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Can a professor in the program I'm applying to write a recommendation letter?
Three professors have promised to write me recommendation letters for PhD program applications. I want to apply to the program where one of them (Prof.A) is a professor. I was in his summer research program and I'm still a member of his group. He knows me pretty well and speaks highly of me. I talked to him about the application and he told me I could apply directly.
Do I need to find another professor to write me a recommendation letter for Prof.A's program? It seems weird to use his recommendation letter to apply for his program. But he knows me quite well and I don't think the SOP or recommendation will give him any surprise information about me. The three professors are very familiar with me and I don't think other professors can write letters stronger than them.

Who will be reviewing the application prof A himself or other people at his institute?

@TimRias I think other people will be responsible for reviewing applications

This should be fine. Certainly in the US. The professor will probably need to not participate otherwise in the admissions decision directly, but that is a separate issue for them, not for yourself. If there is an issue then he would tell you, I'd assume.
It is probably better, actually, to do it this way than to have him work behind the scenes in some way.


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Upcoming dismissal as supervisor no longer wants to supervise me - should I just withdraw?
Basically my PI dropped this on me last week and said that my work is not up to PhD standards. It's pretty frustrating because it seemed like I was on track to graduate this year. That said, my PI has brought this up before. Since then I had shown I was improving and had met his standards—or at least I thought so.
My school's official policy for my situation is that

A Student will be withdrawn from the University, if he or she obtains two unsatisfactory Graduate Student Research Progress Tracking Reports and the academic unit in which the student is registered recommends that he or she be withdrawn.
The Student’s transcript will thereafter indicate that the student was withdrawn from the University.

Regardless, I won't be able to work with him anymore. I've been looking for someone to finish under, but it is looking a bit hopeless right now. If I cannot find someone else to work under, should I just request to withdraw? If voluntarily withdrawing is an option, it seems better than being dismissed/kicked out.
In the future (specifically in interviews) I'd rather say "It wasn't working out for me so I withdrew" than "I was kicked out" to people.
I'm meeting with my department chair next week, but hopefully someone can give me an opinion based on their own experiences.

Does your university have a mentoring system? I think you need to sit down with a mediator and the PI to try and work out a solution where you can continue either under the PI's guidance or someone else. If you do not have a mentor, then you should talk to another Professor who you think will be sympathetic and be able to guide you. Something is terribly wrong if you are being kicked out and it is a surprise. You need to set-up a meeting and negotiate a solution, a meeting with the department chair sounds a bit abrupt, unless they can help find a solution somehow.
I cannot give an answer as to whether you should withdraw. But if you were under the impression you can graduate this year, then withdrawing does not seem necessary. You will have wasted at least three years (presumably).

There is an ombudsman, but we are too far gone at this point. It really came as a surprise, he had told me that we were having a meeting to present my work and before I could say anything he told me it was over between us.
The department chair is going to meet with me to go over the protocol on finding a different supervisor (if possible). The department might be obligated to see me through at this point - I have passed my qualifiers and all my courses (CGPA = 3.85).

If you have not already tried involving the ombudsman, then there is no harm in trying. Put it this way, some universities have primary supervisors and second supervisors that can step in if the relationship with the primary and the student breaks down. If you have done research and you only need one more year's effort, I don't see why you cannot discuss the possibility of working with another supervisor. If you talk with a mediator and the PI, then maybe the PI will even agree and help you find someone.

It is worth a shot, though in his words (last week) there is a "systemic flaw in my thought process" - I'm not sure what exactly as he doesn't really give feedback. He might not have a problem with me moving to another lab, but I doubt he'd help me do so. The last prof I talked to said she does not want to jeopardize her relationship with my PI by taking me on.

@Rüdiger sorry, not sure what GG stands for.
My PI and I have had a pretty bad relationship. He was belligerent (yelling at people, I once saw him make a student faint, the guy needed to be hospitalized), so I fell into a cycle of just keeping my head down and working alone. Lack of feedback hurt too. He brought up something I had submitted 6 months ago last week, and told me it wasn't good enough, despite not saying anything and me asking at the time what he thought of it.
I'm not 100% innocent, I definitely screwed up, but at the same time it's not all on me like he has said.

I think you should bring up your PI's bullying as a mitigating circumstance in your meeting. Moreover, explain that in terms of the work you have done, you believe you have only one more year's work to do. Inquire about any support your university has given your circumstances. Chances are, the PI already has a bad reputation and the university knows about it. I have known people to be bullied before but they have managed to find an alternative supervisor.

I can try. Unfortunately, I don't think there is any other record of other students having a problem. It's something students will tell each other, but it happens in closed door meetings and no one has ever made a complaint. I'm not sure the guy who fainted wants to rock the boat, he's managed to pull through and is doing ok now.

@IAD - For some things, it's necessary to have hard evidence.  But for you to negotiate with your department, I doubt you need hard evidence. // I suggest you start looking at faculty profiles very carefully so that in the meeting you can say whom you'd like to work with.

You'd be surprised at how far information travels. I think it will be easier if you have the confidence that you are in the right (from everything you have said, you have been wronged, the PI should be disciplined and you are capable of obtaining a PhD). As aparente001 said, you do not need hard evidence. You don't even need to make a formal complaint. You just need to calmly explain your situation in a solution-minded way, persuade the department chair that you're close to finishing and seek to find a solution - and if that person can't help you, ask them who can.

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Is it ethical to invite your supervisors for dinner before graduation?
I plan to finish my PhD thesis this year, but I will likely not be able to defend it this year, because my supervisors obviously need time to review it.
However, I will leave the country by the end of the year as well and it is not clear yet, whether I need to come back for the defense or whether it can be done remotely. In case I do not come back to Germany, I would still like to have a last social gathering with my two supervisors to say goodbye and express my gratitude. We had dinners in the past (usually when a collaborator from a different country would meet us here in Germany) and so far it was always them who have covered the bill.
If it was a normal social gathering, I'd expect it to be the norm that one party does not always covers the expenses but it is shared among all participants somewhat equivalently (I pay this time, you pay next time, ... ).
But given that they are my supervisors and will have to grade me, I wonder if this is ethical.  Perhaps an arrangement like pay dinner for yourselves, I'll cover the drinks, will make it less problematic? I do not expect the expenses for any single meal+drinks to be over 20€.

Frankly if you expect the meal plus drinks to be 20€ pp in Germany, it may well be that your advisors will politely decline…

@Oбжорoв I'm not sure what you mean by "20€" in Germany? A meal is usually around 8-14€ and 1 or 2 drinks will probably add around 3-6€. Do you think this is very expensive or do you think it is too cheap and they do not want to go? If it is the latter, then I'm very sure they won't find it "cheap".

"so far it was always them who have covered the bill": Most likely these bills were not paid by your supervisors privately but by the expense budget for such meetings.

@Oбжорoв: to give some numbers to compare with, my professional society stated a few months ago that they consider 35 € per person a good limit for typical, and will not reimburse more than 50 € per person (implied: not even if the president of the society dines with the ministry of science)

Taking a person out to a (reasonable) dinner as a "thank you" is a custom that appears in many societies. As a Ph.D. thesis is a long relationship between people, offering to take your advisors out to dinner as a thank you is within reasonable bounds of this custom---even before you graduate. Technically, they are grading you, but a Ph.D. is not like an undergraduate class.
In some cases, a person may not be allowed to accept such an offer. Common examples include government employees and people with a potential business conflict of interest. If you know that such a rule applies to somebody, it would be rude to offer something you know they cannot accept.
For most professors, however, there is no such rule between them and their students, and if one applies here that you are unaware of, it would be up to the professor to inform you and to decline.
That said: in the professor-student relationships I have observed, the direction often goes the other way, i.e., with professors buying for their students rather than the other way around. This can be about power dynamics, "paying it forward," or even just the simple pragmatics that students often have little money.
Bottom line: invite them out, but don't be surprised if they turn the tables and end up taking you out instead.

In Germany there is such a rule: Anything over 5 € in value (in my state, Berlin) I am not allowed to accept from anyone, student or otherwise, without permission from the dean. So pens, yes. Dinner at a restaurant, no.

@DeboraWeber-Wulff Good to know! How routine is such a permission? Like, would it be unthinkable to ask the dean, or would it be easy to say: "My student wants to take us out to dinner, can we have permission?"

depends on the dean. Our dean would make a note of it (so that no accusation of bribery can be made) and permit it, but others would not. Luckily, I didn't have to make such a decision as dean myself. I did permit flowers and wine that were > 5€ presented after the oral exam. Since the OP may not be personally in Germany after the oral exam, I would suggest a heartfelt, hand-written thank-you letter sent with nice stamps from your country. Something like that means much more to me than any presents. I really treasure former students who take time to write to me!

@DeboraWeber-Wulff Would you be willing to write an answer yourself, as well?

Sorry to -1, but any such invitation before the defense (and even more so shortly before) would be totally unacceptable in Germany. It would not only be something the professors must decline, but is also something the PhD candidate should never even mention. Too close to attempting bribery.

