text:
Complimenting the author of a textbook
In one of my undergraduate courses, I found that one of the required texts was particularly well-written. It is a textbook about computer architecture, and I found that it explained intricate technical concepts in understandable language, and it managed to exemplify and summarize often difficult concepts quite nicely.
Just so it happens, this textbook was written by someone currently in our Computer Science department (not my professor). Would it be well-received, or at least appropriate, if I sent an email to the author to compliment his textbook? I have no ulterior motive; I'm not trying to win his favor or anything like that, I just simply want to express my gratitude for a resource that was useful to my learning.
(A similar question has already been answered, but I am curious if the answer would still be the same for a textbook.)

Possible duplicate of When should I write a thank you letter to the author of a scholarly paper?

See also Should I send an email to authors of a paper I enjoyed reading?

I've emailed an author to compliment his textbook before, but I didn't cold email, it came up in the conversation at a later stage. However, if you're polite, I don't see why anyone would be annoyed by such an email.

In general, I find that people do not praise enough. We take the good things for granted (and loudly complain on the not-so-good ones) and it is always kind to simply say, unsolicited, "great work".

In addition to a nice "thank you" email, you should write a glowing review online - perhaps at Amazon - to help the author in a more tangible way.

I would think you don't even need to go into much detail: just the fact that you have found the author's work sufficiently helpful that you want to express thanks... will be enough, I think.
That is, ... perhaps contrary to the fake myth that textbook and course-notes writers have large, expressive fan clubs... mostly one feels that one is speaking to the void, with no response. (Nowadays even to keep track of IP addresses of hits on one's site seems to require an extra load of various things equivalent to "Google Analytics", which slow things down enormously, so are not usabe... I remember the relatively-better-old days when I could see the IP addresses of people who hit my web pages...)
I myself do make a point of communicating to people whose writing is especially good, at all levels, especially if it's not "heroic, prize-winning" glamor stuff, but is simply very, very good.
We, collectively, should do more of this, I think.

"the fake myth that textbook and course-notes writers have large, expressive fan clubs"  :D  Maybe like five people have these sorts of fan clubs, and even those fan clubs aren't very expressive in general.  +1

This answer needs even more ellipses...

"fake myth". Isn't a myth false by definition? :-)

@FaheemMitha, perhaps some mythologies are more genuine, insofar as they might reflect some aspects of reality...?

Fake myths have been around for quite a while :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossian

In other (more on-topic) news, I'd personally be happy if some readers would comment on whatever notes of mine they are reading, though I definitely wouldn't expect it. Some actual data (corrections, criticism, what they want to see more of) would be particularly good, though. Part of what makes writing a pain is that even when there is an audience, you have no idea what it actually wants.

Dear Paul, I used some of your functional analysis notes in my classes and found them very very useful. Thank you.

Sure.  Writing a book is a huge amount of work, and everyone likes to hear that their work has been useful to someone.  If anything, this is probably more true for books than for papers, since books are typically less useful for career advancement, and are often written with more altruistic motives.
Just be sincere; don't fawn or go over the top.  If there are specific aspects of the book that were helpful, mention them specifically.  If you have suggestions for improvement, it's fine to mention them too.

The biggest way to thank someone who writes books is to write positive detailed reviews. They will see the review and feel appreciated. You can always send a link to the author after posting the review.

Well said! A review is a public form of thanks, and as such, a lot more valuable to an author than a private email.

Where a textbook differs from a paper is that it is by definition a compilation of work (of others) and generally doesn't contain original research. Therefore, you are right to think about approaching this differently from complimenting a paper.
While it doesn't happen often (and really should happen more often) complimenting or thanking anyone for any kind of effort is a positive thing.
You should keep in mind, though, what work actually went into the production of this work. In case of a textbook the majority of the work goes into the selection and parsing of materials to cover which is an entirely separate skillset from research, which you may have corresponded about in the past - and is in fact closer to designing a course on the subject. Therefore, you should slant your praise accordingly.
That said, there are really no 'wrong' ways to do this.

Definitely, I imagine that writing textbooks is a bit of a thankless task and I'm quite sure that a letter of thanks would be greatly appreciated.
It is certainly hard to see how this could be seen as a bad thing and if you can be specific about what you found especially good the chances are that it will be useful feedback.
In terms of more general etiquette it can also be a good thing to give some sort of 'hook' which will help them to write a polite reply without appearing to demand one as responding to compliments can often be quite difficult.

I did exactly that once. I thought the author of a book for undergraduate analysis made a great job compared to many other books I used to prepare my analysis exam. I wrote him that with a little motivation on what I particularly enjoyed. He replied with a brief email saying he appreciated the comment and wishing me the best. As suggested by others today I'd couple that with a review on some online marketplace. As he's in your department bonus karma if you also do this anonymously (also to avoid that you might be interpreted as trying to win his favor, unlikely but you never know and in the end shouldn't matter to you)


text:
How can professionals vet research ideas (and potentially collaborate) with academics?
I am a professional software engineer. In my downtime, I enjoy following some of the informal streams about advances in my field (Lambda the Ultimate for example, academic email lists, etc.) as well as more practical practices to keep myself up to date. Some of those practical aspects involve playing around at the edge of my knowledge/skill to try and advance it.
Recently I've had a particularly good idea that I've been able to turn into a workable prototype for something a little novel (as far as I can tell looking into past research). Normally, I would pat myself on the back and go about my life - or maybe post it to a blog. But this one falls into a realm that is almost entirely academic (Type Theory and Parsing). Nobody reading a random blog would understand or be able to extend/expand it into anything greater. On the other hand, I've read enough papers to know that I wouldn't be taken seriously by academics (or even skilled amateurs) without a boatload of formalism, that I honestly don't have (and may be beyond me).
It's been 20 years (and 2000 miles) since college, so contacting my alma mater's CS department seems to be not an option. These questions ask about how to get into doing research somewhat full-time, and their answers recommend actually entering a degree program at a research university. That certainly seems premature when I'm not particularly interested in doing research full time, and odds are heavily against this idea actually being novel or non-trivial to someone with more formal training.
This question is similar, but is asking more of "is it possible? how is it possible?". I know the options, but I also am pretty sure they won't do much, or I can't effectively do them. The answers point out the difficulty of being a solo outsider, which I readily acknowledge, even if I don't well understand how little I know about the difficulties.
So as someone well removed from university, how would I find someone to vet this idea - and in the best of scenarios, help form it into something respectable?

I'm curious. How did this end up for you?

@RubberDuck - it did not. Over the years, I've talked briefly with some skilled engineers and a few generalist teaching professors about the idea. They all found it a bit weird and uninteresting. I found a group at a local university that works in the field, but never reached out. My interest never surpassed my anxiety. So I infrequently work on the prototype. It's a pleasant enough hobby.

I'm a bit sad to hear that. At least it's a pleasant hobby.

odds are heavily against this idea actually being novel or non-trivial to someone with more formal training

That last line puts you way ahead of most amateur researchers.  In my personal experience most of them follow this line of thought.  If you're interested in talking about your idea with researchers, look up a prof in the field at a local college and write something like

I'm John, a software engineer with an interest in research in your field.  I've come up with an idea I think is interesting and would like to know more about it.  I was wondering if you or a knowledgeable student might be interested in helping me understand it better.  I know you and your students time is valuable, and I can offer some money if someone would be willing to help me understand this better.  (Be sure to attached an explanation of your idea)

I've never had someone offer me money for help in an unsolicited email, but if I did, I would likely find a grad student who would really appreciate an extra $100 for explaining it.  There may also be scholarly meet-ups a grad-student could direct you to.
Although it sounds like your expectations are not sky high, don't expect to have discovered anything revolutionary, and please be nice to whomever ends up helping you, and don't try to convince them you are an unrecognized genius toiling away in your basement.
EDIT: You might find math.stackexchange.com or codegolf.stackexchange.com to be useful.
EDIT 2: Any prof you send an email to will likely measure it against this scale  for crack-pot ideas.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
In college and grad-school applications, will the information of self-identified sex information be shared among all reviewers?
Speaking out one's own unusual sexual identity and unusual sex-orientation sometimes take a huge amount of bravery, yet most university applicants in USA are required to disclose that information (there is usually a prefer-not-to-say option).
We must admit that, although all laws and rules disallow discrimination against sexual and cultural minorities, people are still doing this in their heart. For example, it is not unusual to see someone laughing at gay-ish behaviors or a strong English accent.
My question is, will those information be publicly and widely shared among all faculty members who is reviewing that application?
My motivation is: I am more than happy to disclose my unusual orientation, but only to my closest friends (excluding parents) or professional social workers. I want to speak out the truth and I don't want to use the "prefer-not-to-say option". I am also willing to disclose it to a very small professional team of diversity recruiters, but I am definitely uncomfortable to disclose it to an entire faculty.

