text:
Elsevier and World scientific journals will be deploying Aries
I have noticed that some Elsevier and World scientific  journals has given the following notice:

Please note that Aries will be deploying a patch to all sites starting
on Monday, April 26 at 8AM EST. We anticipate this work will take
approximately two hours during which you may notice some site
slowness. Please be sure to save your work.

I want to understand:
What does it mean ? How does it help the journal or the authors or publishers ?
Any simple explanation please.
Thanks
Edit: This is exactly the notice. I copied it perfectly from journal

You're misinterpreting the quoted notice. Aries (which is maybe a company) is going to deploy a patch to the sites (probably the sites are managed by Aries). In any case, it's not Aries that is being deployed.

Any reason  for downvote? I have exactly copied the notice.One can check

MAS, please read my comment above. The notice doesn't say what you think it says.

@MassimoOrtolano, yeh i  understand. But how does it benefit the journal ? Does it affect the acceptance or rejection rate of articles ?

A patch is just a software update of an already existing software, maybe it's just bug fixes, a nicer interface or the addition of new features, whatever. Don't read too much into it.

@MassimoOrtolano, ok thank you very much

Aries Systems is a company that operates behind the internal workflow system used by many scholarly publishers and journals. As an author, you might know about the tool called Editorial Manager, the platform where you submit your paper or where you enact peer reviews; Editorial Manager is a tool created & curated by Aries (and includes many features for editors such as an "integrated plagiarism checking, reviewer discovery, automatic manuscript metadata population [...], ORCID single sign-on and more"). So, this is a platform that regularly requires novel technical add-ons and constant updates
for security reasons ("patches").
The notice you read on the websites of some publishers means that some technical issue will be added or repaired by Aries Systems on the websites. There seems to be no detailed press release about the exact patch, but we now know not to worry too much in case some websites might be slower during that timeframe.


text:
How to handle a plagiarism report commented by arxiv?
I wrote an article in mathematics (number theory) and submitted it in arxiv in January 2020. I did check plagiarism at my institute which was less than 10%. (Edit: Why do I check ? Because it is 2016 PhD regulation of our country which says an article or thesis must have plagiarism less than 10% and that is the reason we check every article in university library with Urkund software). I have the certificate of that article provided by the institution. Anyway, arxiv accepted the submission, however few months later arxiv moderators has withdrawn the article citing overlap report:

submission has been withdrawn by arXiv administrators due to
inappropriate text reuse from external sources

I am a PhD student and had no deep literature review in that particular field at that time. I was just attacking a question. I was still unable to realise because similar papers do not directly attacked the question that I was trying to solve. Later, I approached some experts in that field and they praised the my results, however they also mentioned that few of my results are parallel study by me while the rest are interesting.
Then after 1 year, I had modified the article and vastly changed it and extended it, which again had plagiarism less than 10%. I also gave it a new suitable title. I then submitted it in arxiv at the end of 2021, and it is accepted by arxiv moderators till date. But I think I made a mistake here because I submitted the new version as a different article with different identifier. Though I wanted to replace the old one by new version, but could not replace because the old one was already withdrawn by moderators and there was no option of replacing.
Now the current situation is that, if I search over arxiv or google with the title of the old version article, then it appears in arxiv showing only abstract and the admin message that I included above. And this makes me worry about  the reputation of the new version of the article, as well as reputation of mine. I submitted the new version in a journal and it is under review. But I am thinking  that since the old version was withdrawn by arxiv, it will give wrong impression to the reviewers. If I put my name in any search engine like google, the arxiv link of the old version (only abstract) plus the admin message can be seen there. This is an embarrasing  situation.
Since the 3 linked papers suggested by arxiv software, doesn't have any significant textual overlap (I checked), now I am planning to write the arxiv moderators to merge the new-version in place of the old version, so that it become just one article and the admin message get disappeared.
Is that the appropriate way to handle the situation ?
Thanks

The percentage of plagariasm doesn't help at all.
If you performed genuine work for the majority of the text, but copied some literature review verbatim, the result would be less than 10% for each algorithm.
Did you check the overlap that was identified by the algorithm?

@StephanZ., as I mentioned that some experts few results are parallel  to some previous work and some are interesting. I have also checked the similar article of some big mathematicians but i found no direct link with my results

@MAS StephenZ's question to you went into a different direction. It's not about the paper's content, it's about whether the sentences that are highlighted by the plagiarism checker contain sentence parts that are taken from elsewhere. Even copying a single non-trivial sentence part is already plagiarism unless accompanied with the proper citation marks, also when shuffling parts. As a rule of thumb, never paste information into your paper found in other publications without adding a quotation and quotation marks immediately. When writing a non-quotation sentence, always start from scratch.

@DCTLib, thanks. as far as I remember, I didn't see any full sentence overlap in the old article, however, there might have overlap for 3-4 words at a time. The whole matter still unsolved to me. So better i should write to arxiv moderators

Is the question out of topic ? Because it is getting downvotes. I think it should have place here

@MAS I think the question is getting downvotes because you're not giving us all the relevant information. Plagiarism is a really serious accusation, and arXiv surely would have told you what sources your submission overlapped with and you'd be able to tell whether their judgement was correct. You're kind of skirting around it, telling us you "as far as I remember" didn't plagiarize and that there were a "few words" of overlap. A parallel study, not doing a very thourough literature review or the fact that you wrote a new article have nothing to do with plagiarism.

@TomvanderZanden, I have told everything that old version was withdrawn due to the above 'text overlap' message while the modified version is in arxiv since 6 months. What more information can there be ? Some experts said that my question is interesting with some interesting results however few are parallel. While the similar papers directed by arxiv does not have any mathematical similarity rather than texual. All I mentioned above. I also agree plagiarism is serious offense and thats the reason I always check in ou Urkund software.

For starters, you could explain why you even felt the need to proactively check your own article for plagiarism? I have written quite a few math articles. Checking for plagiarism never occurred to me. You know why? Because I wrote the damn articles! (Paraphrasing, not plagiarizing, Bernie Sanders ;) ).

@N.I., because our PhD regulation 2016 (in my country) says a thesis can have plagiarism less than 10%. Thus it is a clear instruction by my supervisor that any article before submitting to arxiv must pass through plagiarism checking and our institution provide certificate to that checking.  Thats is why all scholars of our institution a first check plagiarism.  Does this answer your question ? I have at least 10 articles in arxiv and only problem occurred in that single article

The elephant in the room is whether you indeed committed plagiarism or whether arXiv admins withdrew the article erroneously. I think arXiv is generally quite lenient in detecting plagiarism and will give the author the benefit of the doubt, so the chances of being flagged erroneously seem small. In this case, there is nothing you can do.
Otherwise (if the withdrawal was in error), you can appeal to the moderators to have the flag removed. That process is described on the arXiv help page, but you will have to explain in detail why arXiv's assessment was in error.

Thanks. However my new version is in arxiv. So I should write to moderators regarding both old version and new version.

Yes, thatb is the proper course of action.Write to the mods.

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text:
Is it OK to publish the slides for a conference paper on a personal Web site?
Due to copyright issues, I cannot provide the full-texts of my conference publications on my personal Web site. Can I make the presentations of these publications available on my Web site?

I edited to try to bring your title better into line with the question you are asking in the main text.  If this doesn't match your intent, please feel free to revert and improve.

What rights does your publication/copyright transfer agreement say? Can you link to the conference or society's instructions for authors?

@jakebeal Thank you for your revision of the question.

@BillBarth Some of the copyright owners are IEEE (http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecopyrightform.pdf) and Springer (www.springer.com/?SGWID=4-102-45-154182-0) in my case. Looks like IEEE copyright form particularly includes some information about publishing presentations.

Have a look at the copyright transfer document that you have signed. Typically, it will only transfer the copyright of the conference paper that has been included in the proceedings. That means that you or your university / institution remain the copyright owner of the slides.
Be careful, though. Often the slides contain figures that are also included in he article, and the copyright of those may have been transferred. Many copyright statements allow you to use figures and such on you own or your institution's website, but not all.
If you do have figures or other material in your slides that you do not own the copyright of (anymore), then it is wise to either:

ask the copyright holder for permission for them to be used on your own website, or
leave that material out, or
create a new version of the respective material (which often can be done if you have the underlying raw data)

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text:
Some postdoc positions do not have deadlines, but will open until filled. What is happening?
I am currently searching for postdoc positions for my first time. Many postdoc positions have definite deadlines, but others don't. Surprisingly, some prestigious institutes list postdoc positions for a long time but they are still waiting for applicants. My belief is that prestigious institutes would quickly receive a lot of applications, so that the positions ought to be taken very soon, but this appears to not be the case. What is happening?

