them, or never use them. Like Chris pointed out in his comment: consistency means consistency for each word. There have been some answers that point out that names should always be spelled with whatever accents marks the person uses. To do otherwise would be disrespectful. For other words it's up to you.

This normally means consistent for a given class of words though - and I would say the common classes in increasing order of importance of preserving accents are: Words commonly used in English (e.g. "naive") ; Foreign words used within a discipline (can't think of an accented example off the top of my head); Proper names (e.g. Möbius).  Even more important is to be consistent per word.

@ChrisH True. I'll add that to my answer :) Most of the example from my discipline that have accents come from proper names, like Turán graphs.

You should follow the conventions of the style guide for the journal/publisher you're writing for.  A general pattern is that words which have been fully borrowed and assimilated into English  as ordinary vocabulary (such as "naive") tend to lose their diacritics, whereas words or phrases that are still considered foreign, flowery, or restricted to specialized use (e.g., détente, fin de siècle) tend to keep them.  The place where you would most likely keep them is in proper nouns (especially names of people).

Essentially, if your editor spells and pronounces hôtel the French way, then you'll be spelling it naïve.

Exception: café, definitely fully naturalized in English, but nonetheless tends to keep its diacritic, possibly because it has a noticeable effect on the pronunciation.

Not having enough reputation for comments, I'll add my perspective on the topic with an answer.
There are words that have more than one accepted usage, such as naive/naïve or a la carte/à la carte, where accepted means these are actually alternative spellings and are shown in dictionaries. Here is a list of English words with diacritics; some of these words have alternative spellings.
However, while in some languages it may be acceptable to replace diacritics by a version without, such as the German ö replaced by oe, in other languages certain funny looking characters are not considered diacritics. An example that comes to mind is Finnish, where ä and ö are considered two vowels that also have their place in the alphabet, and not a version of a and o on steroids. As such and as stated here, "replacing them by ae and oe is not acceptable for Finnish".
So my view on the subject is to use them unless you're unable to; and I can't see why you would be unable to do so nowadays. I don't mind naive because it is still correct (and a widely used alternative spelling); Jyvaeskylae instead of Jyväskylä on the other hand, would just tell me you either do not know the correct spelling or are plain lazy.

As it's been pointed out in comments a la carte has a different meaning because a is a verb. It is sometimes cited as an alternative form, I just find it lazy, that accent being represented on all English keyboards.

@njzk2 What is the different meaning in English? "a" is not a verb in English.

@cpast: "a" is not a verb in English, that's not really relevant since the locution is not English but French. a is a verb form and à is a preposition. Using one for the other changes the signification. a la carte means (he) has the card/menu which makes little sense.

@njzk2: "As it's been pointed out in comments a la carte has a different meaning because a is a verb." -- Some dictionaries mention the alternative, others do not. Personally I prefer to use the diacritics. Some that are not displayed on the keyboard can still be used such as the umlaut which for me is Right-Alt + ´. Others not available as a shortcut or which I do not know are copied over; I find it doable since it only happens so much.

@njzk2 "à la carte" originated in French, but that doesn't mean its appearances in English text are snippets of French. The phrase has become part of English, and can evolve independently of its French origin (e.g. losing diacritical marks), which is perfectly valid language evolution.

@cpast: I can agree to most of that. The loosing of the diacritic can be indeed seen as an evolution and integration in the English language. I tend to see it as laziness (but then again, that is a valid reason to change the spelling)

The question you need to answer is what purpose the accent serves.  Traditionally, in English and related languages, the accents have three purposes: to change pronunciation (for instance, the cedilla in the word soupçon causes the c to be pronounced like an s, not a k), to distinguish between homophones (as in French, between a, which means "have", and à, which means "at"), and to mark a change in historical spelling (the circumflex often indicates an s that has been lost to history, as in the French word hôpital, which used to be hospital).
My answer would be that an accent that shows a change in pronunciation (especially acute accents and diaereses) should be retained in formal writing, because we cannot know who will read it, and the reader may need these pronunciation aids; the same argument could be made for homophone distinctions, particularly in poetry.
However, if the accent marks a spelling change, it would depend on when the change occurred: there is no reason to continue to mark a spelling change that occurred before the word entered the English language.  If the accent exists, for instance, on the French word, like contrôle, and it shows a letter was omitted long before the word was borrowed into English, then there is no reason to continue to mark the missing letter that was never part of the English spelling.  There is, for instance, no mention on Oxford Dictionaries on-line of the spelling hôtel in English.  The older word hostel came into the language in the middle ages, and is still spelled thus.  The newer form hotel arrived in the mid-seventeenth century, when its French form was already spelled with a circumflex, and the two words were used differently.  Hence, it is pointless to write hôtel; these are two separate words, not a change to an older form in English.
On the other hard, there are some newer conventions that are equally acceptable.  The older spelling coöperate had already been completely lost by the time I learned to spell, twenty-five years ago, having been replaced by co-operate, which seems to do the same job, and so is perfectly reasonable.  These days, cooperate seems to be quite common, and of course, there are no language police to say that it ought not be so; however, in formal writing, I still use the hyphen (as in e-mail; remember when there was still a hyphen there?  And that was an originally English word!  **And yes, it is okay to begin a sentence with the word "and"; your English teacher only said no because all young school children do it far to much).

I think do it far to much was intentional. However, On the other hard was a typo. I hope I am right.

It would be very hard to be consistent with the two dots, for example if you use it in naïve, you should probably use in coöperate, reënter, etc.
The diaeresis forbids to join in speech sounds of two vowels - it gives a hint to the reader not to read cooperate as in Cooper, or reenter as in reel
Sometimes we see them separated explicitly co-operation, re-enter, but since naive, cooperation, and reenter are very common, special orthographic rules may apply.
I would write:

naive
cooperate or co-operate
re-enter

"The diaeresis forbids to join in speech sounds of two vowels" This depends on the language. It is true in French, not in German for example. Moreover, of your examples, only naïve has an explicit diaeresis in French, coopérer is written as in English, and réentrer takes an accent on the first letter. Overall, I can't think of a single french word where there would be a tréma to separate two identical vowels.

There is another difference between your examples: naive is the only one to be directly taken from French, so adding the diacritic is only a matter of keeping the original spelling. Imo it is the same as café vs. cafe: both spellings correct, and consistency with the rest of the english language is not really an issue.

@T.Verron "This depends on the language. It is true in French, not in German for example." The question is about English, so I think we should assume that the answers are also about English unless otherwise mentioned.

@JiK I agree, but in the english language, accents only exist on foreign words (afaik, after all, English is not my native language). The examples in the question and comments include naive and Schrodinger, which is why I wanted to point out that this answer does not address the latter.

@T.Verron: Actually, it is just as true in German, because strictly speaking, a diaeresis is (as expressed by the word diaeresis) always about separating the pronunciation of two characters. In German, it only appears in a few names such as Piëch. German umlauts happen to use the same diacritic mark (two dots above the letter) as what is used for a diaeresis, but in spoken language, an umlaut and a diaeresis are two conceptually different things that just happen to have the same textual representation.


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Which libraries are included in the Scopus citation database?
Is there a list of libraries which are included in the Scopus database?
I am working in the field of Human Computer Interaction and searching for a list of included libraries (e.g. ACM, AIS and so on).

I don't think Scopus manages their indexing by what you call "Libraries" (you probably mean publishers, and I agree that many publishers seem to call their online publishing platforms something like "digital library"). Instead, Scopus selects individual titles for indexing. That means that not all titles offered in a specific "library" may be contained in the database. Scopus offers a list of titles they are indexing on their website, which you could use to research the titles that you are interested in.

okay - maybe "including" in the search index is the right definition. I mean also ACM is calling their "platform" the ACM digital library and I thought Scopus (writting in a lot of review papers) is also including some of those "libraries" by working as a meta-search tool...

