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How should a student deal with personal criticisms from an assistant professor?
I am a PhD student. In the past I have met with an assistant professor for some general advice about my research, both times he has made off the cuff comments on my lack of competence as a researcher and overall career suitability in academia. During my continuation, he made further comments in this area. I prepared for 3 weeks solid for my continuation (or transfer or confirmation, in my case, it's like the defense of the first paper) and it went terribly. I can take constructive criticism and I welcome it, so as to better my paper. However, his behaviour I feel is inappropriate, as the focus should be my paper, and not my personal qualities.
I am not sure what to do, if I should even do anything at all. In general, I consider my PhD progress to be very good, and my supervisor as far as I know shares the same sentiment.
I'm cautious to respond to the  assistant professor, because he tells me I am being defensive, but then I am cautious of being too silent because he tells me I am not contributing enough.
I have not spoken to my supervisor since my continuation or told him about my past encounters with this professor. Do I express my disappointment and confusion in our next meeting, or do I just leave it? I am lost on what to do, and I feel very deflated now.

Do you need to take any course taught by him? Do you absolutely need him in your committee? Can you try to keep distance from him? I mean, why do you care about his comments that much?

@Roland from what I read the "continuation" seems to be an official step in the PhD at that university...This is unclear though. What is a continuation?

sorry I should have explained, continuation (or transfer or confirmation), in my case, it's like the defense of the first paper

I still don't understand what a "continuation" is.  Why would a first paper need a defense?  Isn't that what referee reports are for?

he has made off the cuff comments on my lack of competence as a researcher and overall career suitability in academia — Okay, so he's a childish jerk.  Don't engage; just walk away.  If he's on your thesis committee, kick him off.

I think it's completely out of bounds, it is unfair to make judgements of my competence based on one working paper. The focus should be on my paper (which he was reading for the first time during the actual continuation interview), and not my future endeavours. Unless I ask for career advice, I should be left to evaluate myself. Furthermore, this assistant professors research area is different to mine.

I'll leave this for others to answer, but given that he is an assistant professor, others may be more willing to listen to complaints about him since he is not yet tenured (I assume).

It wasn't clear that this was an assistant professor. This adds another slant to the situation. An assistant professor has still to fight for their place in the pack, so that may give us a clue as to the driver of their behaviour. Now as a PhD you are not even close to their "pack hierarchy level", so it's not just inappropriate but actually utterly misdirected for them to take out their dominance display on you. As they are not your boss, you can ignore their put-downs, stay cool and polite (but make sure your supervisor is smartened up enough to not let this person be on your committee!).

"The focus should be on my paper ... and not my future endeavours."  Surely this rather depends on the purpose of the continuation meeting; if the purpose is to determine whether you have the required qualities (and resources) to successfully complete a PhD, then your research competence is very relevant (and can't be judged solely from one paper).  It could be the purpose of the meeting is to anticipate future problems so that they can be addressed.  I would talk to your supervisor about it, at least to get his/her opinion on your progress/suitability.

" because he tells me I am being defensive, but then I am cautious of being too silent because he tells me I am not contributing enough. " I suspect there may be a miss-communication here.  I would take "defensive" to mean not that you were talking to much, but that you were resistant to (technical) criticism of your work, and that you should be more keen to talk about the difficulties/flaws/errors in your work.  So talk more, but be more self-critical (which is a key skill in research, which the prof. may be trying to encourage).

Do speak to you supervisor, he/she will probably have a better idea what the other prof. is trying to do, and at least will be able to give you a clear idea of your true progress/suitability.  Don't be deflated, criticism is something that happens a lot in science and learning to deal with it constructively is a very important skill, it is the critical reviewers of your papers that are your real friends.  When you next have a formal meeting, make sure your supervisor clearly explains the purpose of the meeting, so that you have the right expectations and can prepare accordingly.

"I consider my PhD progress to be very good, and my supervisor as far as I know shares the same sentiment. " and "I have not spoken to my supervisor since my continuation".  I am rather concerned by this, your supervisor should have met with you soon after the continuation meeting to discuss how it went and to give you formal feedback on how you are progressing (it should be a matter of record, rather than speculation at this stage).

He may be competing with your supervisor. He may not like your general topic. He may not like you. Or, he really believes what he says. Or he wants to test you. You don't know.
You have to live with people who confuse what's going on with prejudice- or agenda-coloured "truth". Practically all successful researchers have encountered such put-downs.
Schechtman (later Nobel winner) got a "Introduction to Crystallography" book put on his table when he first reported that he got a 5-fold symmetry, hence quasicrystals, in his experiment. Feynman got put-down big time initially by Oppenheimer and was only saved by Dyson's aggressive intervention.
You think your progress is good? Your supervisor does, too? That's enough for you to go on, then. This guy may be a big shot, but for you, it doesn't count. Big shots are usually right when they think something is cool/great. They can be awfully wrong when they think something is not good. Trust your instincts.

In fact, the famous Linus Pauling (Nobel laureate) was extremely critical of Schechtman's work before it became widely-accepted, and said "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists."

He may be competing with your supervisor - reminds me with this PhD Movie 2 scene

Thank you! I appreciate your advice! I think you're right, I guess I have let him get into my head, and have second guessed everything.

@Kelly Every time I have seen this happening around me (with friends, colleagues, stories from my advisor) it has always been political. This professor and your professor are probably on opposite "political teams" within the department. So making life difficult for the "other" students is one way. Once we actually saw this erupting into a fiasco at a student's master's defense where the other guy showed up and started asking difficult questions to harass the student because he hated the advisor. The chair had to stand up, take charge, and almost threw him out of the room. Ridiculous!

+1 for "Big shots are usually right when they think something is cool/great. They can be awfully wrong when they think something is not good. "

@ChrisK We should have a "tweet this" plugin for these great punchlines.

Do you have a source for the claim about Feynman? I don't remember reading something like this in Mehra's biography of him.

@Danu James Gleick, "Genius". He describes in detail how Oppenheimer (after Manhattan) became very sceptical and was essentially "coerced" by Dyson to listen to Feynman's ideas.