They wait for good (or better, great) applicants. Finding the right one can take quite a while, and they can afford to be picky.

Long story short, they don't need to "settle for less". Though this may sound somewhat crass, the truth of the matter is that many elite institutions probably do receive a large number of applications but reject most of them. Because there is no risk of the supply of interested applicants disappearing, a lab can wait to pick out a candidate that they feel meets their (possibly very high) requirements.

feel more pressure now :)

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text:
Updating a review paper after several years by publishing a new review paper
Six years ago, I published a review (survey) paper about a topic in my field.
Since then the literature (and the topic) has evolved substantially, so I think it’d be worthwhile to update the review by writing an “update paper”. I can think of at least hundred papers published in the meantime that could be worth adding, and a few interesting points (new perspectives, etc.). However, I have never seen a paper revisiting a previously published review paper and updating it. My questions are:

Does such situation warrant a new publication?
Is it common to publish a review paper updating a previous review? Any examples?
How to title it?

@ChrisWhite that's interesting, thanks for pointing that out

@ChrisWhite If you turn your comment into an answer, I will vote it up.

Updated review papers are not particularly unusual, as a Google Scholar search readily demonstrates.  You should definitely explicitly declare the paper as an updated review, and it is probably best to send the paper to the same journal as before.  If you can get in touch with the journal editors, they may even be able to expedite the review process, since they already know and have accepted the first version.

great answer, thanks. It didn't occur to me to perform a Google Scholar search with those keywords, silly from me. Looks like they're more common than I had expected.

This is a stunningly common occurrence in medicine. See the Cochrane library for a myriad of examples. Many of the reviews in there have pre-planned revision dates as well.


text:
How long should a brief CV for a call for papers be?
I have seen in some call for papers for conferences request a brief CV together with an abstract.
Most call for papers I've seen in the Humanities (my field is history) usually look for a 250-300 word abstract.
Slightly a side note, but when a PhD student or Early Career researcher submitting that may not have much to put in a CV, is there a different format for a "brief CV" or not?
I am wondering what is expected in the "brief CV" requested and how long it is expected to be?

I think this would be perfectly a good question here - but currently there is just too little information to be answered with certainty. Could you perhaps add field information, and perhaps a bit more information about what kind of call for paper this is (for a non-archival conference, workshop, funding opportunity, etc)?

My instinct is probably a one-paragraph biography - such that it might be published in a book of abstracts along with the abstract. However, this is guesswork, and the only way you'll find out for sure i sto write to the conference organiser and ask them.

@Flyto Some call for papers specific if they want a short biography in the manner you state, others ask for a brief CV which is different. There should be no need to ask the organiser of the conference which they want.

@gman indeed, in an ideal world there should be no need because the CFP would tell you. However, presumably it hasn't told you, or you wouldn't be asking this question, and people here can only guess. So the only way you can find out the correct answer is to ask the organiser.

@Flyto Should be no need to guess, my question says the cfp includes a request for a brief CV. What I was asking is how long that brief CV should be, assuming the term means you don't send in a full CV.

@gman and what I'm saying is that "brief CV" could mean anything from a paragraph to a page, and the only way to know for sure is to ask.

If it is more than a page it is too long. As for what should be there, say something about your education, current employment and some of your publications. It isn't necessary to be comprehensive but include things that are most relevant to the conference and to the paper you are submitting.
That is probably about enough, but if it seems too short, include honors, etc. if you like.
All the committee is looking for at this point is that you are qualified to say what you want to say in the resulting paper. Focus on that above all.

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text:
How to write to convey a message to referee during revision of an article?
I am a math doctoral student. Recently, I received a revision of one of my articles.
It is a positive report.  In the report letter, the referee advised looking into a particular project (a significant project, not an indivisual project) and connecting it to my paper to give the impression that my work has a wider readership. The report might advise citing some of the project's work. Though there were a few links, they weren't really strong, so I found less of a connection between the project (referee mentioned) and my paper. I've talked about this with a few people working on that project (referee mentioned), and they've said they'll try to expand their project later, which might strongly tie their project to my outcome. However, it is uncertain, and I cannot hold out for them for so long. In the interim, I discovered similar projects where my work is directly applicable. To put it another way, my results are more relevant to a different project.
Now that I have revised the paper, I would like to send it back to the editor.
How do I inform the editor that we have discovered a slight connection with the project the referee mentioned, but have instead found a similar project in which my results are more significant than the project (referee mentioned) and have revised the paper accordingly?
Should I write a distinct cover letter to the referee via the editor? Or should I simply disclose every detail to the editor and send only the revised paper?

Write the necessary info and explanation in the rebuttal. This will go directly to the reviewers.
Additionally, you can include the details in the cover letter to be addressed to the editor. There you will explain the issue and will say that for further info they can look into the details answer you give to the reviewer in the rebuttal document.

The journal follows an email submission system. I have to send everything to editor through email. So how would i write the cover letter ? Should I write "To Editor" or "To Referee through Editor" ?

@learner I am not sure I follow. When you will send the revised paper, write two extra documents. One, addressed to the editor, is the cover letter where you explain briefly what you have revised and a second document, the rebuttal document, where you address each point raised by the referree(s). The editor then will send the 2nd document back to them to check. It's a standard procedure

Thank you. I mean the journal don't have online submission portal. The articles are communicated through email. So according to your suggestion I will send two 2 covers 1 for editor and 1 for referee) along with the revised paper.

One thing is not clear to me. Since I am sending revised paper to Editor directly through email, I can explain everything to the editor in the email message instead of writing a separate cover letter to him. However, I have to write a separate cover/rebuttal letter for the referee(s). What do you say ?

@learner Why do you need a separate letter to the referees? All correspondence is normally addressed to and sent to the editor.

@DavidSmith, I am not sure and that is why I am taking suggestions. I thought I should clearly mention about the project which the refree suggested  but we have not found much from that particular project, instead we have found another project where we can directly apply our results

@DavidSmith It's a revision so the article, presumably, will be send back to the referees to check the changes the authors implemented. This is normally done with a rebuttal letter otherwise the referees would have no idea what changes have happened, how, and where.

@learner In that case, if the mail is to be sent directly to the editor (and not through some generic journal email address) then you may omit the cover letter to the editor and explain in the body of the email what you want to explain. But what is not clear to me: you would like to submit a revision without a rebuttal (or similar) document?

@PsySp, I followed it. Attached revised version, cover letter to convey to referee(through editor) while in the email to editor,  i have explained details in the email body. So I have sent two files. Thanks

Should I write a distinct cover letter to the referee via the editor?
Or should I simply disclose every detail to the editor and send only the revised paper?

You'll need the following

revised manuscript
rebuttal (which addresses the referees comments/concerns) point by point.
This you do factually (taking note of discipline technicalities, scientific accuracy/correctness, and research processes), and be professional about it (even where you don't (fully) agree with the reviewers).
cover letter addressed to the editor. Here, you can write more (disclose every detail) about your concerns and approach to the suggested project and the more-aligned project you are aligning to.

You'll submit all three using the journal submission system: whether online or manual.
Take note that your rebuttal is what the reviewers would use to review your revised manuscript (alongside the content of the revised manuscript).
You may want to read more on writing a rebuttal.


text:
Need suggestion on simultaneous submission in journal and conference
Is it correct to submit a revised version of a paper to the same journal while some application part of the paper is under review in a conference?
I have received a request for revisions on a journal paper, and am thinking to submit some part of it to a conference. I can't wait for the conference decision, as that will cross the journal revision deadline. Therefore, my question is can I submit it to the same journal while the paper is under review in conference.
The conference and journal version have similarities, but they are significantly different at the same time.

Did I understand correctly? You send a paper to a journal, you got a major revision result, you now submit the revised version back and you concurrently send another paper based on the journal version?

@Alexandros: Thanks for the reply. I have not yet submitted the revision. I am thinking to submit  some part of it to a conference. I can't wait for the conference decision as that will cross the journal revision deadline. Therefore my question is can I submit it to the same journal while the paper is under review in conference. I asked the editor of the journal on this, he has not replied yet, wants to know suggestion of experts in this forum.

What field are you in?

@TomChurch: Stochastic Approximation. This is a mathematics paper, but the application part is machine learning. In other words it is a operations research paper. But, the theoretical part has significant mathematics. My department is computer science. It is slightly messed up.