@ateam That's not correct. Scopus selects individual journals on the basis of their reckoning of quality. Despite being owned by Elsevier, Scopus don't index all of Elsevier's journals. https://awayofhappening.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/counting-elsevier-publications-indexed-in-scopus/

alright, so I can't say that all the papers which are available on ACM appear on Scopus because of their "reckoning of quality" algorithm?

@ateam Probably not, but to figure out, you could make a list of all titles on the ACM platform, a list of all ACM titles in Scopus, and see whether it's the same.

@MJeffryes Interesting link, thank's for sharing.

I have little to add to silvado's spot-on answer, but to answer an implied question: If your study is in HCI, then why not use ACM Digital Library citation counts? Why do you want to use Scopus? The idea of citation counts is that you want to see how many times all relevant literature has cited you studies of interest. In my view, any rigorous citation analysis study should use at least two sources:

Google Scholar: This is the biggest citation database, and captures almost everything, with no concern about the quality of the referring articles. Every other citation database is pretty much a subset of what Google Scholar captures.
At least one other relevant citation database: "Relevant" means that the citation database in question specializes on the topic area of interest, normally including almost all high-quality sources in the field. For HCI, this is doubtlessly ACM Digital Library (ACMDL)--HCI is a very explicit focus for ACM. ACMDL would probably have lower citation counts than Scopus, since Scopus includes far more sources, but in a sense they would "count" more, since they better reflect how much the articles have been cited in the HCI community.

I'm not sure if this captures your intent, but it is worth considering. If so, then it would render your concern moot about what exactly Scopus might or might not index.

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How to cite paper with several co-first authors in APA style?
It's common in my field to have articles with many (>>6) authors including several "co-first authors." For example:

A. Anderson*, B. Brown*, C. Clark, D. Davidson, ..., Z. Zed
* These authors contributed equally to the work.

When citing a paper with many authors in APA style, one would normally use the following citation (Anderson et al. 2017).
However, in this case where there are multiple co-first authors, would it be appropriate to include all co-first authors in the citation e.g., "(Anderson, Brown et al. 2017)"?
Obviously, once there are 4 or more co-first authors, it gets cumbersome to include all of them. Also, I realize that this alternate citation format is by no means necessary if it's even allowed at all.  My gut reaction is that this still would be inappropriate since it would look out of place; at the same time, I want to acknowledge all of the main authors' work on this article.

Short Answer: You should follow the standard citation style. E.g., "Anderson et al".
As far as I'm aware, there is nothing in APA style that speaks to an exception for the situation where the authors of a paper contribute equally or that set out multiple "first authors".
More generally:

Ultimately, author order is a thing that exists independent of contribution. It is often related to size of contribution. In particular, being first author is often related to making the greatest contribution. But disciplines vary substantially in the meaning of author order. And even in fields where first-author usually indicates greatest contribution, authors in other positions sometimes make greater or equivalent contributions. For example, in some cases the first and second author will have contributed equally. It seems more sensible to say that both authors contributed equally than to say that they were both "first authors", because at the end of the day, a reference has to have a canonical order to the authors. So whether the order of authors is determined by contribution, agreement, a coin toss, or a game of croquet, there is an order to the authors, and someone is first.
It seems strange that it would be the citing person's responsibility to adopt a citation style that captures every nuance of relative contribution in a given cited paper. An appropriate place to mention relative contribution of authors is in the author note in a paper. More generally, there are a lot of variants on the "co-first-author" scenario. In some cases, authors will note equal contribution or that author order was determined by a coin toss. Ultimately, this could all get very fuzzy.
It would make citations and references even more challenging to compile. Relative contribution of authors is not usually encoded in abstract and indexing services. And it is not encoded into reference management software such as Endnote or BibTeX formats as far as I'm aware. So it would be an additional hassle to keep track of these things.
The primary goal of citation styles is to unambiguously direct readers to sources. Managing author credit effectively is a secondary goal.

"Managing author credit effectively" might have been a secondary goal initially, but this is what is used nowadays by deciders to direct funding...

This is an interesting interpretation, but ultimately does not answer the question, since there are journals / publishers which do specify a citation policy for joint first authors. I believe the answer to this question is that while some publishers specify such guidelines, the APA specifically seems not to. Also I agree with gaborous; the theoretical considerations of consistent referencing versus the practical implications of what it implies about one's publication activity are two entirely different things.

My take: Language only changes when people change it, and the "authorities" catch up eventually. If you want dual first-authorship to be a thing, you need to CITE IT LIKE ITS A THING. Otherwise, being the second co-first author is functionally no different from being the second author. I believe the most appropriate method is a citation such as "(Anderson & Brown et al., 2017)". Most citation formats can already accommodate listing two or three authors in the in-text citation. There's no reason these two names can't be the co-first authors. This format implies that Anderson and Brown led a study, and others were involved who are omitted for brevity. It rewards the co-first authors with actual ACKNOWLEDGMENT of their contributions, rather than letting most people, who won't read the footnotes on the original study, think that there was only one first author, whoever was listed first. Cite your papers like this and let the editors tell you if they don't like it. Change has to start somewhere.

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Who said that one should change one’s direction of research every seven years?
A piece of wisdom I have heard several times is that an academic should change their direction of research roughly every seven years. This change needs not be radical but clearly more than what you naturally do within those seven years.
Does anybody have a reliable source for this rule of thumb? I heard this being attributed to Feynman, but neither with nor without his name can I find something on the Internet. I may have gotten the details of the quote wrong of course (e.g., seven instead of eight years).
Please mind that this is not about whether this advice is actually valid or why it may be.

One of the most wise methodologies for those who seek anything. Change is more cerebral than habit, to vary habitats and occupations.

Sounds like a good excuse to switch research to how often one should switch research directions.

I think I found it! Richard Hamming, mathematician and Turing Award recipient said it in a 1986 seminar at Bell Labs. The talk was titled "You and Your Research", and a transcript is available here. The most relevant part is in the Q&A session after the main talk:

Question: You mentioned the problem of the Nobel Prize and the subsequent notoriety of what was done to
some of the careers. Isn't that kind of a much more broad problem of fame? What can one do?
Hamming: Some things you could do are the following. Somewhere around every seven years make a significant, if not complete, shift in your field. Thus, I shifted from numerical analysis, to hardware, to software, and so on, periodically, because you tend to use up your ideas. When you go to a new field, you have to start over as a baby. You are no longer the big mukity muk and you can start back there and you can start planting those acorns which will become the giant oaks. Shannon, I believe, ruined himself. In fact when he left Bell Labs, I said, "That's the end of Shannon's scientific career." I received a lot of flak from my friends who said that Shannon was just as smart as ever. I said, "Yes, he'll be just as smart, but that's the end of his scientific career," and I truly believe it was.
You have to change. You get tired after a while; you use up your originality in one field. You need to get
something nearby. I'm not saying that you shift from music to theoretical physics to English literature; I mean within your field you should shift areas so that you don't go stale. You couldn't get away with forcing a change every seven years, but if you could, I would require a condition for doing research, being that you will change your field of research every seven years with a reasonable definition of what it means, or at the end of 10 years, management has the right to compel you to change. I would insist on a change because I'm serious. What happens to the old fellows is that they get a technique going; they keep on using it. They were marching in that direction which was right then, but the world changes. There's the new direction; but the old fellows are still marching in their former direction.
You need to get into a new field to get new viewpoints, and before you use up all the old ones. You can do
something about this, but it takes effort and energy. It takes courage to say, "Yes, I will give up my great reputation." For example, when error correcting codes were well launched, having these theories, I said,
"Hamming, you are going to quit reading papers in the field; you are going to ignore it completely; you are
going to try and do something else other than coast on that." I deliberately refused to go on in that field. I wouldn't even read papers to try to force myself to have a chance to do something else. I managed myself, which is what I'm preaching in this whole talk. Knowing many of my own faults, I manage myself. I have a lot of faults, so I've got a lot of problems, i.e. a lot of possibilities of management.

The Shannon referred to in the quote would be Claude E. Shannon, who is often called "the father of information theory". Shannon laid the foundations for this discipline while at Bell Labs, and in his talk Hamming suggests that Shannon would not continue to "plant acorns" afterwards.

