text:
CV for PhD application: should I list a job I am yet to start?
This is the position I am currently in: I finished a Master's a couple of months ago and I plan to start a PhD in a year's time. In the meantime I have applied for jobs and got a very decent and fixed-term one as a research assistant (so, perfect).
Before I start working I will have had to submit at least one PhD application which asks for a CV. My question is: should I mention this job at all in my CV (clearly stating that I haven't started yet), or just omit it?
This question is slightly similar to this, except that for a job instead of an internship, and the answers were quite mixed.
The way I see it, listing it would mean that (i) a good institution has accepted me to work in a good post, and (ii) unless things go very wrong, I will have gained valuable experience before I start the PhD. The possible drawbacks of listing it are (i) it's not really experience I have in the moment, so I can't be favourably judged on something I don't have, (ii) potentially not looking humble enough.

an application is not the place to be humble.

Assuming you actually officially have the job, definitely, without a doubt, list it.  Put the appropriate start date for the job, and the university will take it for what it's worth.

If you have formally accepted the position, you can use the word "starting" with your start date to indicate it. Either way, you will probably be asked about what you're actually doing while you're applying for a program, but adding it on there ensures that, at the very least, if you forget to update your CV or accidentally provide an older CV for some reason, your bases are covered and the viewer is able to see that what was a prospective job is now likely your current job.
Example:

Underwater Basket Weaver, Foo Inc., Oahu, HI
Starting July 2124

Don't add in stuff you do not 100% own.

Thank you, this is exactly what I ended up doing! And completely agree with your last sentence :) (hence my question, actually)

You could compromise by not stating it in your CV since you have not started the job yet, but mention it in other places of your application. There will either a motivation letter or an email sending the application itself, in which you could mention it.
However, it is relevant that this new job is mentioned somewhere since it may impact in logistic decisions of when to start your PhD. A group/program might need/require someone to start within a time frame. Having a knowledge of time constraints from the student might weigh on their decisions.

Thanks for your comment, I agree. The fact is that the first assessment is only based on a CV and written work, so I can't think of any other place where to put it. Moreover, there is no overlap between the fixed-term job ending and the PhD starting

Then mention it on the CV, as you said, clearly stating that it is something that you will start in X and finish in Y.


text:
My admission is revoked after accepting the admission offer
I applied to PhD program and gladly received official admission offer on the 29th of March. They guaranteed me four-year funding. I accepted the admission offer and was preparing for obtaining student visa.
I accepted the offer on the 13th of April, declining two admission offers from other institutions.
However, my application page suddenly changed that my admission is rejected. A staff of the department said that they decided to rescind my admission offer on April the 22nd.  What can I do now?
I received this message this morning:

My sincere apology for this unfortunate admission circumstance. There was a misunderstanding after the initial admission process, and the initial determination of "Deny" for your application made by our faculty was indeed the decision that should have been maintained. Later, due to a misunderstanding, we reversed the admission decision from "Deny" to "Offer". After this change was made, the faculty who had considered your application - and who denied your admission - confirmed their denial of admission due to lack of funding available to support you. For this reason, we needed to change your offer of admission back to the original "Deny" status. Yours was a very competitive application, and I am sorry to have to rescind our offer of admission. We therefore ask that you disregard our offer of admission and funding, which were made in error.
My sincere apology for this misunderstanding, and best wishes to you as you pursue other graduate program offers,

Side discussions on similar cases, answers in comments, and similarhave been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before writing another comment.

Given your username, the details, etc., I assumed that this is happening in the US and tagged the question accordingly. Please [edit] your question if this was incorrect.

Are you sure there wasn't any fine print or language saying your admission was contingent on available funding or something similar that would allow them to do this? It does seem odd they wouldn't feel at all obligated to follow through.

@GotoSeattle Would be interesting to hear how this went on further? What did you do and what was the outcome?

I would recommend the following:

Contact the other universities and ask if they might still be
willing to admit you (this might be your easiest way out). If the
answer is negative make sure to keep their answers for the later
points.
Write to the university that revoked the offer stating (in a
friendly tone) that you turned down other offers due to their offer
and that this situation leaves you (and them) is a suboptimal
situation. If the result of point 1 was negative then add this
information too. Ask them for a solution. If the mistake was made
just on your application then they might consider admitting you to
avoid a law case. If they wrongly offered to all applicants (e.g.
software bug) then they will not be able to do this.
If point 1 and 2 do not lead to anything then write to them a second
time threatening with a law case in order to cover your damages
caused by their mistake. But still in friendly words along the lines that you would prefer not to etc ... (Many people in the comments below suggest to skip this step and go for the lawyer right away "Never threaten to sue. Either do it, or don't").
Get a lawyer to discuss further actions.

Other points to consider:

How long was their offer there? If it was just there for 30 min it
might be different to being there for days and they decided to revoke
weeks after you accepted.
Was the offer conditional on anything?
Assume you win with the help of a lawyer - do you want to spend the
next 4-5 years of your life in this environment? I am not saying yes or no - it is just something to consider.

According to the original question, the admission offer was made on March 29, and the rescinding email was received on April 23.  That's almost four weeks.  In particular, the rescinding email was sent out after  April 15, which is the common US deadline for accepting all first-round graduate funding offers (and by extension admission offers), making it much less likely that other universities can still extend admission and funding.

You may want to flip points 3 and 4. Having the letter on attorney letterhead will carry much more weight.

@Pyrotechnical certainly a possible way but might destroy the basis for a direct communication (not via lawyers)

@lordy I suppose, but I think you'd be in that venue anyways if you are intending to write a letter threatening legal action. At least if it's on an attorney's letterhead, the attorney will help craft the letter that cites specific and appropriate law; ideally the letter is forwarded to the university's legal department and they determine it's not worth the cost of a legal battle and provide a concession presumably with an NDA attached.

@lordy I would be surprised if such letters were not shown to the legal department on the Uni side of things from the very start anyway. By threatening to use legal action without seeing a lawyer first, OP just gives Uni opportunity to be the first party that actually puts lawyers at work on this.

-1 Never threaten to sue. Either do it, or don't, if you decide to seek a lawyer's input into this,do it before point 3, not after. You don't want to play your hand prematurely, and IF they believe you, they will cease communicating with you entirely. If they don't believe you're really going to sue, you just look like a jackass to them and erase all goodwill that they could have possibly had towards you for their mistake.

@Mołot I would not be surprised to see a complete lack of communication between different departments / offices of the University. I also would not be surprised by a complete lack of professionalism or common sense among University administrators.

Consider the situation: he threatens to sue, they admit him with no funding, take his money for the Master's portion. No professor will pick him up because they think that he got in solely due to on a mistake, so at the end of two years he leaves with a master's. A good situation?

@Adonalsium I agree with your counter points but not enough to downvote myself.  The answer is basically good but could be improved with the minor changes about the order/action involving lawyers.

@user1717828 I will un-downvote if this gets updated, of course.

Before you reach item 3, consider talking to the ombudsperson if the university has one.

"We therefore ask that you disregard our offer of admission and funding"  IANAL, but I wonder if this isn't the critical phrase.  They do say "I am sorry to have to rescind.", but the 'ask you to' bit makes me wonder if they realize that their withdrawal the offer is legally difficult.  If you have not gotten a resolution by the end of this week, I think you need to step up to a lawyer early next week.  The cynic that I am suggests to me that they will give you the go-around hoping you will solve their problem for them.

How realistic is it to advise a young person, probably somewhere in a country far away with a very limited resources, to sue a university?

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text:
Is it important to be a co-author when PI takes first authorship on your work?
I have been in biomedical research for a long time without any good number of publications.
Recently, my work is now being published by my PI. My PI asked someone else to do another part of work. I was then asked to email the methods and results but did not provide me any chance to write a paper. Now I am placed as a second author on this paper and 6 other persons out of 9 are guest authors. I can see that this paper has at least 60% contribution from my work. It is emotionally hurting and extremely disturbing to see this unfair authorship practice, which I am asked to silently accept. It is even more hurting to see the names of all guest authors who I only know by name but never contributed a dime of work to this paper.
Should I accept this issue silently?
I'm aware that the universities favor their faculty members, no matter how many nice words are posted on their webpages on authorship misconduct.
Would it be wise to withdraw myself completely from this article?
Any other options?
I was advised by another faculty member that some very senior PIs still work in old-fashioned way of authorship, where they always want to take first as well as corresponding authorship, pushing postdocs on second spot. Besides, accepting this unfair practice would still not be so harmful for future employments as prospective employers can still figure out based on the names of authors that first person is a PI and the next one is actual person who did the most work.
Is it true?

Also, keep in mind the difference between paper authorship and lab work. They are not necessarily the same

I understand what you mean. I'm not a lab worker. Though I am aware that postdocs are normally considered as blue-collar workers by many faculties.