It sounds like you've gone in the wrong order, here.  In computer science, it is common practice to initially publish a work in a conference, then the follow it by an extended version in a journal, which is more thorough and takes into account all of the feedback from the conference and advances during the time since the conference version was completed.
Going the other way, however, strikes me as unethical and a form of self-plagiarism.  You have already produced a journal-scale paper, and mining a smaller conference paper out of it is just double-publication.  Now, in certain cases a conference might accept this if explicitly declared (there are some conferences that have a special track for reports on journal publications).  If the conference expects original work, however, you cannot ethically submit your paper to the conference.

A pre-emptive comment to others: the ethics of situations like this are HUGELY field-dependent. If you disagree with this answer and are in another field than CS, you should post your own answer (and note what field you're in), not downvote this one. [I say this as someone who is not in CS.]

In some engineering fields rather than CS, most of the conference papers are not peer-reviewed. Only the abstracts are reviewed to determine whether it can be presented in a conference. In such case, I think the authors can extend the conference paper for a peer-reviewed journal paper. By pulishing on peer-reviewed journals, especially good or top journals, you can get constructive suggestions from your peers and experts about your reseach. And your results are more reliable.

It is certainly valid to send different aspects of the same work to separate venues. You must make sure to cross-reference (as "submitted to..." if need be), and that they don't overlap too much.


text:
What to list as affiliation when work spans multiple institutions?
I began working on a paper during my undergraduate degree in the summer of 2014. I continued to work on the same paper into summer 2015, at which time I graduated and moved to a different university to pursue a graduate degree. However, all experiments failed and my collaborators and I were unable to produce any meaningful results. In fall 2015, while enrolled in graduate studies at the second university, I realized that the question at the centre of this paper could be answered using a completely different method. I contacted my collaborators and we have been able to produce some great results.
Now I am writing the paper and wondering what I should list as my affiliation, since the project was begun at one university but overhauled and completed at another. I see four options:

The old university
The new university
Both the old and new universities
The old university, with a “present address” note

What is standard practice in a situation like this, where work is begun in one lab but completed in another? Does the re-design of the project from the second university complicate the issue?

Most journals understand that such complexities exist, and will allow you to list multiple institutions, so all four of your options are certainly viable.
That said, given that you have done much of your work on the paper while at your new institution, your new institution should certainly be listed as an affiliation, which means that you should be using either your option #2 (new only) or #3 (both institutions).
That leaves the question of whether the old institution should be listed or not.  From what I have seen, the customs on this tend to vary by field and also by institution: you can probably make a reasonable argument for either listing or not listing the old institution.  I would thus recommend talking with your co-authors to see what their feelings on the matter are, particularly if you have some co-authors from the old institution on the paper, who are the ones most likely to be upset if your judgement disagrees with theirs (in either direction).

I'd list "current affiliation", and acknowledge the other institutions where you worked. If some of your coauthors still reside there, you might just leave that out (the institutions are mentioned as their affiliations).


text:
How to deal with post-high-school gap in CV?
I am currently finishing my undergraduate degree, and I am working on my CV for graduate school applications. After High School, I spent ~1.5 years traveling, mostly by myself, and with no notable employment.
Do I write this in my CV? If so, should I just mention it or say anything further about it?

Do you need to mention what you did before your undergraduate studies in your CV?

It might help to understand what countries you are applying to study in. The advice on this and other questions would be wrong for Japan but right for the US.

Honestly, if I were you, I simply wouldn't list my high school dates on my CV.  Lots of applications don't, and I've never seen this be a problem or concern.  Given that you now are getting an undergraduate degree, the graduate schools won't care much about it.  I doubt anyone will pay much attention if you do write in your date of high school graduation and simply don't explain the gap, but why even bring up the topic?
EDIT: Just to clarify, I wasn't suggest you list your high school without dates, but that you just leave it off entirely.  I would say you definitely don't want to list it once you've entered grad school.  When applying to grad school as an undergrad, I think it's fine to leave it there, but don't expect anyone to think it's important.

I simply wouldn't list my high school on my CV.

+1 Every CV I've ever seen lists baccalaureate studies or higher.

I did not even finish high school and nobody seems to care since I have a variety of higher degrees.

Keep in mind that in some cultures, secondary education may be considered very important for some reason. Germany comes to mind.

Many people take a gap year between highschool and college and between college and grad school for various reasons (walkabout, military service, family care responsibilities). Unless it's significant for either your personal growth or is notable for another reason (length of time > 5 years; etc.) there's simply no reason to mention it.


text:
How is a Msc thesis judged?
I will have to submit my master of science thesis (in the engineering field) in 2 months, therefore I would like to know which aspect of the thesis are taken into account the most in the final evaluation.
Also, is it mandatory for this kind of thesis to have as output a new procedure/methodology? And what if mine doesn't?
What are the main factors that the commission will focus on when deciding the final evaluation of the work done?

Ask your advisor. Only they can answer these questions for you in the context of your university's standards for master's theses.

Please ask one question per post: it makes your questions more clearly answerable.  Can you please split up this question accordingly?

@Bill Barth: the fact is that my supervisor doesn't even give me feedback when I send him the chapters I write, this is why I asked here

@jakebeal: actually the question is the one written in the title, the others are just to clarify my doubts about it

@Rhei OK; I have removed the final paragraph, which is really a separate question.  If you disagree, please edit the material to make it more connected to the main question.

Sending chapters may required too much of the advisor's time, and not make it obvious what you are askinig. Try asking a question instead.

Every advisor/committee is different.  If you want to know how your advisor will evaluate your thesis, you must ask your advisor directly how he will evaluate your thesis.  Not by sending chapters, not by asking for his opinion about your work, but by using the exact words "How will you evaluate my thesis?"

Which aspects are taken into account with an evaluation depends highly on the university and master study. However, to give you some information about the process and evaluation, I can give you an example how this goes at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands), at the Faculty of Science:
The final evaluation is done by your supervisor and the second reader. And if you have a thesis defence, you will be evaluated by the supervisor, second reader, and one member of the board of examination. Then we have a list of aspects that will be taken into account. These can be found here (PDF).
I hope this may help you to have more insight in the evaluation. Else, you can also look up some scientific articles for example at Google Scholar. And, depending on what kind of study you are doing, make sure your thesis is in the right format. For Computer Science for example, a thesis needs to be in ACM Format.


text:
What are the best sites or free software for rephrasing sentences?
While writing my thesis, I'm looking for some sites or free software that can help in rephrasing some sentences used in scientific papers. Any recommendation? And is it effective to use such sites to avoid copy-paste sentences?

A tool for people who are too lazy to even plagiarize properly? I doubt it exists.

@ThomasS, on the Internet, everything exists. They are of inferior quality, though, at least the ones I could test in 5 minutes. And when I say 'inferior', I mean, 'incoherent and unreadable word scramble'.

It seems that you are not aware of how misguided and offensive your question is to me, jakebeal (I'm guessing), and other educators reading and posting on this site, so I thought it's worth saying something about that.
The point is that writing a thesis is part of a journey of learning in which a person studies a subject, thinks about it very hard and in great depth, and creates a work that represents their own unique point of view on the subject. The writing is an essential part of this process: as educators everywhere know and understand, each word and each sentence in the thesis must be individually chosen, crafted, thought about and written by you, the writer of the thesis, in order for true learning to take place. This may seem like an exaggeration, but I assure you I'm dead serious. (This principle of course makes necessary allowance for names and for properly attributed verbatim quotes.) Keep in mind that when I speak about learning I am referring to a process where you master several complex skills, not only learning about the specific subject you are writing about, but also learning how to think critically, how to communicate complex ideas effectively, and how to write well. These are valuable skills that will serve you well long after you have forgotten most of the technical details related to the topic of the thesis.
Now, if you accept that what I wrote above is true (and I hope that you do), then several consequences follow:

The entire concept of "rephrasing" or "paraphrasing" needs to be thrown out the window. In my opinion these are misguided notions that represent the dangerous mindset that taking words written by another person and just applying some cosmetic or algorithmic changes to them, with the only goal being to avoid "copy-paste sentences," is an acceptable practice. It isn't, because it skips the part where you actually think about the content of what you are writing, which is the most important and central part of the learning process (and the part that is the most difficult and makes our brain hurt, and that lazy people are always looking for ways to avoid). So yes, in your thesis, it may make sense in certain places to summarize some thoughts or comments from the scientific literature - that is absolutely okay. But instead of thinking about this as "rephrasing" you should think about this as "I've thought hard about how to communicate a complex set of ideas presented by another author, and here is the best way I've found to explain what I understood this author was saying."
If you use any method whatsoever for going around the difficult part of thinking about what you are writing - whether it's by paying someone else to write part of your thesis, or using sentence rephrasing software, assuming it exists - you are cheating yourself, by depriving yourself of one of the main benefits that you are supposed to be deriving from writing a thesis.
Using such software or other means to avoid doing the work that is specifically assumed to be an integral part of writing a thesis is also likely to be viewed by others reading your thesis as dishonest and a form of cheating.