I can give you my perspective of someone who used to supervise students and their theses at a German university. You did not mention what kind of institute you worked at, but as you mentioned "grading" I'll assume that you and your supervisors work at a state university, as industry and research institute supervisors typically are not responsible for the grading.
Therefore, they are most likely to be either a civil servant or an employee of the respective German state. In consequence, they are either not allowed to accept presents or only up to a very small amount (~ 10 euros if I remember correctly), depending on the state and the type of contract. And this is before even taking into account that they will be grading you.
My advice is therefore not to do it or to directly ask them about their opinion- it creates a dilemma for your supervisors and might open them AND you to malicious gossip.
A suggestion: Do you know about the German "Ausstand"? If an employee leaves a group or company they typically bring food, either for breakfast in the morning or cake at coffee time for the whole group. If it's a group where parting employees get a small gift from the co-workers there might be a small speech. The monetary amount is (more or less) negligible and it serves as a nice opportunity to say thanks and goodbye to everyone (thus not directly aimed at your boss).

Dinner invitations are not generally considered "presents" (in the academic context) - otherwise, people would be breaking the law all the time.

Inviting your supervisors to dinner before the defense is unacceptable
I'd like to emphasize what @Debora Weber-Wulff already stated in a comment:
University professors  in germany are typically public officers and subject to strict anti-corruption laws. Other employees in public institutions are typically bound by their contract to the same rules.
The anti-corruption regulations already forbid anything that could be read as corruption by others; and they apply to both sides: the supervisors cannot accept and OP is not allowed to offer.
In general, as  @Debora Weber-Wulff said, acceptable gifts or invitations are limited to negligible monetary value even after all exams are over.
Shorly before the final exams/grading, such an invitation is totally unacceptabe since it could be seen as an attempt by OP to bribe their supervisors. This would not only be a problem for OP's supervisors but also for OP.

What is acceptable

Inviting the supervisors along with everyone else in your group (AND)
when there is a reason: you leaving, your defense being over, birthday, ...
again, the value should not be too high per person.

@Kajo mentioned the Ausstand which is on the order of magnitude of cake and coffee for the whole group (note: not only the supervisors).
A similar occasion would be directly after the defense (in-person obviously) - then possibly with added sparking wine.
What I'm familiar with after the defense between different groups in Germany was in the range between: a "hallway-party" one evening at the institute (fresh PhD bringing the food such as buns, butter, cheese, cold cuts and pickles as well as beer, coke and juice for the whole group, the whole group helps preparing the buffet from these or PhD buys already prepared buns). Or somewhat more elaborate food (cooked, BBQ), but then either a few fresh PhDs join forces, or join forces with a workplace birthday party and/or there's a certain potluck component (PhD provides a "basis", and everyone else brings something).
But never anything of non-negligible monetary value to the supervisors or commission only.

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Measuring Progess in Academia Solely By Using a Person's Publications?
Over the last couple of days, I happened to exchange comments with users who disagreed with me about the fact that progress in academia is based on  publications. Am I missing something here?
What I mean by progress:
Simply put, progress here means to obtain promotions. To go from postdoc to lecturer and so on.

Perhaps it is in the difficulty in defining 'progress' uniquely. Publications are one way to document 'progress' in contributing to the field. So are conference talks, seminars, etc. However, 'progress' could also be getting grants, being promoted or given tenure, increasing one's citation count of h-index, finally making the front page of the New York Times (for good reasons, not bad!), making obvious positive contributions to somebody's life (student, post-doc, department secretary), etc. To suggest that publications alone are the sole metric of progress or performance is misleading at best.

@JonCuster All those things you mentioned, such as getting funded, are given based on someone's past publications.

Networking and soft skills contribute greatly to the things Jon mentioned, even without past publications.

I don't understand your question. What are you actually asking?

In any case, to insist that "progress" means just "promotions" is an abuse of the sense of the word, I think. Asking directly about "measuring promotions by publications" would be more honest, if still misguided.

@paulgarrett Becoming a Professor is not a progress? How you become a professor? by a promotion. You are living in a capitalist world, promotion is a form/part of progress.

Trying to measure success with any metric in life is a dangerous thing.
As soon as there is a metric, people will game it or lose sight on its original meaning. For example, in academia, this results in people trying to publish the smallest unit of work possible or trying to go for short term successes rather than the big picture. Additionally, things like peer review have already been shown to have a huge influence of luck so it makes it silly to compare.
Publishing can be a very motivating metric, but you have to be careful when you begin conflating it with progress or success.

Progress in academia is in their publications.

Yes, they are. But publications do not come out of the blue. You need to do reviews to learn the state of the art. You need to attend conferences, to interact with other people. You need to work on projects, to learn how to follow (at your PhD beginning) and how to lead (when you become a PI). You need to learn how to write proposals to fund your research. You need to supervise undergraduate theses, although they might not always lead to a publication. And most of all, you need a network of people that would write reference letters for you, cite your papers, collaborate with you on proposals and saying NO to everything, as your last post suggested is a sure way to end up jobless.
The projects you participate in, the interaction you have with other scientists, the reviews you have to do, the conferences you attend might seem like a distraction to you, instead of sitting in your desk and doing "your" research. But science and research is a social activity and it is usually your network (as sad as it may seem) that gets you a job and not your research. Participating in many research activities, leads to more ideas and then your research becomes more diverse, instead of rehashing the same line of research which is the usual outcome of people working in isolation. So, suggesting that a PhD student should only focus on a very narrow line of research (which considers his) and avoids any other scientific activity (because it steals time from "his" main research) is a very bad advice.

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What is the meaning of 'under review' after making a minor revision?
Last week I received a minor revision decision letter from a journal's editor. I made revisions in accordance with the reviewers' comments and resubmit the manuscript to the ScholarOne system. And now the status still is 'under review'. I wonder whether it means the resubmitted manuscript is now reviewed by external reviewers, or by the editors.

The revised journal needs to go back to the reviewers.  Some times new reviewers will be sought if currents ones are not available.

@Prof.SantaClaus At many journals, "minor revisions" means it will not go back to the reviewers.

Yes, Thanks for your sharing. I'm not sure if the minor revised manuscript is under editor review or referees' review.

@jakebeal in my area, minor means go back to the reviewers.  Recently one of my articles went to entirely new reviewers after a minor revision and was rejected!

@Prof.SantaClaus Please note that this doesn't contradict my statement at all: I merely noted that the practice varies from journal to journal.


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"You are one of our top candidates." How many candidates are there likely to be?
I have applied for a Ph.D. position at a research group in a European University and gotten an acknowledgement from a research unit member. His reply states "... you are one of our top candidates and we would like to pursue your application further. Can you provide us with some of your program codes and two references we can contact."
I have given them some of my codes and details of two of my professors for references. Its almost two weeks now and I've not received any feedback or rejection from them. He/They usually replied back within two working days during our earlier correspondences.
My question is "Am I rejected already?" and how many candidates are usually in a  'top candidates' list?
(The Ph.D. position is to get the degree working with the research group and develop softwares for the group, etc.)

I wouldn't necessarily read anything into this.
Often times there are a number of applications which might be reviewed. (For an open PhD position in my group, I might interview anywhere from three to six candidates, depending on the strength of the overall candidate pool.)
Two weeks to go through evaluations of a number of different packages, including reviewing code and contacting references, is not unusual. Not only that, there's always the possibility that the person conducting the review has had other things come up in the interim (work commitments, vacations, or health issues, for instance).
I would wait a few more weeks, if possible, before politely inquiring about the status of your application. (For example, "I haven't heard back from you in several weeks. Could you please inform me of the status of my application?")

I find it's often helpful to write under the assumption that they've done everything possible, and something went wrong elsewhere.  For example, "I am writing to confirm whether you received my reply with the contact information for my references, which I sent on MM/DD.  If you require any additional information from me, I would be happy to provide it."

Yes, we had multiple vacations in Germany in the last couple days (including today!)


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How to list my name in publications, given that I am referred to by my middle name?
I prefer to be referred to by my middle name. How should I list my name on publications?
I'm not sure if this is correct, but in the past I have written: First initial. Middle name Last name.

Reminds me of three distinguished lunar scientists who always used their middle name. When they coauthored a review with a third author, they made him use his middle name too as a joke. All three were named Taylor, resulting in the paper The Moon: A Taylor perspective. Note how they write their name - exactly as you offered.

You can write your name however you prefer, so long as it is clear and consistent.
A good example of a person with your same situation, however, is Chris Anderson at Berkeley, whose publications list:

J. Christopher Anderson

As you can see, he has come to the exact same solution that you suggest.

Just remember that once you've chosen a name, you should stick with it as much as possible—at least as far as publications are concerned!

@aeismail That's a wise advice in any situation ;)

I'd suggest leaving off the initial.  I think it was (mystery writer) Lawrence Block who pointed out that just about everyone in public life who used a leading initial is a fairly despicable person.  E.g. J. Edgar Hoover, E. Howard Hunt...

@jamesqf I guess you didn't like Babylon 5?

Like other great writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald or L. Ron Hubbard.

L. Ron Hubbard. Right.


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What does the "re-review" mean?
We have written a revised manuscript since the original version is received a decision of "major revision."
Since the status remained "reviewer assigned," we sent a mail with requesting clarification.
The journal editor office replied that the section editor decided to seek re-review for our manuscript given the nature and extent of the revisions requested.
Does "re-review" mean the revision is pending for the original reviewers' comments, or that the section editor sought other reviewers to re-examine the revision for different opinions, or something else?