In this work, i have genuine intellectual work. PI asked me as research question. I pursued it by identifying public sources of data, planned suitable methods, verified and interpreted results, passed my intellectual work to the PI, who then wrote the draft without offering me a chance to write a manuscript.

Relevant: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html (aka the "Vancouver protocol")

I think using the term "Vancouver protocol" in front of the PI is like challenging their authority and therefore it may set conflict immediately. Besides, the Vancouver guideline recommends approval of final draft as one of the condition and I think this particular condition is in control of PI.

I don't see any logical reason why you should withdraw your name from the authorship list. This only hurts you in the long run. You should want to have credit for your work.
You might politely ask your advisor why the "guest authors" have been included, and what contribution they have made (since you said 60 percent was your work, what about the other 40 percent), and then discuss it further if you don't like or aren't satisfied with your advisor's answer.

You are right. I will do it. So far I know the following: My PI considered that she passed me an idea and I was a sort of brainless child of her, who followed her. The reality is that she provided me a research question, but I decided the methods and data to use.

Normally (?) you should be first author and she should be last. At least that's what PI's in my area do, which isn't too far from your field. PI's don't need first author papers, for them it's as good to be senior author - the paper is done in their group and this is indicated by occupying the last position in the author order. PI's also don't write papers, they have students/postdocs writing them. They only help, give feedback, rewrite, etc.
Is this different in your field? Is your PI at a rather early stage in his/her career, maybe still postdoc? Is it the first paper you are publishing together?
The guest authors is a different story, and if they are guest authors - not contributing authors - then they shouldn't be on the paper. There are many questions around here what to do in those cases.
I do feel that a PI who invites half a dozen of guest authors might also take the ethics of authorship order not too serious...
Depending on what you plan for the future, your reaction will range from swallowing this up to complaining at the institute. The latter won't improve your relationship, but it could make the group better for future group members.
You could try to find out whether there is a ethical board at the institute that cares about things like plagiarism, and contact them regarding the authorship question - not to blame the PI (you do not even need to mention who he/she is), but in order to get their advise and possibly support.

My PI is a very senior researcher, holding well-established professor position and I don't see any reason other than the barter approach which allows her to claim a guest authorship on papers published by her collaborator's group in exchange of passing guest authorship to friends. Yes this is my first paper with her. However I found that this is her standard practice when it comes to as authorship on articles written by work done in her group. This means all postdocs and her occasional PhD hires have to swallow this unfair practice.

Do you talk about this within the group of postdocs and PhD's, and do they share your view? If so, the postdocs (they depend less on a single professors' recommendation letters) may have a word with the professor, or even someone at the institute who can have a word with her (ethical board, head of administration or department, ...). The goal should not be to take the professor down, but a few words from the right person may change her behaviour to the better.
Personally, I would reduce my input to the required minimum and look for a different position as soon as possible...

I am in a small group with only postdoc. Other three persons, senior researchers, have no objection with this type of authorship policy. In addition, non-PhD research assistants do not contribute as researchers. I think your suggestion is really good.

You should keep your name on the paper. Since the meaning of name order varies a lot by field, it is common to put a note of your contribution next to multi-author publications on your CV. So you will still be able to claim this paper as your work and list it with "(60% contribution)" or similar brief explanation.

I think this is a good advice, although not sure if my PI will honor that request.

This is not something you ask your PI about! It's your CV, and you put a factual statement on it. Your PI doesn't get a say in this. The only requirement for this is that your name appears on the paper.

Also, this is an extremely normal and benign thing to do. If your PI has a problem with this, your group is dysfunctional and it is time to cut your losses and leave.

So true. I see your point

I have edited my question. I would appreciate if you have any feedback

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text:
How much am I allowed to edit my ESL friend's Master's Thesis?
I am lucky enough to be on a good schedule with my own edit: Thesis  and have a little extra time. Earlier in the year, I offered to edit one of my classmate's/close friend's dissertation in Computer Science. I made sure to leave enough time to do this in the writing process and they gave me a copy to edit a week before the deadline.
The time frame is fine, but the issue is I am unsure of how much help I am allowed to offer. They are an ESL (English as a Second Language) student, and I don't believe they have had much formal English training. Our University makes clear that they accommodate ESL students, as it is a large portion of the student base. The dissertation guidelines note they don't come down hard on syntax and grammar, but that the paper does need to make sense in written English, and that the examiners can't grade a paper they can't understand.
I'm looking at the paper now, and it's pretty rough. I'm not going crazy over the syntax and am helping with that some. However, I'm finding I'm having to make a lot of corrections and completely restructuring sentences and paragraphs in order to make the sentences make sense.
My question is how much should I be fixing? How much would I be allowed to fix? I am mostly worried about plagiarism, as it would be obvious that my friend's paper has been dramatically changed. My friend's supervisor has seen some drafts of his writing, and it would be obvious if the writing was suddenly much clearer. Getting a paper edited is not against the rules, but I have to make so many dramatic edits I'm worried it may risk plagiarism.
When there's a bad argument, I don't rewrite it, but just write a sentence or blurb below it to guide my friend to making a better one. Like, "do you have evidence for this?" or, "this is not relevant here, move to...".
Thanks for the advice!

Ask your friend's advisor whether this is permitted.  And to what extent.

Most colleges I know of have a Writing Center of some sort that offer resources on helping student's write better. Perhaps refer them there?

Michael - That would have been good to look up a few months ago, they do have one, but it's open M-F by appointment, and my friend works a 9-5 unfortunately. @GEdgar, that's a good point. I think the onus is on my friend to ask that, but I will pause before continuing. The advisors here tend to be... aloof. The advisor has seen the writing several times at this point and not commented. The advisors are also the graders though, so I'm not sure how much they can say.

Can you expand the abbreviation ESL at least once?

@henning  can do, and done.

It sounds like you're doing all the right things regarding helping without actually writing for your friend. I would explain to your friend, and ask them to meet with their adviser, either with or without you, to discuss how much/what type of help is appropriate. With the adviser included in the process, and some boundaries identified, it will be clear that plagiarism is not taking place. That being said, this is a huge time committment on your part. It might help you and your friend for them to work with a writing coach. Your school probably has a writing center or ESL center that can help with this.

Thank you! The only problem is that the advisor is known for being a bit of a brush-off, or can be unresponsive, we may not hear back in time. But I think this is a good thing to try, and if not responded to, it will establish a paper trail of good intent in the event of any issues.

Make sure that your email in which you ask to meet contains a very brief description of the problem. Even if (s)he does not respond, you will still have left a paper trail showing that you intended to act in good faith.

Exactly.  There are people who are trained to do just this, while extending the non native speaker's facility with English, without risking plagiarism accusations.

As far as I am aware, the use of proofreaders to correct grammatical or usage errors is not normally a problem. Regulations cover the intellectual content—the ideas should be those of the Ph.D. candidate, but there's no reason they shouldn't be able to have someone help them with writing.
If there's a writing center that students are encouraged to use, then it would stand to reason that a friend should be able to help. Your creation of a paper trail through a marked-up copy shows your contributions and should act as a defense in case there is an accusation of plagiarism.

This isn't about plagiarism; it's about academic honesty. Your statement that the paper is now "dramatically changed" points to that. If the paper is 60% your friend's work and 40% your work, this is dishonest. 20% your work is dishonest---that's one chapter out of five.
This is a very common problem for nonnative writers of English at the PhD level. When a university grants a degree, there's an assumption that the student is leaving with the ability to function professionally in an English-speaking environment (regardless of where the person plans to live and work). Language skill is inseparable from subject-area knowledge. I've worked as an editor with PhD students and new professors from other countries for many years. It's clear to me that their level of English is directly related to their ability to understand and analyze complex concepts. Both mature simultaneously over time.
I NEVER edit a dissertation so that it turns out at MY language and intellectual level. This would be an ethical violation and a disservice to the student. Those who plan a career in academia will immediately be faced with much higher challenges as soon as they have their PhD in hand: the journal articles and book required for tenure, followed by active research and writing for the duration of their career. If I do their work for them now, there will never be an end to it.
From what you write, it appears that your friend is simply not equipped to write a dissertation. I know this sounds harsh, but a dissertation isn't a trivial thing. It represents years of study and hard work. As an editor I could turn out a dissertation for an ESL student that would be superior to one written by a native English writer. That would be wholly unfair. Students and faculty from other countries simply need to come to terms with the fact that they have this challenge to overcome and that overcome it they must. Thousands have done this, and your friend needs to bite the bullet as well.
My advice: pull out of editing this dissertation. Tell your friend, "This really isn't ready to be edited. You need more help than I feel comfortable giving."
Sorry to be so long-winded. This is a really important issue. When your computer is getting eaten alive by a worldwide virus you want to know that the person charged with eradicating the virus did his or her own work in the PhD program. So many important roles in society related to our safety, health, financial well-being, and so on depend on competence fairly gained through one's own hard work.