While it isn't really phrased as a recommendation for others, it is perhaps also worth noting that
Donald Cram (1987 Nobel laureate in chemistry) has said

To retain my fascination with chemistry, I have had to change my research fields about every 10 years.

This quote can be found in I. Hargittai (2003) Candid Science III: More Conversations with Famous Chemists. Imperial College Press, p. 192.

Thanks for finding this, really interesting.

Hamming was indeed a fascinating personality. His mathematical books on numerical analysis, probability and digital filters, even though somehow outdated now, are an interesting reading nonetheless.

I read once that Hamming would ask interview candidates: "What's the most important problem in your field?"  And then he'd follow up by asking "Why aren't you working on it?"

P.S. His Book The Art Of Doing Science And Engineering - Learning To Learn is well worth reading (and there's a beautiful edition of it from Stripe Press).

I am sure many scholars came up with this piece of advice. This is an excerpt from an interview with Ludvig Faddeev published in the newspaper of Saint Petersburg State University, № 5 (3791), 30.03.2009:

I recall, many told me: "Why are you abandoning this gold mine? You have just started it, and it's high time to develop it. Keep on digging..." I am, however, dead set against digging gold mines. And this is what I have preached to my disciples: if you have written five works on a certain topic -- leave it and seek another topic. It is important to switch topics... As a result of this, my disciples and I have a broad variety of directions of research.

However, in academic folklore this piece of advice of his was known long before that. I learned about this rule of Faddeev, through word of mouth, back in my undergraduate years in Saint Petersburg, which was in the early 1980s.

I was fortunate to attend a talk by Richard Bellman around 1970, and he recommended inventing a new field, finding the early and easy results, then moving on and letting others find and prove the obscure and difficult theorems.

Paul Halmos in his biography I Want to Be a Mathematician (1985) raised that point several times, however he gave himself only five years. Here are some excerpts:

I had a theory, first subconscious and later deliberate, that the way to stay young is to change fields often. I never did become an algebraist, but I did change from measure theory (under which I mean to include probability and ergodic theory) to Hilbert space, then to algebraic logic, and then back to Hilbert space, with some dabbling with topological groups and statistics sprinkled in. After about thirty years, around 1968, I realized that I wasn't likely to be able to change again, and, at about the same time, I started writing more expository papers (such as "Ten problems in Hilbert space") and sermons (such as "How to write mathematics").

In the late 1940's I began to act on one of my beliefs: to stay young, you have to change fields every five years. Looking back on it I can now see a couple of aspects of that glib commandment that weren't always obvious. One; I didn't first discover it and then act on it, but, instead, noting that I did in fact seem to change directions every so often, I made a virtue out of a fact and formulated it as a piece of wisdom. Two: it works. A creative thinker is alive only so long as he grows; you have to keep learning new things to understand the old. You don't really have to change fields—but you must stoke the furnace, branch out, make a strenuous effort to keep from being locked in.

The physicist George Uhlenbeck was another famous scientist known for repeating a maxim like this, although I don't know whether he every specified how long one should pursue an area of research before changing to something else.  Uhlenbeck's student Seth Putterman described his advisor's view in the introduction to Putterman's book, Superfluid Hydrodynamics:

In April 1968 during my second year as a graduate student at the Rockefeller University I was one afternoon surprised to see upon entering my thesis adviser’s office, a large pile of books and papers dealing with superfluidity.  My adviser G. E. Uhlenbeck proceeded to ask me if I knew of any other works on this subject.  I replied by asking what had brought about this shift of emphasis away from relativistic thermodynamics.  His answer was that changing fields was a time tested means of renewing himself and to bring it about he had committed himself to give a course on superfluidity (along with T. M. Sanders, Jr.) in the 1968 summer school at the University of Colorado.  In this way he assured me that his course would also fulfill the first requirement of Ehrenfest:  that the teacher learn something.

He first became famous for co-devising (with Samuel Goudsmit, when they were both graduate students of Paul Ehrenfest) the idea of electron spin, but he changed topics frequently.  Over time, he worked a wide range of topics related to statistical, thermal, and fluid mechanics:  the quantum Boltzmann equation, biased and damped Brownian motion, the relativistic thermodynamics that Putterman had been expecting to work on, and superfluidity.

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


text:
Studying medicine in Germany
I'm a medical student from Alexandria, Egypt. By next year I'll have completed the pre-clinical phase of the program and I'm wondering if I can study the clinical phase in Germany (Germany has the same program arrangement)
Is there a test that l can take to study the clinical phase directly without having to start all over ?

German universities have a process to determine whether exams etc passed at a different institution shall be deemed equivalent to a degree component there. This is handled by the individual departments, the keyword is "anrechnen". When moving between similar degrees inside Germany, this will usually be straight-forward.
When you are asking for courses from Egypt to be counted, you'd probably need to provide a very detailed syllabus and maybe additional sources to make the case that they indeed cover everything important the German course would have. To get a clear decision, you would probably need to at least apply, maybe even enrol at the German university.
When studying medicine in Germany, the step from pre-clinical studies to clinical studies is when students take the first component of the Staatsexamen. I expect that it would be much easier to get the individual pre-clinical courses deemed equivalent, and thus get authorized to sit the first component of the Staatsexamen, than it would be to get any foreign exam counted as the first component of the Staatsexamen itself.


text:
Citation depth dilemma (writing sci. article for peer review journal)
The scenario:

in an article, found a point/claim/fact that would fit/support perfectly a broader point I'm trying to construct (@Related works section)

The dilemma:

Whom to cite?

a) only the article in which I found the [whole] point/claim/synthesis
b) the original sources, the author cited during his construction of the point
c) both i.e. the complete paragraph or part of the paragraph that serves my purpose

Pros and cons:

a)

Pro: I pay proper respect to the author from whom I learnt about the sources/facts. + the article is the only source I really read
Con: I would have single reference to support the point, while in reality there are several relevant sources (used by the author)

b)

Pro: I would provide the reader with deeper/direct references for further researching
Con: it is a form of plagiarism, as it would seem that it was me that read all the sources and drawn conclusion presented. The conclusion is not the issue, I discuss that particular point anyway (in my paper), but the first part bothers me: it wasn't me that studied all that sources, but the author

c) seems to me as just solution but I'm not sure how it should be formulated so it is clear for reader what is reference (let it be: [1]) from the article and what (sub) references are just taken from the article (let them be: [1.a] [1.b])

Alternatively, (and this is what I would normally do):

I follow his references, find the articles, read them and then use (some or all of) them together with other references (known to me from earlier research). The issue with such practice: too often there is no justification for referencing his article -- and it seems not to be not right i.e. smells to me like a tiny plagiarism-sin.

The example:
....

To achieve the first goal, the crawler has to visit as many web sites as possible, and to achieve the second goal, the crawler has to
maintain the freshness of the previously visited web sites, which can
be achieved by re-visiting such web sites in a routinely manner. In
the following, the most frequently used re-visiting policies are
summarized: (1) Uniform policy: in this policy, the entire web sites
are downloaded at each visit (Bhute and Meshram, 2010; Pichler et al.,
2011; Leng et al., 2011; Sharma et al., 2012; Singh and Vikasn, 2014).
Although this approach enriches the databases, it requires a large
processing time. (2) Proportional policy: this policy is performed in
many ways, such as: • Downloading only the pages that have a rank more
than a threshold value specified by the crawler administrator (Bhute
and Meshram, 2010;)

From the article:

ALQARALEH, S., RAMADAN, O., & SALAMAH, M. (2015). Efficient watcher
based web crawler design. Aslib Journal of Information Management,
67(6), 663–686. http://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-02-2015-0019

In my article I want to explain/define these two policies, together with his remarks, my own remarks, and, potentially, to expand (support) it with other sources.