There will be differences from one journal to another. Possibly form one editor to another. Even possibly from one editor-author relationship to another. There is not necessarily going to be clear, rational, logical, consistent application of this term.

It could be either, but it usually goes back to the reviewers that requested the major modifications. Whoever the editor sent it to, it means that it is being reviewed again in full.

Typically the only reason to send it to other reviewers is if one of the original reviewers refuses to review a second time.

@jakebeal, or are unavailable, or fail to return their second review on time, or ....

Absolutely agreed.  My experience as an editor, however, has been that refusal is the most common reason: "Let this horrible paper never darken my door again."

@jakebeal: Why would any reviewer suggest a revise and resubmit instead of outright reject if they never wanted to see it again? That's just crazy.

They recommend reject and say that if you disagree they want no part of it.


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Can I publish plots for already derived and plotted data with different values?
I am doing MS Physics. If I take some previously derived results and plot them for different values, can I publish this work? If I do so, will it be like a review work? The plots are already there in the literature but I am going to take my own values e.g. I change the angle or the amplitude to see what happens and compare these with some other data to draw conclusions. I am totally new to publishing papers so kindly overlook my naivety.

What do you mean by "change values"? How? Sorry, but the question isn't clear.

@Buffy It  means I change certain parameters in the equations. For example I can change the angle for a certain experiment.

I wonder if any publisher would be interested, based on perceived lack of novelty. It is hard to judge the validity without knowing more about what you've done, but you would need to convince reviewers that it is "new" enough to warrant publication.

@Buffy Thank you:)

A lot depends on what the new conclusions you draw are. Hopefully you have a master's advisor to discuss such details with.

That would not be sufficient.  You need to present new information.  For example, if you show a well-known equation breaks down in an important scenario, and such a breakdown has never been documented, then that constitutes new info.


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Could not having formal research products affect my MPhil application?
I graduated with a BS in Economics in the Dominican Republic. There are barely any local research opportunities there and I haven't been able to work on any as I've focused on my current job. My job involves research and analysis on a daily basis of international commodities market conditions, international economics and more. I have experience researching many topics with multiple tools, yet have not produced anything in a formal, academic format, since what I do is mainly oriented to upper management for decision making, so ends up primarily in PowerPoint presentations.
I have achieved great results at work thanks to my research and analysis, saving the company upwards of US$1MM, but I don't know how to use this to my advantage.
I want to apply for an MPhil in a program with an acceptance rate of 9% and think I have a strong profile for my application. Yet, as soon as I started drafting my Academic CV I got a rush of fear when I realized I don't have any formal written research products (which seems like a MUST) other than my undergrad thesis.
Questions

Could the absence of formal research hurt my application? Will I not seem like a good fit?
Is there any way I can use my work research and analysis to my advantage in my application?

Where do you want to apply? What country or countries? MPhil often implies UK.

Will it hurt your application? Perhaps. Can you do anything about that now? Not really. So, apply to a range of places and see what happens.

@Buffy, Oxford University, MPhil in Economics.
Background: 22y/o, 3 years of work experience, 3.86 GPA, good test scores.

Anyone's chances of getting into Oxford are very nearly zero, with a lot of highly qualified applicants. If you want a degree, make a broad search, not a narrow one, especially not an extremely narrow one to one of the world's top institutions.

Yes, I have that taken into consideration. I will be applying for other colleges as well. Regardless, it baffles me that publications are so heavily weighted in masters applications, what about the people like me who work for the private sector in manufacturing for example and want to study at a highly regarded college to acquire top of the line knowledge?
It just seems weird that I can't (I think) consider my research as work in my CV. Can I do so even if its not published?
Thank you for keeping in touch. @Buffy

Other colleges where? All UK or also US, etc? US is quite different. And do you eventually seek a doctorate?

Mostly in Europe, London School of Economics, Oxford, Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, Instituto Empresa (IE). Courses range from MPhil in Econ to MS in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics. I do intend to eventually seek a doctorate, yet not in the near future as I must go back to my country after the Masters - and need to further develop my professional career in my industry. @Buffy

I will be applying to other programs, yet, my main concern is in trying to find a way to show my research at work in my CV - as otherwise I would have to skip this section and loose the opportunity to show my research and analytical abilities. I have what I may consider a fairly strong profile for applications (99th percentile of Latin America in Bachelors in Business and Economics) - so I don't want to dismiss top universities and at least try. Can you or anyone else think of anything I can do? @JonCuster

This is what the department told me when I asked:
You’re research experience should be recorded within your CV and you are welcome to include you undergraduate thesis should you feel that it demonstrates considerable research experience. We generally leave it up to applicants to decide what exposure they wish to highlight.
@Buffy
Following this I think I can use my undergrad thesis with certainty, and maybe use very detailed investigations I conducted at work in my field. As this is research experience, yet without the result of a publication per say.
Thoughts?

@Roland please check my last comment, couldn't tag more than one user.


text:
Contribution to SE listed on a CV as public scholarship
Scholarship and public benefit:
As a social science PhD student I frequently encounter discussions about the need for "public scholarship" in the discipline. Often these discussions highlight the importance of publishing in non-academic forums that can benefit the public. My understanding is that such forums might include more traditional online media but the focus is usually on freely available and accessible works published, for example, on institutional or self-hosted blogs or sites like Medium.
The question:
Instead of listing publicly available non-academic writing on a CV among traditional publications, it seems reasonable to include it elsewhere, e.g. with other volunteer work. Would you find it justifiable if, for example, a student of economics or mathematics or linguistics who regularly contributed to related SE sites listed that contribution on a CV (under volunteer work or elsewhere) as an example of scholarly work with a public benefit? Or perhaps the more relevant question: would you anticipate that colleagues who are not familiar with/frequent contributors to SE would find this a reasonable and even compelling inclusion?
The context:
I don't recall seeing volunteer work listed on full-length academic CVs, but I know that CVs for some grant applications have space for it. I ask this primarily because I've never been in the position of reviewing CVs for (academic) job applications or funding requests, so I don't have much of an idea what's convincing or relevant versus what comes off as BS or fluff.
Non-duplication:
The question I'm posing is related to this one about SO/SE reputation but sufficiently different that it is not addressed by answers there. My question isn't about reputation per se but rather participation generally, especially in the eyes of CV reviewers who may have no idea what SE is and what "reputation" means on the site. This question about communicating SE achievements on a CV is also vaguely similar, but the longer answer there focuses on SE's metrics and answers unrelated to "scholarly" output (e.g. questions about working conditions, rather than answers related to the subject matter of one's discipline). I'd also note that those questions were posed 9-10 years ago, and in the intervening time there have presumably been changes in how people view the academic and professional relevance of online, non-academic publications.
What most substantially sets my question apart from others relates to its concern with framing SE contribution as publicly available scholarly output—in anticipation, say, of a CV reviewer who wonders, "What work have you done that's related to your research but has had a benefit for people outside the university sphere?"

Various takes from Chemistry: https://chemistry.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4873/chemistry-se-on-your-cv-r%c3%a9sum%c3%a9-other-professional-avenues

q is too long .

@AzorAhai-him- q too l

And from Physics: https://physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5789/is-physics-se-on-your-cv

@JonCuster Those links are helpful; thanks. Though I'd still be interested in whether there are differences between disciplines like chemistry and physics versus those in humanities or social sciences, especially given that in the latter there has been considerable recent uptick in the expressed importance of PhD candidates doing publicly-facing and -beneficial scholarly-adjacent work.

I have argued both in my (mathematics) department and here on SE (though I can't find the posting) that substantial activity answering questions should count as service to the profession when considering tenure and promotion cases.
My son has a long list of publications in ecology and statistics. But it may well be that his postings on stats.stackexchange.com (> 100K reputation) has helped more people than have read his papers.

Though it doesn't supplant scholarly work, I think public outreach and engagement are an important aspect of academia and are beneficial to list on a cv.  In the past this could include public lectures and media interviews, today I can also imagine cv lines like "frequent contributor on the topic of XXX to the YYY forum" or "YYY followers of my science twitter account".


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Should a paper be reviewed in entirety, if the introduction contains plagiarized passages?
I'm very new to being a peer reviewer. I agreed to anonymously review a paper for publication, and while reading it for the first time, I was a little annoyed by the writing style. It sort of reminded me of the feeling I get when reading a paper from a student in an undergraduate Liberal Arts Math course. When I began to read it again, I was very uneasy about the writing, especially in the introduction. There were inconsistencies in style. Some short, dry sentences followed by longer passages using flowery language.  I looked at the references and noticed a few secondary sources. One was a NY Times article. I looked up the article online and in the first paragraph found a passage that was almost identical to one in the introduction section of the paper I'm supposed to review. I was shocked. And then I found more.
So far, all of the plagiarism that I've found is in the introduction. I haven't read the rest of the paper carefully yet because I'm fairly disgusted.
My question is this: should I even bother writing a review? If this were an undergraduate paper, the student would get an F on the assignment and get reported to the Dean. I want to write to the journal editor and just tell him that the paper doesn't deserve to be reviewed.
Has anyone seen this before, and what did you do? If you decided to review a paper like this, how would you phrase your feedback?