I'd just like to add that your friend's situation is very similar to native English speakers who major in foreign languages and litteratures. They're expected to develop full competence in their second language, which takes years of work. They're held to a high standard of language competence, which is unlike the leeway you describe being given to ESL students.

Good points, and ultimately, I ended up telling them that they need to redo the whole thing, and engage with a coach. I also realized, in my naivete, that I dramatically misunderstood the difference between a thesis and dissertation. My question is actually about a thesis for a Master's, which is why there was some leniency allowed. It's for a STEM course, so excellent English does not determine how good they actually are at their field, which is quite good.

If the paper is 60% your friend's work and 40% your work, this is dishonest. 20% your work is dishonest---that's one chapter out of five. I'm not sure value of editing can be quantified in this way. The OP has not produced one chapter out of five, they haven't produced any chapters. That said, I appreciate that editing can push a paper's value from a lower-tier conference to a higher-tier one.

"Language skill is inseparable from subject-area knowledge." "Level of English is directly related to their ability to understand and analyze complex concepts." Good god, where to even start.

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text:
Reproducible science: do entities exist requiring Level 3 of TOP standards?
Quite many (if not most of) scientific articles, related to computational sciences, which I have seen, do not share both data and code leading to the figures.
This may have of course good reasons due to other than scientific, still substantial aspects involving intellectual property and data protection laws.
Not widely known (less than 1000 Google results) is though this quote on reproducible science:

An article about computational science in a scientific publication is
  not the scholarship itself, it is merely advertising of the
  scholarship. The actual scholarship is the complete ... set of
  instructions [and data] which generated the figures. (David Donoho, 1998)

Obviously, scientists trying to climb on the giants' shoulders should experience more and more difficulties with growing science complexity.
Then, there is also a set of "TOP" (Transparency and Openness
Promotion) guidelines to establish science reproducibility.
According to the CoS, Center for Open Science:

Over 5,000 journals and organizations have already become signatories
  of the TOP Guidelines.

There are of course open access journals, but this is about free distribution of articles (very good but not necessarily reproducible).
Now my question is, is this TOP model elsewhere binding or is it sort of idealistic: specifically, are there journals/universities really inforcing the highest Level 3?

Level 3: Data [and code] must be posted to a trusted repository, and reported
  analyses will be reproduced independently prior to publication.

Further sources:

"Building Research Integrity Through Reproducibility
University of Utah" Victoria Stodden, 2018 slides

I'm trying to figure out how Level 3 would actually work - who would do the independent analysis before publication? I don't think running the provided code on the provided data to be an independent analysis (and if the TOP guidelines do, shame on them). So, I'm going to go with a no, it isn't done since there isn't really a way to do it properly.

@JonCuster regarding independent, I think they refer here just to reproducibility, or? i.e. me, you, anybody, could get the code and the data and produce same results without even much understanding what is it all about. - following Donoho, you have so to say the complete set of instruction to reproduce the experiment. This of course does not setup an "independent" scientific review.

There is at least one peer-reviewed journal, reScience, that explicitly publishes replication of existing work.

ReScience is a peer-reviewed journal that targets computational research and encourages the explicit replication of already published research, promoting new and open-source implementations in order to ensure that the original research is reproducible.

So as such it does require high TOP levels.
Overlay journals such as those in EpiSciences play well with reproducible science, since their model is that you put everything online first, and the "journal label" is applied by a review committee that agrees that the results are correct and worthy of inclusion in the journal


text:
Searching for PhD theses in google scholar
It seems like PhD theses are way more rare in the Google Scholar index than globally done.
If my assumption is correct they get published as well, is there a primary search engine for that?
Specifically I am interested in comp. science and information systems mgmt topics.

"PhD" is a title, not a piece of scholarly work. Are you talking about dissertations/theses? Many if not most of these do not get published.

As Matteo points out, PhD theses are rarely published online unless the awarding University uploads it to their own digital archives. Typically you will have to go to the library and get the physical printed version of it if you wish to read.

Is there a good reason for that actually?

@J.Doe many theses are not much more than a collection of published papers, there is no need to invest into publishing such theses

Aside from a university's own digital archives, you have several options to get copies of dissertations or theses.
A large fraction of the world's libraries list their holdings on WorldCat, and it's one of the first places I check for dissertations and theses. Ask your librarian if you want to get a copy of something on there via loan or look on your library website for interlibrary loan. I have received many dissertations via interlibrary loan.
You can also find many dissertations and theses listed on Google Books or HathiTrust, but they rarely can be downloaded. Google Books does not seem to have more than Google Scholar, but it provides links to WorldCat on the left side for each item. I often use both Google Books and WorldCat to do full text searches of books, and I sometimes find dissertations this way.
ProQuest is also a good source of digitized dissertations and theses. The service requires a subscription, but if you're affiliated with a US university then they probably have one.
Usually it's easier to find journal articles based on dissertations than the dissertation itself. So keep that in mind. I usually try to get both if the journal article is important as the dissertation often has extra details or tabulated data (compared against the plots in the journal article).
Few Russian libraries are on WorldCat. So, for Russian dissertations, I've found most I've wanted to be at the Russian State Library, but from what I understand you have to be present to read them, or have a library card to download more than the preview for the digitized ones. My university's interlibrary loan service has been able to get abstracts of these after many months of waiting, however.
One last option is to contact the author. I've done this many times and have received everything from no response at all, apologies that they are not able to provide a copy for technical reasons (old document format), to a copy of the dissertation or thesis in question.
Here are some related questions with other answers:

Is there a smarter way to search for PhD theses for a specific topic?
Worldwide Dissertation Database? or French, German, Italian ones?
Search all Theses online

Searching for PhD theses on Google platforms is very simple. Check these tricks:

"in partial fulfillment" -sample -handbook "doctor of philosophy“ filetype:pdf Check the results (125,000)
inurl:etd "doctor of philosophy“ -sample -handbook filetype:pdf Check the results (19,300)
Visit https://www.netvibes.com/ircnigeria#FREE_Virtual_Libraries for links to open repositories of theses worldwide.

Listed on the page are
- Global ETD Search. http://search.ndltd.org/;
- ProQuest's open access ETDs. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com
- Open Access Theses http://oatd.org
- Openthesis http://www.openthesis.org/
- ETHOS http://ethos.bl.uk/Home.do


text:
Advisor asking to cite his works in my thesis. Not sure if the right thing to do
I am currently writing my thesis, and so far I've mentioned some well known related artcles focusing on a certain family of methods. My advisor has also published a similiar work, which is not influential or as diverse compared to other methods - the work also focuses more on utilization aspect rather than benchmark one.
My advisor wants me to mention his work - I feel it would be a little out of place in my thesis, unless I mention some older not necessarily state-of-the-art methods. What should I do?
EDIT: I forgot to mention that this is a master thesis. Aside from that, what feels wrong to me is not having a choice to comply or not with the request and treating citations as a currency. It's a small thing, but if it weren't my advisor I would probably refuse.

What kind of thesis is this? Bachelor, master, PhD?

Just cite it. If something is relevant, even not in the way you see it precisely,  I recommend being generous here. Being too stringent in your citation is not a good way to go, especially if it's your advisor. Nobody likes authors who are citation-parsimonious :)

@Mark it's master

Agree with Dilworth, just cite it. But first check if it isn't such that maybe your advisor knows something that makes his work cite-worthy, in the sense that it should be discussed a bit? Could your work be based upon his to some extend?

I'll discuss it with him. I'm afraid that mentioning my doubts will upset him.

You are working on that subject because your advisor has worked on sth. similar, aren't you. His mentoring will have been based on that work. By not mentioning it you would be hiding valuable information from the reader.

At least where I got my M.Sc. from, the thesis document is supposed to indicate who the advisor was. That should be enough to indicate whose know-how was consulted for the thesis.

It's the same here. The front page of the thesis mentions who the advisor is.


text:
Is having the same reference twice a mistake?
I'm looking at an IEEE paper:
http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85135877899&partnerID=8YFLogxK
Here, the same reference is listed twice: Reference [31] and reference [45] are citing the same source. Is this simply a mistake, or is that the correct way to do it in the context of an IEEE paper?
I have looked at
How to cite the same source multiple times in a row IEEE
but I don't think it answers my question.
The references in question:
[31] K. Wilhoit, “Who’s really attacking your ics equipment?” Trend Micro, vol. 10, 2013.
[45] K. Wilhoit, “Who’s really attacking your ics equipment?” Trend Micro, vol. 10, 2013.

Looks like 'ics' should be 'ICS'. That's another type of common mistake. Always double check your titles in the bibliography.