Would you please clarify what the application is for ?

@Nobody Mostly grad-school application and I am interested in both College and Grad applications.

you really have to disclose your sexual orientation (e.g. straight, homosexual), or rather your gender identity (e.g. identifying as female, non-binary)? Because those are two very different things and at least in Europe, asking about the sexual orientation is absolutely not allowed.

@Sursula I am asked to disclose both.

I am not familiar with laws in the US, but are you sure that this is legal?

I suspect that the only colleges that ask about sexual orientation are those that are conservative religious ones. They will also discriminate against anybody non traditional about sex/gender. Can you show an excerpt from the application and a hint about what sort of college this is? Seems very unusual.

@Buffy Thanks you and leonos are correct that there is a "not-to-say" option. However, I want to speak-up the truth rather than hiding. I am happy to share my private orientation with my closest ones (excluding my parents) and any professional social worker working for the diversity goals. I feel uncomfortable, however, if this part of application is to shared with an entire faculty.

I cannot answer for the US, but in the UK it is common for this sort of question to appear on an application form. However, it usually comes with a disclaimer that your answer will not be seen by the people actually considering your application. The stated purpose of collecting this information is that it will be used, in aggregated form, to assess the overall fairness of the application procedure. If this disclaimer does not appear, I think it would be reasonable to contact the admissions office and check.

Yes. This used to be the case in USA. Before 2021 there was a section tagged with "will only be shared with diversity staffs" or something like that. However, for now, there is rarely such a disclaimer.

In the US, if you put information on an admissions application then assume that everyone on the admissions committee and those in the administration (likely clerks, office staff) with responsibility for handling applications will see it. It is unlikely to be shared outside the people in the process, but that can't be guaranteed. Unlikely because few would care or even think to do it.
Information that won't be shared should be clearly marked. Some of the information is collected because the government asks for aggregate data on some questions such as race/ethnicity. Most (all?) such questions are marked as optional. For such information, you may assume, that policies are adhered to, though mistakes can be made.
It is even possible that, having seen it, someone might mention it in an interview situation contains parents. It would be inadvertent, probably, but, still, not what you seem to want.
If you want such information closely held then don't put it on such forms, which have a long lifetime.
If you are "forced" in some way to reveal personal things, then I'd suggest that you look elsewhere for your education. You are unlikely to be satisfied with other things occurring at places that would do that.

Undergraduate admissions in the US is usually handled by an administrative (Admissions) office. Graduate admission is usually handled by a faculty committee. There are exceptions.

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


text:
Can I omit my department's name to express my dissenting opinions?
My full affiliation is:

Abacus Beard Department of Underwater Basket-Weaving, Calvin Doofus Division of Ocean Science, University of Watering-Down.

A. B. is the name of a big donor. C. D. is the name of another big donor.
I dissent with many opinions of A. B. and my department. I don't want my name to be with AB. I like C. D. on the other hand. Can I omit the department's name and AB, putting only the CD Division as my affiliation?
The university does not have any specific rules on writing affiliations.

The question needs clarification. A.B. is a "big donor" in what way? As in a donor to the program? Or the PI who paid for your research expenses?

@user438383 Not only against the journal rules. Your employment contract (or grant) may require you to list some acknowledgments or affiliations.

Is there an issue with skipping the A.B. part and just using Department of Underwater Basket-Weaving?

When do you actually need to state that affiliation? For papers? Grant proposals? Pep talks? Are you actually the only one of your department involved, or would there be e.g. a co-author with maybe different views?

@MisterMiyagi For a paper. My coauthors are free to put anything they like. I never make decision for others.

I would suggest that dropping the name of a donor, gives the impression not of disagreement with their views but of impropriety—an attempt to hide a conflict of interest.

If you do not want to be associated with these people, you may want to consider changing your affiliation. It seems rather dishonest to refuse to acknowledge that you live off their donations.

So you're willing to take their money (as a post-doc or faculty member) or give them your money/labor (as a student) and have their name on your paycheck or diploma (figuratively if not literally) but not on your publications?  Huh.

In what areas do you have a difference of views with A.B.? Do you prefer to weave clockwise while A.B. advocates/ed counter-clockwise weaving? Or is it that you support the Landlubber Lads in football while A.B. is a big fan of the Mad Mountainclimbers? (I.e. is your dislike even relevant to the work you do?)

If you have a named chair and believe your salary comes from immoral sources or the donor's positions are immoral, resign. Then you can say what you like about the donor, and you will not be paid from the funds they endowed. In every case I've known about, you would just revert to a faculty member without a named chair, possibly at a lower salary. Whether this will affect future promotions or a tenure decision, I leave to you to judge.

@user253751 It depends on whether their badness is in how they get their money or how they spend their money. In the case of rich philanthropists, usually they get their money in often-immoral ways and then spend it on good causes. Taking money from them would only encourage them to make more money.

@user253751 I never suggested that it might not be good. I simply stated that it seems dishonest not to acknowledge the fact that you are accepting their money.

To quote a line from the show Band of Brothers: We salute the rank, not the man!

Your suggestion seems strange to me, and also rather churlish.  In the first place, acknowledging a person or organisation in an academic paper does not imply that you share their views or that you "like them" --- acknowledging a donor just means that their resources contributed to the research and listing your department in your byline just means that it is the department you were in when you did the research.  Thousands of researchers publish papers that are funded by places like the Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, etc., and I would never imagine that these researchers necessarily share the views of Bill and Melinda Gates, or the various other billionaires who control these funding bodies.  Likewise, I would think there would also be thousands of academics who have grievances with their departments or donors, and I would never presume the absence of such grievances merely because they list their department name in their byline or list donors as contributing to funding the research.
There is variation in the particular types of acknowledgements that people make in papers, so you probably have some legitimate discretion here.  Nevertheless, these decisions are usually driven by clarity and candour in relation to the relevant organisations and people, rather than the author's personal views on the merits of ideas held by those people.  Clarity and candour in the acknowledgements is really just a basic element of politeness in relation to sources of research and the general desire to give the reader correct and complete information.  It's not a good idea to develop a reputation as someone who withholds acknowledgement or credit to others simply because you don't get along with them personally or don't share their views.

It's simple enough: do you benefit from the department and hence (indirectly) from the donation of A.B.?
If you want the benefits of being affiliated with something then you should be willing to acknowledge that affiliation.

There are so many evil rich people out there trying to buy reputation with their money that this answer seems very misguided to me.

@Arno I don't understand why you think that. All I am saying is that if you don't want to be associated with the evil rich person, then don't take their money.

Imagine you are a faculty member of an extremely large medical school. The dean of said medical school decides to take $50 million from a donor. What control do you have over that decision? Your argument is to resign in protest?

@Ian Some people may be willing to resign in protest, and most (including me) would not. But it's only the people who resign who get to say "I am not affiliated with that school or donor."

I aknowledge that it would be hypocritcal to decry someone's position while taking their money and using it to advance the decried position. However I strongly reject the notion that it is hypocritical to decry a person's position while taking their money and using it for other purposes (thus diverting resources from the decried position).

@Vaelus I said nothing about whether or not one should decry the donor's position, and I did not use the word "hypocritical". I have no problem with someone taking the money while publicly disagreeing with the donor. But I would feel the need, as a matter of honesty, to qualify my disagreement by admitting that I took the money.

@Arno It seems very misguided to me to label people 'evil' so lightly and so broadly.

Congratulations, you have come to a point where you need to decide what matters to you more - your beliefs or money. If your department accepted funding from someone you disagree with, then you are always free to quit in protest. This way, you will not have to accept money from someone who you feel is abhorrent, and you will act in accordance with your beliefs.
You can donate an amount commensurate with the donor's contribution to your salary (a rough computation would be the donor's contribution divided by the department's overall budget), which is in my opinion the most noble option.
You can also advocate with your department chair, dean, and provost to reject the donation. This is very unlikely to succeed (since administrators love money more than almost anything). You can campaign with faculty, staff and students, to get them to pressure the administration to reject the donation. This would also probably come at a personal cost.
Simply removing the donor's name is an empty gesture, unlikely to sway anyone and do nothing except make you feel a bit better about "doing something" or "sticking it to the man". It's also, as @Ben suggests, a bit hypocritical - you are accepting the donor's money after all (either directly or indirectly).
As researchers we often need to decide whether to accept funding from X. Unfortunately, having enough money to fund universities often correlates with some skeletons in one's closet. You can choose to accept this as a reality of research, and try and do the best things you can with the funding you were given. You can also choose to reject it (I, for one, will never accept funding from certain financial institutions that openly support terrorist activities/drug dealers; some people don't accept DoD/DARPA funding), but understand that it will come at a cost.
Besides being hypocritical and childish, ignoring funding sources most likely violates funding acknowledgments rules/department regulations. For example, when writing official letters on behalf of the university, such as reference letters, you will need to do so using the department's letterhead, and changing it is not allowed.