@corey979: exactly what I thought of - why put that as a comment instead of an answer

Thanks guys!
btw. on this forum I still have no "comment up vote" privilege, otherwise I would use it

As often when it comes to writing it is key to think about this from the viewpoint of the reader. Write and cite so that it is as easy as possible for the reader to get the point and find the relevant literature. If you are unsure how to do this think of your past self as the reader, i.e. think about how you would have wanted the passage to be when you did not know much about the field you are writing about.

I am considering only the case where there was substantial synthesis in the article encountered. Merely encountering a relevant citation in another source has already been discussed in other questions.
Since synthesis is an intellectual contribution itself, Option b) of only citing the foundational sources and recreating the synthesis without crediting the intermediate author is plagiarism, and thus out of consideration.
Option a), citing the synthesized claim without delving into the details or the sources it is based on, is acceptable. It has to be acceptable, otherwise the rabbit hole never ends. Considerations for whether to use it include the following:

Is the point made a very important one for the paper we are writing? Does it merits being discussed at length?

Is the point a contentious one? Would explaining HOW the author we cite arrived at it help convince our own readership of it?

Are we subject to restrictive page limits?

Would the authors-at-arms-length benefit from the extra citations/credit?

Option c), crediting everyone involved, is obviously always acceptable. As an example of how this could look like, take the following:

Skywalker (12 ABY) explains that the light side of the force should be preferred, drawing from earlier arguments put forth by Yoda (3 BBY) and Kenobi (6 BBY). Skywalker particular stresses the merits of Yoda's observation that 'there is no try, there is only do' (Yoda 3 BBY).


text:
Is it common for a journal to reject a paper after accepting it subject to minor revisions?
Is it common for a journal to reject a paper after previously accepting it?
When a paper of mine was first reviewed, one of the reviewers was okay with the paper and the other one requested minor revisions. The journal clearly said that the paper was accepted, subject to minor amendments and even went on to mention tentative publication dates. I then quickly made the required revisions.
Both the initial reviewers accepted it, but the editors solicited a third reviewer. These reviewer’s comments were not that specific but just referred to things like some of the citations are too old and he had problems with the methodology and contribution and then in other places he goes completely off topic saying that the paper implies certain things that I certainly do not say and are very far from what I am discussing in this paper. Now the journal has rejected the paper.

Was the acceptance letter unconditional, or did it say that the paper would be accepted if certain changes were satisfactorily made?  In the former situation, I don't see that the journal has a very strong case. I would consider sending a polite but clearly worded letter to the editor in chief saying that they gave you their word in writing and you will hold them to it.

It clearly says accepted, subject to minor amendments and then goes on to even mention tentative publication dates and that I should turn in my revision as soon as possible to meet those dates, otherwise discuss other dates if I could not meet the turnaround time

So, did you address all of the reviewer's comments in the revised manuscript and/or cover letter? Yes, even the comments that 'went off the rails' - my guess would be that you didn't touch those, and that reviewer was not happy. Perhaps they weren't so far off the rails after all.

Both the reviewers who initially reviewed the paper said that they were happy with my revisions and had no further comments. However, a third reviewer was solicited after I resubmitted and he is the one who was not happy. This reviewer was not in the picture the first time round

@PeteL.Clark: Demanding that they "stick to their word" doesn't seem productive here.  The editor seems to be convinced that the paper is seriously flawed, and if he were right, then I'd say it would be appropriate for him to reject it at any time before publication has actually occurred.  Otherwise, what are they going to do?  "Stick to their word" by publishing it, and then immediately publish a retraction of the seriously flawed paper?  I think it would be better to try to get a higher-up to look at the new review and notice that it's crazy, and that the paper is not actually flawed.

@Nate: It is not actually clear to me that if the editor thinks the paper is seriously flawed, the right thing to do is to back out of publishing it.  The OP hasn't mentioned her field; in many academic fields whether a work is "correct" is something that community members can disagree on, and in certain other fields (like physics) publishing a paper with an interesting idea or hypothesis that turns out not to hold water is not considered shameful.  Here's the question: why did the editorial board do further vetting after the paper was accepted?

That the journal has broken a promise to the OP and wasted the OP's time does count for something.  Obviously we are not privy to what is actually going on, but none of the comments the OP mentioned seem to be of the "this is dead wrong" variety.  It sounds like more of a judgment call, and knowing that the OP views the action of the journal as a reneging on its word could well be enough to change their mind.  Or, if it turns out that the editorial board has grave reservations about the paper, they should say so explicitly to the OP.  The OP deserves more information than she's gotten.

None of the comments so far are addressing OP's actual question. The answer is: No, it is not common. In fact I believe it is extremely uncommon, and I personally never heard of such a thing happening. The only situation where I imagine it would make sense for the acceptance of a paper to be withdrawn is if new information came to light that suggests that the paper is fraudulent or largely incorrect. From the OP's description that doesn't sound like what happened here.

Is it common for a journal to reject a paper after previously accepting it?

It’s certainly not common, but it’s also not entirely unheard of or something that should never happen per se. Coincidentally something along that lines happened to me yesterday.
See this from the journal’s point of view: When they consult somebody as a reviewer, they assume them reliable and thus it would be odd to fully ignore their judgement. If this reviewer raised severe objections, it would be unwise of the journal to leave them unaddressed.
On the other hand, if two reviewers gave a positive evaluation of your paper, it seems equally unwise to reject your paper without even giving you the opportunity to react to the third reviewer’s criticisms. I thus strongly suggest that you check the wording of the journal’s decision letter and your paper’s status carefully as to whether your paper was actually rejected or they just want you to address the third reviewer’s comments and decide upon that. If your paper was actually rejected, you might want to consider a rebuttal due to the above reasons.
What seems a little odd is that a third reviewer was considered at this stage. Could it be that this reviewer was asked in the first round of revision and turned their review in only recently for some reason?
Finally, a sidenote: If the reviewer actually argued against your paper because it “implies certain things”, this gives you a strong argument for rebuttal. Even if a paper’s result imply that the first law of thermodynamics does not hold, it should not be rejected on that basis.

Journals do whatever they want without oversight or logic. It is generally a tactic used with new authors who aren’t well known or have a long track record with the journal. It can be due to many other reasons ranging from blithe idiocy of some apathetic whimsical or unqualified reviewer. But, there are certain nefarious impulses that are at play (i.e. power struggle within an institution or journal or an industrial contact asks them not to accept a certain paper). Integrity in publishing is present in certain journals, in many other journals it is who you know. Nepotism, even when it’s double blinded (so called) reviews! Go figure the world of print works like the world of people!

This seems more like a rant than an answer which addresses the question. Perhaps you could trim it or tone it down, while maintaining the core point?


text:
Is it okay to share a tex template from a journal for teaching purposes?
I am a graduate student in a university. I was an undergraduate student on the same university, and I have good feelings for the workplace where I did my undergraduate studies (very much so that I keep close contact with the students).
In order to enhance the writing abilities of the students (it is a Mathematics course), I had the idea of making a "toy" journal, where students would be able to submit what they were studying/thought was interesting/etc. The main objective is to improve writing and exposition capabilities, and providing motivation for the students.
In order to make the idea go forward, I considered taking a (tex) template from a journal and sending it to the students for them to write using the template. This would be excellent in terms of efficiency. However, I feel that even though this "toy" journal has only internal intentions and is only this: a "toy" journal, there may be some ethics issue on taking a possibly copyrighted asset.
I would like to know:

Are there any issue with the above, given the intentions?
If there is no issue, is there a standard way to ask for permission?
If that is not possible, are there any good free templates available?

@MassimoOrtolano Thank you for the suggestion. I did it. Could you turn your comment into an answer so I can accept it?

I think that's a cool idea for getting students engaged with the topic and doing research.

Several journals have made their LaTeX classes available on CTAN: I suggest you to pick one of them.
Example journal classes available on CTAN are:

amsart
IEEEtran
elsarticle

As Federico Poloni rightly suggests, check anyway the license of the package you want to use, which is written on the CTAN page of the package.


text:
What do all the numbers mean in a pubmed shorthand citation?
At the top of a pubmed abstract, there's a "shorthand" citation, and I don't know what the numbers mean. For example:
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2008;1129:323-9. doi: 10.1196/annals.1417.017.