If it's exactly the same reference, it's a mistake, but a minor (and relatively common) one. The same reference should be cited twice instead.
Arguably it's a mistake the publisher should catch before publication. Certainly automated software should be able to reliably detect duplicated references. But not every publisher has the resources necessary to run this kind of check, and since it's a minor mistake, they might not feel it's necessary to fix, either.


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One year into PhD, feeling lost and inadequate, Help!
I'm 22, and I'm one year into my PhD in History. I immediately started my PhD after finishing my master's, working with the same supervisor. Throughout the years, I've started to become more and more anxious when it came to writing essays and doing research. I hated working on my master's thesis, but I nonetheless grabbed the opportunity to start a PhD, because I convinced myself that it was something that I would be good at, I wanted to overcome my anxiety and challenge myself mentally, and the stipend is very decent. Now I'm one year into my PhD, and I'm constantly anxious and depressed. I feel like I've accomplished nothing, I have huge problems concentrating. My head feels so scrambled right now, that I can barely figure out my research questions and key thesis. Whenever I read articles on my topic, I feel like I can barely manage the information. I feel stupid and totally inadequate. Communicating with my supervisor is horrible, since I go mute from anxiety mid-conversation.
I feel trapped in my PhD. I feel horrible, but I also feel like I can't quit, because I would disappoint so many people and regret it for the rest of my life.
Any advice on coping with these issues, and getting back on track? Any particular advice on how to start delineating a research project? Am I already in a hopeless situation, or can I still 'save' my PhD?
Edit : My university doesn't offer counseling for PhD students, but I have been seeing a shrink for the past year. I don't know if I'm improving or not.

"I go mute from anxiety mid-conversation" sounds like a good point to start discussing with a mental health professional. If your university offers mental health help, start from there. You can also read How should I deal with discouragement as a graduate student?. It's the top-voted question here, which means you are not alone.

Try a new therapist! Ask for a recommendation for someone who might be able to also recommend some anti-anxiety meds. If you are not sure if the sessions are helping, then it is not a good fit. Also it is normal to try several therapists.

Maybe take a break from academia for a year and evaluate and decide with your life choices

This is the reason you gave for pursuing a PhD:

 I hated working on my master's thesis, but I nonetheless grabbed the opportunity to start a PhD, because I convinced myself that it was something that I would be good at, I wanted to overcome my anxiety and challenge myself mentally, and the stipend is very decent.

You don't say that you were anxious about writing the thesis, you say that you hated it, which sounds to me like you simply don't like doing academic research. But that is the whole point of a PhD. Furthermore, the only career a PhD in history really prepares you for is research and teaching, and you don't say anything about your feelings about teaching.
So it sounds like you enrolled because of extraneous expectations from both yourself and others. Getting a PhD is not a merit badge, it's very specific training for a very specific purpose. There are plenty of other ways to show that you are smart. And "losing" one year is no big deal, especially when compared to spending even more time going down what might well not be the right path for you.

@JohnColeman The OP said that they were seeing a therapist, but made no mention of a depression diagnosis. I think you're right that I should back off "clearly not the right path," but a self-assessment that someone hates doing something is a pretty good indicator that they don't like doing it.

Hi! I actually really like the teaching responsibilities I have. I find teaching stressful, but exciting at the same time. Which by the way, is how I used to feel when I just started my PhD. Terrified, but sort of excited.
I've actually loved to write as a child and as a teen. I also remember liking to do research in my freshman year, but as time went on, I started to feel really insecure about my research and writing skills. I really feel like anxiety hit me in the face, although it's probably something that has been building up for quite some time.

Hi @kaliope it's impossible for a random stranger on the internet such as myself to know your entire situation, but I can say that grad school is the worst possible place to figure stuff out (or deal with mental or physical health issues, for that matter). There's really nothing preventing you from coming back to this or another PhD program after some time away, even though it might not seem that way right now. People do it all the time. Best of luck.

Under ANY circumstances, put your health and your psychological condition first.
Always, ALWAYS put it above your grades, academic accomplishments, or career.

Would it be possible for you to take a break? Can you ask your doctor(s) to provide you with the necessary paperwork? And then talk to your supervisor and the university administration on how to arrange for a break?
You do NOT need to reveal to them how you hate your research.  Just explain that you are having health issues.

A break should help you to relax. Ideally, you should forbid yourself, for some time, even to think about your university experience. After having some rest, you may want to ask yourself several questions:
(1) What are your plans for future, at large?
(2) How valuable will a PhD degree be in the light of those plans?
(3) Why are you staying in academia? Was this YOUR choice or someone else's choice? Is any social pressure involved? Or prestige?  (Could it be, say, that your parents want you to please them with a PhD from a prestigeous school, and you cannot say no?)
(4) Why exactly do you hate your research?  Do you hate research as such, and the entire academic life?  Or do you detest your area, History?  Or do you, perhaps, detest the topic and direction of your studies?
Having at hand clear answers to these questions will help you to decide if you wish to continue your studies.

From the bottom of my heart, I wish you luck in your career -- but, first of all, recovery from the stress.  Put your health first -- this is more important than anything.

Sounds like it's time for a leave of absence.  A letter from a medical or mental health provider could be helpful in arranging this.
Lower the stakes for yourself by postponing any long-term decisions.  You can withdraw from the current semester and take a break (we don't know for how long yet) without burning your bridges.
I'm not going to push medications; but I will go so far as to say that you might want to ask your medical provider about possible medications to support the psychotherapy, and then discuss the options, pros and cons, etc., with him or her.


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An interviewer has asked for a copy of an unpublished manuscript I'm writing, is it safe to do this?
The paper is one I'm working on as part of my current role for which I'm not the PI. Is it safe/sensible to share this with my interviewer? I don't have any published articles at present, so I assume they are just interested in seeing writing samples and such. Should I offer them a copy of my PhD thesis instead?
The interview was for a job in academia I am applying for.

What do you mean by "interviewer"? Are you trying to find a new position? In academia, or industry? Are you being interviewed for a newspaper?

It's an interview for a new position within academia. I'll amend this in the question.

Are you the lead researcher on the paper or is it just something you are contributing to?

I'll be the lead author on the paper yes, but I'm just a research assistant on the grant.

Do you have explicit permission from each of your coauthors to share the manuscript?  If not, you can't ethically share the manuscript, even if you are the lead author/PI.  (Just like submitting for publication.)

"Do you have explicit permission from each of your coauthors to share the manuscript? If not, you can't ethically share the manuscript"  I think that's an extreme view.  Showing somebody a paper in progress is not an important decision.  (I have many coauthors on each paper and I work in a field where there is no confidential information from human subjects.)

There's no concrete, objective answer to this. My opinion is that it's fairly safe to give unpublished manuscripts to an academic interviewer. You definitely need specific permission from all the co-authors on the manuscript, though. If the interviewer is directly in the same field as you, and might be working on the same topic, you might be more hesitant, but it's not a definite "no".  Hopefully, if you're interviewing and considering working with this person, you've already decided that they are not a horrible human being, so you've already done a little of the due diligence.

I believe it is odd for an interviewer to ask for an unpublished paper. It is common for researchers to share partial results though...If your paper is already under review and you, and your co authors believe it is safe to share it, I do not see any problem. Just be aware that there are many awful people in academia, and it is not uncommon for ideas to be stolen.

Do you know of ideas being stolen? My understanding is that it is not actually as common as people tend to think.

Maybe it was just unlucky... or maybe the other group was actually working on a similar project,...,but happened to a friend of mine. He presented his work to another researcher and months latter the other researcher published something similar, right before him.

@JessicaB It is not often that ideas get stolen, but it happens, and if it does, it can get very ugly. Being cautious is thus like an insurance. It is not often that a house burns down/car gets stolen/etc, but you'd rather it not happen or, if it does, be protected.

@Tuco In maths at least it is very common for someone else to be working on the same thing at the same time. I know of a number of instances, one myself.

@CaptainEmacs So you don't agree with 'it is not uncommon...'?

@JessicaB You have to weigh the probability against the cost, that's what I am trying to say. I am aware of at least 2 clear cases where ideas were either stolen or an attempt made to do so, and a number of suspected cases (not mine). It's not a lot overall, on the whole, but it's infuriating nonetheless to whoever it happens.