I usually list only one "structure level" in my affiliation (it varies which one), and I've never been told off for that. I am also not aware of any potentially issues this could cause for the records (eg like a too weird formatting of a reference could deprive the cited authors of the citation count).
You could probably also just drop the "AB" from the departments name and just go for "Department of Underwater Basket Weaving".
Overall, the only problem you could face if your department/university has very detailed policies on how affiliations should be phrased, and someone actually cares enough to pay attention and then enforce them. This would surprise me, but you'll know much better than us how the local situation is.

I'd argue that there is a moral problem with dropping affiliations simply because you don't like them.

This. Find a plausible compact way to state the affiliation and it's unlikely that anyone will complain.

This article might help you think about the tensions involved in philanthropy.
https://johnsoncenter.org/blog/philanthropy-and-reparations-righting-the-past/
I'm making some assumptions here, but often the tension people feel about having a foundation's or person's name on the department (or museum or whatever) gives the name an air of legitimacy, when the money may have been acquired by illegitimate means (or perhaps the person/family were historically involved in perpetrating racist polices, for example).
Some foundations have been publicly acknowledging this, and it would be reasonable for university faculty to suggest/encourage a foundation to try to acknowledge and/or redress past transgressions.

I mean, if you feel better by omitting the department, why not just do it?
If somebody at your university objects, you can still change it.

This is the answer.

What's next? Omitting your affiliation entirely because you feel you will look cooler as a 'lone genius'? Omitting coauthors because you don't like them? This seems very contrary to the general attitude in the modern sciences that credit should be given where credit is due. I'm not saying this answer is wrong, but it could definitely benefit from some more thorough consideration.

If the affiliation has contributed to OP's salary/funding, this is not an acceptable answer.

@Servaes I mean, if Donald Trump would donate a large sum to my department, and they choose to call themselves "Donald Trump department for X", I would also try to avoid to mention this as much as possible.

@Servaes Omitting coauthor and omitting affiliation are very different legally. When submitting to a journal, you sign a legal agreement to include all coauthors.

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


text:
Does the superseded version of a paper establish priority?
Last year a group of authors put online a paper, titled "XYZ". The paper "XYZ" contain part I and part II.
Later the authors deleted the old file. They published a new paper called "ABC" in a good journal. On paper ABC they explicitly state that "ABC" supersedes "XYZ".
In ABC, the old results in part II is completely removed. I checked their part II and their results were mistaken but some calculations and deduction are correct.
Very recently, I find out that one of my submitted paper is closely related to their deleted part II, but is unrelated to their new ABC. Since ABC and my paper deal with different research topics, I did not read either ABC or XYZ until very recently. XYZ is still available to the public in an old repository.
Does their superseded paper established the priority for them or I can still claim the priority? Do I need to talk to that group?

@AnonymousM I was unaware of their paper until very recently, since the paper ABC itself is unrelated to my paper. I've submitted my paper for a few months. I'll include more details!

You said they deleted the old paper but it is still available. I don't understand. More important, were you plagiarized?

@Buffy I don't think anyone is plagiarized in this case. Deleted old paper is still available in one old repository but not available on the authors' website or the journal's webiste.

There is no official definition of priority.  The detailed facts don't seem at all disputed in this case.  For what purpose is priority relevant here, and what is the definition those decision makers are using?

@AlexanderWoo My paper did not cite their paper and their results in XYZ part II so I am afraid that this might make me look bad in future.

@dodo - People miss things all the time and it's not a problem as long as it was a reasonable honest oversight, which this looks like it is.  Just cite it in the final version with a sentence giving the facts.  "While this paper was under review, the author(s) discovered that X, Y, and Z had stated the results of Section 3 in an old version of paper ABC entitled XYZ that remains unpublished." (and give appropriate citations)  (You might want to run the exact wording of the sentence by the X, Y, and Z to make sure they agree - assuming they don't have a bad reputation about this sort of thing.)

You don't mention the field, but in my field there's coming up with the idea, then there's publishing it. They have priority on the idea, you have priority in publishing. Yours counts for more, but you must acknowledge.

How does "yours counts for more" work?

You get the citations and others refer to your idea as "originally published by X".


text:
What is the de facto standard while writing equation in a short email to professors?
In a research field that math is frequently used, while sending a long note/paper, attaching a pdf is of course the best. But for a short email that only involves few equations, a pdf file might be too much I guess (is this correct?). What is the best way to facilitate communication and not scaring the readers to stay away from the content?
Here are some options for writing equation in a short email:

There is chrome extension generating in-line equation for Gmail. But such option is unavailable for other sender's clients and the recipient might face some formatting/loading problem.

Use in-line image like this . Again this option might cause massy formatting issues in the recipients' end, even if the sender's been careful

Use uncompiled latex pseudo-code. This is what my advisor and some seniors use, for example: "consider the equation mu(Q)=sum_{n in Q}a_n, we can get...". This option is hard to read but will not usually cause formatting problem accross different platforms.

Use uncompiled real latex code. Since it is the real code (not pseudo code), the code is more rigorous and directly compliable if the receiver likes to. For example: "consider the equation \mu(Q)=\sum_{n \in Q}a_n, we can get..." This could be harder to read than "option 3".

Use pdf regardless of the length of the email.

Write a pdf and then take a large screenshot of the page.

What do you use daily? Please don't hesitate to share us your own tricks!

Voting to close as opinion-based. I don't think there's a "right" answer to this question.

@astronat Do you feel that this is more like a community-wiki-type question? How can I improve?

There is also the, albeit slower version of typing the equation out in ASCII: µ(Q) = ∑ a_n, or even µ(Q) = ∑_n∈Q a_n.

@JannikPitt that's unicode not ASCII.

@JannikPitt Will it cause some formatting problem on some email clients?

The LaTeX pseudo-code being hard to read for short equations seems like an opinion, for sure. It seems like your advisor and others have decided that pseudo-code is the best for them.

@dodo  I rather misread this when I answered.  Are you concerned with writing professors in all areas, or perhaps advanced students and researchers in math, CS or physics?  I imagine biology professors will not want to look at mangled latex code.  Also, many researchers are not professors.

@TerryLoring Researchers in math-heavy fields

@dodo  Good.  That seemed implicit, but just checking.

It's strange that nobody has yet created a browser (Chrome/Firefox) extension that would format all math on any page using MathJax (I could find only for Github and Wikipedia). In this case using real LaTeX code with proper delimiters would work for anybody who has installed the extension.

@Petr There was one for chrome/gmail. Not sure if it uses MathJax but I'd say it is similar. Check my option 1.

@dodo Researchers in math-heavy fields - This info should definitely be in the statement of the question.  But there's also the question of whether the recipients are regular *TeX users?  If it's a mathematician, yes.  If it's an engineer or economist, I'm not so sure.

@Kimball Add that info in the first line. Thanks for the comment.

I've frequently send and received emails with LaTeX code in them. I don't think I've ever received an extremely short pdf (ie a single line or so). Formulas as image is something I've seen only students do, never colleagues. As such, I feel confident in declaring LaTeX-code-in-emails the de facto standard in my local neighbourhood.
There is no clear pattern in whether it is compilable code, or whether stuff like \ is dropped. For stuff I am writing myself, I'm more likely to write correct code if either the expression is sufficiently complicated that the receiver may want to compile it rather than reading the source code, or if it seems plausible that the expression could eventually be copied into an actual paper draft. I'm less likely to write to write formally correct LaTeX code if I'm in a hurry.

Agree. People who write in LaTeX can "visually compile" math mode in their head. And our visual compilers are more forgiving about missing dollar signs and curly braces!

Many thanks! Have you encountered anyone using unicode equation like μ(Q) = sum_{n ∈ Q} a_n?

@dodo: I occasionally use μ(Q) = ∑_{n∈Q} a_n which is both understandable and I believe directly compiles in modern LaTex. I'm not making that an answer because I do not know actual etiquette.

@MatthewLeingang but our "visual compilers" (as you put it) are less forgiving about things that are run together — like \frac1ab, which is valid LaTeX but which you'd probably want to write \frac{1}{a}b in pseudo-LaTeX.

@dodo I have encountered this, but I don't like it. The mixture of symbols and code throws me off balance a bit, and ultimately reading it becomes more difficult for me. Some symbols also look a bit wrong, depending on the font used (\in is a particularly notable culprit here). Also, it is extra work if the goal is to copy it into an actual LaTeX document.