What do all these numbers mean? Obviously, I understand that 2008 is the year, but I don't know what anything refers to after that.

volume 1129, pages 323 to 329

There are two parts to the citation that you gave.  The first part is an abbreviated citation:

Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2008;1129:323-9

"Ann N Y Acad Sci." is an abbreviation for "Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences" which is a journal published by the New York Academy of Sciences.  2008 is the year of publication, 1129 is the volume number and 323-(32)9 are the pages of the volume containing this particular paper.
The second part

doi: 10.1196/annals.1417.017

is a "Digital Object Identifier", which is a standardized unique number for the publisher's online version of the paper.  The DOI isn't supposed to have any particular meaning other than as a key that can be used to lookup a particular paper.  In this case the publisher has chosen to include "annals" (short hand for the journal title) as part of the DOI, but that's not really required.
The DOI system is maintained by an organization called CrossRef.  Publishers pay a fee for membership in the organization and are given a part of the DOI name space in which they can assign identifiers.
CrossRef maintains a central database which keys off of these DOI numbers.  The central database contains the metadata (journal title, article title, authors, etc.) for this paper, along with a link to the publisher's copy of the paper.  If this metadata changes for some reason (e.g. an authors name was misspelled) the metadata can be updated in the database.  More importantly, if the publisher rearranges its website at a later date and moves the online copy of the paper to a different URL, they can update this link while leaving the DOI unchanged.
You can go to
http://crossref.org/
and enter a DOI to find the metadata about the corresponding article.
You can also use a link like
http://dx.doi.org/10.1196/annals.1417.017
to refer to the article.  When a web browser accesses this link, it will be redirected to the current location of the paper based on the record in the crossref database.


text:
Can you resubmit a rejected manuscript to the same journal if you have made many changes to improve the manuscript?
Last year one of my papers was rejected. The editor provided the comments of referees so I have continued to work on this paper following their suggestion. I have done a great deal of work and I think that now the paper is really worth a publication.
I was considering to resubmit it to the same journal: can I do this or is it frowned upon?

I have done something similar.   I provided detailed responses to the comments from reviewers and also outline the main changes -- basically arguing why my paper should be treated as a 'new' paper.  The editor accepted my argument and allowed my paper to enter the review process - in my case, it was sent to  the same reviewers.  It is up to the Editor-in-Chief to decide whether it is a 'waste' of reviewers' time.

Some journals won't accept a resubmission after rejection. For some others it might depend on the reason for rejection. If the editor deemed it not suitable for the journal it isn't likely to be reconsidered.
But otherwise you should be able to resubmit it. You can also ask the editor whether it would be advisable or not. Follow their advice, of course.
And "frowned upon" only matters if the editor is the one frowning.

If you submit a previously-rejected paper to the journal, what happens in principle* is that the editorial management system flags the paper as a duplicate. Screenshot if you want to see what it looks like from the other side.
Once flagged, the editor (or more likely the desk editor, i.e. the employee of the publisher) will have to decide if they should pass the paper on to begin the peer review process. The default reaction will be "no". You will need to convince them otherwise. The easiest way is to write an explanation in the cover letter. There's a good chance they'll be looking at the previous reviewer reports while making this decision, so you might want to address the reports directly.
The worst that can happen is that your paper is desk rejected. Rather more likely (assuming you did a good job updating the paper) is that the paper is sent for review, but the same reviewers that reviewed the original paper are invited again.
tl; dr: yes, you can resubmit.
*This is only in principle. It's possible the journal fails to detect the resubmission.


text:
Why does a university not require me to send proof of high school degree?
I'm applying to a online Bachelor of arts degree at a very well established university in the United States.
However, I'm almost through the application process and at no point did they require an actual print of my high school diploma. They simply asked me to sign (digitally through docusign.net) that I have completed high school. I've been corresponding with an agent of theirs and according to him they are just reviewing what I've sent them (which does not include a diploma) and after that I can enroll.
I do have a high school diploma but how come they don't require proof of this?
EDIT: Continued story:
I recently got accepted into a university and they had me attest to having a high school diploma, which I did. After being accepted without needing to provide any proof of having said diploma, I naturally asked why they didn't ask me to provide proof of graduation.
They replied: "We randomly select 1 out of every 20 students to provide further documentation. You would’ve been selected at this point so it looks like you were not chosen."
Is this normal in the United States? Where I'm from (Iceland) this just sounds plain weird...That potentially 95% of students can get in without a diploma at all?

I suspect the point of traditional (i.e. brick and mortar) colleges demanding to see proof of high school graduation or equivalent is to insure that they don't waste time and class-space (i.e. money) on a student who won't fit in and won't graduate. A misfit student will impose lower (though not zero) costs on a on-line program. Maybe they just don't consider the cost of a more careful check worth their time at this point?

Why would they? One of my undergraduate classmates was expelled from high school a month before graduation.  When he contacted the university admissions office for advice, they asked "Did you get an admission letter?" When he said yes, they said "Well, then you've been admitted. See you in August!" and hung up.

For the traditional admissions process, most high school students apply to university before they finish. It is in fact not feasible to require that they submit their high school diplomas, as most applicants will only earn said diplomas a few months into the future. (Note that the United States is not unique in that regard: in Britain the admission process will often ask the "high school" for predicted/expected grades on the standardized exams; though the British practice of extending "conditional" offers doesn't seem popular in the US.)

Most US universities will ask for a transcript from high school to be sent to the university upon graduation (as a condition for acceptance).  Most HS students who apply to a university do not yet have a HS diploma because the application process happens in the fall of the last year of HS.

@JeffE you might be dating yourself. By the time I was a student, admission offers contained language about the offer being conditional upon satisfactory grades in your final year.

@StrongBad I think this is more a feature of my undergrad institution than the year I entered. (Unless, of course, you went to the same place I did.)

@JeffE didn't go to the same school, but you are old :) Those offered admission are expected to complete the remainder of their high school courses with the same superior performance that led to their admission

@StrongBad Sigh. I used to be young, and Rice used to be proudly weird.

This is not normal in the US -- but that doesn't mean it's an illegitimate process. Private institutions can select applications using whatever criteria they deem appropriate; so while it sounds a bit questionable to me, it's perfectly within reason.
It is also perfectly valid to admit students without a high school degree; it happens to be uncommon, but depending on the subject matter of the BA, it may not be (at least in the university's eyes) a strict necessity, provided your other credentials are sound.

From a technical standpoint proof is really hard. Anyone can print up a fancy looking diploma on nice paper, so a diploma is not really proof. Similarly a dishonest student could produce fraudulent letters of reference.
Even if the university independently found the contact information for the school, got in touch with someone who could verify if someone was a student they would not be done yet. The university would then need to verify the student was in fact who they said they were. While forging government documents (e.g., a passport) is more extreme than forging a diploma, if the verification of the diploma was only done on the basis of a name,  then a dishonest student only needs to find someone who had the same name as them and graduated about the same time as them.

I'm not sure your second paragraph represents a real risk to the school, as the dishonest student would never receive any credit, as it would all be listed under the other name.

Contrary to popular belief, in the United States a high school diploma is not required to enrol in a bachelor's degree.  Indeed, there are no universal requirements at all.  Each university is allowed to set its own admission standards, which might make a high school diploma manditory.
Personally, I obtained a bachelor's degree and a PhD without completing a high school diploma.  At Simon's Rock College, nearly all the students are completing bachelor's degrees without completing high school.  The practice of blurring the boundaries between high school and college is a trend right now.


text:
Best way to respond to a request for CV
A couple of weeks ago I met this person who had come to our institute for an invited talk. Her domain of work was same as my area of research. Later I discussed with her some of the topics and asked her if there are any openings in her company (she is in the industry as an R&D head). She responded: "Send me your CV, I will look into it."
Now I want to write to her. How do I begin with that? Should I send my CV in the first mail itself? If so should I also include a cover letter? What's the best way to introduce myself?