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Restroom and lunch breaks in medical school
My apologies if this is not the right place to be asking this question.
My pregnant wife is an osteopathic medical student in New Mexico, and she tells me that the school does not always give them a lunch break or bathroom breaks during the day. Today she tells me that they are expected to stay from 8 am to 5 pm without a proper lunch break, and that they are required to take bathroom breaks during lectures because they only get enough time to walk from one class to the next.
So my question is, does anyone know if this is legal? Should the students be allowed at least a proper bathroom break a few times in the day?
I know the academic environment is a little different from the workplace, and that medical school is extremely challenging, but this seems to violate a moral code. I have tried the typical google searches, but nothing of substance presents. Beyond that I don't know where to check without paying for a lawyer or directly asking the school, which could potentially damage her reputation.
If anyone is able to help me out, please provide a source that I can refer to as well (I know this is standard practice). Thank you!
Edit:
Thank you for the feedback. I forgot to mention that the school is private (but not religious), though next year students can start using federal loans. They haven't treated her any differently than other non-pregnant students from what she tells me, I suppose I mentioned her being pregnant to underline my concern with this problem though.
Really the concern comes down to how someone (or a group of people) can be expected to work/study for 8 hours or more without even 1 proper bathroom break or an opportunity to get a proper meal. They are allowed to snack in class and they have a coffee shop in the building that sells muffins and such, but again they have to use these facilities during lecture times and it's hardly a way to get something substantial.
I don't think this is the day to day routine, but it is still common enough that it concerns me. I have trouble understanding why someone would subject themselves to these conditions or worse for 7 years at least (including minimum residency time), but I do have great respect for the sacrifice and perseverance.

The answer would differ by place. It is also, likely, different if the student is also a formal employee. But as you note, what is legal may not always be moral. There is no question that medical students, in particular, are badly abused in the US, at least. It is somehow considered a feature, not a bug. I suspect it is just as bad or worse during residency training. Complaining might help. Medical students have a certain amount of power as it is very expensive for a school to leave a student slot empty. They depend on every seat being filled.

FYI: I think your wife might be able to join a Facebook group for medical student moms or similar and ask what others have done in this situation.

I forgot to mention that the school is private (but not religious), though next year students can start using federal loans. They haven't treated her any differently than other non-pregnant students from what she tells me Once the school accepts students on federal loans, it will certainly have to comply with Title IX, but it may have to do so already. You may be able to work it out by Googling "[university name] title ix". Also note that "discrimination" doesn't mean treating differently. In fact, schools must treat pregnant students differently in order to accommodate their needs.

Medical schools have a long tradition of abusing their students with ridiculous workloads and scheduling, and I suspect that there will be a strong cultural resistance to anything seen as mollycoddling the students.  The same reason hazing persists, generation after generation, it seems to me: "I survived it, and it made me the person I am today, so you get to suffer, too."

Under Title IX, it's illegal for universities receiving federal funding to disadvantage students due to pregnancy. The Department of Education specifically calls out more frequent bathroom breaks as an adjustment that educators must provide to pregnant students.

your school MUST:

Allow you to continue participating in classes and extracurricular activities even though you are pregnant. This means that you can still participate in advanced placement and honors classes, school clubs, sports, honor societies, student leadership opportunities, and other activities, like after-school programs operated at the school.
Allow you to choose whether you want to participate in special instructional programs or classes for pregnant students. You can participate if you want to, but your school cannot pressure you to do so. The alternative program must provide the same types of academic, extracurricular and enrichment opportunities as your school’s regular program.
Allow you to participate in classes and extracurricular activities even though you are pregnant and not require you to submit a doctor’s note unless your school requires a doctor’s note from all students who have a physical or emotional condition requiring treatment by a doctor. Your school also must not require a doctor’s note from you after you have been hospitalized for childbirth unless it requires a doctor’s note from all students who have been hospitalized for other conditions.
Provide you with reasonable adjustments, like a larger desk, elevator access, or allowing you to make frequent trips to the restroom, when necessary because of your pregnancy.

Your wife should first request more frequent breaks from her instructors. If this adjustment is not made, the Department of Education gives this list of steps to follow:

Helpful Tips for Pregnant and Parenting Students:

Ask your school for help—meet with your school’s Title IX Coordinator or counselor regarding what your school can do to support you in continuing your education.
Keep notes about your pregnancy-related absences, any instances of harassment and your interactions with school officials about your pregnancy, and immediately report problems to your school’s Title IX Coordinator, counselor, or other staff.
If you feel your school is discriminating against you because you are pregnant or parenting you may file a complaint:

Using your school’s internal Title IX grievance procedures.
With the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR), even if you have not filed a complaint with your school. If you file with OCR, make sure you do so within 180 days of when the discrimination took place.
In court, even if you have not filed a complaint with your school or with OCR.

Contact OCR if you have any questions. We are here to help make sure all students, including pregnant and parenting students, have equal educational opportunities!

Bryan Krause suggested that she ought to escalate within the departmental (eg, officials within the medical school) before escalating the Title IX coordinator.

In my opinion this is the correct answer for anyone in the US like the OP, although I'd say that meeting with a Title IX coordinator is a bit of a big first step, and I'd suggest a couple escalating steps within the department and anyone who is responsible for student welfare overall in the medical school first, if the initial request isn't productive. Not that it isn't a right to go through the title IX process, just that using all of your rights all the time can impact opinions of people that have some control, and the world is not perfect.

@BryanKrause Yes, that's why I said "your wife should request more frequent breaks", but perhaps I should have made it clearer that this should be with the course organisers initially.

I think that was clear, I meant that the step afterwards should probably be to see if someone else in the medical school can intervene as Step 2 if the initial request with the course organizers is not productive.

Students are not generally employees in the US so comparing the laws that govern a workplace (OSHA and labor laws) is not really relevant. That said, treating your students nicely, even if it is not legally required is still a good thing.
Scheduling students in back-to-back-to-back ... classes is stupid and serves no point but to abuse students. It is completely reasonable for a student to ask for accommodations to be made for bathroom and lunch breaks. Best is probably to email a few professors in advance and explain the situation that the schedule does not allow for any breaks. Then ask them if it would be least disruptive for you to arrive late, leave in the middle, or leave early. You may also want to follow up on if there are safety concerns regarding eating (or evening bringing) food into the classroom. Again, tell them you are going to eat, and want to do it in the least disruptive way possible.
If there is any resistance, then you escalate to the department chair, dean, etc. as needed.


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Will it hurt my chances if I state I want to study Theoretical Computer Science instead of something like AI/ML for PhD?
I will be applying to CS PhD programs coming fall. I have a BA in Mathematics right now.
I am hearing that it is harder to get into a CS PhD program if I state I want to study Theoretical Computer Science because there are less funding opportunities for the area. So if I state I want to study TCS in my SOP, I might have a hard time getting in to a program as opposed to something like Systems or AI that have lots of funding and faculty who are willing to take students. Is this true at all? I am talking about getting into a CS PhD program in the first place by indicating my interest in TCS. I am kind of worried because I do want to pursue TCS in grad school and have done undergrad research in coding theory and also number theory.

What country is this?

It is probably true that you will have a better chance of getting in if you are willing to study AI/ML. However, if you want to study TCS, what will be the point of saying that you want to study AI/ML?

Can only agree with @AgnishomChattopadhyay - if you are accepted into the program saying you want to do AI, would you actually do AI when accepted, or are you hoping you will be allowed to switch to TCS?

Think of graduate admissions as not only a process to be gamed strategically by the applicant, but also as a process of fitting students to the programs that suit them best and vice-versa.

This is a US-based answer.
Theoretical computer science is indeed less well-funded, but it is also less popular, and the effect of this on graduate admissions is complicated.  You should also consider the effect on your eventual chances for jobs after you finish your PhD.
The main effect of TCS being less well-funded is that many lower-ranked, smaller departments do not have anyone in TCS at all and have no plans of hiring anyone, because the people they can hire in TCS would not be able to get funding.  If your record can only get you admitted to, say, University of Georgia, then you are out of luck; they don't have any faculty with primary interests in TCS as far as I can tell.
On the other hand, if you are competitive for admission at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, then you probably need a slightly less impressive record to get admitted in TCS, because they have a lot more applicants interested in AI/ML than their faculty can advise, whereas they only have somewhat more applicants interested in TCS than faculty availability.
You should make sure you are only applying to departments with several faculty primarily interested in TCS, but if you are doing that (and competitive for admission in those departments), then mentioning an interest in TCS probably helps your application.
You should also consider the other end.  Once you get a PhD, only the best researchers in the TCS will eventually get faculty jobs at research universities (or research jobs in industry), whereas merely good researchers in other areas frequently manage to get faculty jobs.

Thanks for that answer! I am looking for faculty whose research areas are around "design and analysis of algorithms". I am aiming for mostly top 30-40 ranked CS PhD programs. Should I be fine with TCS at these schools? I see about at least 3-4 profs doing TCS (some kind of coding theory, algorithms, complexity etc) at most of these programs.

You have to be a little careful here.  Say a department has a professor who primarily works on network protocols, and somewhere in their work they needed to develop an algorithm to solve some network optimization problem which they couldn't find in the literature, so they write an algorithms paper that gets in some second-or-third-tier algorithms conference (or just for a journal).  Now their department advertises them as working in algorithms as well as networking, but that's a bit misleading, and they're not going to be a good advisor for someone who just wants to do algorithms.