Captain Emacs already gave a great answer, I'd like to address this point specifically:

I'm cautious to answer back to the professor, because he tells me I am being defensive, but then I am cautious of being too silent, because he tells me I am not contributing enough.

I suggest the following strategy:

If he criticizes you personally: Ignore it.
If he criticizes your work: Answer back, but use questions. Don't defend your work, try to find out why we criticizes it and what alternatives he suggests. If he is right, you get valuable feedback. If he is wrong (and others are present, like at your continuation), he will make himself look bad rather than you.

Example: "And you call yourself a scientist? This section is rubbish."

Bad answer: (Get angry) "Of course I am a scientist! And this section is great because..."
Good answer: (Take out a pen and paper to take notes) "Why do you think it is rubbish? How can it be improved?"

I have not spoken to my supervisor since my continuation or told him about my past encounters with this professor. Do I express my disappointment and confusion in our next meeting, or do I just leave it?

Sure, mention it! Your advisor's job is not only to help you write a great thesis, but also to help you find your way in academia and guide you through the process.

Downvoted.  Engaging the abuser is really not a good strategy for dealing with abuse.  Better to walk away, cut off all contact with the abuser, and get help from someone you trust.

@JeffE: Sure. At the risk of sounding defensive (no pun intended): My answer was written under the impression that cutting off all contact is not an option (or incurs too high a cost). In addition, I do believe that being able to deal with difficult employees/customers/colleagues/superiors is a valuable skill which can be learned/trained and greatly enhances your career options. That said, I'd also keep contact with this person to the minimum required.

I agree that one should minimise contact, but sometimes this is not possible, e.g. in an examination or a work situation. Certainly OP, as a student, cannot simply ignore a professor in the same social context who is ostentatiously giving statements disguised as "objective" (which are, of course, not objective at all, but can be extremely difficult to counter). Keeping nerves, confidence and good manners is therefore paramount to prevail in the long-term; Heinzi gives a workable suggestion, although myself I prefer a tad sharper tack, riposting with something outside the prof's expertise.

+1 for "If he criticizes you personally: Ignore it.". I would also add, "cut out all the small talk because small talk often reveals personal information and is food for future personal criticism; make your relationship a purely professional one".

Never ignore a personal criticism. When it comes to us humans, perception is reality. If you appear that you're coming off as a slacker, even if you're not doing anything wrong, you should try to find out why you come off that way to them and strongly consider doing something about it. If someone discretely tells you your fly is down at a party, you discretely zip it up. If someone grabs the mic and goes "Heinzi's fly is down, everyone point and laugh!!!!" are you still going to leave it down? Just because someone is a jerk in pointing something out doesn't necessarily mean their wrong.

@corsiKa Actually, finding the right balance is the point at hand. If they can make you "jump through the hoop" reliably, they simply will not leave you alone. With bullies, if you cannot avoid them, you are better off if you are unpredictable and unprofitable to manipulate.

If someone grabs the mic and goes "Heinzi's fly is down, everyone point and laugh!!!!" are you still going to leave it down? — Of course not.  But I'm not going to invite them to my next party, either.

Kelly, if you have had a chance to meet with your supervisor since you asked this question, you may not need any further advice.
I'm male, so maybe not qualified to speak to this topic. You call yourself Kelly, which where I am (geographically) is usually but not exclusively female. A male professor is criticizing you personally and telling you that you are not suitable for academia, so it's even more likely that you are female. If I've guessed right on that, then since I see you also used a male pronoun for your supervisor, you should discuss this with women on the faculty in your department.
My other comments are gender neutral.
I'm worried because you said you prepared for three weeks and the exam went badly. If that's just because an assistant professor asked inappropriate questions, that doesn't reflect badly on you. But your supervisor is supposed to intervene for you if something inappropriate happens in an exam, and it sounds like he didn't. If the rudeness was coming from an assistant professor, then your supervisor should be at least of equal rank and it isn't obvious what power dynamic would keep him silent when you were being mistreated.
If the exam did go badly, your supervisor should bring it up without prompting, I think, but I wouldn't count on it. I think you need to know if your supervisor thinks it went badly, and if he shares your view on why it went badly. If you agree that this one assistant professor is the problem, then you supervisor should agree to keep him off your committee in the future, and all is good.
You say you view your PhD progress as very good and "as far as you know" your supervisor shares the same sentiment. I wish you were more confident in that. Maybe you and your supervisor need to agree on milestones and deadlines to reach the milestones so you can judge that you are making good progress.
It's 99.9% likely the other professor is wrong in his assessment of you. But you're probably not the next Feynman or the next Marie Curie, because they wouldn't need to ask the question you've asked. They succeeded no matter what anyone else said. The rest of us might be suitable for academia but still slip through the cracks without support from mentors and colleagues. In your question I see red flags that say your supervisor isn't supporting you.

What the heck? After being oh-so-careful not to gender-judge ("Kelly"...female name), you say, with a straight face, and to applause of 2 upvoters "A male professor is criticizing you personally and telling you that you are not suitable for academia, so it's even more likely that you are female." Seriously bigoted, dude (which, where I'm from, can refer to a man or woman); I find this self-satisfied statement insulting. It's good that you estimated the precise likelihood of the other professor being wrong ("99.9%") though. Big downvote.

@gnometorule As sexism is sadly quite common in academia, particularly in STEM disciplines, it's not entirely improbable, that this personal criticism is a demonstration of that, though I wouldn't up the probability in such strong terms as "even more likely".

"In your question I see red flags that say your supervisor isn't supporting you." +1

@LLlAMnYP: The question asked has just the right amount of obfuscation that what happened is consistent with both hearing "That's why a girl shouldn't do research!", and, after witnessing incompetence in statistics, "You don't understand statistics!"; and that's probably quite consciously so, to attract the crowd of the professionally offended (like this answer-writer) to receive a pet on the back; note also the strange editing in of "assistant" as if that mattered. In the much more likely case this was about pointing out a lack like that, it takes being part of the cult to scream 'sexism!'.