The paper fails a sniff check. Reject.

What is wrong with "Liberal Arts Math" ??

@Mindwin, there's nothing wrong with Liberal Arts Math. Since I teach mathematics at the college level, I don't often grade papers. When I teach courses like Liberal Arts Math or History of Math, I grade lots of them. I've graded enough to to know that inconsistent writing style is often the result of plagiarism.

@Freiheit That would be highly unlikely, seeing as the paper cited the NYT article, which would imply the NYT article was written first.

@Freiheit: In addition to what Compass said, this paper is being sent for review which means that it hasn't been published yet. So NYT cannot plagiarize from it.

See the Council of Science Editors white paper on publication ethics at:
http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/resource-library/editorial-policies/white-paper-on-publication-ethics/
and the Committee on Publication Ethics flow charts at
http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts
Many journals follow these recommendations or similar ones in handling ethical issues.
As a reviewer, your job is to report this to the editor.  The editor should take it from there.
I'm actually somewhat surprised that this paper even made it to the review stage- most publishers now routinely check all submitted papers for obvious plagiarism using tools that check against large databases of published papers and other material.  Normally, this would have caught the kind of plagiarism you've described.

Until the plagiarism is dealt with, there's really no reason for the reviewer to waste more time on the review.

Sad observation: if your editor follows these flowcharts, all plagiarizer have to do is keep silent. The "no response" paths do not always lead to retraction.

If there's no response from the author then the editor won't publish the paper.  The point is to give the author a chance to respond to the allegation.  before a final rejection of the paper.

The PDF contains pages for already published articles. I was referring to page four, "What to do if you suspect plagiarism (b) Suspected plagiarism in a published manuscript". The "no response" path does not lead to ... anything.

I think you've pretty much done your review.  You found a whole bunch of plagiarism up front, and that's enough to recommend rejection of the article.  Document your findings and report to the editor.  Even if the rest of the article turned out to be brilliant and original, there is no way it can be anything other than rejected and possibly even formal proceedings against the authors.

'Even if the rest of the article is brilliant and original' … unlikely, but really??

@chris: YES. A paper containing plagiarized passages should always be rejected.

Why? Clearly if it is brilliant otherwise it should be revised not rejected.  Refereeing is not primarily about morality or is it?

Rejected papers are normally revised, occasionally based on the rejection comments, and then submitted again/elsewhere. The rejection in itself is a form of negative reinforcement. Publishing a paper with plagiarized text intact harms the reputations of both the journal and the authors.

@chris: Two reasons: 1) Plagiarism is such a severe misconduct that the strongest punishment is necessary to deterr it. If a student plagiarised only the introduction of an otherwise brilliant thesis, they should fail too. And rejection is the strongest punishment the reviewer can recommend (the journal might also initiate charges for copyright infringement or similar). 2) I would not trust any results by plagiarising authors, unless I have checked them myself, which is only possible in a proof-based field, in which case there is a considerable chance that the proofs are plagiarised as well.

@Wrzlprmft as stated, the referee was supposedly able to decide that the rest of the paper was 'brilliant and original'. It seems to me the introduction then does not matter and could be re-written. On moral grounds, the author might need to be sanctioned, but that's another issue.   Many morally sound but content-wise useless papers are published all the time….

@chris the main issue is that the plagiarism puts the entire article under question. If the authors start out with blatant plagiarism, this is a strong indication that the results might also be fabricated. It is often not feasible for the reviewer to repeat the work and test the results. For example, in a field like biology, that might be the work of a year and several million euros. Therefore, the only thing the reviewer can do is report the plagiarism and recommend rejection.

@terdon of course it does; but the premises of my comment was that somehow it had been established that the rest of the paper was brilliant and original. It is trivial to detect plagiarism nowadays. It is not trivial to identify brilliant papers. In my field introductions do not really matter as far as I am concerned.  Plagiarism in the introduction is a very bad sign indeed but...

The odds of the rest of the paper being brilliant and original are nearly nil. How could a researcher capable of brilliant and original work have sufficiently weak knowledge of the field such that even contemplation of gross plagiarism would be sensible?  I suppose laziness is a potential explanation, but hardly casts the researcher in any better a light.  No: document carefully, and reject unconditionally. Losing the chance to publish the work in the journal submitted to is an appropriate consequence.

@chris I did not decide that the rest of the paper was "brilliant and original." I have not been able to bring myself to read that carefully beyond the introduction.

@chris: I read the premise with the implication that the reviewer judged the paper to be brilliant and original, because that is all you can ever do. You can never fully verify experimental results (as stated above) and you can never ensure that it hasn’t been done before (except maybe, if we are talking about things like a proof to Goldbach’s conjecture or similar). That you really know the work to be brilliant and original is a completely hypothetical situation and there is no use discussing it (while the premise as I assumed it is only very unlikely).

@ConchaGomez: Nobody said that. This was just to illustrate how extreme the plagiarism weighs.

@chris Given your apparently strong feelings on the matter, I would recommend you post a separate answer to the OP's question, rather than castigating those with whom you disagree in the comments.

@Brian thanks for the advice. I thought about it but I only have strong feelings about a sentence in one of the answers.

@chris, if I'm understanding your position correctly, I agree that the distinction you're trying to draw is significant -- I just disagree with your conclusion. I think the question would benefit from a more full exposition of your thoughts -- but, per the site guidelines, a better place for it is in an answer.

@Brian: How could a researcher capable of brilliant and original work have sufficiently weak knowledge of the field such that even contemplation of gross plagiarism would be sensible? English not being his/her native language? Not that it justifies plagiarism, I'm just saying the two things are not necessarily incompatible, just as you can be very good at what you're doing technically but not be able to explain it properly.

@chris: "Refereeing is not primarily about morality or is it?" - I don't think anyone stated this yet, the absolute objection to any form of plagiarism in academia isn't a matter of morality, it's a matter of the integrity of the academic process. No, refereeing is not primarily about morality, and someone who would immediately reject a paper for plagiarism would not necessarily reject a paper containing something they consider morally worse. Murdering a co-author is morally worse than leaving their name off, but per academic process you can accept the former paper but not the latter.

@SteveJessop This is a very well-put point, and I would agree with it.  For example, if I was asked to review a paper with problematic human experiments (which I consider morally much worse than plagiarism), I would review it thoroughly and flag it as a concern to the editor.  Plagiarism, on the other hand, simply disqualifies the paper from consideration.

@jakebeal: presumably there would be cases where someone reviews a paper and recommends changes for something that is or arguably is plagiarism as it stands. Maybe a citation that's accidentally omitted from a list, or spectacularly typoed to the point of failing to identify what's being quoted or who is being credited (entire line deleted or something). But evident intentional plagiarism just puts it beyond the pale, so it's a matter of where you draw the line that says, "I'm going to stop reading this, whatever there is of value in it will need to be submitted anew".

I can't believe that some of the answers and comments here are even discussing the possibility that a paper with plagiarized introduction may still be publishable if only it was otherwise brilliant and original. It's not like we assign 50% of the grade during review for brilliance, 30% for writing style, and 20% for not plagiarizing. It doesn't work that way: if you dope in the long-jump event, you're not getting a 30cm penalty for every jump -- you're kicked out of the event (and, in fact, banned for the next couple of years).
Plagiarism is not an offense that has to be balanced with the rest of the evidence. It leads to immediate rejection of the paper. In fact, I would suggest that the proper path is not even to just suggest to the editor to reject the paper (which is the same penalty as for the regular poor paper) but indeed to use an "exceptional exit path" (too much programming with throw-catch languages :-) in which the paper is rejected simply for plagiarism or unprofessional conduct.

I personally would assign 90 % for brilliance, 10 % for writing style and if the work is original, would not care too much about the introduction. I would not compare the purpose of scientific publication to that of high jumping. As far as I know e.g. Gauss could have been morally unsound but he still wrote papers worth reading. I believe the editor rejects paper.  We don't have to agree but I fail to see why this point of view is unbelievable. And I am worried I am going to regret writing this :-)

@chris Yes, the editor rejects the paper. The referees make recommedations. Are you saying that the referees shouldn't recommend rejection because it's the editor's job to reject papers? That makes no sense to me. Do you also think that lawyers shouldn't argue that people before the court are innocent or guilty because it's the jury's job to decide that?

@DavidRicherby no I am not saying that. And I would not consider myself the analog of a lawer either! :-)

@chris OK. So what consequences, if any, on the reviewers' behaviour are you trying to imply by "The editor rejects the paper"?

@DavidRicherby in contrast to what Pr Bangerth wrote, I would fully leave the issue of plagiarism to the editor to whom I would pass on the information. I personally would not be able to  detect it unless maybe if the author copied my own wording. I would focus on making sure the paper is indeed brilliant, because that's what is important and difficult to do, hence worth my time.  To be a bit provocative, I feel all introductions are bound to be similar in substance, and focussing on how they differ in form is not essential. May be that does not translate well across fields of research?

@chris "all introductions are bound to be similar in substance" In any field, that can only be true if all papers are also bound to be similar in content. If there are many papers on the same narrow area of research, then that area is sufficiently well-known as not to need introducing beyond something like, "We study aspect X of metasyntactic widget theory, as discussed by [cite survey paper]." The rest of the introduction can then describe the work that is novel to the particular paper.