The problem with attempting to use some sort of "rephrasing software" is that proper rephrasing is not just repainting a piece of text in order to avoid some technical definition of plagiarism.
Instead, proper rephrasing is taking a set of ideas, incorporating them into your own thinking, and then explaining your thinking (which now incorporates those ideas) in the context of your own work.  No mere piece of software can do that work for you---if it was sophisticated enough to do such thinking, you would need to credit it as a co-author.
If you are worried about accidentally repeating phrasing, I would recommend doing the following:

Carefully read the entire source that you want to adapt ideas from.
Do something entirely different for at least an hour.
Write down your understanding of the material you read and how it applies in the context of your own work, entirely from memory and without looking at the original source.
Now return to the source and see if there are any important mistakes you made, things that you overlooked, or phrases that you accidentally repeated.

It is easy, especially for an inexperienced writer, to get stuck in thinking that a nice presentation of material is "the only way" that it can be written.  Taking that palette-cleansing time and avoiding looking at the original will make it extremely likely that you will end up truly presenting in your own words.

Ethical concerns with using such "rephrasing" software have been address thoroughly so far. However, I would like to focus on something that has been alluded to in some of the answers and this is the information processing aspect of the thesis experience.
When you are forced to analyze and develop ways to express other's ideas in your own words it is highly beneficial in helping you to retain the incredible amount of information you consume when writing a thesis. This is critical because understanding what you know from having to express yourself helps you to know your thesis inside and out. As you wrestle with each reference and idea it sticks with you for literally the rest of your life. This only happened because you actually thought about and expressed it.
If this process is skipped through the use of software you would not really know what you wrote and why. You would not be able to see the connections between the various ideas and themes of your paper. Lastly, when you are asked to defend your thesis you would be completely unprepared and unable to answer many of the questions of your committee.
I do not want to downplay the ethical concerns here but just bring to light a perspective from a psychological viewpoint.


text:
Do I need to add answers to the reviewers’ comments to a conference paper?
We submitted a paper to a conference and received a mail containing this clause

Please see the reviewers’ comments below on your paper. These comments are
  intended to help you to improve your paper for final publication. The listed
  comments should be addressed, as final acceptance is conditional upon
  appropriate response to the requirements and comments. The conference
  committee retains a list of certain critical comments to be addressed by
  authors, and will control that these have been addressed in the camera-ready
  version.

It seemed to me that along with the main camera-ready paper, we need to send a response like this. Can anyone please suggest what should be done? Should we create a response (like the PDF) along with revised paper or should we only send the revised paper according to the suggestions of the reviewers?

Once I saw a paper actually citing a publicly available peer review of itself...

It's unclear from these instructions whether a separate response document is required by this program committee or not. However, it's easy to write one, and it will make it very easy for the PC to see that you have addressed the reviewers' comments. You should prepare a short separate document that lists each reviewers' comment and the action (if any) you have taken to address it, referring to pages, sections, or figures that have been modified. Depending on the submission system, you may be able to upload this as a PDF or incorporate it directly into the submission system in a comment to your final submission.
Not every comment will lead to an action on your part, so if you disagree with a comment and made no change based on that comment, you can address why in your response document. Sometimes, you will write your reason for not making a change, realize that your reason could be incorporated as a clarification in the paper itself, and then make that clarification instead (and note it as such in your response to reviewers). Thus, preparing the response document and addressing each comment point-by-point, can help you figure out how to deal with each comment and lead to a better article.
You should prepare at least the outline of this document even if, in the end, there's nowhere to submit it. If you're having trouble finding a place to upload it, you should ask the PC Chair or whoever is shepherding your article whether they want your formal response.

thanks a lot for guiding; we were confused as we heard we need to send separate response if we are submitting for journal not conference. Now we will surely submit separate outline as a response of reviewers' comments for our paper!


text:
How reliable are QS Top Universities rankings?
I was told that universities in USA are generally better that the ones in Italy. I will take the undergraduate degree this July, and I need to decide whether to continue my studies in Italy or to move to the USA.
This site reports the world ranking for computer science & information systems, and Politecnico di Milano is ranked 48th.
I'll not be able to afford an university with high tuitions like MIT (let's say 15,000 $ per year maximum), also since I may have not the prerequisites to join high selective universities, if I move to the USA I'd choose a university that is ranked below or almost as Politecnico di Milano. So the indecision: it is still worth to move to the USA? Do you think that the rankings are reliable?

I wouldn't overemphasize such rankings.

What kind of degree are you seeking? A PhD is almost always fully funded so the tuition is meaningless. On the other hand, I think it's unlikely you'll find a program with tuition under $15000. About the only option would be a public university with in-state tuition, but international students are usually not eligible.

A master of computer science would be good.

48th is not bad.

Ok but it doesn't have the course that I'm looking for, the next one would be University of Bologna which is ranked 169th in computer science & technology.

Related question (different school, similar issue).

Assuming you're interested in a PhD, your target department's reputation in your subfield is at least as important as its overall reputation. Fortunately, the only reliable way to judge the reputation of various departments in specific subfields is to ask someone who works in that subfield.

@NateEldredge German/French/Austrian/Dutch universities (and probably other EU universities) have usually very low tuition.

I was told that universities in USA are generally better that the ones in Italy.

This statement, in its given generality, is false. The US, like most places, has very good schools, ok schools, and a reasonable number of pretty bad schools. If you explicitly are looking for very cheap schools, I would not assume that the remaining selection is necessarily any good, just because it is a "school in the states".
POLIMI is a pretty good school in CS. To be honest, if I had the choice of going either to POLIMI or to a low-ranked US school, I would almost certainly choose POLIMI.

The linked QS world university rankings are a well respected international ranking. That said, using a university's rank is a really terrible way to chose a grad school. Some of the factors which drive the rankings are important for choosing a grad school, but don't just rely on the rankings.

If you are planning to pursue PhD studies in computer science, you should in general not have to pay tuition yourself—this is covered by either your advisor or the department as a whole (e.g., if you're a teaching assistant).
So, basically, it comes down to a question of whether or not you're able to gain admission to a school that you think is better than the one you are attending in Italy. Equally importantly, if you're looking to start this fall (2014), you will almost certainly not be able to do it in the United States, as the admissions "window" for fall of 2014 has already closed.


text:
How to automatically link LaTeX .bib references to a set of pdf full-text articles?
I have a huge collection of PDFs of research papers. Many of these have valuable annotations. I also have a huge .bib file containing citations for these and many other works. Is there a reference manager software where I could import the .bib file and the collection of PDFs and somehow the entries in the .bib file could be magically linked to the corresponding PDFs? I would then like to use that tool to access my PDFs (of research papers).
I think this was a feature request for mendeley long back
http://feedback.mendeley.com/forums/4941-general/suggestions/80946-automatically-find-pdfs-link-them-to-imported-me .
As of today, I don't think that it has been implemented.
I tried Quiqqa (http://www.qiqqa.com/) , but had no luck.

Migrate to tex.stackexchange.com

I think that this question is more relevant to Academia that to the tex forum. I suspect the people at the tex forum would consider it off-topic (see http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/121961/free-reference-manager-and-pdf-organizer-for-windows#comment376604_121961). My original question did not have latex in the title. latex/bib is not the only way to manage references and it is easy to interconvert between reference formats.

have you check Papers app? it may have what you looking for.

Jabref has this feature.

@seteropere I've tried Papers a couple of times, but last check their BibTex support was weak at best.

http://jabref.sourceforge.net/help/ExternalFiles.php says that you need to name PDF by the bibtex key. I want the tool to read inside the PDF file (title and authors) to do the matching.

We use some home-grown PHP scripts for this in my previous group.

Have you tried citeulike. I have a feeling it may have what you are looking for.

Although I'm sympathetic to this trouble, I think you're asking for a feature that likely doesn't exist. What assumption can the tool make about your annotated PDF files? Is there some kind of key of where the Title/Author/DOI/etc. is stored in them? Probably not, because these are not standard for PDF or for academic articles. Yes, a search tool might find these strings, but it would have to be a pretty fuzzy data miner to find all the matches perfectly. Some PDF files use encoding which make searching virtually impossible. My advice: JabRef lets you link to them relative to the .bib file.