@gnometorule At the risk of sounding stupid, I have to admit, that I'm having trouble understanding your comment. Although English is almost a mother-tongue to me (grew up in Britain, but not from there), I'd have to ask you to rephrase what you said. No offence meant, in case the gist of my reply suggests otherwise.

@gnometorule Re:editing in assistant, Captain Emacs mentioned in the comments under the OP, that the fact that he's an "assistant" may be particularly relevant to the question, prompting the editing.

Hanlon's razor is useful in situations like this, or at least more mildly worded versions of it, i.e. assume the meaning that casts the writer in the best light consistent with what was written, rather than assuming the worst.  Of course that doesn't mean you shouldn't point out that it is ambiguously worded and needs clarification, it certainly is.

I did speak to my supervisor. I am more confused! He explained that his bad behaviour was out of caring for my future, he also said I should not worry about it because academics are weird communicators so these things happen. surprisingly, he thought the continuation went well.  I still think there's more to the professors behaviour. In the end, I said my piece and I am happy I explained myself. I will be more cautious in the future when it comes to interactions with staff. But I have to disagree with your comment, my supervisor is extremely supportive, more so than is expected I think.

@gnometorule Is it bigoted of me to believe what I read in APS (American Physical Society) News that half of the undergraduate women at the APS Conference on Undergrad Women In Physics say they have received some form of sexual harassment or inappropriate comments in the field? Is it bigoted of me to believe a female graduate student in my group who said that our PI had made reference to her sex/gender when he was criticizing her performance? Or are you just the type of person who cries foul every time someone acknowledges there might be sexism to get the pat on the back from your own cult?

@Anonymous; Ooooooh - a true believer! I bow in shame, facing a human being on a much higher moral plane than I could ever dare to hope to be part of...also, what is my cult?

@gnometorule just to be clear, you're telling me that the graduate student I referred to in my research group, who you don't actually know, was lying about what a professor in my department said to her, is that right? I mean my small brain can't figure out why else you would mockingly call me a true believer except to say that I'm gullible. Your cult? I assume it's the cult of Donald Trump and/or the Republican Party of the US.


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Why do Universities offer a "Double PhD Program"?
I just scrolled through the student list of my university and found a person who is a “double PhD candidate”. Since I have never heard of that, I tried to find some information. The best link that I found is “Joint-PhDs: A Guide” at Find a PhD.
However, the only explanation given is that,

[...] universities offering double degrees rather than jointly-awarded degrees is often practical in nature, for example one country’s legislation does not allow joint-degrees.

I expected something like research in two research areas by one person. But giving two PhDs because of legislation seems odd to me. Can someone tell me more about this?

See Mapping International Joint and Dual Degrees: U.S. Program Profiles and Perspectives

Bureaucracy. They may have students from a specific country (that make them lots of money) and they want to accommodate their requests.

There is nothing odd about not breaking the law. Sometimes, especially when dealing with multiple countries and thus multiple laws, you just have to do things to make it work in all these countries simultaneously. Avoiding such international collaborations would be a worse outcome.

I think the site where you found the information was pretty crystal clear:

Joint-PhDs are doctorates which are done at two degree-awarding institutions. This type of doctorate, also called split-site PhDs, does not mean that you are simply supervised by one supervisor in one university with another advising you on an informal basis. Joint-PhDs mean that you are fully registered in two universities, having to comply with admission requirements and assessment regulations at both institutions and that it will result either in two PhD degrees (double PhD) or one jointly-awarded PhD (one diploma with the two university logos). The reason universities offering double degrees rather than jointly-awarded degrees is often practical in nature, for example one countrys [sic] legislation does not allow joint-degrees.

I'm not sure which part of this is unclear. Often it's easier for two institutions to each grant a PhD (i.e., double PhD) than it is for them to create a hybrid entity that would grant a singular degree or for the creation of the institutional apparatus and coordination necessary for a joint degree program.

We have a joint PhD in physics here with a neighbouring university, as none on their own have the breadth and depth to comply with the (more or less arbitrary) requirements for funding students.

@RoboKaren what isn't clear is why they would grant a double PhD rather than decide which of the two institutions should grant a PhD, with the student simply having an external co-supervisor (and possibly visiting student status) at the other institution.

Because when one is in an interdisciplinary field, it would be nice to have the recognition of both disciplines -- as well as the name value of both institutions.

@RoboKaren It would be nice, yes, but it seems unfair to other students. An interdisciplinary PhD is not twice as much work or twice as great an achievement as any other PhD.

@Significance: In your comment you assume that PhD degrees are quantities that can be added up. I disagree with this assumption.

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Complicated citation of sources
I am writing an essay and have to use the Chicago 17th edition notes and bibliography style.
One of my sources is a book. Within the book is a collection of 30 historical documents. Some of these documents are excerpts of direct primary sources, and some of them are excerpts of a separate secondary source citing a primary source. How would I cite these in my essay?
Here is a copy of the book I am using: https://www.scribd.com/document/667447666/Matteo-Ricci-and-the-Catholic-Mission-to-China-Ronnie-Po-Chia-Hsia
Essentially I just want to know how to cite this, thanks.

I tend to err on the side of over-citation. There is no reason you can't have multiple citations at the end of a sentence. Cite the book (your original source) as well as the secondary source cited in the book. For historical documents, you may get away mentioning something along the lines of "x document as reproduced in book". But you could certainly include a reference to the original document if available. Either way, as long as proper credit is given and information/ideas can be traced back to their source, you have some leeway.

There is no reason you can't have multiple citations at the end of a sentence. FYI, I've seen several instances of 10+ citations at the end of a sentence, but off-hand I don't know the longest list I've ever seen. An extreme case that I do recall is the Introduction (pp. xiii-xv) of this book. Unless I've miscounted, on p. xiii there is one list with 46 citations (middle of page) and another list with 47 citations (near bottom of page), and there is also a list with 20 citations on p. xv.