I rarely need to communicate equations except with other mathematicians or statistician, and in those circumstances, I presume (possibly incorrectly!) that they all speak TeX ... so I write the equation in the same way as I would if I were using TeX, LaTeX, or the kind of markdown that Stack Exchange uses.
No one has yet replied saying, "What was that supposed to mean!?"
Added in response to a comment question ...
I type the equation, much as I would in TeXMaker, including the $ and \ marks. My reason for doing so? Laziness! Sometimes I'm just cutting and pasting a line. I know it might sound inconsiderate, but for reasons similar to these, I don't think it is.
And finally ..
Having just read the nice answer by #Vectornaut, I might change my ways.

It should be non-mathematican readable for most people. If you want nice typesetting it can become much less readable, but there is no need for that in an email or message.

Do you use the real TeX code, or use the pseudo code with "" and "$" dropped?

I often use LaTeX pseudo-code with some symbols encoded in Unicode. For example, I might express the valid LaTeX
\mu(Q) = \sum_{n \in Q} a_n

as the pseudo-LaTeX
μ(Q) = sum_{n ∈ Q} a_n

or the valid LaTeX
\sum_{n \in \mathbb{N}} \frac{1}{n^2}

as the pseudo-LaTeX
sum_{n ∈ ℕ} 1/n²

I know that the more Unicode I use, the more likely I am to hit a character that the recipient's browser or e-mail client can't render, but I can't recall anyone ever telling me this happened to them. Operating system developers have gotten really good at using font fallback and font linking to seamlessly display documents containing wide ranges of Unicode characters.

Perfect answer! I am also worrying about the recipient's end cannot render some characters. All the Greek letters are fine I guess. Do you also use the real subscription and superscriptions instead of "_"?

@dodo I've found that most modern computers have built-in fonts that will handle most if not all of the math symbols defined by Unicode.  For example, Windows systems have shipped with Cambria Math for years.  It's not nearly as big of an issue as it used to be.

@dodo, I use superscript characters pretty regularly, as shown in the \frac{1}{n^2} example. I didn't know about the subscript characters until you mentioned them—I'll try them sometime! Superscript characters aren't the best choice for all situations, and if I use carets anywhere in an e-mail, I might use them everywhere for consistency.

If your equations are reasonably short, consider explaining them in plain English, rather than presenting them in maths notation, e.g.:

For a given sequence, consider a set of indices and call the partial sum of sequence elements on this set

(of course, use the correct terminology -- I am not sure what does your equation represent).
If explaining in simple English becomes tedious, perhaps, your email is not so short after all and it is best to write a proper LaTeX or Markdown file and compile it into a pdf.

Maybe I've been at this for too many years (English-writing math stuff in ASCII emails), but if it's only two or three equations and such, for me it's quicker to spend 10 seconds quickly typing something like "The mu-measure of Q is the sum of a_n as n ranges over Q" (or whatever mu(Q) should be called; or just write m(Q)) than trying to figure out how to get an image in the email or stop and make a .pdf of some handwritten stuff. On the other hand, when things get a bit long (and I do this every 2-3 days, at least, regarding my contract work-at-home stuff), then I'll handwrite, scan, attach.

If the math involved is more than three or four short equations then I usually typeset the math, or even the entire letter, using latex.  Then I attach the latex and a PDF -- one for quick reading, the other so the other person can edit the equations when replying.
For just a touch of math, I use an unholy (uncompilable) mashup of latex code and matlab code and ASCII art.  I will write  -->  in place of  \rightarrow  and  alpha_2  in place of $\alpha_2$.  And finally totally corrupt things like  alpha --> [alpha 3; 3 2*alpha] .  Lots of extra whitespace that SE will delete.
When I teach math online, this is a real problem.  Undergraduates rarely know both matlab and latex.  The discussion boards are rather pointless.  I tried third party discussion boards with easy editors for tex, but it was a bit of a failure.  The solution that was best was for students to write using pen on paper and use their phone to make a PDF.

Personally, I use any and all of the following, depending on how much of a hurry I'm in and who I'm communicating with.

Avoid email and use a messaging service that supports LaTeX.

This is the best option if you can convince people to use such a messaging service, which admittedly won't be the case with everyone you want to mail. The one I like is Zulip. It's free to set up a reasonably small server and the functionality is similar to Slack or Discord, but it supports LaTeX (or rather KaTeX, an alternative to MathJax) out of the box. There might be other good alternatives, this is just the one I know.

Use images

Personally, I think your email is much more likely to be read and understood if the equations are legible, so I think this is much better than the pseudo-LaTeX-code option. I think the main reason people don't do this is because it's a bit of a hassle, but if you set up a good workflow it's not so bad.
I don't know about other platforms but on the Mac there is an app called LaTeXit that allows you to just type the LaTeX code and view the resulting equation, without all the boilerplate of setting up a document. Then you can do shift-option-command-4 to screenshot part of the screen and place it in the clipboard, so you can then just do command-V to paste it in the email. I've never had an issue with someone not being able to see the images.
I never use an image as an inline equation though - I always put each image on a line on its own. That ought to avoid the vast majority of formatting problems that you might otherwise run into on the other person's email client.

Use unicodeit

unicodeit.net is a simple web site where you can enter (pseudo)-LaTeX code and get unicode output. It's great for writing simple inline things like x ∈ ℝ, which I got by typing x \in \mathbb{R}.

use Markdown

There are many Markdown-based text editors that let you use MathJax and export the result as a pdf. What I do is write the email in such an editor, then both paste the Markdown source into the email body and attach the pdf with the LaTeX rendered. That way the recipient doesn't have to open the pdf just to see what you wrote, but they have the option to if they want to see it with the equations rendered properly.

write LaTeX pseudocode directly in the email

To be honest I do this quite often, but only if I'm feeling lazy and/or in a hurry, and if I know that the recipient won't have trouble parsing the pseudo-LaTeX and will take the time to do so.

TL;DR Don't use images. Use PDFs if complex.
I don't know much about the math side of things, but based on my experience in end-user email (and everything else) support across many different platforms, I highly recommend against using images. Depending on the destination email system, software (whether local such as Outlook or Thunderbird or online webmail of various types), device (smart phones often different from desktop and laptop computers) and other factors, images are not a reliable way to convey critical details in an email message:

Size - depending on many factors, an image that looks "normal" on the sender's computer might appear tiny (and nearly unreadable) or huge (and unprintable) on the recipient's system.
Access - Due to bandwidth issues, spam issues and other reasons, some systems block images, some allow images only after confirmation and some block remotely hosted images (some sending systems will automatically turn attached images into hosted images without a non-expert sender realizing what is going on). So using images can sometimes result in the recipient not actually seeing the intended content at all.
Printing - Some email systems will reliably print images inline with the text of the message, some will not or will do so but too small/too large.

I have dealt with this so many times that I actually wrote a system - picturepdf.com - to handle it. I have some customers who receive images occasionally from many different sources and in many different sizes and who can't be easily trained to open up attached images in Paint.NET or a similar program to resize them and print them. Send an email to convert@picturepdf.com and it will send back a PDF of the included images, one per page. Once they have the PDF, they can print that easily or forward it along to someone else, etc. (I don't make any money on this - the value to me is in not having to help customers every time they get an image that they can't print properly. Saves me time and saves them frustration.)
I agree with using various methods of spelling out an equation, depending on the situation, including plain text, pseudocode and LaTeX. I have not used LaTeX myself (I am not a mathematician) but I done similar things with snippets of code as needed.
But when it gets complex, use LaTeX or whatever system you prefer and turn it into a PDF and attach it.

Many thanks! Do you think unicode characters like ℝ, μ will be well-supported?

In general, I would expect Unicode to be better supported than images. Images present a ton of bandwidth, formatting and security issues that Unicode does not. That being said, there are still some older email clients (e.g., Eudora) that don't handle Unicode very well.

Another option is to use links to SE posts
I would typically just use attached pdf for communicating mathematical material with colleagues, students, etc.  However, one alternative that you don't list is for the student to post their question on https://math.stackexchange.com/ or https://stats.stackexchange.com/ (both of which have LaTeX facilities for mathematical notation) and then send the professor the link to their question.  For professors who use SE, they can answer directly on the site, but even for professors that don't use SE, they will at least be able to see the question set out using clear mathematical notation.
This option is obviously not suitable for every occasion, but you can add it to your options.  Typically it is useful to use a linked SE post when you have a question of a general nature that may also be useful to a wider audience, you have a professor who either uses SE or doesn't mind viewing linked questions on the network, or you want to attract answers from a broader audience of experts in the field.  It is typically not suitable if your question is too narrow to be appropriate for the network, or if your professor is averse to this method of communication.