So how do I find someone who works just in algorithms? Will they be in related fields? Like graph algorithms, complexity etc. If I see a prof who does "algorithms, optimization, complexity, coding theory" etc, then can I count them as a prof who does TCS? How do I actually know who would be the right advisor? This is to, of course, mention their name in the SOP.

Look at their actual CV/publication list.

Thank you! Do you mind taking a look at my SOP after I am done writing it? Do you have experience reading SOPs written by CS (or TCS in particular) applicants?

I'm a mathematician not too far from CS, not a computer scientist.

I am hearing that it is harder to get into a CS PhD program if I state I want to study Theoretical Computer Science because there are less funding opportunities for the area. So if I state I want to study TCS in my SOP, I might have a hard time getting in to a program as opposed to something like Systems or AI that have lots of funding and faculty who are willing to take students.

The statement about AI is not correct. In fact, AI/ML widely considered the most competitive field to apply in right now, and much more competitive than theory and systems, because there is an explosion of applicants interested in pursuing a PhD in AI/ML, with generally far fewer faculty available than can advise all those interested.
Zooming out a bit: your ability to get in to a PhD program in an area X is roughly a function of (1) your application strength in X (rec letters, profile, and interests), (2) funding in area X, (3) the number of candidates interested in X. You are very focused on (2), but (1) and (3) are probably more important, especially if you are open to being funded through TA-ships rather than RA, which typically doesn't need the faculty to have as much external funding.
Comparing between theory and systems, it's less obvious; as far as I have seen, neither theory nor systems is especially hot at the moment, so they may be roughly equivalent (for metrics (2) and (3)).
This is all besides the point, though: if you are interested in theory research, why not give yourself a chance and apply? By far the most important factor to do a successful PhD is that you are working in a field you believe in. Without a doubt, your interest and excitement at this stage will take you further than just following the money. Good luck!

Graduate studies are no cake-walk. You will likely be totally on your own, motivation-wise. Your advisor will advise you, but very likely it will be up to you to develop the motivation to actually get through - do not expect your advisor to pull you along.
Doing things that interest and motivate you in themselves makes a huge difference when the going gets tough. In the best case, the time will fly by and you will be sad when it's over. If instead you study something that does not really interest you, chances are you'll not get through the darker phases.
Another aspect: If I were on the committee that interviews graduate applicants, I would strongly look for people that show great interest (and somehow give me the feeling that they are able to do it, of course). Especially because that field has less funding, they will try to pick the cherries amongst the applicants. And vice versa - if you apply to a ML/AI course, and the board notices that you don't really feel like it's the most interesting thing for you, your chances of getting taken might diminish significantly.
So, do what your heart tells you. Of course, don't be blind to realities, but if you burn for TCS, then study TCS.

Actually, in the US, you have a lot of time after entering a doctoral program with a bachelors to choose a specialty. The first years are advanced coursework leading to comprehensive exams. You get to look at both areas of specialization and faculty members who might advise you.
Whether a university is more interested in theoretical CS or hot topics like AI depends on the faculty and also on which of the faculty are looking for doctoral advisees.
I wouldn't be too concerned, but it would probably be good to keep your options open for the moment and project some flexibility in a statement of purpose. Saying that your current interests are in more theoretical aspects is almost certainly fine.
Note that acceptance in the US is broad based. A single thing, especially a statement of interest in theory, is likely to have very little weight compared to things like GPA, letters of recommendation, specific courses, and such.
Also note that funding is less for many theoretical fields is less because less is required. If you don't need expensive labs/equipment then there are few funding requirements. Most students in such fields are supported as teaching assistants, which provide a service to the university and are adequately funded. TCS and math are similar in this regard. Even in physics, some theoretical aspects require little if any funding beyond salary. Einstein didn't require an experimental setup to come up with special relativity. (IIRC he was terrible at experimentation.)
Don't overthink it.

So overall, it wouldn't be a problem if I wanna study Theoretical CS (algorithms, graphs, complexity etc) as opposed to ML/AI? It wouldn't hurt my chances of getting in, right?

Generally, not a problem. But specific programs might have specific needs, so not a universal. The US is pretty flexible about such things at your stage.

I am a TCS grad student. Yes, it is noticeable that there is much more funding for ML/AI right now. My advice is to do (or at least try) what interests you. However, I will point you to another field that recently seems to have a hype going on and might be an option for you -- Quantum Computing.
This is not my area of research and so I am not that much into it, and it is definitely a broad field. But in certain areas of QC there is much of TCS involved -- BQP; QMA; the recent result MIP* = RE; Quantum fine-grained complexity, ...
As said, I do not know much about this field, but from what I do know your math background might be beneficial here -- Hilbert spaces, Unitary Matrices, the Spectral Theorem, all stuff that pops up there (to be honest in a finite-dimensional toy variant most of the time, but anyway, depends on how much you want to delve in) and you probably already have learnt (some of) this stuff as a mathematician.
As far as I heard, it is not expected that this QC hype ends soon. Companies are already establishing use cases, consulting companies evaluating applications and in general it is expected to have an impact on industry in the near future (some say next 10 years, some say next 30 years). Furthermore, there is some kind of a  national competition between the US and China on quantum supremacy (and also Europe is investiging a lot recently, but as far as I know they buy their hardware in the US).

So if you are interested in studying algorithms, complexity theory, is it harder for you to be admitted into the program in the first place? (going straight from an undergrad)

To be honest I do not know anything about specific QC PhD programs, I just wanted to help you broaden your perspective and show you another option. Some universities that are into QC (where you might find further information): Texas Austin, University of Waterloo, QuTech (at Delft University), MCQST (Munich) -- just a few (big?) names that came to my mind. There are probably much more, but that should give you a start. I am really not into this community, I am just an outsider who tries to keep up.

Thank you! But I wanted to ask you about TCS in general, not QC. Lets say I wanna work with professors specializing in designing algorithms, studying computational complexity, coding theory etc. Will I have a harder time getting in if I state I am interested in these fields, since they are typically less funded?

I do not think so, it might get harder after the postdoc phase maybe. But there are a lot of professors and institutions doing research related to what you have mentioned.


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How to find less-difficult-than famous unsolved problems?
When I was in my high school I studied 14 undergraduate books with almost all their exercises. I am about to begin my undergraduate in mathematics this week. I love to do research in mathematics. I met a few professors during the last few months and asked them if they can accept me as their 'unofficial' research student but they all refused even if after I become officially an undergraduate student but without taking "research for undergraduates" course or I have be their graduate students.
Trying to do research on my own, I found a book that includes many unsolved problems. My question is that if I choose to do research like most students, that is adding knowledge to mathematics by expanding it gradually and in smaller steps, I can't because I don't have a adviser to know the frontiers and if I want to be an independent researcher I just know the problems that are famous to be impossible to solve!
How can I take a win-win with both; that is how to find 'smaller' unsolved problems like the problems students publish papers on, as an independent researcher when nobody willing to share them?
Also I found out that if learn mathematics along doing research I memorize the materials easily after analyzing them. That's a good side-effect of research compared to only studying.

Actually, there is no reason not to study the hard unsolved problems. The insight into why things don't work in math is just about as valuable as why other things do. In my generation we all studied the as yet unproved "Four Color Hypothesis". Our failures helped give us insight. As a young researcher, I assume you still have a lot of time to become famous.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying in your first paragraph.  Are you saying that they are willing to do research with you if you take a "research for undergraduates" course?  If so, what's wrong with doing that?

@Kimball, yes I have to take the course otherwise I'm considered not officially involved. But I can't take that course because only last-year of undergraduate students can take it and I am a new entry student. The system is not so flexible here, unfortunately.

A book which doesn't have unsolved problems, but which might have problems whose solutions you haven't seen, or introduce you to new ideas, is http://store.doverpublications.com/0486613488.html (apologies if you're already aware of it). I used to read this book in my "high-school" years

@YemonChoi, I haven't seen it but I will check the library. It looks a cool book! Thank you :)

Maybe the first thing to keep in mind is be patient.  Learning mathematics and finding good problems take time, and you're still very young.
In math, at the undergraduate level, the most important thing to becoming a good researcher is to learn a lot of math.  At this level, really the only reason to do research is for fun.  Your goal should not be to get new results--you might or you might not--but your goal should be to understand things and enjoy the process.
Thus my recommendation for doing research on your own is: just learn a bunch of things that seem interesting, and when questions naturally come to you, explore them.  You will probably stumble on to many ideas for research this way, and it doesn't matter if they have been studied/solved before or not (my experience: usually they have, but occasionally you find something new).
If you really want to do something new, it helps immensely to have an experienced mentor guiding you.  They can tell you what is known/what isn't, suggest relevant references and teach you some basic techniques.
It's unfortunate that none of your professors seem willing to work with you now, but there could be various reasons for that, such as being busy and not knowing your abilities/background.  I can't guarantee this, but there's a good chance that if you excel in their courses, one of them may be willing to provide you some informal guidance.
Finally, to directly answer the titular question here are some specific suggestions:

Try reading articles in undergraduate-oriented journals like The American Mathematical Monthly, College Mathematics Journal or Involve.  Many of the research articles are readable by undergraduates, and implicitly or explicitly suggest projects suitable for undergraduates.
You can use Mathematics Stack Exchange and MathOverflow to try find out what is known about a problem you're wondering about.  Also browsing some of the questions and answers will introduce you to some unsolved problems.
If you read an article you find really interesting, and you have some definite ideas about a project, you can try emailing one of the authors for their thoughts.
In the US, we have summer programs like REUs (Research Experience for Undergraduates) at various institutions.  You might look to see if there are any similar opportunities in our around your country.