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Is research done by breaking copyright publishable?
I was playing around with some data that I got with a license not to use the data in this manner on my own time. I found some results that are better than those published in my field in a non-trivial manner. Would this be publishable if I don't release the data itself (ie. I say if one uses some of this type of data, where it's clear that it's highly unlikely I got access to that type of data, one can use method ABC, detailed in this paper, to get a x% improvement)?
I can ask my advisor, but I don't think I want to bring up something too unethical and mar the relationship.

Do you mean you got a license for another purpose and there is no mention of using the data for research purposes or that the license specifically prohibits use in some way? I think that makes a difference. Either way though, if you use data you don't have the rights to, you're setting yourself up for trouble.
Even if you don't release the data, you will probably be expected to explain where you got it. And that will lead down a rabbit hole that will ultimately end in journals rejecting the paper because of concerns over copyright/licensing.
There isn't anything unethical about the question though. Just talk to your advisor. They likely know more about your field and specific situation. It's their job to guide you through things like this. They may be able to help you get the proper permissions for the data or they may determine that you actually can use the data. Or they may just say "no" and you can search for a more appropriate data set to develop your research.

Would it be ok to say "I did do this without copyright on my own time just for fun (because realistically no one cares if someone downloads/uses your data without copyright if they don't do anything with this), however we have really good results. Can we do something about this?"

Sure. I don't think your advisor would be upset by that. If the data is available to download (like you didn't steal it) thats seems totally reasonable.

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Submitted paper without part of methodology
I submitted a paper but I realized we accidentally commented out a couple paragraphs of the methodology. These are relatively important paragraphs, without which, I don't think the paper's results make sense (they're too good for the methodology without the added paragraphs). Do I withdraw the paper or do I add these in rebuttal?

Write to the editor, if possible, stating the problem and asking for advice. Waiting to update in rebuttal may be too late if you get a hard reject. They may have a way to let you update the paper now.
Failing that, withdraw and fix it for resubmission.
But if the editor can be reached and is helpful it would be the quickest way.

Waiting for the rebuttal could take quite a long time and if done well, the referees will notice issues if your omission is critical, leading to a possible reject.


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David Publishing Company (DPC) legit or not?
Recently I completed my master's program in ICT from Tokai University, Tokyo, Japan.
I have received an email from David Publishing Company (DPC).
They wanted to publish my paper in their journal.
They sent me a similar email earlier but, I forgot to reply or take a look at it. And I received it again.
I don't know the publishing companies directly contact to publish papers in their journal.
I have a little experience working with ICTR, IEEE, IDW, Academia, etc. Rather I don't know much details about other journals.
I will be very thankful if someone helps to identify whether this company is legit or a scam.
Here is the link to the publishing company:
https://www.davidpublisher.com/Home/Journal/JTHM
Thank you

Welcome to Academia SE. Please be aware that we do not evaluate individual journals or publishers here (see this FAQ). The linked question may help you though.

I haven't come across this particular publisher before but a quick scan of the website seems to suggest that it might fall into the "predatory" category. One obvious indication is that they are soliciting you, someone who is objectively not a well known expert, to submit a paper.
Identifying predatory journals is something that has been discussed in general here and here (this question deals specifically with David Publishing Company).


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What are good methods for determining course instruction workload equivalency?
The courses at my university are assigned a number "units" that basically correspond with the number of in-class hours per week, i.e. a 4 unit course is often two 110 minute sessions per week. Different types of courses require different amounts of time for the instructors. Professor teaching distributions are often set by simply stating something like "a regular faculty member must teach 1 four unit course per quarter". The courses in my department vary from 10 students to 300, we may get teaching assistants, and courses are traditional lecture styles, laboratories, project based, etc. It is likely not a good idea to say that 1 four unit course with 10 students requires equivalent time/resources as a 4 unit course with 300 students, but that is what we do. Instructors may not get fair teaching distributions due to this and it also has bearing on merit and promotion cases.
How do other institutions and departments compare courses in terms of instructor workload? I assume there may be ways other than simply the # of hours in class per week (credit/unit measure).
Edit: I'm particularly interested in precise definitions of this measure.

Not so much between instructors, but my university does compare departments by "credit hour production", which is roughly credits (units) times number of students enrolled, summed over all courses taught by the department in a particular term or time period.

Distribution of teaching load—even the definition of "teaching load"—varies significantly between different universities, and even between different departments at the same university.  (For example: The math department at my university gives faculty more "credit" for >200-student classes; in contrast, the CS department balances teaching mostly by social pressure. Berkeley's EECS dept—but only EECS—uses a complex "heaven points" formula whose parameters are not all public.)  This site frowns on "big list" questions, but I'm afraid that's all this question can be.

Yes, I am looking for a list but I don't think asking for the best or the most effective or the most thorough makes any sense. There is no one answer. I'm simply trying to get a sense of how other Universities might do this. Some combination of the resulting answers may be able to fit different University cultures.

Actually, most universities I've heard about specify either courses or numbers of “contact hours” per week. It is the job of the department chair (or executive officer or equivalent) to make sure everything is properly distributed within the department, so that one faculty member isn’t teaching only 300-student lectures while another faculty is only teaching specialized seminars for 10 students.

On the other hand, it's far from clear whether the 300-student lecture would be more or less work than the 10-student seminar.

How is "contact hours" any different that the "units" I describe above? For a 4 unit course my contact hours are two 110 minutes per week plus 2 office hours (that students may or may not come to). The "4 units" is assumed to be 4 contact hours in our case.

Because "contact hours" at some universities do not include just in-class hours. In Germany, supervising undergraduate theses and research group seminars can contribute to the quota.

Yes, true, but how precisely do they define contact hours?

Basically 1 hour is equal to one hour per week for the length of a semester (14 hours or so).

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Attending a conference in a field of interest outside PhD field?
I really want to attend an international conference which is relevant to the field of research of our group, but more specifically related to projects of other group members than my own project. However, the conference (and projects of other group members) are far more in my areas of interest than my current project.
Do you still think it is appropriate to attend this conference? I don't want to step on the toes of other group members who will want to network with the researchers in their specific field, but I also want to try and transition more into their area of research as it is a new field which was not an option for me to enter when I started my PhD.