If you need to communicate equations to someone outside a field where LaTeX is common you might want to use the embedded equation features of Office or Google Docs.  Typesetting systems knowledge is mostly limited to a subset of hard science and engineering fields and anyone outside of them can still use equations and citations but only through such GUI tools.

Will "embedded equation features" cause some problems on some clients?

I think providing two options sorta implied universal compatibility might not be available.  Each office suite has it's own equation system.

@dodo I find that both Office and Google docs mess up fonts when the sender is on a different OS.  Sadly, the symbols are the most common to be messed up.  Always print to a PDF and attach that as well.

@TerryLoring You mean the "embedded equation feature" is messed up on emails or do you mean that the unicode equations will be messed up?

@dodo I have no idea.  When people send me equations and symbols in a word document they are often corrupted.  No idea why.


text:
What is the consequence on purposefully lying on grad-school application (town of birth)
Sam was really really uncomfortable in disclosing their actual biographic data such as the town of birth (similar to Gaza). Sam felt that they will be discriminated.
There was no option to "prefer not to say", or "unknown".
I don't think such biographical info will have anything to do with academic qualifications.
Will Sam get caught and what is the common consequence of this practice?What is the consequence on purposely lying on grad-school application (town of birth)

In case this relates to grad school applications in the US or in the West more generally, I would recommend that you in addition ask: when applying to grad schools in the US, am I likely to be discriminated against based on my place of birth?

@DanielHatton They all asked for the town of birth. Perhaps that will be on a biographic page, but there is no indicator of concealing. Perhaps we need an insider adcom member to tell us if that info is concealed.

@dodo In which countries is Sam applying?

In Germany you usually have to hand in a certified copy of your birth certificate for your contract (grad students are often employees).

@JFabianMeier where in Germany? I have never been asked for a birth certificate as a requisite for any employment in Germany (including as a doctoral student). ID card or passport is enough.

@wimi City of birth is usually on passport, though

I'd be concerned that, whether Sam knew it or not, there might be advantages to being from a different town.  If School likes to have students from every state but hasn't had enough applicants from Nebraska, then if Sam lies and says he's from Nebraska, he's committing fraud.  Or maybe someone endowed a scholarship for Nebraska born seekers of Ph.D.'s in Animal Husbandry.

@JFabianMeier When does that happen? You have to do that in the US (passport, or proof of citizenship like birth certificate and ID), but that's done on your first day, well after acceptance.

As @JFabianMeier mentions, the truth will come out very soon as you will have to hand in the documents almost everywhere before you officially start. Also, why faking town and not country?

@wimi Maybe my information is outdated or depends on the Bundesland, but I worked at three different universities in Germany, and each university required me to hand in a copy of my birth certificate.

How would this situation come up?  A question like "town of birth" would have to have a free-form text entry field, I assume, since I can't imagine they would have something like a dropdown listing every possible town.  And if it's a free-form text box, then you could type "Decline to state".

@NateEldredge That's so smart! I will definitely look into that! Do you think there will be consequence of typing "Decline not state"? By the way, there are some applications that there is a dropdown list every possible state for each country.

I have no idea whether there are consequences, but surely they could not be more severe than the consequences of being caught lying.

You should strongly consider your motive for lying: if a person responsible for admissions is judging (not "evaluating," i.e they are forming a "like" or "dislike" opinion, rather than making educated guesses about what opportunities may have been available to you) your aptness for the program based on the place of birth written on the application, and has actionable (within their realm of being able to justify their admission recommendation or lack thereof) bias against your true place of birth, it is likely not an environment where you should spend the next several years.
In most countries, graduate schools will either offer you a stipend, or have such a high financial cost that you will need to take some kind of loan to cover tuition. In both of these cases, you will need to provide to the university (directly or indirectly) government-issued documentation, so the truth is likely to come out. Don't take your chances of lenience from a university holds a bias against you due to your place of birth.

Any sort of dishonesty is frowned upon. It could be anything from nothing to expulsion and it is impossible to say. If you lie about one thing, are you going to lie about others in the future (muses the reviewer)?
You aren't responsible for where you were born. Nor are you responsible for what others do in the place you were born. It shouldn't be an issue, but lying is definitely a potential issue.
I doubt that an exception (say, Armenia v Azerbaijan) is the question here, where there is historical evidence of discrimination. But even in almost all such cases, academics tend to be better about such things than the general population. Even US v Russia at the moment isn't an issue for individuals.
Moreover if there is a place that would discriminate against you if the "only knew", then you don't want to go there. What happens when they learn of it.

Also, for what it's worth, I know plenty of Israelis who disagree vehemently with the direction the current government has gone (and been going for years). Israel isn't a homogeneous place.

@dodo To expand on Buffy's statement, it might take you from "worst case scenario = application rejected" to "worst case scenario = arrested".

@BryanKrause: Arrested for lying on a grad school application? Where might this happen?

@JochenGlueck The accusation wouldn't be lying on a grad school application, but that you're doing so for some nefarious reason, with fraudulent statements as evidence of guilt. Could more directly be fraud accusations if the difference in place of birth would qualify you for financial support that wouldn't otherwise be available.

@BryanKrause: Ok, I can see where you're coming from. Whether that's a plausible possibility in OP's situation does, of course, depend a lot on circumstances that we don't know. (Although I doubt that lying on a grad school application alone could be reasonable evidence for anything except for, well, lying on a grad school application. But then again, we don't know whether we are talking about a jurisdiction where courts sometimes decide on the judgement first and then hold the trial to find a reason...)

@JochenGlueck Yeah, I'm operating on the assumption that if someone is going to be treated unfairly for university admission based on their birthplace, other systems are also likely to treat them unfairly.

@JochenGlueck If you fill out 'Gaza' as your town of birth on an application for, say, a liberal arts college in the US, you can expect to receive a full scholarship regardless of any credentials. If you accept the scholarship and then it turns out you lied about your town of birth, you have committed fraud, a criminal offense.

@Servaes: Citation needed for your first sentence.

It is hard to imagine someone really getting arrested (in a democratic country) for lying about their town of birth in a way the OP asks (OP doesn't want to get more money, so they would presumably give a town of birth in the same "range" as Gaza (so if Gaza gives not more money, also a not-more-money-town). Does anyone have an example for anyone being arrested because of that? It's hard to believe

You can typically read the consequences of lying on the admissions form itself. Here's an example.

The information supplied on this application is complete and true to the best of my knowledge. No materials and supporting records submitted by me or on my behalf in connection with this application or my attendance will be released to anyone other than authorized university personnel without my consent. It is understood that incorrect or falsified information will be grounds for disapproval of this application or dismissal from the university. The undersigned agrees to pay all financial obligations if admitted to and attending the university, including assessed collection costs and any obligations incurred if financial aid is terminated, reduced, or postponed for any reason. ...

So the consequence is that they have legal grounds of declining Sam's application and/or dismissing Sam from the university if he has already been admitted. It doesn't mean they will, Sam could conceivably persuade them not to. But that will be the default reaction, and the onus will be on Sam to change that default (especially since if Sam lied about this, the odds of him lying about other aspects of his application goes up).

If Sam isn't a citizen, lying is likely to attract grief from whoever checks up on visas — most countries do remarkably little data-matching, but if someone does bother that's a glaring red flag, especially as presumably they'd lie about which country they're from too.
If Sam is already at the institution in question for their undergrad, they'd be better off talking to a sympathetic senior academic and asking what information is even seen by those making admissions decisions.


text:
Use of future tense to refer to following sections
While writing papers (computer science, on the border with digital humanities), I find it quite natural to write

In the following section we will present some examples of such and such.

or

To illustrate these point we will use a few examples of increasing complexity.

Many style guides forbid the use of the future tense and suggest the following formulations, that I personally find too stiff.

The following section presents some examples of such and such

and

Examples of increasing complexity illustrate these points.

(The last sentence is plain ugly.)
I do understand the will to use a language that keeps papers as much factual as possible, but should this dry style be used also for the more narrative parts of a paper?

Your first two examples sound strange if they would appear in a paper (my personal opinion). You have already written the paper. You "will" not present somethings, its already there. I would expect such formulations in a talk or presentation about the topic.
Nevertheless, the third example sounds quite good and I have also used this formulation.
I think this might also be dependent on personal preferences whether someone likes future tense. However, I don't and I have rarely encountered it in papers.

This kind of future tense is very common in math writing.  I can’t speak for other fields.

You changed more than the tense in your examples, which makes it hard to study the effect of tense alone. The only odd sentence to me is the one in which the section is doing the presenting of your work.