Do you have a website with your cv? Having one is a good idea and can avoid dealing with such requests.

Since any potential job is apparently outside of academia, you might want to ask on http://workplace.stackexchange.com/

Well... there are lot of important variables not mentioned, but this is how I will generally draft it:

Dear Madam Give-me-a-job,
It was great talking to you after your talk on Jan 17th, 2014 at
My-Little-Institute. I found your experience and nature of your job
fascinating. In our conversation about pursuing a career in
Whatever-you-are-working-in, you were so kind to offer giving comments
to my CV. And if you don't mind, I would love to take up your
generous offer.
Attached please find my CV. I would love to follow up with you in two
weeks and set up a phone conversation to discuss how I can strengthen
my profile so that I can be a more competitive candidate in this job
market. Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to your invaluable critiques and suggestions.
Sincerely yours,
Penguin Knight

My approach:

Don't treat it like a lead to a job. She might just say that to be nice. If I come off too pushy, I may not even get a chance listening to her comments. For that reason, I will not attach a cover letter that details my experience, research interest, and why I am suitable for the position. There isn't even a job, a catch-all cover letter is difficult to write and hard to be made impressive.
Ask for follow up and act on it. A lot of the "send me your CV" didn't get follow up because the candidate really just "sent the CV" and that's the end of it. I specifically tweaked it as wanting advices from her, making it easier for both parties to engage in another conversation.
No need to worry about "what if she really just gives me comments?" She probably knows and remembers. If my CV is really good, she will mention the availability of openings. If there isn't or I am not good enough, then I can use this chance to flush out weaknesses and improve them.

I don't understand your answer: "I will not attach a cover letter" what is the thing in yellow if not the cover letter?

@cbeleites, you can call that e-mail a cover letter. The cover letter in my mind (the one that I will not send) was a separate letter detailing my research experience, interests, and why I am suitable for the posted job. I revised the answer to clarify.

All jobs I have applied for (via email), which to be honest isn't very many, I have written a brief, courteous email introducing the proper cover letter and CV as PDF attachments. For a number of reasons (formatting, ease of distribution, professionalism etc), I think it's a bad idea to make the email itself a cover letter.

@Moriarty OK for formatting (though not much is needed) but why is making me have to open two files in an external program more professional or easier to distribute?

@terdon Because there is a potential for formatting to get messed up on different devices through forwarded emails. Nothing wrong with combining the CV and cover letter into one PDF - many job ads request that specifically.

I wouldn't make a big deal of it:

FirstName,
Good to meet you the other day. Interesting presentation.
Attached is my CV as discussed.
Best wishes,
  Your full name

Most people are busy and they're not going to read more than a couple of sentences anyway.
Also, the longer the email, the more desperate and obsequious your tone; save time and your dignity - keep it brief.

While shorter is better, especially in industry, too short can come across as lack of interest and that is usually a turn-off.

If you want to save your dignity, I recommend writing in complete sentences.

I agree with the notion of keeping it short, although @BenWebster has a very valid point ;)

Try with a Haiku: Was good to meet you / Here attached is my CV / Best wishes Your name.

Indeed, if I received this note, I'd bit-bucket it because there's no evidence the sender is actually interested. Brief is fine, but this is too brief.

I'd go as far as to say that this email is so short on evidence of interest that it closely resembles many spam messages I get; if I received such an email and I wasn't paying close attention to (or didn't remember) the name of the sender, this would go into my spam folder right away.

@ben abbreviating/truncating sentences in writen communication by omitting obvious and unambiguous pronouns and verbs is a very old, common and acceptable practice (probably dating back to the telegraph, where the cost was charged per letter/word). The implied sentence is clear and meaningful. My dignity is intact.

@Bohemian Telegrams were also often written in all caps.  That doesn't make it good email practice.  I agree that what you've written would sound fine as spoken English if you said it, but written in an email, I don't think it comes off well. Would it really be that hard to write instead: "It was good to meet you the other day. I really enjoyed your interesting presentation. I've attached my CV as we discussed." instead?

@Ben your version sounds fine. Perhaps mine is too casual. Fine. Morse code, which the telegraph used, doesn't cater for mixed case.

Hello (Speaker-name),
We spoke on (date here) when you came to our institution and presented
  on (topic here). I very much enjoyed your speech and our discussion
  afterwards on (a few words on what you talked about) and possible
  openings in your company. As discussed, I've attached my cover letter
  and resume for your consideration.
Thanks so much, and I look forward to hearing back from you!
Sincerely,
(Your name here)

My post is making the email a bit less formal, as I assume you talked to her in an informal way. By bringing up where you guys were, when you met, and what you talked about, you're likely sparking her memory (unless she gave two talks and had identical conversations that day, which is unlikely). I'd also keep the email relatively concise, because your intent is to seek jobs, not make a new friend.
Personally, I would attach my cover letter, because the cover letter gives a better indication on not only what your skills and past experience is, but also on what your desired position is. It also gives the employer a bit more indication into what you're like as a person, and whether or not they'd want to hire you.
This is all, of course, assuming you're emailing her and not mailing it. If you mail it, I would put a shorter version of this email into the cover letter and only send the cover letter and resume.

CV and cover letter in an email and maybe send physical copies as well.
Just a friendly brief email with the attachments in the companies preferred format.
Make sure to mention the sort of position you are looking for in the cover letter.


text:
Is admission standard for math PhD significantly higher than that for physics PhD?
I'm a student at a small LAC, and I'm considering to apply to both math and physics PhD programs. In my school, which is top 15 but do not have large (20 students in each dep.) or well-known departments for either of these fields, students did significantly better on physics PhD admission than on math PhD admission. For math, many students go instead to master's, and only one or two students can make top 40~70 PhD program per year. For physics, some students went to Caltech, Columbia, UCSB, and other high ranked programs in the last year, which was just as usual. A similar phenomena seem to happen not only in my school. Mathgre.com and Physicsgre.com list applicant profiles and admission results for each PhD program, and they show a similar tendency. For example, students accepted to top pure math PhD programs are exclusively those who got nearly 4.0 GPA, took many grad-level courses, had a significant amount of research experience and come from an undergrad institution with a renowned PhD program. On the other hand, students accepted to top physics PhD programs have more diversity in GPA, their undergrad institution, number of grad-level courses taken and amount of research experience.
What causes this difference? Or is my view wrong? If this difference actually exists, I think the following factors are among the causes:

Physics PhDs are funded more, and therefore more students can be afforded.
Physics PhDs have both theoretical and applied subdivisions, while many applied math programs exist as master's programs.
Math PhDs demand its applicants to take a significant number of grad-level courses, while physics ones don't.

Also, how about the situation when it comes to pure math vs. hep-th in the U.S.?

Is your first sentence saying that your university 1) is a small liberal arts college, 2) is one of the top 15 universities in the country, and 3) does not have a strong mathematics or physics department? I don't think all three of these can be true simultaneously.

I mean it's one of the top 15 LACs in the country, so it's not an university, and the ranking excludes universities. Although it has strong departments in other natural science topics, our math and physics deps are not the ones. 2) and 3) can be simultaneously true only when 1) is also satisfied.

Thanks for your comment. In the U.S. is the admission for experimental hep PhD usually separated from the admission for hep-th? I'm not familiar with the process in the U.S., but many PhD programs in the U.S. seem to have the same admission process for both experimental hep and hep-th. If they are not usually separated, do students officially select their "concentration" after entering to the program?