Also, I'd suggest the feature to the JabRef team, as I think with modern PDF it could be feasible, although probably not perfect.

@Fuhrmanator: PDF does have metadata. A random sampling of the PDF files I have in my reference library suggests perhaps at least 60 or 70% have the title of the article included.

@WillieWong The title is a start. But that's the easy part. My experiment with EndNote http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18204/3859 shows that the metadata isn't sufficient or consistently used by research publishers (at least IEEE) to build a precise .bib file as the OP is asking.

@Fuhrmanator: sorry, I was just trying to contradict your statement "probably not" when it comes to whether there is some kind of key stored in the PDF file. And indeed, even given a bib file which contains all the paper titles and given a list of PDFs which store the paper titles in metadata, it is still a nontrivial task (and most likely involve some human intervention for ambiguous cases) to automatically match entries. But my understanding of the question is that tools that do something is better than tools that do nothing at all.

@Fuhrmanator the OP does not want to build a .bib file from scratch from the pdf metadata, they want to match an existing pdf with an existing bibtex entry. This is an easier task and leaves room for some heuristics.

@FedericoPoloni Agree - I didn't read closely enough.

Here is one nearly automatic way to do it using Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/):
1) import the PDFs in Zotero. One way is to select multiple PDFs and drag them into a collection (in the LHS pane) of Zotero.
2) Select the PDF items (CTRL click in Windows for multiple selections), right click and select "Retrieve metadata from PDF". Note that this step searches online databases for missing information and seems fairly robust.
3) import the .bib file in Zotero
4) Go to the duplicates collection in the LHS panel and merge all the duplicates.
Issues:
1) In step 4, there may be false negatives if the automatically retrieved metadata (in step 2) is too different from the corresponding entry in the .bib file (step 3)
2) Step 2 might fail on old scanned PDFs.

One options is BibDesk (OS X), which can track links between files and associated citations.
Personally, not a fan of what it does to the .bib file, but could suit your purpose.

Thanks. I upvoted this answer but I would have preferred to use a tool that works on windows/linux/android. Do you think that I could use Bibdesk to do the association and then export the library to some other (cross-platform) tool in a way that the new tool would import the file associations too?

@Abhishek IIRC BibDesk stores file-system references as new fields inside citations, so yes. It's a pretty tight coupling though. I'm really not the best person to ask though; I have largely given up on automated citation tools until I can get around to building my dream tool :P

EndNote x7 has this feature, known as "PDF auto import."
I tried it and it got 0/3 of my sample PDFs correct, all from IEEE conferences initially downloaded from IEEE Xplore.
One of the three articles was closer to having a correct reference (the others were useless). But that article had PDF metadata visible in Acrobat Reader (Title, Author, Subject). EndNote got page numbers right (somehow), the DOI, but failed at the conference name, and reference type (EndNote mistakenly thought it was a journal article).

Try Tellico
A collection manager for linux which "provides default templates for books, bibliographies, videos, music, video games, coins, stamps, trading cards, comic books, and wines."
The reference manual states the following:
"If Tellico was compiled with exempi or poppler support, metadata from PDF files can be imported. Metadata may include title, author, and date information, as well as bibliographic identifiers which are then used to update other information."
Is that useful? If so, then you can check the site for reviews of Tellico and it works on the following:

Debian
Ubuntu
Gentoo
FreeBSD
openSUSE
PC-BSD
Fink (Mac OS X)
Fedora
Linux Mint
Pardus
ArchLinux


text:
How to cite an aside article in a bible MLA format
I have an a NIV Arcaeological Study Bible and am taking an Old Testament studies course.  This bible has a lot of articles about archaeology and history alongside scripture.  None of the articles have the author listed.  There is a list of contributors, but there is no way to determine which author wrote which article.
So if I wanted to cite a specific article in this bible using MLA how would I do it?  Would it be like citing an encyclopedia?
If the article is titled "The Bible and Pseudepigraphical Literature", is this correct?

"The Bible and Pseudepigraphical Literature." NIV Archaeological Study Bible. 2006. Print.

Or would it be done like a collection with the editors?

Kaiser, Walter and Duane Garrett, eds. "The Bible and Pseudepigraphical Literature." NIV Archaeological Study Bible. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006. 2041. Print.

Or some other way?
I've been looking here for help: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/

It is possible that your department at your university could provide some further guidance on this as they would possibly have a stylesheet developed that would deal with this type of publication.
That said, after reviewing the book at the link you provided and as per your question said it is impossible to cite the individual contributors to the book.
Because of these circumstances I believe the most appropriate way of citing this work would be as follows. Citation below is for International edition so you may need to amend based on what edition you are using.

Kaiser, Walter C. Jr., and Duane Garrett. NIV archaeological study Bible: an illustrated walk through biblical history and culture: New International Version.. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2005. Print.

This is similar to your second suggestion but drops the article title. This should be appropriate as the articles in this book appear to be half page further information pop-outs rather than full scale academic articles.
A useful site as well as the one you linked to in your question for creating citations is Citation Machine


text:
While my elsevier in press article shows up on the journal website, it has not appeared in Google Scholar after a week
While my Elsevier in-press article shows up on the journal website, it has not yet appeared in Google scholar after a week. Is this normal and part of the process? If not, what's wrong with it?

Yes it can take some time. Don't worry - it will show up soon.

My advisor recalled of a time that to submit a paper you had to type it and send by letter. It would take months to get a response and the reviews, and after all the troubles and if you were lucky you would get a printed journal with your paper. They considered it a jump in technology when the department installed a fax machine! Leap forward, now we complain because an automatic online list, that crawls through hundreds of publishers and thousands of papers didn't list our paper after 1 week of acceptance.

I'm curious - is your paper there by now? Facing a similar problem

@AmirSagiv Hi Amir. Congratulations on your new paper. Yeah. it appeared on Google Scholar after a short time, but I can't recall how much time it took. Anyway, I think you should be patient. Meanwhile, you can share your new publication on social networks to get more attention. It works a lot.

Google Scholar updates on its own unpredictable schedule, based on whatever sort of web-crawling and internal processing schedules Google happens to be running with it.  Sometimes I find that it updates almost immediately, other times not for more than a month.
In short: don't worry about it.  If it's on the website of a reputable publisher, then it will show up sooner or later, and usually within just a couple weeks of publishing.

I recently had that issue with a paper and decided to add it manually. When I hit the "Add" button (which appears at the top of your publication list if you are logged in and viewing your own profile), I found that the paper was already in one of the groups under "Select groups of articles that you have authored from the list below," it just hadn't actually been added to my profile. I selected it and it was added with no further hassles.
On another occasion, I did add the article manually. Months later, it was also added automatically by Google Scholar, and I was able to merge the two versions.

Have patience! Google scholar will find it. Give it some time!


text:
Why aren't scientists richer?
I am an undergrad right now and I want to go into research. My question is not about whether I will be able to become rich (I am okay with a small life), but more from a civilization perspective.
For the progress of a civilization, shouldn't it focus more on increasing its scientific knowledge? So shouldn't the civilization focus on getting more people into scientific research?  Why is this not the case? Why is the simple application or mixing together of scientific principles more valued that the actual creation of scientific principles? In the long run won't this lead to a reduced pace of scientific progress?
Most people want to be the next Zuckerberg or Kalanick, Gates or Jobs, but isn't their contribution to Society's progress minuscule compared to say that of Shannon or Hamming? Shouldn't society encourage more Shannons and Hammings rather than Kalanicks or Zuckerbergs? I fully realize the importance of Kalanick or Jobs in the progress of civilization, but it seems to me that society values them much more than it does Shannon, heck most of Society does not even know who Shannon is! Yes the iPhone is wonderful, but it is pretty meaningless compared to Information Theory. Isn't this huge bias adversely affecting society and its ability to move forward?
Also, if people like Shannon or Hamming had access to more resources, won't they use it to fund more research rather than say waste it on some big house / yacht etc? We have huge poverty in this world, many children die, who knows how many Einsteins civilization might be losing? If scientists had more resources, won't they focus on reducing this? In the poverty present in the world greed plays a role, but isn't a larger cause of it simply lack of access to enough resources? Won't faster scientific progress solve this problem ?
What is the benefit of society following this policy? From my perspective this will only harm society in the long run due to reduced progress. I am assuming that my thinking is flawed, but could you help me understand why I am wrong?
PS: If this is not a suitable question please remove it. I might be able to get an answer to this someplace else, but I wanted an answer from a scientist.

As interesting as this topic is, I'm not sure this question really belongs here.