I do appreciate your very informative answer :) .. I didn't know that there are undergraduate-oriented journals; that's cool.


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Pursuing a UK PhD with a Greek BSc + research experience
I am beginning my final semester of my 4-year undergraduate program, studying Informatics (Computer Science) in Greece, and I expect to graduate this September. I would like to pursue a PhD in the field of astronomy & astrophysics (with a focus on radio astronomy instrumentation), or telecommunications/RF engineering. These two fields have a lot of similarities, especially when it comes to certain aspects of instrumentation.
I am not as interested in Master's studies, because I enjoy conducting research a lot more, which generally tends to prevail in a PhD program. Although pursuing postgraduate studies in Europe is usually hassle-free for European citizens(?), it appears that holding a Master's is a strict requirement to every university in the EU.
However, I've noticed that this is not at all the case with universities in the UK (which should be a bit more accessible compared to e.g. US-based universities, in terms of relocating, visa, paperwork, etc.). This has formed the interest of looking into relevant PhD programs in the UK. Despite my young age (21 years old), I have managed to publish 2 journal papers in the field of radio astronomy and RF engineering, and expect to submit/publish 5 more papers soon.
In case authorship order matters, I've been the 1st author (out of 3) on my first publication and 7th/7 on my second. As for the ones I'm currently preparing, I expect to be 8th/8 on my third paper, 1st/1 on my fourth, 1st/2 on my fifth, 2nd/? on my sixth, and 1st/4 on my seventh. I've been actively working with many coauthors from different institutes around the world, and only 1 publication will consist of coauthors from the lab I've worked with (a different department in my university). I assume this helps promote my experience working with different people from a variety of fields.
I've also worked on countless other projects around the field (including but not limited to education), and I've got over 3 years of industry experience in RF engineering (incl. two full-time jobs, a paid internship in my university, and volunteer work).

Have you got any suggestions on what the best move might be for me? I know most students don't publish until their Master's/PhD's, and different opportunities might be available for me given my experience early on. Considering the lack of a Master's requirement compared to the EU, are UK PhDs ever frowned upon, or are they treated equivalently to EU/US PhDs (given the admission process still favours Master's holders)?

On another note, I've heard that PhD by publication is a thing, but I guess this is more for established researchers late in their career, and as applicable to me. Is this correct, or should it be something to have on my radar?

See the answer for UK to this canonical question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/176908/75368

@AntonMenshov Partially, but I would still appreciate some comments on how helpful my industry experience and publications might be in applying, and how relevant PhD by publication is for young researchers with multiple publications.

@CotoTheArcheryou may want to highlight in your question what particular aspect you are looking for compared to the canonical question. Also, notice, that "Strongly depending on Individual factors" can be a closure reason, so try to have your question applicable to the general audience, not just your individual case.

UK PhDs are not considered in any way worse than US or EU PhDs (or those from anywhere else, for that matter). While it's not always a requirement to have a Master's before starting, many people do. For example, in the department where I did my PhD (big cosmology institute in the UK), out of about 30 students there were probably 3 who started straight after their BSc and maybe 10 who had come from the EU with a 2 year Master's. The rest of us had 3 year BSc + 1 year MSc, or a 4 year MPhys, for example....

However, with your publication record I don't think you will have a problem being accepted with a BSc alone. To be safe, you could apply for Master's and PhDs at the same time.

Please also consider that the typical US PhD program "absorbs" MSc studies: completing  a PhD on average takes two years longer than doing the same in the UK, give or take.

@Lodinn more and more UK PhD programmes absorb a MSc year as well (tho the MSc is condensed down to a single year). In fact, the students start as master students, and only after their first year do they officially become a PhD candidate (after a sort of approval process), in a 4 year programme.


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How can students with varied interests decide which to pursue in graduate school?
I am someone who has wide-ranging interests, and these interests are not terribly interdisciplinary. (Say someone is interested in Physics and History. Or perhaps, Economics and English. Or, Civil Engineering and Music Composition. You get the picture.)
The fields I am interested in do not inherently intersect. They can be fused, however I don't think this interests me, because it would result in a "perversion" of each respective field, for lack of a better word. It seems forced...and would probably ruin my interest in both fields.
It's not that I "like" one field more than another; both fields are interesting to me and I cannot calculate which one is more interesting. The fact is, they are very different, and I like each one for different reasons.
I want to go to grad school, because I enjoy learning, reading, writing, etc. and I am interested in a career in academia. But I am trepidatious about immediately going into grad school because I basically believe, "Whichever field I end up choosing is the field I will be destined to spend the rest of my life (or at least many years) exclusively studying. I really don't want to mess this decision up."
How can someone in my situation decide which interest to pursue in graduate school?

The question itself is to chatty. Summarize before you post. For your answer, it is obvious; each one has their own interests and limits, it is for you to discover and reach. Anyway, this question is primarily opinion based and has to be closed; I'm flagging this.

I understand you cannot calculate which one you like more. Do you have an idea which one is easier to get a job later?

@scaaahu -- Yeah, one is definitely more valued in the economy. One field is more "left brain" and the other more "right brain."  Like in the three examples above, the first field is generally regarded as being better for job opportunities. Do you think that is what should determine my decision?

Well, all I can say is that the decision is yours which means no one else should make it for you. And I do not want to say the decision should be based on future job prospects. But, it should be a factor for you to consider. We all need to make living.

Voting to close this question as too broad, as there are too many questions in there. Moreover, most of the individual questions are not well fit for our format as they are too broad in themselves, polls or nothing we can answer without exactly knowing your personal values. A question that you may ask here is something along the lines of: “What aspects can one consider when choosing if one is equally interested in both subjects?” (By the way: Stack Exchange is not a forum.)

@Wrzlprmft -- Should I edit this question or is it better to create a new one? Can you revise my body to fit SE standards to preempt closure?

@Kyle: If you can edit quickly, edit. I have no experience with this style of undergraduate studies, so I do not feel qualified to edit.

Please explain why you want to do a Masters: without knowing that, no answer is possible. Don't fear question-closure - it's perfectly fine for a question to be put on hold while it's improved, and then reopened when appropriate.

@Wrzlprmft -- I am sorry but I do not quite understand the Academia SE's rules. I see several open questions that are clearly situational and totally subjective. If anyone thinks they can modify my post to adhere to the rules, please feel free.

@EnergyNumbers -- Keen observation—I have added my explanation to my original post.

@Kyle if you see open questions that are totally subjective, please just flag or vote to close them. Just because we've got one or two broken windows doesn't mean we want people to break more windows. We want people to fix the broken windows.

What are the two subjects that combining them would be "perverting them"? I actually enjoy the challenge of needing to learn and understand both subjects deep enough to be able to combine them.

Why do you need an MSc program to learn, read and write? Cannot just go to eg library?

Looking at all of your 'non-interacting' pairs of fields, I immediately come up with at least one obvious topic that would benefit from both of them. As an example, I knew someone who dual majored in Electrical Engineering and Music. He is now a well-known recording artist who makes his own guitar effects boxes. Physics+History = History of Physics. CIvil Engineering + Music Composition = Design and build performing arts centers. Econ + English = Finance pundit. While you seem to like 'learning', you need to synthesize and generalize better.

@JonCuster -- Studying History of Physics, is studying History, not Physics. Designing and building performing arts centers has little to do with the field of Music Composition. Studying Finance is not studying English; you may utilize English, but you are certainly not studying it, and studying English will not contribute to your research. The example of blending Electrical Engineering and Music to make guitar effects boxes is, in my eyes, like the "Russian/Art History" example above—two fields that can be truly interdisciplinary; thus this case is not particularly relevant to my situation.