This is an attempt to gather some data supporting or refuting your hypothesis (or rather a slightly different one).  Ideally, we would like a direct comparison of admission rates at top places, but I could only find limited data on admissions rates, so let me start elsewhere.  At any rate, some of this data may be of interest.
The annual number of bachelor's degrees in physics is about 8000.
From the AMS's annual survey, this number for math is about 28,000.  This suggests there may be a lot more PhD program applicants for math.  However, I don't have data separating out which math degrees are on a math ed track (or similarly for physics, though I guess the numbers are much greater for math ed), and these people are unlikely to pursue PhDs.
What about actual numbers of PhD students?  I didn't see 1st year PhD numbers in physics for recent years but this slightly dated data puts it around 3000 new grad students in physics/astronomy (with about 93% aiming for PhDs), whereas the AMS annual survey has around 3600, and around 5000 if you include masters programs.  (Stats and biostats is separate with around 2000, I guess including masters.)  These statistics also say the number of physics versus math phd's awarded in recent years are pretty similar (about 1500-1600 for physics compared to 1400 for math).  So there may be many more "potential" PhD applicants in math, but both math and physics students seem to compete for roughly the same number of slots in grad programs.  (I don't know about how many of the PhD enrollments were domestic BS/BA holders, but we might guess the numbers are comparable as about 54% of enrollments were US citizens.)
So the above data tenuously supports your hypothesis.  Can we check this with some actual admission rates?
For physics schools, this website has grad school admission rates.  For top schools, the admissions rate seems to be around 10-15% (though Penn State seems to be an anomaly).  Unfortunately, I don't know such a nice tool for math schools, but a few math departments mention their admission rates. Northwestern is around 17% (about the same as for their physics program, 16.4%).  Notre Dame's is around 20% (a little lower than their 26% for physics).
These were all I could easily find and I'm afraid it's not enough to make any real conclusions, but I might speculate that top math phd programs are only somewhat more competitive than top physics ones if at all.  (And in terms of undergrad research experience, I would guess that's more common in physics than in math.)
Edit: One qualitative issue for why you're seeing what you're seeing could be that top schools in math get lots of applications and if an admissions committee isn't familiar with a department, it doesn't know how to evaluate a transcript or the letters of recommendation from there, so it will tend to play it safe and accept students from places it's more familiar with.  This is one reason why it's very helpful for students at small, relatively unknown schools to do programs like REUs (or a master's first) where a letter writer from there can compare you with a wide range of students.  That said, I know many people who have gone straight from small, relatively unknown schools directly to top math PhD programs.

I really appreciate your effort to gather all these data. I'm surprised to see some of the facts you mentioned and from your link. 1) # of physics bachelor's is only 8k/y. This sounds like physics is one of a few least popular majors among the departments which exist in almost every colleges in the U.S. Maybe media is exaggerating difficulty of physics, and youngsters were discouraged. 2) Acceptance rate of physics programs are much higher than expected (I thought ~5% for top ones). While top math PhD programs enrollment are roughly 20/r, physics

PhD seems to have more capacity. 3) Some of lower ranked programs have pretty low acceptance rate. Penn state, while it's ranked high, is probably not for me. 4) This may be a well-known fact, but about a half PhD students in math and physics can't get PhD. The following list of universities attended by math PhD students at Harvard and UC Berkeley gave me an idea of how prestige of undergrad institution matters in admission for math PhD (because better education nurtured better students). https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/296e60/universities_attended_by_math_phd_students_at/

That only 8,000 bachelor's degrees are awarded to physics students at American universities annually made my eyes pop out.  I would have guessed a much larger figure.  So a big +1 for presenting hard data.

Another point to consider is that people that end up in physics departments come from a variety of backgrounds. I'm a physicist myself but we have plenty of chemists, materials scientists, IT guys and the odd mathematician in my department. I would guess it's mostly only mathematicians trying to make it to maths PhD programs.

@AranKomatsuzaki Regarding your point 4), I'm guessing that most of the PhD students at top schools can get PhDs.  At Caltech in math, almost everyone who started finished, and those who didn't were usually the ones who decided it wasn't for them during their 1st year, so I don't think that's as bleak as it seems.  Also, see edit about undergrad institution.

I think admit rates at top schools are a bit irrelevant. The number of students we admit at Stanford in math each year is essentially constant. Therefore the admit rate is really just telling you how many students apply. Moreover, our reputation is sufficient that I believe (and hope) that all the students who have a chance of admission are already applying. Therefore the admit rate is really just telling you how many unqualified students apply.

@TomChurch I agree admit rates don't exactly measure the standards for admission, but how do you compare standards in different fields?  Things like GRE scores aren't very good indicators of qualifications, but admission rates provide some quantitative measure of how difficult it is to get into a school, so I think it can be considered a crude measure of "relative standards".  (Of course there are self selection and prestige factors in the application process, but that happens in both math and physics, possibly at comparable scales.)

(cont'd) One issue I didn't take into account (and I don't know about any such data) is whether students apply to the same number of top grad schools in both math and physics.


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Do PhD positions in Germany need to be formally advertised?
Do the professors in Germany have the authority to issue contract or hire a PhD students directly with a formal contract without previous advertisement?

Do PhD positions in Germany need to be formally advertised?

tl;dr: Theoretically uncertain, practically yes.
PhD students in Germany are generally* employed as civil service employees (Angestellte des öffentlichen Dienstes). For civil service employees, the law company Gloistein & Partner on their website gives a nice summary of various, partially conflicting judgements (see "2. Ausschreibung von Arbeitsplätzen im öffentlichen Dienst" - use Google Translate as required). An important one is from the Federal Administrative Court (Bundesverwaltungsgericht), which rejects a general responsibility to formally advertise such positions, but leaves open the possibility that such responsibilities can arise in practice, for example, if an institution regularly formally advertises its open positions.
HR people at public institutions in Germany are typically keen to "cover their asses" and avoid uncertain legal situations. Therefore, in practice, very most if not all PhD positions are formally advertised.
* Actually, PhD students do not need to be employed, but most are (at least in STEM fields), and then they are always employed as civil service employees. Typical alternatives to employment are stipends and being self-funded.

May I suggest two improvements? (i) At first glance, it is unclear to which question your first line refers (since the question in the body of the OP is the negation of the question in the title). (ii) I think the remark "but most are" in the footnote would be better with a specification of the field; I'm quite confident that this is correct is STEM, but I'm not so sure whether most PhD students in the humanities are employed.

@JochenGlueck Thanks, I agree with both suggestions and have addressed them.


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Publication on hold
I am working in the field of HCI. My relationship with my advisor turned sour due to difference of opinion and eventually I changed my advisor. Now I am stuck in a situation where my paper as a first author is on hold because the ex-advisor is not letting me submit it. This is primarily my work of 2 yrs., while my ex-advisor is a coauthor based on guiding me throughout the research, reading my writing, and giving his comments. What should I do in this situation?

If the ex-advisor isn't an author, what authority do they have to stop it?

@Buffy "involved in guiding me throughout the research, reading my writing, and giving his comments" is almost certainly grounds for authorship (or at least opportunity to complete remaining steps towards authorship like drafting and approving a manuscript) in most fields.

Thank you for responding. My ex-advisor is an author in the paper. Is there any way I can still submit the paper without his approval, considering I am the first author?

Related, possible duplicate: Co-author contributed almost nothing and is blocking publication

Thanks for responding. @cag51 The link you shared is very useful. There is one difference though - in my case, my ex-advisor did guide me through the research and shared feedback on the writing. What can I do in this scenario? Do I really have to sacrifice a publication despite honest work and 2 years of effort?

It sounds like you need to resolve the conflict with your first advisor.

In that case, it sounds like the relevant link is this one: Co-author blocking publication. In particular, the top answer there is exactly what I would have written here (though probably not what you wanted to hear, unfortunately).

You should explain what exactly "not letting you submit it" means. Are they categorically ruling out publication or are they suggesting changes? If they are suggesting changes, how extensive/reasonable are those suggestions? Arguing about those with an ex-advisor is a very different game from arguing about a complete denial for publication.

This is quite a tricky situation. You can't really submit until they either approve or withdraw from the paper. I think, assuming you have asked them several times, then your best option may be to drop an email to your head of department. Stay very polite - emails often get forwarded on, and ask them for advice on what to do. I would think they will most likely forward that to your co-author (without you being on the email) and ask what they are playing at, and things will then move.

Things "might" then move, actually. But good advice.