This is a philosophy/social science question that seems to have nothing to do with academia.

I strongly disagree with the close votes: a question with a mistaken premise can still have a clear answer.

I strongly recommend the OP to learn some basic economic theory.

Dear Anonymous, try asking this question on researchgate, they seemed to be more open for these kind questions, usually this forum is highly edited and censored, and I think even if question is reopened, they will still maintain highly downvoted,

Your fundamental mistake is to assume that our civilization is run with goals.
It is simply not the case that we have a well-coordinated world of that type.  Instead, the allocation of money and political power are tightly intertwined, and the resources that are devoted to science are determined by the interplay of political struggles and economic markets.  Those produce very different outcomes in different places and times, from the fairly high investment in science in places like 1950s and 1960s America to the dismally low investment in science in, say, the mid-Ottoman empire or contemporary Somalia.
Arguments such as the one that you put forth must contend against many other arguments, including people's need for food, shelter and security, their desire for power over others and to advance other causes (wise or foolish), etc.  Right now, scientists are not rich, and if you wish to change that fact, you should not look to science to bring about such a change.

Also, not all people are motivated purely by money (as soon as they have a confortable enough life, that is). Some are (often seen in the ones making it to "100 richest of..."), others crave popularity (noticed among rock stars), there are power-crazed ones (Alexander the great, Julius Caesar), others write furiously for the sake of writing (<cough>Euler<cough>).


text:
Short bio for thesis back cover?
I thought about writing a short bio, maybe 100 words, for the back cover of my thesis.
Should I do this? What to include in that case?

It sounds like you're thinking of your thesis like a book, and indeed in some countries/disciplines, at least a few copies to get produced as such.
For most theses that I see these days, however, the notion of "back cover" is entirely meaningless.  There is an electronic document that starts with a cover page, which you might consider a "front cover" if you want to, but the end of the document has nothing in particular to distinguish it, except that you come to the end of the references and/or appendices.  Moreover, many institutions have fairly strong requirements for thesis formatting, and in most that I have encountered there is no place for an author bio.
As such, I think that adding an author bio would not make sense, unless it is specifically part of a format that you are required to use by your institution.

Is not a requirement. In fact, I think is not necessary. My CV is in LinkedIn.

For what it's worth, many universities require a vita page in thesis, which is essentially a bio.

On the other hand, if it's brief and accurate and modest it isn't likely to do any harm. (My usual response to web forms with a "bio" box is "Yes, mostly biological.")


text:
What is the meaning of h-index for a journal?
What is the meaning of h-index for journals, especially those recognized Journals?

I could not quite understand what does a recognized journal mean.

I mean Good indexed Journals

The h-index for a journal is defined is just the same way that an h-index is defined for a person: the greatest value h for which there are at least h publications with at least h citations each.  Thus, for a journal, if it has published 1000 articles in its history, and 50 of them have received 50 or more citations, it would have an h-index of 50.


text:
What is a good etiquette to correct a person using wrong title for me?
I currently have a masters degree in an engineering field and I don't currently have any PhD degrees (I may study for a doctorate degree in future). It happens that when I go to conferences or scientific occasions, even in the emails I receive from people; they use a doctor prefix for my name; but I do not have a PhD degree.
What is a good etiquette to deal with such thing? Should I directly tell them that I do not have a doctorate degree? Or should I neglect such a mistake by them and don't do anything?
I think it is unethical not to correct such thing, because the person may still think that I have a PhD degree; and such wrong usage of title should be corrected some way. Once a person used doctor title for my name in an email and I just added a line in my reply to his email, stating that I have a masters degree.

In Italy any degree allows the use of the title doctor, even a Bachelor degree.

I had a college instructor who would say "Mr., please - and barely that!" when we called him "Dr.," which I thought was funny, but might not be appropriate for professional settings.

Once I, a student by then, went to a job interview and the interviewer called me "Engineer", which made sense. I told him that I was not one. He acknowledged, apologised, and... carried on calling me "Engineer". That was his training, I guess, or maybe he refused the concept of talking to not-an-engineer. Who knows. So, If after using some of the fine suggestions here, the other side keeps on calling you "Dr." you probably better give up. They could call you worse names :-)

Tell them to call you "Master" instead. :-P

Be weary of predatory publishers and other dubious paraacademic entities who bomb everyone with pompous titles hoping to attract attention with flattery.

Addressing it with humor is nearly always appropriate and can defuse otherwise awkward situations. Whether you go self-deprecating ("Just call me 'Hank', I'm a spectator, not a wizard."), street-pride ("That's 'Mister Hank', please -- I still work for a living."), over-the-top ("'Your Grace' will suffice, I'm not a doctor.") or any other way with it is a contextual judgement. The most important thing to keep in mind is it is almost certainly not a big deal to anyone.

You are reverse Howard!

I would say this depends on context. When contacting academics, it is common to assume they all have a doctorate. A mass email (or mail-merged etc.) is therefore likely to use Dr. even for a PhD student on the list, because checking would take much more work. Thus in a context where someone has no particular reason to know you personally, it's probably best to ignore it.
On the other hand, if it's coming from someone who who might reasonably be expected to remember specific information about you as a person, I would be inclined to point it out. Personally I put things like that as a PS to an email, or similar, to try not to make a big deal out of it.
Edit: Another thought on the ethics side. I would agree that you should not allow people to continue acting on the assumption you have a PhD when that is not true. However, in many cases where this arises, it is not that the person specifically believes you have a PhD, but that they are not really thinking about it, or doesn't really care.

In these cases I tend to sign my replies with an explicit title, such as e.g.

Best wishes,
Mr. Joe Smith

without any formal correction beyond this.
Particularly for a short email, it's sufficiently awkward to sign with an explicit title that it's there if they care at all about the correct title without unduly intruding into the conversation. If they don't care about it, then that's their problem, and you've discharged any moral duty you had to correct the error.

If this is done using a gmail there is a tendency for it to hide your signature line so do beware of that

It's Mr. Evil, I I have not yet spent six years in Evil Medical School so you can just call me "mister,"

Optionally followed by :-P
You could also substitute Evil Graduate School for Evil Medical School.
Referencing (and reversing) Dr. Evil Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)

Reminds me of Mister Evil Doctor Pork Chop https://youtu.be/bOZqIpbIuUg?t=185

Would be totally lost on somebody who never watched Austin Powers (which, a quick head-count in the office here, would be four out of four). Humor can backfire if it references something you can not really take for granted.

@DevSolar I hardly understood this answer and its humor...

@EnthusiasticStudent I've only seen it once, but if I recall, it's a television commercial. With this cartoon leprechaun, and all of these children are trying to chase him, "Hey, leprechaun, leprechaun man, we want to get your lucky charms." Oh! And there are these little tiny pieces of mashmallow just stuck right in the cereal. So when the kids eat them they think, "Oooh this is candy, I'm having fun!"

Perhaps it would be best to say something like "You may call me Mr. (or Ms.) Something, as I do not have a doctoral degree yet."  Keep it very short.

I think it would be reasonable to politely correct someone who did this consistently. "I actually don't have a PhD"; something very short. If it's someone you're never going to see again I don't think it would be worth saying anything.
In my field (physics in North America) basically everyone goes by their first name so this never really comes up. The only people who go around calling people 'Dr' are nervous undergrads.

Sign your reply email "Enthusiastic Student, M.Sc.", and write the same on your conference name badge.

I'm not sure I agree with the "conference badge" part. At the conferences I attend, badges just have the person's name and affiliation - titles such as "Dr.", "Prof.", "PhD", etc, are not included. At such a conference, if you write "M.Sc." on your badge, you might look pompous.

Many conferences include Prof. or Dr. (more than not in my area) on their badges, so you just cross the Dr.

@NateEldredge agreed. Maybe there should be an "N.Ph.D." acronym for "Not a Ph.D." that people in the OP's situation could use when appropriate. :-)

@DanRomik if I saw N.PhD I'd think it something like "Naturalis Philosophiae Doctor"

then perhaps ¬PhD?

I would just point it out in the next email - there is absolutely no harm in doing so.
As one person once put it - apparently it is better to assume people hold a doctorate and to address people with "Dr." rather than to not acknowledge it when they do hold one.
Any decent person/organisation should and will treat you the same irrespectively of whether you hold a doctorate or not.
I.e. a technical query from a PhD Student it equally valid as a technical query from a PostDoc.
A PS: During my PhD at least two support places gave me a title I didn't have and I mentioned it in the next email - no harm done. Having said that, I have finished my PhD since but still prefer not to use a title when say filling in a form - unless there is a good reason that it is needed. - I.e. if you apply for a PostDoc, filling in "Dr." as the way to address you makes sense, but filling in "Dr." on say Amazon or another shopping invoice - what for?