@DavidRicherby what you suggest sounds good to me; this is not how papers are written in my field.

@chris, my answer here wasn't about whether the reviewer or the editor makes the decision. (The reality is that the editor makes the decision, taking into account the reviewers' opinions.) The answer was about the fact that there cannot be any gray zone where a paper that is sufficiently brilliant can offset a certain degree of plagiarism. We as scientists would be no better than those who "dope just a little bit". We'd be morally bankrupt if we are willing to accept even a little bit of plagiarism!

@chris If the paper starts off with clumsy lazy plagiarism, and follows with brilliance, wouldn't one tend to suspect that the brilliant part was quite possibly also plagiarized?

@Dronz of course you would. I was arguing under the premises its has been established it was brilliant and original, however unlikely that might be. What i am trying to convey here is that taking the moral high ground is fine, but let us not forget that scientific publication is not about the appearance of being right morally, it is about substance. If, however unlikely it might be, a given paper is identified as truly brilliant and original, it should be published after correcting for the plagerized introduction.

@chris: I cannot disagree more with this statement. You can only take this position in areas nobody cares about. If you are in climate science, for example, or any other area where there is public interest, any degree of moral ambiguity imperils the entire scientific enterprise. Let us not open this door even a wee bit.

@WolfgangBangerth this line of conduct seems to imply that one has lost track of what science is about and one is only concerned in its apparent credibility, which is my opinion is rather sad. I ll leave our disagreement there.

Absolutely agreed. I actually heard of a case where students caught cheating on a (notoriously difficult) test were given a -10 penalty – which prompted a lot of “Really? If that’s the deal, I’m taking it; cheating could get me a lot more than 10% on that test.” (It turned out to be -10 on a test that was scored out of 20, which made it far less attractive as an option, but was still regarded as absurdly lenient. Not sure what ended up happening in that case.)

@chris one has lost track of what science is about and one is only concerned in its apparent credibility — As opposed to what?!? In what way is science not about credibility?

Science is about knowledge, truth, predictability, not about the moral standards of scientists. My impression is that people get very excited about the moral high ground these days, (on this site in particular!), which is ok I guess, but mostly beside the point. (and note that I too master bold face as means of emphasizing certain words  :-))

I understand there is a moral and potentially punishable issue.
However, as the reviewer appears to have understood, the writer is inexperienced.
What an author knows about plagiarizing practices depends largely on the country/university where s/he grew up in academic terms. In the Anglo-Saxon world I know this practice is severely punished already at undergraduate level, since from early stages of the studentship, students are required to participate more actively to the learning process and write papers for their classes, which allow them to learn about plagiarizing rules. In other countries this is not the case. The approach to the educational process is more passive in this sense, you are never required to write papers: if you do not write, you do not learn about it.
Another reason that might lead inexperienced authors to plagiarize (and write bad papers) is their bad level of English: you do not know how to formulate and write down your thinking in English language, you are more prone to copying text passages instead of rephrasing. I sense that this is the most probable reason for plagiarizing in this case. In fact, you have also noted (to my understanding) that although some sentences are copied, they are referenced to the original source; ergo, the author must have problems rephrasing the original sentences (quoting exists, but it is used for very specific passages, not for banal sentences).
Bear in mind, I am not justifying this practice, I am trying to explain that these behaviors may well exist even in absence of any true malicious intention. Therefore, each case should be very well pondered, before to decide how to act.
I would do the following:

warn the editor about plagiarizing passages in the paper
suggest a rejection of the paper
not recommend formal proceedings
explain that this behavior does not seem (at least at first sight) to be led by malicious intentions but rather by inexperience/bad English

I guess though that recommendations on formal proceedings are rather a subjective matter. I am sure many people won't agree with my do-gooding approach.

I totally agree with you on your very last sentence " I am sure many people won't agree with my do-gooding approach." As I am sure that there will be more than one author to it and one of them would usually be a Professor (Last author), hence the first author might be inexperience but i find it had to believe that all the author were inexperienced. I assume that they didnt do their internal reviewing properly.

@Saurabh I have assumed that, since the reviewer did not mention the presence of a co-author, there is no co-author (in many fields this is the case, in many others it is not). If there is an experienced co-author, as you suggest, there should be a formal proceeding, I believe.

@Saurabh But then, how can we check whether there is a co-author? if the review process is not double blinded, the reviewer should now the amount and identity of the papers authors. If it is double-blinded, then Google the title of the paper: there might be chances that there is at least one working-paper or conference version of that paper, so that you see the amount and identity of the authors. From some reviews that I have received on my paper, I suspect there are some people doing it.

I would say to reject it and tell the editor that it's plagiarised if the review is double blind. Moreover I agree that having co authors might be field dependent but still everyone working in science should know that plagiarism is a crime.

+1 for recalling that there are severe and mild forms of plagiarism, each morally wrong but probably calling for different responses. one extreme is the intentional copying of someone else's findings and arguments, claiming them as one's own. note that this extreme kind of plagiarism does not at all entail the verbatim copying of a text passage -- it is even more effectively deceiving without. by contrast, very mild plagiarism would be a negligent rather than intentional copying of a short text passage with sloppy attribution …

… the intellectual value of the impropriated content in each example differs by orders of magnitude.

I asked this follow-up question as to whether plagiarism from inexperience is a real thing.

I did not say that the author was inexperienced. I had no way of knowing that, or whether there was a coauthor. I said that the paper read like an undergraduate paper. A bad one. Also, some of the plagiarized passages had citations, some did not. I ran across a plagiarized passage by simply reading the first paragraph of the first reference. I then ran across several more. There are also several instances of statements that should have citations but did not. It is fraught with serious problems in the first three pages. I stopped there and wrote to the editor recommending outright rejection.

+1. The difference between "looking on Internet to find the translation of a single word" and "looking on Internet how one could translate a whole expression/idea from its own language into English" is not as neat as Native English speaker could believe.

@ConchaGomez, I said "as the reviewer appears to have understood, the writer is inexperienced." And not "as the reviewer claims, the writer appears to be inexperienced." Sorry if I appeared to misrepresent your words, I apologize.

No, it should be rejected on spot as plagiarism should not be supported in any form and any level. If you found the a plagiarised passage is used in the beginning only then it is highly possible that the whole body of manuscript would be full of it and if you would go through and check the whole text then it will be a massive waste of time for you.
Moreover if the author did not even know that plagiarism is a sin in science then he should not be in academia on the first place.
Hence my recommendation is rejection on spot as well as to communicate this to the editor as well so that appropriate action could be taken against the authors.

Hence my recommendation is rejection on spot as well as to communicate this to the editor as well so that appropriate action could be taken against the authors. — Besides rejecting the paper, what other "action" do you think might need to be taken against the authors?

@MadJack: Well, the journal could take legal actions, as the authors claimed content to be their own which wasn’t. Then the journal will probably ban the authors. Finally the editors could inform the authors’ university and funders about the incident.

I think it is important here to differentiate between plagiarism and self-plagiarism. It is not an automatic rejection for self-plagiarism in the introduction. If an author has several papers coming out of one study, the introduction usually contains a description of that study that might contain a certain amount of self-plagiarism simply because the author has found a clear way to describe the context. This is generally okay even though it is technically a breach.
In the case you found, the plagiarism cannot possibly be self-plagiarism since the original is a news item etc. Such plagiarism is always a breach and, as others have said, should be reported to the editor and then let the editor decide whether you should complete the review.

Journals have their policies against plagiarism, but it's the editor's duty (or the editorial board's) to enforce them. The reviewer has the duty to read the whole paper and assess its quality.
You should surely report the plagiarism to both the editor and the authors, but first you should complete your duty as reviewer. The editor will then make a decision on the basis of yours and others reviews, and on the journal policy.
If you think that you would not be able to complete the review in an unbiased way because of the introduction, ask the editor to find another reviewer.

"The reviewer has the duty to read the whole paper and assess its quality." [citation needed] I believe the reviewer's duty is to assess the quality of the paper. If one is going to state that the paper is good, one had better have read all of it. If one is going to state that the paper is bad, it is only necessary to read enough to determine that. In mathematics, for example, it's common to "stop at the first serious mistake" since, if that mistake cannot be fixed, it's likely to invalidate everything that follows.

@DavidRicherby: your example is not pertinent for the situation is completely different: a wrong theorem can surely invalidate all the consequences which are subsequently drawn from it, but a plagiarised introduction --though ethically unacceptable-- does not necessarily invalidate the scientific content of a paper. Moreover: firstly, that mistake can be fixed; secondly, if something is likely to invalidate what follows, you can't be sure unless you read it first.

a plagiarised introduction --though ethically unacceptable-- does not necessarily invalidate the scientific content of a paper — True, but irrelevant.  The referee's job is to make a well-reasoned recommendation to the editor to accept or reject the paper.  A paper with significant plagiarized content should not be published, regardless of its scientific validity.

I disagree with this answer. Recall that the referee is donating her time as a service to the academic community. I don't see how the community benefits from a full evaluation of an unpublishable paper, certainly not in proportion to the value of the referee's time. I would regard this as a waste of time and I don't think the referee has a duty to waste her volunteered time.