According to the comments, your ex-supervisor is a coauthor of the paper. The nature of their contributions likely makes it impossible to cut out parts of the paper to obtain a version they would not be considered a coauthor of.
You need the consent of all coauthors for submitting a paper.
How to proceed will depend on the nature of your ex-supervisors refusal.
Scenario A: They refuse based on objections to the research itself or its presentation.
Work under the assumption that their objections are genuine as much as possible, and address them. Do keep in mind the possibility that there could be a flaw in your research approach, maybe even a fatal one. Also keep in mind that publishing a paper with coauthor will on occasion involve making compromises in how to present stuff (and that having the paper published probably is more important than having everything presented just the way you'd prefer it).
If above assumption becomes difficult to sustain, consult another expert in the area (maybe your new supervisor). If that expert is very positive about the merits of the draft, ask them to support your case. (If you get a mere "well, I'd consider this draft publishable somewhere, I guess" - forget about the paper and move on.)
Scenario B: They explicitly refuse, in order to spite you.
I would consider this a very unlikely case, because it would not only be unprofessional to do this to a (former) student, but also be unwise to admit this. Here a complaint to their head of department seems in order.
Scenario C: They just don't consent, either giving you silence or delaying getting back to you forever.
Try to get someone both you and your ex-supervisor respect involved. Maybe your new supervisor, maybe a head of department, etc. The involvement you ask for is  simply to ask your ex-supervisor for an update on your paper. Ignoring them will be more problematic than ignoring you, and you'll probably find yourself with either permission to submit, or a variant of Scenario A eventually.


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Am I considered to be a native speaker of English if I was born in the US?
I'm applying for graduate colleges right now in the US. I was born there and did school till 7th grade and then shifted to India where I have been for the last 10 years until now. English is my first language, and I am a US citizen.
Am I considered a native English speaker for the purpose of admissions, or will I need to submit an English test certificate?

If it's your first language, yes. Citizenship and country of birth have nothing to do with it. Also, this question has nothing to do with academia so I'm voting to close.

@astronat I assume there is an unwritten "for the purpose of university admissions" in the question.

Ultimately, each university will set its own policies regarding who counts as native speaker and who needs to provide a test certificate to prove their competence.
I would be very surprised if "place of birth" counts as evidence for language proficiency. Being a US citizen might suffice, but I would not take this for granted, as English isn't officially the official language.
Having completed either school education or your undergraduate at an English speaking institution is a very commonly accepted criterion; and here I would expect that it is taken for granted that a US school or university is English speaking. However, even if your school or university in India taught in English, it may be cumbersome to prove this to admissions.

Thanks for the answer. My institute of study does have English as the only method of instruction so I hope that does work for admissions.


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How to identify the pronouns to use for a single-author when citing them?
I am writing a paper and want to cite an author's work. I don't know the authors pronouns and while I could go by pictures I find of the author online, I cannot find their pronouns anywhere.
I can always write "Author (YEAR) wrote ..." but to mix things up in a whole paragraph I write on author's work, I wanted to use a pronoun. But I don't know which pronoun. (I am not familiar enough with the language of the name either).
By now I think it should become common courtesy to indicate single-author's preferred/used pronouns directly on the publication. If the pronoun is not indicated, please tell me how to work around?

No there is nothing on that, I checked it. It’s an Elsevier journal - seems like many of them have the same guidelines

Welcome to Academia StackExchange! Given the slightly demanding tone in your last paragraph, I think it is worthwhile to remark that your perception is probably a bit biased. The concept of announcing one's pronouns seems to be mainly a thing in English speaking countries. Maybe there are also a few further countries where this is common, but it's far from universal. Just as one data point, in STEM in Germany, it is very uncommon to announce one's pronouns. So if you are citing people from various countries, you will quite often find the situation that they have not announced their pronouns.

So it’s basically something I thought was universal and not specific to certain areas of the world. I just don’t wanna be an asshole.

Well I have multiple paragraphs on the work of this author I heavily criticise (also a reason why I wanna be super correct!) and I just want to have a bit of variety in the sentence structure. If mostly is: work shows x (author, year). Just some variety and it’s like also a trope that is in this authors work and the literature has not adequately criticised yet.

@canIchangethis: Well, maybe it's a bit safer to replace "specific to certain areas of the world" with "depending on the area of the world and also on the specific academic field". For instance, the reason why I explicity mentioned STEM when referring to Germany is that such language issues can sometimes be quite differently perceived in various fields (think of e.g. engineering compared to gender studies). So my comment was not meant as advice on how to act in your situation; I just wanted to make you aware that announcing one's pronouns is not as universal as you might have thought.

(@canIchangethis: Oh, by the way: if you use an expression like "@JonDoe" in a comment, than John Doe is notified about your comment. This facilitates communication if you respond to a particular comment.)

Thanks @JochenGlueck I totally understood ur comment as such. And thanks for the reminder to the @ function

@canIchangethis Just as a note, the fact to you find need to use personal pronouns may be sign that you are making your criticism too personal. Criticize the work, not the author. In doing so, you will find that you mostly need pronouns to refer back to the work (ie it), rather than personal pronouns referring back to the author.

This does not directly answer the title question, but instead of using personal pronoun, in many cases you can achieve the desired variation by using terms like "the paper", "the study", and so on (in addition to "the author" that atom44 suggests, which I also find quite common).
This might be preferable in itself (not simply as a work around). After all, the subject of discussion is usually the work, not the author, and the "Author (year)" is commonly understood to refer to the work. (For example, the Chicago Manual of Style specifically states that "an author-date citation is a form of bibliographic shorthand that corresponds to a fully cited work; it does not refer to a person.")

Oh, oh, this is probably the answer!

In English, you can always use the (singular) pronoun they when referring to people of unknown/unclear gender. See the following (fictional) example:

Smith (2014) finds that children under the age of 3 prefer 3-wheeled bicycles. Their research also shows a preference for the color green.

Oh absolutely, I can. But what if that person really wants their she/her or he/his pronouns? Just imagine they are a trans-female or trans-male (as an example!!).

@canIchangethis I would believe that most people who would absolutely want to be adressed by a specific pronoun would be the few ones who might state them. And most people will probably prefer a gender neutral approach to being misgendered.

The thing is, in m field of research I have never seen anyone state their pronouns (especially not on any publications) that’s why I want to make sure I don’t gender people wrong. And yes, imho, using they instead of another pronoun is also a form of misgendering, right?

In English, the "they" pronoun is not specifically for unknown gender, it is also grammatically correct where the gender is known and binary.

@IanSudbery I know. AFAIK, is can be both: a pronoun used to adress a person of unknown gender and a pronoun to adress non-binary persons. I see it as a from of umbrella pronoun that includes everyone, and while most people rather specify their gender more closely (e.g. her/him) it is as if I would call an animal an animal, and some animals might say: but I am a giraffe, others might be content to staying a not-further disclosed animal. But calling any of them an animal is not wrong.

Sursula, I wished it were like that. I would be fine if they were a default one could always go back to. But I thought that’s not how it is. See also the comments under the question telling me that pronoun disclosures don’t happen in some parts of the world.

I think it would be problematic to require (or even encourage) authors to include preferred pronouns in their papers. Some people would want to leave this ambiguous, for example to avoid any real/perceived bias in the review process, etc.
I think you have a few options:

Research the author and see if you can find an interview/bio (which are often written in 3rd person) -- you seem to have already done this
Ask colleagues in the field if they know, they may have met this person at a conference for example.
Use 'they/their' as others have suggested
Use 'the author'  (  Surname (1992) set out to prove that the world is flat. However, the author was unsuccessful because ... ).
Email and ask them. If the gender of the name is ambiguous in English they have probably been misgendered before and would appreciate the attempt to get it right.

Jeah I think the addition to a preferred citation could come far after the review process, like in production stage.

But besides that, I am very grateful for the suggestions and as you said I have done that

Upvoted. I particularly like that you mentioned the option to simply ask the author. "Just ask" is suprisingly often a surprisingly simple and efficient solution to a problem. :-)