Related and important, please don't use Dr for PhDs context. On a plane, you may get asked if you are medical doctor when there's a situation in need of attention. Saves a lot of trouble for philosophy PhDs like me to not go by Dr on my information for flying.

One of my former colleagues would say: "The only time I call myself Doctor Friedman is when I make a reservation at a restsurant."

I quite often use Dr for flying.(If they don't offer Ms, I choose Dr, and yes that still happens.) Never once have I been approached during a medical situation - and I've heard the "if there is a medical doctor on board please identify yourself to an attendant" page more times than I can count.

@virmaior: I'm hoping Aviation.SE can clear this up.

In the UK at least, a passport does not show the title Dr, but may have a note of the profession doctor.

@JessicaB In Germany you can have a doctorate in the ID card/Passport.
(No idea if I will add it or not - I'll have to decide when I renew my passport - and I do not know how an English PhD would be represented in a German passport...)

@NateEldredge great idea. I'm actually depending on an anecdote I heard with respect to this practice. The person claimed they've been asked several times. As a result, I never select Dr. If this is not so, I shall.

@virmaior: "Related and important, please don't use Dr for PhDs context." - I would be careful about calling myself anything else than what is stated in my certificates; it cannot be taken for granted that a holder of a "Dr." degree is allowed to call themselves "PhD" in all legislations.

You can't always win. While I was studying for my PhD I submitted my MSc thesis as a research paper (really, I wrote a research paper and submitted it to gain my MSc, then polished it and sent it to the journal).
The referee's remarks came back in an envelope addressed to "Dr.". Since I had to send a revised version back, I wrote something like "Since I am currently studying for my PhD, I'm not yet 'Dr'." It wasn't a big deal to me, but I didn't want the departmental secretaries thinking I was misadvertising myself. This all seemed to go OK -- it passed without comment, my revisions were accepted and my paper went to print. Then the printers sent my preprints addressed to "Professor".
It occurred to me recently that they may have taken my letter into account, since in the U.S. "Professor" is the lower title (as far as I know, it applies to anyone who teaches), but at the time I read this as an upgrade -- in the UK "Professor" implies tenure!
So yes. I don't think you need to worry about including a short sentence like "By the way, I don't currently hold a PhD so for the moment I'm just 'Mr G. Mann'". I'd advise against the out-and-out joke response ("That's MR Evil..." etc) but it's fair to assume your interlocutor is at least good-humoured.
If conference badges seem to always include "Dr", perhaps ask if it's possible to omit the title, as if it's a technical question?
(On the related question of whether to include "Dr" in various contexts, I use it when a title is required, since it is my title -- and it appears that way on my billing information for example. This may mean people misidentify me as a medical doctor, but I've never had that problem. However, I don't use it most of the time. My e-mail sig is just 'John Aldis', for example. Outside the "match the billing information" examples I use my title only when doing things directly relevant to my degree. If I was applying for a post-doc, or writing a letter to a newspaper in a professional context, I might do it. Otherwise, I wouldn't.)

You could say that you can't wait to actually bear that title and are working very hard to get it.

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How important is the country of academic experience in applying for US academic jobs?
I have long academic experiences in African universities (where I studied and am based). I had various administrative positions such as head, dean, vice president. Academically, I have supervised tens of students and published many paper in high impact journals. Now I want to apply for a position in American universities (for example, a Dean position).
When I compare my credentials and academic/administrative experiences with current Deans of American universities, I am fully comparable, but my worry is:

Do the search committee needs American experience for appointing someone in an American university?
Do the search committee consider academic experiences in developing countries not-competitive to American candidates?

I understand that there might be personal views, but is it the general strategies of search committees?

it sounds like you're asking about administrative positions rather than academic positions. Is that correct ?

@Suresh yes I basically ask about administrative positions but I appreciate comments on both.

I do not intend to be rude, but why would someone hire an administrator that has no experience in the American academic system (either as student, researcher/administrator). Usually Deans were at some point full time professors in some American University first.

@Leonpalafox why America accepts workers studied in completely different education system? Why US government run lottery to satisfy the desirable diversity of immigration? American higher education system is a world's leader, but it is not perfect. I don't want to disagree you, as it was indeed my question.

Yes, but student skills are perfectly transferable, for example a very good software programmer will be good in whatever country. Yet, to be a University Deans involves a political element that has a lot to do with networking. My only point is that given that they have plenty of candidates from the US system that already knows fully well how to navigate these politics, why would they hire someone that has to learn it.

@Leonpalafox you're quite right, but why they encourage international candidates to apply? Many countries only accept candidates from inside the country (because of labor issues or what you pointed out), but most of US job advertisements equally invites international applications. Why they do not note that experience in US education system is mandatory or preferable? Then, the international candidates can officially figure our their chances before spending time for an application!

I imagine that a professor from Oxford that did his PhD in the US (or Postdoc, or had a research experience) might look as an interesting candidate. To be honest, I think that when they encourage international applications, they encourage high profile universities, and people who at least had some experience living in the US

To answer your questions:

They do not require, but they will usually prefer someone who is familiar with the academic system that they use. For example, small liberal arts colleges will usually prefer people with experience with small liberal arts colleges.
Perhaps not "not competitive" but certainly "less competitive" unless you are in a Tier 1 school in a nation that is known to have competitive tertiary education.

People have already noted in comments that there are two types of deans at American academic institutions:

Academic deans who are heads of units (the Dean of the Graduate School, for example).  These are usually promoted from within the current faculty body but on rare occasions are brought in from outside.
Non-academic deans or deans of student services (the Dean of Career Services, for example). These can be promoted (or laterally transferred) from the faculty body but are more often hired for that particular role and specialty. Non-academic deans are much more mobile -- for better or for worse. They move from institution to institution, hopefully moving up the ranks.

I would say that in your case the possibility of moving into an academic dean slot are very small.  You do have much more hope for a position as a non-academic dean.
I should note that one option that is open to you is to apply for a senior faculty position in a university with the intent of becoming Chair, then a Dean within that institution. There are often job postings listed for departments that explicitly want senior faculty -- including senior faculty who are willing to immediate Chair the department.


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Is it popular to request TA presence in the classroom for all lectures & is it right?
A Professor normally send his TA to conduct some sessions of his course (e.g., for problem solving).
It is also possible to ask the TA to attend all sessions to keep the track of the course. This is helpful if the TA is responsible for reading the essays of students, as he can be aware of discussions in the class.
How much the second scheme is popular?
Is it right to force a TA to stay and listen to the basic topics? When someone provide TA service for a course, he knows that topic well, and it is boring to sit and listen it again.

In many cases it would not actually be possible to "force" the TA to sit in on the classes, as this would have to count towards their teaching duty, which is usually set to a maximum percentage of their time.

It is very popular in the academic courses that I have seen. I have also been asked to do this. I do not think this is unreasonable. Perhaps, this is more common in North America.

Are you allowed to just stay in the back and bring a laptop, or a book to study, or something else to do?

I have not seen it ever or heard of it ever happening in my academic environment  (Serbia). In fact, I've only seen the opposite happen: Professors sometimes attending classes conducted by TA, especially if TA is new and inexperienced.

are they being paid for these hours?
(Most TA's where i am from are on a hourly rate)

Yes, attending lectures or other class sessions is a reasonable duty for a TA. Of course, if your contract specifies a maximum number of weekly hours to work, time spent attending the lectures would count toward those hours.
Keep in mind that even though you may be familiar with the basic material, the professor may feel it would be helpful for you to see the same presentation that the students are getting, so that your teaching will be consistent with his.
If you don't agree that this is the best use of your time, and there are more productive ways you could spend that time, then you could certainly suggest to the professor that you try something else. (Be polite about it - I would avoid using the word "force".) But ultimately it is his decision - he is the boss and you are being paid to work under his direction.

This is institution-dependent, at least in the US.
When I was a grad TA, it was written into our union contract that we would attend the lecture. Some people didn't, but it was generally expected that the TA's would go, and I went.
My first occasion supervising TA's, at a different university, I asked them "You'll be attending my lectures, right?" I may as well have asked them to bring me coffee every morning and shine my shoes.
I'd recommend finding out what the norm is at your institution, and following it. In particular, don't try to require lecture attendance of your TA's if the graduate director won't back you up.