@NateEldredge and the others: I agree that the reviewer's time is precious and that plagiarism should be condemned etc., but I also think that one should avoid to be overly judgemental and feeling outraged without knowing the full story (see also Luca's answer). Therefore, I think that one should try nonetheless to be as a fair reviewer as possible, leaving to the editor the duty of sorting out whether the plagiarism was the consequence of fraudulent behaviour or inexperience, and to take proper action.

I've dealt with this situation as an editor.  Once plagiarism was detected, we immediately asked all of the reviewers to stop working on their reviews until we could confirm the plagiarism and get a response from the authors.  We stopped the review process entirely once the plagiarism was confirmed and the authors had no acceptable response.  From my point of view as an editor, there's no point in your wasting time on a review of a manuscript that will be rejected.

@BrianBorchers- I appreciate your response. After reading all of the other responses, I was surprised to see that no one else had actually experienced this issue. I've already told the editor that the paper should be rejected without a review, and I'm glad to hear that other journals have dealt with this problem in the manner you've described.

I wrote to the editor today, describing the instances of plagiarism that I found so far (not only in the Introduction!), and told him that I stopped looking after running across plagiarized passages in each of the three references that I checked. I stated that the paper should be rejected without a review, and I added that if the editor disagreed then he should send it to a different reviewer because I was obviously biased. I'm surprised by the diversity of opinion here on Stack Exchange, but glad I came here. My situation appears to be somewhat unusual, which is a relief.


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How to write proper nouns such as company names whose spelling is nonstandard in reports?
I am currently writing a paper on accessibility and I am talking about some companies in my report. How do I write a company name, product or otherwise when the word is not spelled correctly?
For example:

I went to ToysR’us at the weekend.
  I visited the Change4Life website.

Is it acceptable to just write it as normal, or should you put the word in italics or quotation marks?

For those who don't know what a "proper noun" means, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_noun

I challenge your contention that these things are spelled incorrectly.  When you write 'Toys "R" Us' you are correctly spelling a proper noun.  Names are signifiers, and the entity who controls the name controls how it is correctly spelled.  I would not have told my high school friend whose last name was "Tomson" that his name was spelled wrong just because for most people it was spelled "Thompson."  Likewise, 'Toys "R" Us' has chosen a particular spelling for its title, and that's the correct name.
So now comes the question of how to communicate such titles, and here, I see four basic cases:

Just use it as written, and count on people to understand: not great with Toys"R"Us since quotes are semantically loaded, but fine for a well-understood "misspelling" like Google.
Often, there are commonly used variants that are simpler.  If you say Toys R Us, people will know what you are talking about even without the quotes, so its OK.  Same with the artist formerly known as Prince. If you say Toys Are Us, however, you've gone a step too far and "corrected" the name into something incorrect.
Put it in quotes, like I did in the first paragraph: 'Toys"R"Us' (here I made the unusual choice of single quotes because of the presence of double quotes in the name).
If you think it is still strange enough that you think people will think you misspelled it, you can add [sic] afterwards, as in "Tomson [sic]"

I don't like italics, as a solution, personally, since I generally see italics used for emphasis or for definition, and neither is the case here.

For published work, this is for the journal to decide. For your own writing, Wikipedia's guidelines seem sensible. They distinguish the name of the company from the company's preferred orthography.
A company, just like a person, is free to choose the spelling of its name. If I want to call myself Dayvydd (I don't), I can do: you're welcome to tell me that that spelling is unusual but, if I choose it as my name, it is my name and it is correct by definition.
A company is also free to brand itself using unusual typography: for example, unusual letter cases, miscellanous symbols and so on. This is a sort of watered-down logo: you wouldn't include a full-blown logo in running text and there's no particular reason to use one of these almost-logos. So, use ordinary capitalization and replace any weird unpronounced symbols with the normal one ("Macy's", not "macy*s"; "Seven", not "se7en") but don't replace pronounced symbols with words ("Phones4U", not "Phones For You"; "Toys R Us" but not "Toys [backwards-R] Us" or "Toys Are Us").

Usually, the journal’s copy editor will have an opinion on this. My personal guideline is to adapt the spelling as much to a regular one as possible without diminuishing the identifiability of the name.
Thus, Toys R Us stays like this (because, at least I would have to think am moment about who Toys Are Us is), and Change4Life becomes Change 4 Life ore stays as it is. However, BIG STUFF INC becomes Big Stuff Inc., and etechnicks becomes Etechnicks or possibly eTechnicks, and Ovəя!†he!†0p!!! becomes Over The Top. In particular, there should be a capital letter at the beginning of the word or at least near it and only there (unless it is a real abbrevation), so it can be easily identified as a proper name, hence this is the function of capitalisation in the English (and almost every other) orthography.
For further reading, I recommended: Editors’ enemies and ‘But FUNKY!!!web!!!DUDES.com is their trademark!’.
As for italics and quotation marks, I would not treat such names different from others. If you follow the above rules, they should be identifiable as proper names through capitalisation, which should be sufficient.¹ If the journal’s style reqires you to italicise company names or equip them with quotation marks, that’s another story.

¹ I only italicised the names in the above, because I was talking about the names, not the companies.


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Question on etiquette while trying to secure a postdoctoral position
Let us suppose that a certain senior Ph. D. student is interested in "securing" a postdoctoral position under a professor whom he does look up to. Would it be right for the student to write the researcher and ask him if he stands a chance of eventually being hired as a postdoctoral fellow in the institution wherein the researcher works? The Ph. D. student is certainly interested in some topics on which the researcher has written in the past; furthermore, there is a certain problem at which the student plans to try his hand once he manages to graduate and this problem is also somewhat near the area of expertise of the researcher in question.
Thanks in advance for any suggestion you may want to leave for me below.

How close are you to graduating? If you're still a few years away, then perhaps get an introduction from your advisor to that professor and see if there are natural ways to seek feedback or advice from that professor.
If you are thinking about the next year and a half, then your questions should be more concrete. In particular, you might tie your question to funding, as that determines a lot of the possibilities. Even if a professor loves your work, they can't hire you if they don't have the money for it.

If you see from the professor's CV that there is an active grant, you could ask about whether there is space on that grant.
If there are regularly postdoctoral openings in the person's department, you can ask about whether the professor is looking for another postdoc soon. (You may learn that people in the department tend to take turns hiring postdocs, and the professor is (un)likely to be up this year. Apply anyway, but know your odds.)
You could say that you're preparing to apply for an external grant for a postdoc (e.g. NSF in the U.S.) and wondering whether the professor would be open to having you work with them on that. (Often a faculty sponsor is already required to apply.)

In addition to feedback and advise, one might also wish to collaborate with the professor.

The situation in math is slightly different than other fields and so it is reflected in the hiring process.
As a general rule, it is always good if your potential employers (i.e. the professors in the related math department) will know you beforehand, and definitely if you have means to go and present your work in a seminar go do that.
If you happen to meet in a conference, go introduce yourself and shake hands with him.
Approaching a professor directly out of the blue (i.e. just emailing) might not be the best thing, you might get overlooked or something, it might irritate the professor, the usual best idea about emailing someone without prior meeting with him is to arrange a more senior person (i.e. your adviser) to email him and tell him about you and inquire about your status as a future hire. It is also OK to email him with your preprint before putting them up in the Arxiv (again, do everything in coordination with your adviser, as it would be best to write explicitly in the email - my adviser, Prof. MATH, asked me to send this article to you for your consideration) and then end up in p.s - I'm about to graduate, and I would like to consider me as a post doc.
You have mentioned some future work, after the initial contact, you may bring that up (again, it would be best to ask your current adviser about it, maybe there are better experts to contact, maybe things are easy, you don't want to discourage your future employer so it is a delicate situation). Definitely you should write that future direction on your research statement you upload to mathjobs.
Regarding ''securing'' - most post-doc positions in math are (junior) faculty, means that there is some teaching involved, and the hire need to be accepted by the department. There's no extensive voting process like the one done for senior faculty hires, but usually there is some post-doc committee sifting through the applications, short-listing and so on.
The professor you've mentioned can ask to consider you to the short list.
Moreover, in many cases the spots are allocated between the different ''groups'' namely in there are X places, Y will be analysis, Z will be NT, W will be dynamics, P will be algebra, Q will be applied and so on. So you should check that this professor you mentioned can grease the wheels inside his group in order to get you high up the ranks.
In the end, the best thing you have is your recommendations (and this is what carries the most significance to your hire). Make sure that they are good and when hiring season is in play (say December), make sure your adviser is taking care of you and encouraging his friends to hire you.
Good luck.

Discussing potential research projects and post-doc positions is good, and one stands a much better chance to get a position with prior contact with the professor. Also, the student can get some insight in how the application process works. It could even be that the university tailor the announcement for a post-doc position to be favorable for the student, if the student is really strong.


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Suggestions to turn an "accepted, pending revisions" into an "accepted"
As far as I understand "accepted pending revisions" is not the same as "submission accepted".
What are some important things to keep in mind while revising the submission in order for it to be finally accepted? Which have been the most useful to you?

When they say that, they send you a list of suggested revisions (or several lists, one from each reviewer).  Just follow those suggestions.  When you send it back, explain which suggestions you followed, and which you did not (and why not).