I think this is more a pragmatic matter than a question of whether it's appropriate or not. In a vacuum, yes it's entirely appropriate to attend a conference outside one's own specialty, perhaps even without presenting (just going to learn). The big question is: how do you fund your attendance?
It's quite likely that you plan on asking your advisor, group leader, or department to pay for the trip. In that case, would you going stop another group member from going? Perhaps a PhD candidate about to defend who'd want to present their research and look for a postdoc position? That might be considered stepping on toes, yes. You'd have to talk to said group members to find out how they'd feel about it. However, presumably whoever holds the money sack has the responsibility to divvy up the funds in a beneficial way, not you. So go ahead and ask if you can and should go, and see what happens. Perhaps there is enough money for all of you to go, in which case everyone should be happy with the situation.


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Hiding my first GRE scores from university
I'm going to start applying to universities from 1st Dec onwards. In my 1st attempt of GRE, I scored 300. I'll planning to give my 2nd attempt on 21st November. I don't want to show my previous attempt score to universities and I'll receive my 2nd attempt scores around 5th December. Is it possible hide my 1st attempt score and pretend I haven't given GRE and fill my application form on 1st Dec. And on 5th Dec, when I get my score card (of 2nd attempt), I'll send it to the university pretending that was my 1st attempt. Is it possible to hide my 1st attempt score and send the GRE score after university deadline?

There's basically no reason to do this unless the first test marks you as having cheated on the exam or something exceptional in that direction.
Reasons to support what I'm saying:
1. At most (all?) institutions, GRE scores compose only one small piece of a large part of your graduate admissions application.

Unlike the LSAT, the standard practice is to just use the highest score rather than average them.
For some institutions, the value of GRE scores is to filter out exceptionally bad applicants (though others don't do this at all). And this is generally done on the basis of just a single score.
For other institutions, it's more about getting you funding from the graduate school at larger than any particular interest of the department.

Since having had previously a lower score is not meaningful in most graduate applications, it's best just to include it. Conversely, engaging in shenanigans to hide your previous scores might draw unwelcome attention to you as someone who is trying to hide something.


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Should I cite the source of a definition in a thesis glossary?
I'm writing my thesis and I added a glossary at the start with the more complex terms and their definitions.
The definitions usually come from scientific papers. My question is: should I cite those papers if I use their definition? (Even though I'd say a definition is something that is global.)

Which field is this about?

If you use something from another paper, then you should cite it. Make that a general rule. There are a number of reasons for it, only one of which is to avoid a charge of plagiarism when someone notices that they have "seen that before."
The other, perhaps primary, reason is that scholars want to know how a paper is situated within the scientific/mathematical literature and if previous work isn't cited it is difficult or impossible to do so. A future reader of your work may want to know where else this definition appears and what its history is. Citations make this possible.
However, for things that have become common knowledge, such as the definition of the derivative (math) or ph (chemistry) you don't need to give definitions as you can expect that they are known to every scholar in the field. But you probably wouldn't repeat those definitions in the first place unless you were doing a comparative history study of some kind, in which case you would cite the original sources.
Don't quote or paraphrase the work of others without citation.

Definitions in a glossary are nearly always common knowledge, so the answer would be that citations are not necessary.

@louic, if the papers are at all recent or in any way obscure, then the definitions are possibly not common knowledge. Mathematicians, for example, are happy to define new things. It is only the OPs reputation on the line.

Sure there are always exceptions, but answer this: have you ever seen a thesis with citations in the glossary? In practice the definitions are nearly always well known concepts. If not they will be further discussed in the thesis (otherwise there is no point adding them to the glossary in the first place), and the sources can be discussed and cited there.

@louic, my own thesis, I guess. I worked in a pretty obscure area that was known to only a few living mathematicians at the time. It was necessary to give background on the work and to cite my predecessors. It seems to me to be a mistake to make subtle distinctions to general rules that can only harm you when someone objects. If you use it, cite it. Keep it simple.

Fair enough. If the definitions are not common knowledge the papers should be cited (as my answer also implies).

No, it is very uncommon to cite papers for copying a definition. Why? Because a definition is (by definition) accepted as a word for daily use (albeit possibly in a small field). Secondly, it is usually difficult to know whether the paper you are citing is actually the source of the definition or if they copied it from another paper or conference (possibly partly or using different words).
Citations in your glossary would be comparable to citing old English literature for every uncommon word you use in your thesis. This is no different for "scientific" words that happen to end up in your glossary.
Of course, if the definition is controversial, particularly important for the subject of your thesis, or requires further explanation, you can give details elsewhere in your thesis and cite the relevant papers there.

Are you suggesting it is okay to take text from a paper and include that text in a thesis without indicating that the text is from the paper? That sounds like plagiarism to me.

No that is not what I am suggesting. I am suggesting taking definitions from a paper, where I have defined definitions as common knowledge. Plagiarism is copying text and presenting it as your own. A definition list is (by definition) not presented as if it is your own work.


text:
Would getting started in research in something outside my specific interest hurt my ability to research in that area later?
I'm a CS undergrad who wants to eventually do research in machine learning. My university has plenty of machine learning labs, but they are quite competitive. At the moment, I have a few opportunities to get started in research. One is a project in the electrical engineering department that involves optimization algorithms for Cyber Physical Systems. One is a bio lab looking for someone to work on software for analyzing signals of particular types of fish. Another is working on scientific computing for a physics lab.
I would not be opposed to getting my first shot at research in any of these places, but would getting too involved outside the CS department actually hurt my chances of getting a chance to research in Machine Learning later? Or would having some type of research experience raise my chances for these competitive labs?

I don't see any reason why doing research in one area would prevent you from doing research in another area later on. Many people do several different research projects before they figure out what it is that they want to do and, in some graduate programs, it's even a requirement to do several different "rotation" projects before officially selecting a research group and project.
So I would view any research project as worthwhile. You could find:

you really do like research and find a new area that you'd want to pursue.
you don't like the project but want to try something else.
you really don't like research.