I see the TAing as a time of apprenticeship and learning how to be a professional scholar. I require my TAs to attend all of my lectures -- and I also require them to visibly take notes.
The undergraduates often want to address issues raised in lecture. I do not go strictly by the book and on occasion deviate considerably into a tangential area.  Without knowing what is going on, how will the TAs handle the students' questions in section?
And the reason I require the TAs to take notes and not to noodle around on their computer is that they are setting an example of professional behavior in the classroom. If the undergrads see the TA wasting time on StackExchange the entire class period, the students will also feel free to go to FaceBook, etc.
If a TA has an issue with this, I would suggest that they talk with the department registrar and find another TA assignment more to their liking.

"Tough-guy" answer. :)

Mind mentioning where you are located? Because I've never seen this in Europe.

@Davor I agree. In the european universities where I taught so far, there were generally significantly more posts for TAs than there were good students interested in TAing. If you would at my current university force TAs to sit through class and take notes, you would likely not have TAs next year (or only those that nobody else wanted to hire).

-1: I feel this is not a good exemple to set. Taking notes is by far not the most efficient way to learn for a lot of people (myself included). See this question and answers http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1956/do-professors-frown-upon-students-who-dont-take-notes

@Xleitix - I am in the United States Fortunately, I do not feel that I must lower my standards for bringing on TAs in order to have them work for me. They are free to work with someone else. I'd rather not have a TA than to have an insubordinate one who does not follow directions.

@Zenon: The answers in that question are conflicting and hardly conclusive.  In any case, surely there is room in academia for a wide variety of teaching styles.  RoboKaren's practice isn't what I would use in the classes I teach.  But if she were my colleague, I would respect her judgment as to what works best for her teaching style in her classes; and I'd hope that she would likewise respect mine.  +1 to cancel your -1 :-)

I think it's best to leave this to the TA's discretion in many cases. Professors ought to respect the fact that TAs may be deeply immersed in their thesis research, and really need to have enough time for that.
This may depend a lot on the academic field, though.

Ehhh... no.  A TA assignment is a job or is professional training, whichever way you want to look at it.  The TA needs to behave professionally. To take your answer to its logical conclusion, if a TA doesn't feel like grading or leading discussion sections, they shouldn't have to do those arduous tasks either, right?

@RoboKaren that depends on whether it is officially considered a duty of the TA to sit in on lectures. If it is, then sure, but if it is not, then for experienced TAs, it will be a huge waste of time to sit in on all lectures.

I'm at a university in the United States where we have more latitude in what the requirements for TAs are. Personally I'm surprised that TAs aren't required to go to lectures, I can't possibly see what the purpose of the professors would be if the lectures are so rote that the TAs don't feel they need to attend -- why would anyone else attend lecture?

@RoboKaren Those others have not already taken the course and possibly TA'ed it several times. While I would not necessarily mind sitting in on lectures to make sure I knew where the lecturer had deviated from the course notes or similar, I would hate to be told that I could not also do some productive work at the same time.

I think this is both an institutional and disciplinary variance. At my university, we would never have someone TA the same class twice. We view TAing more as pre-professional training than as cheap, exploitable labor.  You are TAing to learn how to be a teacher, professor, a professional, a colleague, and more.

@RoboKaren Ahh, that is actually a very nice attitude. In that case it makes a lot more sense to require their presence (btw, remember that you can ping me with @ to make sure I see your reply).


text:
What is the procedure for hiring a professor?
When a department head needs a faculty member, how is the process of hiring one started and conducted (at least in US and UK universities)?
Of particular interest is the following;

Finance: Department head should ask the Dean for financing the salary? Who is the final decision maker?
Selection: Is the department head responsible for forming the search committee? and is he responsible for approving the qualifications? Can higher officials (e.g. Dean) interfere in the selection?
After the selection, how are the official matters handled? Who signs the contract? and who can terminate it (if not tenured)?
What is the role of human resources in this process?

This will vary significantly between countries, if not within a country.

Around here it will vary significantly between now and Tuesday!

(US-specific; public university)
You'll find a huge variation in procedures across universities. There really isn't one standard method. Having said that, I can at least suggest what happens in (one) American public universities (private universities have different financing structure)

Financing: In our universities, "slots" are line items that are approved by the legislature and are created ultimately by approval of the president of the university in conjunction with the dean of the college. There's a lot of negotiating that goes on to acquire one of these slots, and it's typically based on some "soft" arguments: "look how much research money we're generating, and how many students we're bringing in" and hard arguments: "We can only get this gigantic grant if you promise to give us a faculty slot" and so on.
Selection: departments are usually quite protective of the search process, and control most aspects of it. Again, the degree of shielding depends on politics: it's not unheard of for deans to get actively involved, especially if the department is weak. Within the department, the chair might take charge of selection, or assign a committee to do it, and so on.
Official stuff: a contract is ultimately signed by the university, and all official paperwork must go through them. Negotiations also happen with the dean via the chair.
HR: They're usually involved initially, to make sure job ads are posted correctly, and in compliance with university, state and federal employment laws. They're also involved after the offer is made, especially if there are legal requirements, international issues and so on.

Except for the bit about the legislature, this is also a decent description of how things work at my US private university.


text:
Undergraduate thesis quality in research field
I'm a graduated student who is trying to continue his education with a Master or possibly a PhD. Surfing the net, I noticed that to enroll for some PhDs an example of writing is required. I successfully completed my bachelor degree (as required) with a thesis about a proposed topic. I wrote it entirely in English, which is pretty uncommon for many colleagues from my country, but my work didn't show promising results. Long story short, my algorithms aren't really good.
Is that something common or it's a sign of demerit? Doing research for an undergraduate thesis and ending with bad results, is this something that you should avoid speaking about when asked about previous research experiences?

In undergrad research, how you did it is more important that where you got.
If you did your research properly, that is: adequate bibliographical revision, adequate problem definition, reasonable approach and a proper interpretation of the results, that is an excellent thesis, IMHO. Even if your conclusion is "these methods are terrible for this", which, if true, is a valid contribution.

The fact that you worked through a research project is definitely great experience, whatever the eventual outcome. If you played a part in designing the project, all the better, but even if you just executed a research plan proposed to you by your research adviser, that's still valuable experience that will help your graduate school application.

"The fact that you worked through a research project is definitely great experience, whatever the eventual outcome." - This seems a bit unfocused. In a way, it seems to say that no matter what the specifics of the thesis, the mere fact that someone got their Bachlor degree in a country where a Bachelor degree invariably includes a thesis gives them a significant inherent advantage over other candidates (?)

Moreover, note that the OP just mentions having written a thesis with some relation to research. This may or may not have been a true research project (also depending on what is defined as "research" in the context).

Thesis is mandatory, but you can make a "experimental" thesis, where you try to find new solutions or improve those who have already been proposed, or a "compilation" thesis where you simply explain and speak about a certain field without trying to give new solutions.

@user3574984: This may be field-dependent, but I can imagine more types such as "development" theses that find new solutions that are new artifacts, but not necessarily conceptually new. In short, having written a thesis does not imply having done (much) research, as this answer somewhat implies.

Yes, I gave the closest translation. I think your definition suits it well.

I think that you (as many others) have a distorted perspective on expectations and goals of doing research and writing a thesis in a educational setting. The following represents my vision on the topic and definitely is not an absolute truth. However, I believe and hope that many people would agree with my point of view. In my mind, education and research in educational setting, including writing a thesis (dissertation) seeks to enable a future scholar to perform research and, perhaps, teach. That is, the goal is to immerse a person in an experience and teach them a framework for approaching problems and finding solutions to those problems (gaining specific knowledge is a valuable, but secondary goal). That experience and that framework are much more important than anything else one can learn in an academic environment. As the famous Chinese proverb says,

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Obviously, this wisdom should be understood in the academic context, but both essence and value of this idea remain as valid in academia as they do in other contexts. Moreover, from the perspective of mastering the scholarly framework, I think that it is much more important to ask the right questions (and, perhaps, ask any questions, as IMHO there no wrong or bad questions), than to obtain results or, even, good results. In my view, asking questions that lead to obtaining results is paramount to becoming a good scholar and represents an essential part of the above-mentioned scholarly framework. Speaking of importance to science of asking questions and, generally, being curious (versus focusing on results), another famous phrase of a famous scholar comes to mind:

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. – Albert Einstein

Considering all the arguments, mentioned above, and returning to your specific question, I would say that it is completely wrong to gauge quality of a thesis (or graduate's achievements, in general) by research results. Not only results are not an indicator of said quality or achievements, but also "bad results" are as valuable, if not more, as the "good" ones. For more information on the value of negative results (for studies with formulated hypotheses), please see my other answer. Good luck!