What if the author decides to waive one or two of the referee's suggested revision? Won't he/she get mad at the author and retaliate suggesting a rejection in the end?

@Jamai-Con for a "typical" journal in a "typical" field (if such a thing could exist) accepted, pending revisions strongly implies that the editor believes the requested changes are so non-controversial and so minor that the author will have no reason not to follow them. In that case, it's likely the editor will sign off on them without going back to the reviewers. If the If the push back is strong on anything, then that might cause another round of review, comment, respond. Serious disagreement might lead to a trawl for another independent reviewer if the workflow allows.

@GEdgar: Thanks a lot for your answer. What would you say is a reasonable/typical lapse before the author receives a report on the revised version of the paper?

Follow all suggestions that you agree with and document those you do not agree with and attach a clear explanation of why you disagree with them (possibly offering an alternative if you understand what exactly the referee was unhappy with in the original version or asking for clarification if you don't). Remember that it is your paper and you want to have it the way you think is right more than you want it to get published, so don't forget yourself when listing the parties whose opinion should be taken into account. Normally, a compromise satisfying everybody can be reached in finite time but it may require more than one iteration. As long as you stay polite and make your point of view clear and substantiated, occasional disagreements with reviewers and editors constitute a normal part of the publication process and are nothing to be afraid of. And, of course, try to meet the deadlines or at least inform the editors in advance when you cannot.

fedja (from mathlinks?): Thanks a lot for your answer. What would you say is a reasonable/typical lapse before the author receives a report on the revised version of the paper?

Following all reviewers' suggestions and remaks (if appropriate).

And make sure that your changes are directly linked to reviewers comments and are noted in the cover letter back to the editor. Conflicts between reviewers recommendations should be noted and your response clarified.


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Off-campus job and Internet earning
As far as I know, international students can't  work off-campus in the USA (according to the law). What about Google AdSense?
I have been working on my personal websites and I have activated AdSense on these websites. I have been getting paid in my native country and Google sends the payment to my local bank account.
Could I link my US bank account after I reach there? Will it be considered as off-campus job?

I don't think you should rely on StackExchange for legal advice in such cases.

If you link your US account, there should be taxes to be paid in the US, otherwise in your home country, depending on the sum involved. Either way, you should consider seriously a legal advice.

Does anyone know if this is on-topic for Law.SE? It seems a decent question to me.

Expats may be better.

Two things:

If you are structuring your royalties through a foreign bank in a way to avoid paying American taxes, then from the USCIS/IRS perspective, that would of course be a big big no-no.
As to whether you are permitted or not to receive royalties under your visa, you should ask your international student/scholar's office. It may depend on the degree to which your royalty payment is considered a passive or active activity, or whether it is related to your work as a scholar. You shouldn't do this without consulting the international student's office or an immigration lawyer.

From the IRS perspective: it's only hiding the information if you don't report it.  They've got nice clear policies on this now, though if there's a non-trivial amount of money involved it's often a good idea to make sure a tax lawyer is preparing your taxes in order to affirm correct behavior.


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Is Google Scholar reliable for reporting citations?
When quoting the number of citations for each paper you have published, different sources can be used, Google Scholar, ResearcherID, Scopus.
Google Scholar covers a larger range of literature.
Is it acceptable to use Google Scholar? Or it is not a professional resource, and we necessarily should use ISI Web of Knowledge for counting citations?

In my limited experience, looking at my own publications: I find Google Scholar listed many citations that should not be included in a "professional" list.  Are you publishing in some field that does not have a professional citation list?

Many problems with google scholar. These include (1) imperfect merging of versions means you can get multiple citations from multiple versions of the same paper, (2) imperfect parsing of author lists means  that I get "credit" for all of the citations to papers I've edited for one journal, despite trying repeatedly to remove them from my profile, and (3) the system is easily gamed.

None of the citation databases are particularly good.  Google Scholar tends to err on the side of inclusiveness (thereby over-representing impact), while the more curated databases (e.g., ISI WoK) tend to err on the side of exclusiveness (thereby under-representing impact).  This is particularly acute in some fields: computer science, for example, is notoriously under-represented in the curated databases to the degree that it has is own independent citation database, DBLP, which of course has its own different problems.
You can potentially use any of these databases reasonably to report citations in a reasonable and professional manner, as long as you are consistent and make it clear which database you are using, such that readers can adjust their expectations accordingly.

DBLP is not a citation database, but a publication database. They recently added links to third-party citation databases to their web interface (opencitations.net and crossref.org), but these seem to be vastly incomplete within computer science.

Google Scholar is actually quite useful, insofar as it draws a broad net for publications, whereas many other citation databases fail to capture important papers.  Unfortunately, Google Scholar also has some problems with double-counting, since it often treats different versions of the same articles as if they were different publications, which can artificially inflate citation count.  A secondary problem with Google Scholar (which also applies to other citation databases) is that it gives "raw" citation counts (and derived metrics like H-index, etc.) rather than "author adjusted" metrics.  This also artificially inflates citation count, especially for authors who do most of their work with a substantial number of co-authors.
One problem with Google Scholar is that its broad sources for papers means that it can be subject to manipulation by publishing mock papers that give no scholarly contribution but give citations to other works or to each other (see e.g., López-Cózar et al 2012).  The more tightly curated citation databases do not have this problem since they only count publications in approved sources; typically these sources are established scholarly journals with effective peer review processes.
As the other answer here points out, none of the citation databases are very good.  They all suffer from under- or over-coverage and most do not make a serious attempt to adjust metrics for authorship.  Personally, I think Google Scholar is less bad than many of the others, since it at least captures all the important papers a person has written, rather than artificially excluding those that fall outside a narrow range of journals.  However, you should be aware of its drawbacks in relation to other citation databases and ensure that you carefully inspect the individual publications when using it as an evaluative source.


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Discovered that my BA topic has been discussed thoroughly ...after i finished half of it. What to do?
I've found out from other professors that my topic for B.A. research is something that has already been covered thoroughly. My B.A. research topic covers the hindrances affecting high school students from achieving good English speaking skills. It is a subject that I've been quite passionate about and my supervisor never gave me any negative remark about it. I started to read deeply about it and was discussing it with two other professors. They both gave me this shocking remark that this topic has been thoroughly dealt with before. I really feel frustrated and disappointed, for I feel that I'm just wasting time not adding anything new!!!
I don't know what I should do now?!!

Have you read the previous studies in question? Do they really cover it so completely and definitively that there is nothing to add? Has there been any additional research since those studies were published?

well, i did read some works on the net and i did found that they cover the same topic that is the hindrances affecting students from mastering english speaking " but still there are of other countries ..never seen any done in morocco ...still professors claimed the opposit

and of course there lll always be things to add ..and i wouldn't deal with the topic of course the same way it has been dealt with with iof course it will be different acording to how .myself wanna deal with it !!

Discuss your concerns with your adviser. Also you might want to ask the professors you were discussing this with for references so you don't end up duplicating the work already put forth. You say your are quite passionate about the subject what drives you? Do you have a solution to the issue? That could be your angle. Reading some works on the net isn't the same as good research. Dig a bit deeper and you might find more than you thought was there.

This post might be useful to you: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24168/should-i-pursue-a-research-area-even-after-finding-that-papers-have-already-been?rq=1

The professors who indicated there was prior work may not have intended to put you off the topic, but to indicate that your related work section and references are incomplete.

Like @PatriciaShanahan said in her comment, you have the following possiblities:

Check it up if the previous work is the same as the one that you are actually doing. At this point, it would be advisable that you present to your supervisor with your current work and some past articles that resemble what you are actually doing. He could help you to see if its the same or not.
If indeed your work has been published before, then you can make a literature review about it; adding your own experimentation and so on. That could become your thesis for your BA degree.
If  your proposal is new or at least an extension of what has been done before, then you can continue it, but aiming maybe to a future publication.

In all the cases you can, and should, continue with your current work. Remember that what your professors or teachers look after your BA thesis is that you manage to amalgamate what you have learned on your undergraduate period, but not necessarily to present some novel contribution as it happens on the PhD studies.
Good luck!


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Do non-Russian technical universities use Olympiad-style math/problem solving entrance exams?
In the U.S., colleges typically don't use entrance exams to select students. For test results they rely instead on standardized tests like the SAT or ACT. I heard that the top technical math/science schools in Russia administer entrance exams which are similar to math Olympiads. I am wondering: is this a Russian thing or do universities in other countries use difficult problem-solving/Olympiad tests like this?

My question is the one in the title, which is the same as what I wrote in the above text.

Would you please clarify what's the difference between standardized tests and entrance exams? As far as I know, US colleges rely on standardized tests and other criteria to select students. Some countries rely on only entrance exams to select students.. Some countries rely on both.

I said "for test grades" the US colleges rely on standardized tests like the SAT or ACT as opposed to an entrance exam designed by the university. In other countries top schools use entrance exams because standardized tests don't do a good job of distinguishing the best from the good. My question is which universities use entrance exams that are similar to math olympiads.

I deleted my answer because I mis-understood your question. If you would like to see my answer remains, please leave a comment here. Thanks.