I think that this is pretty field dependent. The first two sentences don't strike me as odd, though J-Kun strongly disagrees in the comments. In particular, I would say that the phrase "in this paper we will show" is common in the papers I read. I have first hand experience that the future tense used in this way is common in mathematics, computer science, and philosophy.
I also have very strong opinions about the fact that papers should not be dry. The fact that some researchers praise dry writing is fundamentally misguided in my mind. Papers are written by humans to be read by humans, and should be enjoyable to read. In my field (theoretical computer science), historical anecdotes, philosophical interludes, jokes, and amusing names are commonplace in academic writing. I strongly discourage you from aiming for dryness in any portion of your paper.
Given the field-dependent nature of stylistic issues like this, consulting the editorial guidelines of the journal or journals you hope to publish this paper in / have published in in the past would likely be your best option. Even if they don’t have specific style guidelines, you can usually in for what is preferred by reading other papers published by these journals.
EDIT: In your edit, you specify that you're in computer science. In my experience, computer science writing is far more conversational, and computer science culture is far more casual, than most other fields. I doubt anyone would bat an eye at either of the first two phrases. In fact, the paper I currently have open on the Arthur-Merlin Protocols says:

In Section 3 we will also use the representation of Boolean functions by polynomials with real polynomials (p. 5)
We will show that this
protocol needs communication at least Ω(√na), which implies the theorem. (p6)

and has similar constructions in at least four other places. IIRC, Babai's original paper introducing the A-M protocols had the first four pages entirely in the form of a faux mythological story about King Arthur.

My field is CS. Thank you for you corroborating my hypotheses: papers in our field sounds more "conversational" than in other fields. AFAIK, ACM and IEEE don't have any kind of content guidelines, only stylistic and reference guidelines.

@gioele I've edited a response to your edit and comment.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
How to find out who were the reviewers of an article?
I understand the concept of (peer-)reviewing as helpful to guarantee a good quality result. Clearly it makes sense that journal articles are reviewed by someone before publication. Yet, what I am still unclear about is who the reviewers are? The focus of this question is not who can peer-review articles, as I am not interested in who qualifies for being a reviewer, but rather about how to find out about the actual people having been involved in the review process?
It disappoints me to not be furnished with a list of the reviewers as it would help me tell if the article is likely to be well-reviewed or not. In academia, where reputation is paramount, it would seem imperfect if the people behind the reviews are kept secret. Yet I have not yet encountered a list of reviewers for a specific article and the best place to put this information seems to be with the article itself.
Another worthwhile information connected to it would be the number of reviewers. After all the more people investing time into a review of some contribtion the higher I assume to be the chances that flaws and problems become corrected and again the more interesting the contribution may become. Since unfortunately there is an excess of publications from people needing to make a career and reading through all of those articles constitutes an obstacle more than an accelaration of the scientific progress.

Elsevier has a nice explanation of the different levels of peer review and what do they mean.

The reason that it's secret that if I, an early-career scientist, reject the paper of a famous scientist in my field, he or she has the power to destroy me.

@gerrit I can understand, yet I have to confess that it feels wrong to hear that such an egoistic career-focused behaviour should be tolerated anyway. what you say is sad. While some here give much thought to what is gained by the anonymity the adverse effects may not receive enough consideration.

Peer-review is a certainly a form of quality control but does not 'guarantee good quality'. 2) The number of reviewers is obvious in reputable journals, since you receive a review report from all of them. 3) while it is probably true that there is too much noise in the number of papers published, if anything blind peer-review reduces this noise.

@humanityANDpeace It might feel wrong until you have to review a junk paper by a person you know (which is a small field happens a lot), or even worse, your supervisor. Then you'll be happy that the review process is blind.

@NickS You should never review a paper by your supervisor, junk or not.  You have a clear conflict of interest.

how to find out about the actual people having been involved the review?

By and large, you can't. This is guaranteed by the anonymous (or "blind") peer review process used today by most publishers. I guess the main reason for blind reviews are that publishers fear that well-known professors will not be judged harshly by more junior researchers for fear of repercussions.
There are individual publishers out there that share your frustrations with the model, though - most importantly, PLOS One and PeerJ have recently started to experiment with a semi-open review model, where reviewers can choose whether to reveal themselves to the authors.

I was already fearful that it was career and egoism-rooted reasons that would be behind the apparent secrecy of peer review, which makes me a little sad as I am not anyway interested in preserving the almighty "well-known professors", especially not for sacreficing transparency.

@humanityANDpeace This isn't at all what I was saying, but ok. I can tell that you have formed your opinion, so I am not going to argue with you.

sorry for misinterpretation. As I understood your answer informed about 2 things. (1) that there is indeed often not such a desired list of reviewers and that (2) one reason/motivation  this anonymous review process could potentially be caused by conflicts (i.e. junior researchers would not be able to criticize for fear of repercussions). Am I so wrong in perceiving your answer? only because I lamented the loss of transperency related to the anonymity?

@xLeitix: In case of non-blind reviews, repercussions might also occur among people with the same academic rank. Blind reviews are thus necessary to ensure serenity of judgment at all levels. Some journals require that the submitting authors suggest a list of reviewers (typically 4-5): afaik, however, the editor can choose reviewers not belonging to the suggested list.

Additionally, journals can also let authors provide a list of people who should not referee a given paper, through conflicts of interests or otherwise. However, it is the editor that has the final say on who reviews the paper.

@humanityANDpeace I find it ironic that you complain about "career and egoism-rooted reasons", when your motivation is that you would like to figure if the reviewers are good because in academia reputation is paramount....

And the best reviewers are, in my experience, not the one at the very top of their career; these latter guys have less time for reviews.

Although @xLeitix answer is spot-on, I think you are missing the main point. Anonymity is directly linked to any democratic process. Likewise, your election vote is anonymous. In this sense, a review is just a vote of confidence for the reviewed article and therefore it has to be and remain anonymous for a more objective opinion.
Another point is that anonymity in reviews not only protects the reviewers against repercussions but also protects against nepotism and mutual exchange of favors. Moreover, anonymity also ensures that all reviews are (almost) treated equal. So, a favorable, short review from a professor (who just said ACCEPT because he might personally know the authors) might count less than an informed, in-depth review even if that review comes from a PHD student. So, although the editor knows the reviewers, one reviewer cannot argue / discard with the other reviewer based on their individual status. In this sense, anonymity also protects the reviewed, since if the paper is actually good, it is more probable to be reviewed based on its merits then the authors' public relations.

sadly anonymity is ranked high may lead to secrecy and eventually to substantial loss of democracy which comes through the loss of transperency. Neither anonymity nor transperency are likely to be reached in absoluteness and should be relatively based. Just declaringt anonymity sacred and democratic falls short.

@humanityANDpeace Have you actually been a reviewer yourself? If yes, you already know that through anonymity, it is easier to express your "true" opinion about a paper. Transparency relates to the review process not to the names of the reviewers.

:) for fear of adverse consequences I cannot disclose if I have been a reviewer, sorry. Can you understand? No all jokes aside I can see you point that anonymity can bring some good. Yet it makes it hard for me to fallow you logic that transparency would relate to the review process? A secret process does strike me as the opposite to being transparent. Yet even if you disclose that fact that you will keep the reviewers a secret would not make the review anymore transparent in my perception.

@humanityANDpeace That's ridiculous. Most journals publish a list of reviewers. Who's acting as reviewer for a journal is not confidential, but who reviewed which article commonly is.

@humanityANDpeace Any system can be subverted by jerks. Forcing people to reveal their identities does not make them more reasonable.  With signed reviews, senior referees could bully junior researchers into changing their papers to suit the senior researchers’ agendas, or could simply refuse to acknowledge legitimate criticisms because they come from junior researchers.

@humanityANDpeace for fear of adverse consequences I cannot disclose if I have been a reviewer, sorry. Can you understand? — No.  I can't.  What consequences?  Nobody knows who you are.

In terms of conflicts and deliberate sabotage, it is the responsibility of the editor assigned to your paper to moderate this. The reviewers and authors are known to the editor, and the editor has the ultimate power to accept or reject a paper. If there appears to be a conflict of interest, or a reviewer is unduly harsh, or misunderstands the content, the editors have the power to overrule the reviewer, and the editor-in-charge has the power to overrule assistant editors.
You will see this in some journals where each paper has a name under "communicated by". It lets the reader know that the named editor is responsible for the review process.
Finally, the number of reviewers is disclosed. All journals I've ever worked with have a policy of providing reviewer comments unedited to the authors. Just count the number of reviews you receive. The editors should have no problems telling you how many reviewers were involved; I've frequently received e-mails saying "I got 2 reviews back and am waiting on one".