Any of these would be a notable and valuable end result. So don't worry about getting into machine learning later on if you can't get it into it now. Doing research in something that has piqued your interest (at least temporarily) is all that really matters, especially early on in your career.


text:
How to list a series of related experiences in CV
Problem
I am applying for Ph.D. in electrical engineering. Since the first few deadlines are coming, I am making final revisions to my CV.
There are two related questions

I have a rather long (about 15 months) research experience that yield several preprints and a thesis. Is it fine to list all of them under one entry (see below). The issue is that the items (a, b, c...) become too many (8 in my case).
Or maybe I need to split them base on milestones (based on preprints and thesis results).

My Awesome Research Topic

a
b

I have taken two projects-based courses, where the professors talk about details about each particular algorithm and we need to do projects which use the algorithms. The same question re-emerges, do I split these experiences project by project or maybe organize under one common entry?
If the latter is preferred, what should be the entry called, maybe something like "xxx Project Series"?

Appreciate any input.

The issue is that the items (a, b, c...) become too many (8 in my case). Or maybe I need to split them base on milestones (based on preprints and thesis results).

Perhaps have a single list entry per publication. (Each list entry can highlight several points.)

I have taken two projects-based courses, where the professors talk about details about each particular algorithm and we need to do projects which use the algorithms. The same question re-emerges, do I split these [two projects-based courses] project by project or maybe organize under one common entry? If the latter is preferred, what should be the entry called, maybe something like "xxx Project Series"?

You could list all the courses you've taken. (Under the title 201X-201Y, Degree classification, subject, university, country, for instance.) You only need to discuss those with particular relevance, e.g., related to your PhD field. It seems unlikely that you'd need to discuss particular algorithms, unless they are in the field of your PhD and you are interested in pursuing them further.


text:
Can a scientist meaningfully be an author of more than 1000 papers?
In chemistry and physics, there are now a number of scientists who appear as authors on over 1,000 papers. Famous professors can have good funding and then a large research group where their research fellows work in parallel while they apply for more funds.
However, when it comes to 1,000 papers, to me it no longer seems possible for a person to make a legitimate contribution to each paper. In other words, it seems the famous professor's contribution must be trivial to many of these papers. I even wonder if there is time to read all of their papers carefully.
Do these authors simply get authorship in return for getting funding and running a group, or is it possible for them to be a full author in the normal sense of the word for most or all of their papers?

The easiest answer would be, that his contribution is the money and the lab space. That's most of the time enough.

@Julian money is not enough!

@StrongBad Form my experience, I learned that especially in the really big groups, the profs use really a lot of time to wirte proposals for funding, give talks and interviews. They have post docs or employes (in germany e.g. akademische Räte) which help/guide the phds. They more ore less divide theit groups in smaller fractions which are superivsed by the post docs/etc. and If they are really great profs, they supervise the group leaders. But there are enough, who are "just" on the paper for money/name and field of science. If its really enough contribution to matter is a different topic.

@Julian I asked a question about "gift" authorship a while back and the answers seem to suggest that it is widely viewed as unethical.

@StrongBad It is unethical. But if the student is working for and in the lab of the professor, normally (as far as I know in natural scieneces) the prof is on the paper whather or not he did wiggle with his little finger for the paper or not.

Erdős and Shelah immediately come to mind, when I see the title of this question.

It seems like a single person could make a meaningful contribution to 1000 papers. Assuming 40 years of high publishing productivity (35-75 years old), 1000 papers requires 2 a month. With an 80 percent time commitment on a 50 hour work week, that is 80 hours of contribution per paper. I think 80 hours is enough time to make a contribution to a paper worthy of authorship. Simply discounting papers because someone has published a lot seems unfair.

40 years without teaching?

@StephanKolassa if you bring in enough grant money, there is not much risk of being on a  soft money research only contract.

Meaningfully contributing to 1000+ papers is rare but not unheard of, especially in disciplines like math. I think the record holder is Erdős with 1500+ papers, and some other prolific authors (e.g., Euler) are not that far behind. Near-misses (i.e., authors with a number of publications in the high hundreds) are also more common than you think.

@Koldito I can offer one data point: I was lectured in Galway by a mathematician who has (at last count) 1106 papers. While most of them seem to be co-authored, I'm pretty sure his contributions to them cannot be dismissed as trivial.

To answer the title question: Yes, it is possible, as shown by the following convincing example.
Logician Saharon Shelah has written over a thousand papers (in addition to a number of books). The inner workings of collaborations are never public, but the norms of the field and the fact that the papers have very few coauthors strongly suggests that he did indeed make substantial contribution to all of them.
[ Whether most scientists with over a thousand papers to their name "earned" them is a different question. ]

While it is possible (as other answers show), there are also professors whose name could be considered as the collective pseudonym of their PhD students: The students publish papers with the author "Prof X" (and their own name), so that they can write grant proposals for "Prof X", citing all his papers.


text:
How rude is it to ask a potential PI for their CV?
I think I made a dire mistake a few days ago. I asked a potential PI for their CV (I wanted to get a full record of their credentials along with the information I could find about him on Google Scholar and his website), but I was met with a curt response telling me I should look at his website and papers. I felt really, really bad after that. I sent him an apology e-mail, saying I meant no disrespect, and will look at the materials he suggested.
For context, I am trying to decide between two reputable graduate schools for an EE PhD, and I am interested in a particular person at both. One guy had his CV publicly available, while the other did not (the one I may have offended). I naively thought I could ask for a CV since I've seen professors post theirs. I thought this could help me decide.
I'm going to wait a few more days to make a decision because I don't want it to seem like I intentionally provoked him to make it easier for me to pick an option.
Does the guy despise me now? I'll be seeing him in the next few years (these particular people know each other and work together, and go to the same conferences). Is there any way to undo any damage I might have caused to his impression of me?
Edit: Thank you everyone for your input. I will try not to make this mistake in the future.

Did you know this person at all before emailing them?