In Japan, many universities have their own entrance exams.  For the entrance exams for mathematics that I've seen, there are several challenging problems (maybe about 5) to be solved in about 2-3 hours.  For instance, here is a recent exam from Tokyo University (this is the math exam for science students--humanities students get a different exam).  If you're a bit rusty on your Japanese, it's 2.5 hours for 6 problems.
Entrance exams in other east Asian countries are reputedly difficult also, but I haven't seen those exams to compare.  Maybe someone else can comment on that.

Another bit of anedoctal evidence from my experience: in Italy, the Scuola Normale Superiore (a very highly-rated honors boarding college for the hard sciences and the humanities) uses Olympiad-like problems for its admission tests in mathematics and physics for bachelor and master students.
Up to a few years ago, admissions to the university-funded PhD positions in mathematics in many Italian universities also required solving Putnam-style exercises. Example 1 Example 2.
(All problems in the links are in Italian, sorry for that).

Actually, today's Russian entrance exams are quite as standardized as in many places abroad. Besides this,  state exam in mathematics not only contains  the part, filled with test questions, but also staffed with an extra one,
where contestants are required to write down all the solutions in details. It's not an obligatory - it's possible to pass the exam without solving this part, but it's impossible to gain a result, which would be sufficient to be accepted to the undergraduate programs in technical universities.
Moreover, regarding olympiads, for the last years some universities tend to organise their own olympiads, results of which are always taken into accout in the process of application. In most cases, the contests' problems looks like classical entrance exam ones, which inherited  traditions from the past times. Although, some olympiads enable
contestants to solve difficult problems( IMO style), which require a strong background and sufficient level of training. (such as Moscow Mathematical Olympiad or the Russian Mathematical Olympiad).


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Alphabetical authorship order in graduate admissions (particularly high energy physics)
I would like to know how graduate admission committees at US Universities look at alphabetical authorship publications in a CV (particularly in high energy physics). Since the convention in high energy physics is to have authors in alphabetical order, how do the committees determine the contribution of the applicant (I guess recommendation letters is one way)? Also, do the committees actually read the papers (mentioned on the CV) on arXiv or the journal website to check the quality of the papers?
I am applying to US universities for a Ph.D. in high energy physics. Because my surname starts with one of the ending letters in the English alphabet, however, my name on all of my publications is last in the sequence. Could this create confusion in committee members about my contributions?

Don't say HEP in general, that's just a phenomenon prevalent in HEP-experimentation, with the big collaborations and all.

@The Dark Side: No, it is all of high-energy physics.

I think that a simple footnote in an appropriate section of CV with proper clarification will be enough to prevent confusion in committee members' minds.

@MattReece - FWIW, I am an hep-ph, nucl-th guy! Disagree. Doesn't happen in theory.

@MattReece - As an afterthought, from going to your SE profile -> your Harvard page (!!) -> your inspire page, I can anticipate that you will say it does happen. But I'm curious, we both work in hep-ph, yet how come we are disagreeing? I have not yet been demoted from first authorship because of my surname!

I don't know? If you're at the nuclear corner of hep-ph maybe the customary practices are different. But just look at today's arxiv listing. 23 papers on hep-ph, 22 on hep-th, mostly multiple authors, and only about five are not in alphabetical order.

@MattReece Surely you can see how five non-alphabetical and 17 alphabetical listings means you are both correct if you are claiming that your experiences can generalize and you are both incorrect if you are claiming that your experiences always generalize?

When I said "all of high-energy physics," I meant theory and experiment--the whole field, broadly construed--not every single paper.

You should definitely request one or more of your letters of recommendation from senior researchers, preferably tenured professors, who worked directly with you on this paper. You should request that the letter writer directly address your contribution to the project. Admission to graduate school is largely based on promise, and letters are crucially important. Even the best students may have only a publication or two to their name, and many do not yet have any. The letters help flesh out the applicant to the admission committee.
The issue of scientific contribution is a challenging and subtle one that persists throughout the academic lifespan, from student to faculty member to Nobel Prize Winner. Committees may not grasp the full significance of the scientific work, nor your contribution to that effort. You will need to address the significance of the research and your contribution to it both in your statements, and in your letters of recommendation.

I can't speak to how every department does it, but in my department (and I think typically) your application would be read mostly by people working in a similar field who are aware of the conventions. You could always add a note to the CV pointing out the alphabetical author convention if you're concerned about it.

If you are talking about graduate admissions, having authored any paper will be a huge advantage for you, regardless of where your name appears in the author list.  The faculty members reading your application are going to notice if the authors are listed in alphabetical order (unless it's only two or three authors), and they will take that into account.
Really, the people reviewing your application are not going to judge your contribution based on where your name appears in the author list.  You ought to have a strong letter of recommendation from whoever supervised your undergraduate research, and it is that letter that will explain your contribution and place it in context.  (If you do not have a letter from the research supervisor, that would be a red flag.)  The letter will explain what you did and how important it was to the publication.  That will allow the admissions committee to get a good feel for your talents as a researcher.


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Can version control systems, like Git, be used to establish priority date of a paper?
Are systems like Git robust enough so that if questions arises about a paper's priority, it would prove or substantiate a claim to have a VCS log?

What do you mean by priority? That one paper was written before another?

That's exactly what I mean :)

@Ian_Fin I asked about priority a while back: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/66052/what-do-researchers-mean-by-the-priority-of-an-idea

Are you talking about priority for patent law or to "prove" to your colleague/wife/mother that you had the idea first?

Note that in the USA first-to-invent has gone away, replaced by first to file. I assume the patent office tracks what comes in when...

You could ask git itself—git help commit—and note the conspicuous [--date=<date>] option in the synopsis… :-)

Short answer: no, the date of a commit  can  be easily edited. Cf. http://stackoverflow.com/q/454734/2657549

@Clément I think github stores two dates, the one when the commit was made and the one when it was uploaded. See for instance the two sets of dates in https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits/master.

It sort of depends on what you want to timestamp, and who you want to convince with the data, but there's some important points to keep in mind.

If it's a locally-kept repository, then it simply cannot be used to establish any sort of priority, because those timestamps can be forged. Git is simply not robust enough (depending as it does e.g. on your system clock) to be a silver bullet; it can be made part of a case (analogously e.g. to timestamped lab books) but it is not enough by itself.
On the other hand, you can use a version-control repository hosted by a third party, such as a private repository on GitHub or Bitbucket. Here you need to make sure that you push regularly to the remote repo, because what really matters is the timestamp on the push and not the commit (again, because the locally-generated timestamps can be forged); you also need to make sure that the third party actually keeps timestamped logs of said uploads.
This is in principle usable, but whether it will be sufficient or not will depend on what you want to do with it. Ultimately it will come down to whether the people you're trying to convince can be persuaded to trust the third party's logs and their neutrality. (Note, also, that what matters here is not the robustness of git that matters - it is the reliability of the third party instead.)
Depending on your field and its community, having written the paper first may not actually matter - quite often, a lot more weight can be put (rightly or wrongly) on being the first to publish the work.
There is a lot of field-to-field variability, but if someone else publishes work that is essentially equivalent to yours, then at the very least you should expect a steep uphill climb to get a journal to publish your manuscript, even if you can prove you had the text just about completed before the others even submitted. I will leave these discussions aside, though, under the assumption that you've already thought through them or will do so before acting.

I understand your question in the following way:
You are asking if a git repository can be used to add a "timestamp" to some idea, so that in case multiple researchers come with the same idea, you can prove that you were the first (whenever this is actually true).
Unfortunately, dates in a git repository can easily be forged. See here for a stackexchange thread documenting this.

Maybe if it's your repository. But what if it's a repository controlled by some other person/department/organization/journal?

@smcl They can still be forged.

If we assume a third party is trusted, they could validate the dates and for instance reject commits that are in the future. Then you could at least prove priority if you push immediately after publication or whatever. But at that point the VCS itself becomes irrelevant and it could just be any old website.

@smci: Are you aware that while git does have access controls, it's a distributed peer-to-peer system, so that the clones possessed by anyone with push access are pretty much equivalent?

@BenVoigt: not if the repo is private.

Anything not signed of by an trusted authority is worth nothing. You can push your repository to a trusted authority, if they agree to that, but that doesn't depend on git. The best way to prove some document existed at some specific time is trusted timestamping, in my opinion.

@MattiVirkkunen the problem is forging dates that are earlier than you claim, not later.

@OrangeDog: Uh. Very good point. You'd need a time window. And using a VCS would be even more pointless.

Trusted time-stamping service
What you are looking for is a provider of trusted time-stamping.
Git can not — or rather: should not — be used for that, because git is not in any way meant to perform that sort of service. For git to be used this way, you would have to prove that the git repository is accurate when it comes to time, accurate about who is submitting to it, and tamper-proof when it comes to commits.
And sure, you may assume that this is the case with any of the big third-party providers, like github. And sure, in a civil case, where a preponderance of the evidence is enough (i.e. evidence need only be more likely than not likely, instead of as in a criminal trial where they must be proven beyond reasonable doubt), then this might very well fly.
But why bother with re-purposing git when there are dedicated providers for this very type of service? There are both free and paid providers. I would personally take someone way more seriously when they use a proper service for this compared to someone that re-purpose something that is meant for completely different things.