The short answer is "you can't". Unless somehow required by local law, editors will not reveal the reviewers' names. This answer focuses on the reasons behind this.
So far, two benefits of blind peer reviewing have been mentioned:

It (maybe) avoids a situation where junior researchers are afraid to criticize senior researchers.
It (maybe) avoids the issue of exchange of favors, where reviewers help each other by giving overly positive reviews. This is similar to a benefit of secret ballot voting, which helps prevent "trading" votes with another person, because the secret ballot makes it impossible to tell whether the other person actually voted the way they agreed to vote (as long as the vote isn't unanimous).

I see two other benefits:

Many research areas have a small number of researchers. The anonymity of peer review (maybe) helps to avoid personalizing the peer reviews. My own subfield of mathematics has under 100 researchers in the world who could realistically referee my papers, and only maybe 25 who could claim to be experts in the specific area. I know many of these 25, and they know me. So we are often asked to referee papers for authors whom we know - there are not that many experts to do the reviews, after all. In small research fields like mine, the inevitable disputes over rejected papers could otherwise be toxic to the common good.
The editor is responsible for choosing appropriate reviewers. Keeping them anonymous to the author cuts off an avenue of appeal where, instead of responding to the content of the reviews, the author instead just tries to impeach the reviewers.  Of course, the author can already tell the editor "I don't think the reviewer understands the field". But they can't directly refer to the reviewer's identity when doing so - they have to look at the actual review.

good answer to the question "what are the reasons/benefits motivating the blind peer review process?", yet does it really inform who the reviewers are?

@humanityANDpeace: indeed, no.  You could ask the editor, or your colleagues when you meet them at conferences, or try to guess based on grammatical idiosyncrasies of the reviewers report (it seems you want to know who has reviewed your paper), or other detective work.  However, people are trying to explain that you're not supposed to know who has reviewed your article (for good reasons), even if there were a way to find out.  Oh, yes, egotism and self interest play a role in  human activities throughout known history, scholarship included.


text:
A trivial correction to my currently-under-review paper - What to do?
I have several small corrections to apply to a paper which is currently under review. The errors are - as far as I can say - not very significant. There is a citation which it would be good to include, but maybe is not crucial (I only recently discovered a paper which deals with a somewhat related problem), plus a number of typos that I recently discovered.
What is the correct way to proceed? Should I update the paper and send the corrected version to the publisher, or would it be better to wait for the referee reports and apply these corrections together with the ones the referees request? Or have I lost my chance to correct the paper when I sent it for publication, and have to accept that I can't apply the corrections I want?
There is a similar question where the accepted suggestion is to send in the corrections; however that is a significantly more serious correction than in my case. My field is mathematics, if this matters.
Edit: This question is very similar to this question with the slight difference that there they consider an error in a paper and worry about a possible rejection, and here I'm mostly concerned about modifying a paper in a way that (in my opinion) makes it better but not necessarily more correct.

As you indicated, usually a paper is accepted with some suggestions - that is, the referee has a list of suggestions/errors. The author then addresses those suggestions/errors, and sends the edited manuscript back to the journal with a list of changes. This version is the one that officially gets accepted (I guess it's possible to go through multiple rounds of this, but I've never heard of this occurring in practice).
Since the errors/omissions you found are minor, I would just wait to hear back from the referee, since they don't truly affect your paper in any significant way, and in fact the referee might find most of them. (If your paper is on the arxiv, you might consider updating it there).
For what it's worth, you'll get the opportunity to correct typos even after the refereeing process; there is usually some editing for typos from the journal's side, and you'll also get a chance to make small changes to proofs before publication.

Agreed, if it's under review then you will have an opportunity to correct later when it comes back. Even after you make the corrections as suggested by reviewers, prior to publication (if accepted) you should get a pre-publication copy from publisher to review prior to print. So there is at least one opportunity to make corrections after the review process.


text:
Is it recommended to email a professor at other institution to work with him over the summer
I am currently an undergraduate in mathematics and physics and graduate student in applied mathematics in the US. I am looking for a research position/internship for the summer (somewhere other than my current institution). Is it recommended to cold-call or send emails asking professors or researchers at other institutions around the world for an opportunity to work with them? In what other way can I find a position for this summer?
I am specifically looking at institutions in the US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and China.
Thank you :)

Sure, just reach out with SHORT emails.  I would not expect too much reply since it is a cold call but "a shot on net is always a good play".  Mention a sentence or two to indicate you looked at their webpage or pubs and have an interest in their work.
In addition, try to send some inquiries (similar format) where have some connection (e.g. you mentioned friends had visited specific places in Italy, England).  Professors like to get some "pipeline".  (E.g. "we have had periodic Elbonia Uni students".) Just gives some slight familiarity for you/them and some feeling for them that they may get more positive experiences in future.  However, note that expectations for undergrad visitors is not high.

Since you mention a broad range of countries, I think you should first try to get information about the typical yearly schedule, because in some countries summer may be a busy period.
For instance, since a couple years, I've started to receive emails from random students asking to do a summer internship with me. But from June to July, I'm busy with exams, workshops and conferences, in August I'm on vacation, and in September I have again exams and conferences. So, I usually decline any request in that period. I know other European groups with a similar situation.

I would expect the professors I contact to notify me if that is the case since I have known of people going to England and Italy for summer internships. Do you have any recommendations of universities or other institutions where I could enquiry?


text:
Can an academic paper use a fictional world (such as the show Westworld) as a case study for AI, software engineering, and system implementation?
I'm writing two academic papers currently, and have discovered the point where things get absurd and I need something that is lighter and more enjoyable - the kind of feeling that spawned The Journal Of Irreproducible Results.
As a fan of the show Westworld, I'd enjoy producing a paper which uses it as a medium to examine how AI can be implemented to fit grand contexts like storylines, a large park with unpredictable interference, and the social interactions that humans consider normal. There are more than a dozen Ph.D thesis that use Star Trek extensively - but they are all in the humanities, and they tend to examine things like the show's allusions to ancient mythology and history (which were rife in the show), or cultural perceptions of the show. I do not know of any papers in the hard science that used Star Trek in any significant way to explain or illustrate concepts.
Westworld, however, is different. There are several scenes that display real issues in computer science, the problems that can be encountered, and potential solutions. The show also included a well-architected software framework that all the hosts work within, and an excellent division of responsibilities within the code. So, while Star Trek used fictional physics, the computer science in Westworld is realistic - the AI may be exaggerated, but the fundamental approaches and issues were real. This paper would be weekend work and I'd write it to distract myself from the toils of the more traditional papers. Spoilers follow.
So my question is: can a fictional world be the basis and foundation for a serious academic analysis? I would diversify the subject to include other examples, but I don't think there are any that are elucidated well enough.
A perfect example is in Season 1 episode 3, when a woodcutter wanders off because he was tampered with. The park was only alerted to the problem because the woodcutter's group hadn't moved for several days. Upon investigation, the humans found the woodcutter's camp and the rest of the crew bickering over who should cut some wood for the campfire so they could cook dinner. The lumberjack was the only host allowed to use the ax - which is registered as a deadly weapon and the other characters were not authorized to use it. The circular bickering among the group is very similar to deadlock - they are all waiting for a resource and requesting it from each other, but the entity that can provide the resource is unresponsive. The group had no handling for a condition where the woodcutter wandered off, even though it presumably had some form of handling for a situation where the woodcutter was killed (that problem would be solved by the role-based plotlines, which I would cover in another part of the paper, and these are an extremely consistent and well-illustrated part of the show.) I would argue that the bickering is an optimal way for AI to handle that situation. The only solution the AI could create on its own - to let someone else do the work - would violate the safety protocol which has god-level precedence. The solution for park management is to kill the woodcutter host (or at least terminate him in that storyline), so the role can be re-designated to another host, and that can be programmed into the group's storyline as an exception case.
The show has many aspects like this; I think it has enough to reverse-engineer the highest levels of the software framework and treat it as a case study. That architecture would be applicable to current or near-future video games that are built around a storyline such as Fallout, Witcher, and similar. Other sources have already noted things like markov chains on the control tablets in the show.
I would write the paper to the highest standard possible, especially regarding diagrams and with a focus on making it more understandable to a broader computer science audience than just AI or systems architecture researchers. The references section may even be larger than usable, as I would compare a number of existing frameworks to show how they could be applied in the show. And I would try to do it without killing the enjoyment of the show.

What is your question exactly? You can write any paper you like. If you are asking if it’s a good idea, I doubt anyone can make predictions about that until they’ve seen the final product. (As a general rule, I’ve seen a fair number of published papers in pure math and computer science make references to pop culture as a way to motivate and inspire the reader, and even included such a reference myself in one of my recent papers.)