Yes, I did. I've maintained intermittent correspondence with him for a few months, and even met with him in person when I visited his grad school. Still, the fault is really on me for not digging into his publicly available information.

It would be a strange person who starts “despising” someone for making an innocuous social faux pas. In novels one reads about such people, but real life people are, by and large, more reasonable.
I can only speculate, but I suspect the professor was mildly annoyed and/or amused by your request, told about it as a funny anecdote to his spouse later that day, and has by now forgotten all about it. The fact that he bothered to answer your email, and that the reply was polite, even if curt, suggests that he wasn’t terribly offended.

I had a similar problem about two years back when I made some e-mail etiquette mistakes and a professor said "learn to write better e-mails" or something like that. I guess this incident brought back those bad memories (let's just say that professor and I don't have the best relationship, around the same time I was still undergoing that transition from high school to undergraduate life).

@martychoke yes, I understand the mortification, but it’s probably not as big of a deal as you imagine. By the way, I disagree with lordy’s answer about whether it’s ok to ask a professor for a cv. It’s not an appropriate request, regardless of how it’s phrased. It comes across as spammy and presumptuous (even the same request coming from another professor, unless they included a good reason why they need it). I also think this is true in a more general workplace context outside of academia. You don’t usually ask someone to send you their cv unless you are thinking of offering them a job.

Not just a "strange person", but probably one you really really don't want to choose as an advisor...

@DanRomik Okay, I will keep that in mind in the future. Thank you for your advice.

I'm confused about why asking for a CV is a faux pas, since presumably it isn't private information and it contains much more than just a pub list. And I'm sure the student would be expected to provide a CV if the professor wanted it. Is the issue here the power/status differential between professor and student? It's not true that the only use for a CV is job applications.

@ElizabethHenning And I’m sure the student would be expected to provide a CV if the professor wanted it. exactly, if the professor is considering offering the student a job then that is consistent with what I said. And yes, there are other times you would ask someone for their CV, eg when you are nominating them for an award. Basically a lot of people regard their CVs as containing sensitive information and are protective of whom they share them with. Others may not have an up to date CV and will only wish to do the work of updating their most recent version if there is a compelling reason.

The student is entrusting the professor with their education and future career, which is higher stakes than a job. I don't think everyone needs to make their CV public and they can refuse any request, but I don't get why anyone would take offense at a legit request from a prospective student.

@ElizabethHenning if your premise is that it is a “legit request”, then there‘s no reason to be offended. But I don’t see your basis for assuming this premise. Just because the student is making a high stake decision doesn’t mean they can ask for any information about the professor they‘ll be working with. E.g., is asking for the professor’s tax returns a legit request? What would be more reasonable is if the student emailed to ask for specific details they need, and explain why those are important to them. As I said, people can be touchy about their CVs, hence it is not quite “legit”.

@DanRomik The basis is the fact that information about a prospective advisor's educational history, former students, conference participation, teaching history, and invited talks are highly relevant for anyone trying to get a complete picture of them as members of the field. Why is it presumptuous for a student to be making this assessment but not for anyone else? People can be touchy if they want, but that's on them and not the person making the request.

@ElizabethHenning you make some good points. To clarify, my comments above were describing the current norms in academia. I’m not expressing an opinion about what is the morally correct way for professors to approach CV requests, which I think is the point of view you’re coming from.

@DanRomik The student is thinking of offering the professor a job: Advisor!

@JeffE I’d be happy to hear your thoughts about OP’s question expanded in the form of an answer.

It is in principle ok to ask but the tone is very important. Something along the lines of:

I am very interested in your research and would like to know more about ...
  but on your webpage I could not find detailed information about ... would you be willing to send me your CV? This would really help me to get a  better idea/picture of ... etc

If your email was friendly but the response was not then it might not be the right supervisor anyway. But if your email was something like "Hey, send me your CV" then I would not send you mine eigther and give an answer as above. And I have to say that many students write emails in quite rude tones and/or like in a facebook chat directly from their mobile phone and such emails are usually not very much appreciated by the receiving professors.

Yeah I didn't communicate it properly. That's what I wanted to say but for some reason I omitted the "I could not find these information from your website/papers" in a moment of poor judgement. Would you think of me poorly for a while after making such a request, even after an apology?

No, I would not - I do however think poorly of the 2 downvoters that do not even give a reason.

Well, it is unlikely that they despise you but it could certainly be seen as a major faux pas.
You see, asking for a CV has a hint of "convince me you are good enough for the role". And while it is true that this relationship affects the student a lot more than it does the professor, the power dynamic heavily favors professors/schools: it is students who are at the bottom of the ladder here. Not to mention most people (I believe) do not have an up-to-date CV ready at all times; I certainly do not. And asking to produce one might be quite a request.
The whole situation is a bit like coming to a store and saying "I'm not so sure, why don't you tell me why should I shop here". There is an expectation that you make this decision based on publicly available information and possibly ask more specific questions as needed. Sitting back expecting them to court you might make some owners/managers irritated or outright angry. It is unlikely the prospective advisor has reacted so strongly, and you still should be able to make amends, but this was out of line.

"a major faux pas" we are seeing the whole thing through OP question, in reality I think it was a very minor one, whatever the tone OP used in their email.
Regarding the store analogy, well, it is equivalent to asking "why don't you show me your business and credit record", the CV has some degree of objectivity inside (unless it is fake, obviously :D ), of course it is up to CV's holder how to frame it ...

I think this is an XY problem. I suspect what you want to know are things like:

What topics have you worked on and what papers have you and your group published?
Where have students and postdocs that have worked in your group ended up?
Do you have funding to take me on as a student?
Do you collaborate with other groups and if so which groups?
Can I talk to some of the students in your group?

These are totally reasonable questions, and you should feel free to ask them in a polite way.
There are a few issues with asking for a CV in your situation. The first is that the CV very likely contains much more information than you really want or need to know, such as

What are all the talks this person has given at conferences?
What are all the courses this person has taught?
How much funding was achieved in every successful grant proposal?
What is the list of every research visit this person has taken?
What is the name and current job title of every student this person has ever advised?