Huh - I must have completely misunderstood what friends of mine who do history of physics worry about. Hint - you really should know physics deeply to untangle the history properly. To me, you see stovepipes and silos, I see interaction of fields that can mutually support and extend each other. You see things as courses and majors, rather than inspiration. Your loss.

possible duplicate of How not to be like a rolling stone in research?

(Question on hold, so commenting).  Go back to the roots of academia:  philosophy.  Philosophy can unite any of these fields and you can tune it to your interests.

Edited for conciseness and voting to reopen. Please don't "reply" in your original post; if it seems that some information should have been there to begin with, edit that in "naturally." If your edits seem like they'll change the premise of the question, ask a new one instead. If a question is getting overly long, edit for clarity and conciseness.

I recently saw photos of an opera house on Instagram put by a relative of mine. Those photos remind me of this question. My wife and I talked about this relative and have some ideas. Take a gap year. Go around the world, Get in touch with different cultures. Visit museums. Go to libraries. Talk to different people. Then make the decision. I think this might also apply to you. Also, Architecture may be something you should think about. It combines Design and Physics/Math. (You question is vague about what your interests are, I can only provide some idea here) Hope it helps.

If you like two subjects equally, pick the better paid one for your actual career. That one should be the basis for most of your formal, documented education.
You can still treat the less well paid one as your hobby, and go for informal education in it.
Taking your first example, Physics and History, I would make Physics the subject for formal education such as a master's degree. Go on reading about history, join a historical recreation society, take on-line courses in history, blog about history as your hobby.

+1, cannot think of better advice for students in general. Following your passion is fine, but if you're going to pay tens of thousands of dollars for it, you should plan for financial success too!

Let me briefly analyze the situation, based on your description. On one hand, it sounds like you want to go to a graduate school, because you "enjoy learning, reading, writing". Since you mention a desire and slight probability of a Ph.D. route in the future, I'm not sure, if I would go as far as @EnergyNumbers and conclude that "you're studying for pleasure". It appears like, you're very undecided about the best direction you should take. Having said that, while you mention professional academic career as desirable, your phrase "I don't enjoy much else" sounds quite alarming to me. Perhaps, I misunderstood you, but my take on this phrase (with a combination with the first one) is that you would love to learn, but not do work. So, based on this assumption, it appears that EnergyNumbers' conclusion (learning for pleasure) might not be too far from the truth.
On the other hand, considering the learning for pleasure assumption and your undecided state, enrolling in a graduate school seems like a rather poor idea to me (cost, stress, need to focus, deadlines, length of study, etc.). There are much more optimal options for someone like you, who enjoys learning, but wants to figure out what discipline/area/topic is the best fit. Such options include enrolling in several MOOCs, based on your interests, or taking some non-degree individual classes at a college/university of your choice (on/off campus). This approach would allow you to validate your assumptions or clear fuzziness in regard to what discipline/area/topic to choose or, in general, whether to consider going the academia route or choose another direction (i.e., industry).

The world is full of interesting things, and you cannot study them all deeply.  Even if your interest were all in an apparently focused area, like physics, you would soon find that it is full of interesting sub-areas, and that you cannot effectively simultaneously focus on, say, superconducting qubits and entangled photon imaging.
This leaves two basic options:

Celebrate that you have more than one good choice, and choose one to focus on.
Choose a career path that doesn't require you to focus---i.e., don't get a Ph.D.

This answer will be based on U.S. colleges and universities (while other systems may specialize at different points, often earlier).
One theme you'll notice in the answers here is which profession you would like to pursue afterwards.  This is a key difference between undergraduate studies in the U.S. and graduate studies.  Undergraduate education is often broad and flexible, aimed at developing educated and well-rounded citizens rather than preparation for a specific profession.  However, almost all graduate programs are intended to be pre-professional.  Depending on the program, sometimes it's preparation for a type of job in business or government (lawyer, dentist, social worker, statistician, software engineer, etc.), and sometimes it's preparation for a specialized career as a professor or researcher.  Not everyone ends up with this career - for example, there's a notorious shortage of professor openings relative to students who hope to become professors - and some graduate programs provide preparation for a much wider range of careers than others do.  But the strong assumption is that you are aiming for a career that will make use of this education.  Students who don't have relevant career plans are often looked down on a little, on the grounds that they are just killing time while trying to figure out what to do with their lives ("perpetual students"), and in the meantime taking up space in graduate school that could go to someone who really needs this education for their future.  This is a radically different perspective from undergraduate, where nobody assumes that a philosophy major necessarily intends to become a professional philosopher.
So the conventional approach is to decide what you would like to do with your life, and then choose the graduate education you need for that goal (if any).  But if you have the time and money to study with no particular goal in mind, then you can do whatever makes you happy.

As you're studying a Masters for pleasure, pick the subject that would be more pleasurable for you to study.
Your case is very unusual, so other people's experience in how they selected their masters wouldn't be much use. Many people take a Masters to advance their career, or to switch profession / industry. And for them, the answer would be different.
But in your case, you're studying for pleasure. So it's much simpler. Pick the course that would be more pleasurable to do.

I wouldn't say it's "very unusual" for people to not know what they want to specialise in.

+1 to Patricia's answer.
One alternative possible decision rule: which of your interests is easier to pursue in your spare time, without additional formal training?
In my personal case, I was interested both in mathematics and in languages/linguistics, but languages (and, to a degree, linguistics) are easier to do "on the side" than math, where you really need to invest significant time and effort to get anywhere. So I studied math and took language/linguistics courses on the side.

While Patricia's and your advice are indeed valid and make total sense, we need to consider (see my answer) that it is very likely that the OP does not seriously want to pursue any of those interests professionally. In that case, it really does not matter how to proceed, since all interests remain as such (interests as hobbies) and, thus, can be pursued at the OP's convenience.

Another way of thinking of both our answers is to compare life as a physicist with history as a hobby to life as a historian with physics as hobby.

@PatriciaShanahan: I understood both answers, which imply choosing one direction as a profession. IMHO you're missing my point: I got an impression that the OP has no intention to make any of the interests a profession.

I am in a similar situation to yourself, but will try to answer this without opinionated bias.  I'm also not going to focus specifically on graduate school, rather keep the answer generalized to college programs.
When it comes to higher education, the biggest factors to realistically consider include: cost, marketability, and the ability of the student to succeed in both the program and a career once they have finished.  So unless a student is already wealthy from some outside factor, then they need to make a decision that will allow them to make the most out of any given program's time and monetary cost.  This is done by estimating one's ability to be marketable enough to earn a profit after exiting the program and one's capability to both complete the program and succeed in a the career options for which each program prepares the student.
The first task should be fairly easily accomplished by most adults who are looking to further their education.  There is plenty of information available about median incomes for various jobs and what the ideal education level is for them.  If the time and cost required for a program do not justify what will be spent to complete it for whatever the student's needs are, then it likely is not a viable choice for them.
The second task is a bit more difficult.  There is research being done daily that discusses the marketability of various degree programs, but it is hardly set in stone and is often skewed by regions or locations (ie, Silicon Valley for tech based jobs).  This is where a particular student would need to heavily tailor their decision based on their own experiences.  They need to first decide if they are set on living in an certain area.  That will drastically change their ability to be marketable for many degree programs.  As income levels for industries vary by location, then that would likely be the next issue.  A particular job might constantly be in demand, but it might not have a particularly good income level in the region where the student wishes to spend their life.  Teaching is a good example here as it is often in demand, but what they make can vary greatly by where they work (ie, teachers in Alaska make significantly more money than most of the rest of the US, because not many people want to live there).
Finally, the truly hard part begins.  After assessing the complete financial situation, would be the student's own ability to find and do something with which they are comfortable.  This can offset some of the money parts, but not all of it, which is why I put it last.  After a student has narrowed down their interests by their ability to provide for themselves and/or their families, then comes the time to narrow down any further decisions based on what is it that they can and are willing to do for hours and hours every week for the foreseeable future.  If the student is someone with wildly varying interests, then the best career path would be one with options, versus one where there is a mostly clear path of what they will be doing throughout their day.  For example, Computer Science offers a dizzying array of possible titles and positions for each degree level completed, while Archaeology is a significantly more limited field.  Each student will differ at this point in the process and must be treated differently to determine how to quantify their personality fit and possible fulfillment level of the programs that they are deciding between, but ideally it will rarely come this far as the previous stages are more generic and easier to handle, as well as being topics that are often overlooked.
To the OP, my recommendation is to consider the first two tasks of my answer and try to narrow down the fields based on facts and choices that you may have already made in life before trying to handle the personal choice of enjoyment.  It may be that by preferring warmer climates or having already started a family,  one option stands out more sharply as a prospective career.  If you manage to make it all the way to the last point again, then take the time to sit down with everyone who would be concerned with your available choices, and start working through the pros, cons, impacts, etc.  If possible, do this at the office of a counselor, whose job it is to help with these sorts of decisions.  Good luck.