That's pretty much what I'm asking - is it acceptable to use a pop culture element as the basis of the paper? Basically I'd treat the Westworld park as though it were real, and write a case study of it. My concern is that it's not really "valid" to pretend that a fictional item is realistic, even if the fictional nature is irrelevant. Maybe I could compare it to a climate analysis of Game Of Thrones, or a study on the administrative effectiveness of Hogwarts. The analysis can be done, even if the subject is fictional. So does a fictional subject make the analysis invalid?

It is “acceptable” in the sense that there is no rule saying what you can write in an academic paper. If you want to write it, go ahead - no one will stop you. However, as for the separate questions (which I suspect are what you really want to know) of whether it’s a good idea, whether it is likely to be accepted for publication in a good journal or conference, whether it will impress your peers and help your career, etc - as I said, I don’t know the answers and suspect no one can meaningfully answer them without seeing the finished paper. Good luck anyway.

All of what @DanRomik says is of course correct, but as a first-order approximation I would say that a STEM paper that "uses Westworld as a case study" would be better appreciated as a nice blog post than as a formal peer-reviewed paper.

It sounds like I wouldn't be laughed out of the room just from the title, so that's helpful! I'm happy to get some chuckles and grins, but I hope those would be more appreciative than derisive. The subject may be a tightrope in some sense, but trapeze acts are impressive and easier to watch than a chess game.

xLeitix, that's one of the things that has gone through my head, and indeed it would be a great blog post. But it would be too long for that to really work (IMO), and it would have a much more limited outreach. The other option would be a 20-minute YouTube essay that delves into the subject (probably in a style most similar to Scott Manley's explanation of rocket fuels, but more formal and polished). That would require more editing time, especially for the graphics, but I have a soft spot for such things. Citations, sources, and the like would all be attached as needed for academic rigor.

@user3685427 I am not sure what you mean. You can make it a series of blog posts so length shouldn't be an issue, and your "outreach" with a nice blog post is almost guaranteedly orders of magnitude higher than with a somewhat obscure paper (and let's face it, your premise isn't one that will get you into a top journal).

@xLeitix If it has genuinely new scientific content in that case study, I honestly couldn't disagree more.

I wouldn't say that it has new scientific content, more that it presents a very useful architecture for multi-entity AI systems, particularly for storytelling. And as we don't currently have any media or games with that depth of complexity or AI (the model used in Witcher 3 is the best I've seen, and it evolved from the branching tree model), the architecture hasn't been explored before. I could program 'real' (virtual) test cases based on that architecture and run them - that would be a big task, and may expand the project to the scale of a thesis.

You can write whatever you want.  However, if you want to call it computer science, it had better teach us something about computation.  Yes, a fictional world can be "the basis and foundation for a serious academic analysis" but literary analysis is literary analysis, not computer science.
You talk about using Westworld as a case study. How can it be that? It isn't a "case" because it doesn't exist.  It's a work of fiction.  The systems within it don't exist and aren't fully worked out.  Using a work of fiction as a source of illustrative examples can be a useful device, as your example with the deadlocked work party almost1 shows but there's a big difference between using a fictional computer system as an example and making a detailed study of that fictional system.
Ultimately, anything that happens in a fictional world happens because the author of the fiction wanted it to happen. For example, you could use the woodcutter wandering off as evidence of a bug in his AI. Perhaps the author never intended that bug to be there but, at some point, realised that the bug was a consequence of some other thing. At that point, they had two choices: they could either rewrite the fiction to remove the cause of the bug, or they could have the thing wander off and write about the consequences. They chose to keep the bug because it made the plot more interesting. Likewise, they chose how severe the consequences would be. That's not how real-world systems work, and a real-life example of the problem you wish to illustrate would be much more convincing.

1 The problem is, it's not deadlock at all: it's resource starvation. Deadlock is a situation in which two or more processes cannot make progress because each needs resources held by one of the others. For example, consider two mechanics who each need a hammer and a wrench to carry out their task. The first mechanic picks up the hammer, the second mechanic picks up the wrench. The first mechanic says, "Please give me the wrench." The second says, "Sorry, I'm using it. I'll give it to you as soon as I've finished my task. Please give me the hammer." The first mechanic says, "Funny, I'm using the hammer. But I'll give it to you as soon as I'm done with it." That is a deadlock: neither mechanic can finish his task because each one is holding a resource that the other needs, and refusing to give it up. However, in your example, all of the processes are waiting on a single resource (firewood) that is unavailable.

Thanks! The magnitude of the author's choice in the show hadn't quite hit me as strongly as you describe it; I think I got lured in and it flows so well that every action inside the park feels so natural (and they are supposed to be scripted, thus that feels 'real') - it's the people running the park who seem more arbitrary and unnatural. And you are entirely correct that the term "resource starvation" is the correct one. I avoided using the term because I didn't want to imply that the robots were literally starving, considering that they couldn't cook for three days.

Boiling down your question based on a comment you made:

is it acceptable to use a pop culture element as the basis of the paper?

The answer to this is yes. And not just in an obscure journal - if it's a useful worked example, tells us something new about the field, suggests new directions, etc. there's no reason why it couldn't be. Indeed, I've published several papers using pop culture and an event within a fictional setting as a basis to think critically about my field.

Yes. This could be published. It would be worthwhile to purse the Journal of Science Fiction or G|A|M|E Journal. Computer Science journals are less likely to take something of this nature.
You should write an abstract and "test the waters" with it.

While I believe accurate, had I taken this advice when I was considering doing this, I would have regretted it.


text:
How to make my research productive when my advisors don't give me constructive feedback?
Thanks all for your kindly replies. This is my first time to post something on this website and I also read some other posts. I realized that I didn't get the purpose of this website. So I revised my post.
I am a 3rd year PhD student with Mechanical Engineering background. I have two advisors. One of them is a researcher in our department and another is a professor. Both of them had good papers published before. But maybe recently they are not that into research. The citations are going down. I feel like they think about my research only during the meetings. Their typical mentoring style is:

Let the student find research gaps. The student should justify why this problem is important and why people care about it. They never tell you that "you should work on this problem"
The student should be able to seek sources to solve the problem himself/herself, either doing literature search, or talking to other students. They never work side by side with you to figure something out
They meet students every week. During the meeting, they will throw a bunch of questions, such as "why did you use this example to validate your theory?" and "why did you propose this solution?".
When the student ask them questions, like "which system do you think is better for our situation?" and "Should I add this feature to our system?". Their answer would be "You need to find out yourself", "talk to xx", "what do other people do?".
They give suggestions. But they usually say "I am not telling you that you should do this and you need to decide"
When I follow their suggestion but things don't work out as expected, they would say "we didn't say you should do this and you need to think"
They never check your math. If your math goes against their instinct, they want you to explain in pure English instead of going through math.

I admit that my advisors' questions are good. The questions are usually the ones we will encounter during presentation. I also agree that my advisors give me lots of freedom to do research. But sometimes I feel like I don't know how to swim, they just throw me in the water and let myself figure it out. No doubt that my research is going super slow because I had lots of trial-and-error and I did lots of repetitive things. But they are still pushing me to publish paper, which makes me very upset. So how to make my research productive when they don't give me constructive feedback?
I have thought a lot about what I want from my advisors. Here is a list and I am not sure whether or not I am expecting too much:

When finding a research problem, because I didn't have a big picture of this domain yet, I was expecting my advisors could tell me what people care and why.
After deciding a research problem, I would like them to give me suggestions on what kind of skills that I should get or what courses I should take in order to be able to solve the problem.
During the research, when I need to decide something, like what assumptions I should make, I am hoping my advisors can help me decide. They have done research so many years and they should know what assumptions are realistic and what are not.
I hope my advisors are on the same page with me, not only the big picture but also the details. I can find solution or work on math/simulation by myself. But I hope they could understand my solution and my math. I may not always right on math. I hope someone could point out my mistake if there was. I don't want the reviewers to tell me that my math is wrong and to reject my paper.

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

Have you talked to  your advisors about how you would like more specific guidance and feedback?

@J. Wong From my experience, you are not a lone. I agree with Arron Brick above. This method of training is very common and very constructive for some Ph.D candidates, preferably for those with some experience prior to grad. school. If you don't find this method work for you, I would suggest to articulate this issue with your PI. Remember to be positive about what you think is working for you and what is not working. Then suggestion a solution that you think will work both for both of you. Imagine this training as a marriage of 5-7 years, and you want it to work smoothly as long as it lasts. If you find that kind of conversation doesn't go well with your PI. Discuss the issue with your favorite committee member(s), professor(s), Dean etc. Also, don't forget that your committee members are not there for you to "torture" you only once or twice a year, but they should be there for you all year round. They signed up to constructively help with your project and training. After all you are in a training environment, you will find someone to be the mentor of your dream. Remember sometimes your advisor may not be the mentor of your need, as in your friend's case. Find one for yourself if you don't think your current PI is. Best of luck!