Given how much information is in the CV of a tenured professor, it is a choice whether the person makes it publicly available or not. If the person has chosen not to post it online, they might be worried that giving the document to anyone who asks could very well result in someone spreading the document around. Additionally, keeping a CV up-to-date is a lot of work, and they might not feel comfortable giving you an out-of-date document and not have the time to update it. Finally, there is generally an expectation as a PhD student that you will do due diligence to find information that is publicly available on your own. Sending a request for a CV subtly implies that you did not try to do any research on your own. On the other hand, explaining that you have a question about $X$ specific piece of information and could not find it shows that you have done your homework.
Having said that, I don't think this matters enough that you should be worried about what they think about you. If your advisor is a reasonable person, they don't expect you to know all the unspoken rules in academia as a starting grad student. Professors are busy people, and there just are not enough spare cycles for them to think about the social skills of a prospective PhD student. They gave you the information you needed, just thank them and move on.
I also don't think this on its own is enough of a data point that you should be worried about them. You should try to find out if you will be able to work with this person successfully. Talking to students in their group, finding out where past students have ended up, asking your current mentors what they know about this school/group/advisor, and reflecting on the tone of the other interactions you have had with this person are good ways to do that. But, I don't think the email you are describing is so far out of the norm that it indicates that they are an unreasonable advisor. It doesn't indicate they are a reasonable advisor either -- this is just too small of an interaction to mean much of anything, and so I would recommend moving on. Certainly, I would not recommend making the decision to go to one school vs another, based on this interaction alone.


text:
How will the topic of my Master's thesis affect my PhD?
Main question:
Will the admission committee care about specific research topics or do they only care if I can/cannot do research irrespective of the topic? Will an off-topic thesis be looked as sign of inconsistent interests?
It would be great if answers focus mainly on US schools, however answers for european schools are also welcome.
Related questions : Will an off-topic Masters hurt my chances of a PhD place? . My question is very very similar to this but with two main differences - 1) The author of that question had no option and was at liberty give this as a reason if it was brought up in the admission proces. But I cannot do this and thus, will it be looked at as sign of irregular intersts? 2) I want answers for US and not UK
Why I ask this question:
I am a Physics Master's student from India and will be starting my Master's thesis around 3-4 months from now.
Until this point (and even right now) my projects were in Cosmology-Dark Matter. I enjoyed them and I want to apply for PhD in Theoretical Cosmology/HEP/AstroPhysics groups. This decision is based on my chances to get a PhD position in a good place and how much I liked the topics.
I always wanted to study/work on "pure theoretical" topics such as Quantum Gravity. But after I started my Bachelor's I realized that it is impractical to pursue these topics, at least not for PhD (lack of positions and funding - from what I heard from seniors). However, I really want to research on these topics at least once, and I know for sure it will be next to impossible once I start my PhD. That's why I want to work on this for my Master's Thesis. I have read an interesting paper on semi-classical gravity and have even approached a professor in my department who is willing to guide me on a project related to the paper. However, I am not sure if this is a sensible choice. How will such a thesis affect my PhD application? I do not even know if I'll produce any new results but I really want to try this but at the same time I am worried if this would reduce my chances of getting PhD in a good place i.e will a thesis on Cosmology give a higher boost than this? My previous research projects on Cosmology were quite extensive, with one first author paper, so I can show that I have some experience in the topic. But I do not know if the admission committee compares specific research topics or do they only care if I can/cannot do research irrespective of the field.
Thanks in advance!

In the US it should matter very little. Having a closely related area in mind might be an advantage, but changing might not be much of any disadvantage, within limits. In fact, having too narrow an interest might make it difficult to find an advisor in the US. Some flexibility is suggested.
Note that most beginning doctoral students in the US don't come with an MS or with much research experience. The first task is to pass qualifying examinations and some coursework is provided for that. Along the way you choose an advisor and a topic. But the topic has to be mutually agreed on.
It isn't quite correct to say that all they care about is your ability to do research. But it is fairly correct provided that the fields you previously studied and the new one is fairly close. But expect to have to do some background work at least.
And, even having a wildly different MS topic might not hurt your chances for admission. It would just add to the time to completion as it would for someone entering with a BS instead of an MS. But a lot of things will be looked at in any application: courses taken, grades, test results, letters of recommendation...


text:
Citing draft papers found on academia.edu
I have noticed an article published in a peer-reviewed journal in which the author cites a draft paper posted by another person to academia.edu. The former gives the whole bibliographic information of the aforesaid draft (including the URL) at the exact place where it is cited, but does not mention that draft at all in the bibliography, even though she does give all other sources she has cited in the bibliography.
Does it mean that a draft paper can be cited but should not be included in the bibliography? If it does mean that, is this because it is not yet peer-reviewed? I am rather curious here.
(For those who need to know, the field is religious studies.)

In my experience, absolutely anything can be cited, but not everything should be cited. Papers uploaded to Academia can often be what's called post-print, i.e. they are the version that has been peer-reviewed, accepted by a journal but not copy-edited by the journal [this is the point where the article still belongs to the author, after copy-editing it is the property of the publisher]. In this case it would still technically be a draft, but quite a long way down the line.
Of course the paper can be cited, as long as there is enough evidence that the research is of good quality [if it's been accepted by a journal then it generally would be]. Things that should be cited are works like academic books, journal articles; whereas things like Wikipedia should not. Then there are grey areas such as drafts and online articles: basically if you know the researcher and field, and you trust the quality of the research, I see no reason not to cite it and include it in the bibliography.


text:
How should I decline an offer from grad school
I know such type of questions has been asked lots of times, but I do believe people's conditions vary and there is not necessarily someone who has an identical condition to mine, so please allow me to ask such question again with some details.
I was applying for master's degree in computer science, and got accepted by the one that I've accepted and the other one that I have to turn down now. It was the professor who contacted me first, and one month after I received my offer, I went to the city and visited the school and met professor in person. We talked about a number of things including the research, her supervision style and such. However, I don't think I ever speak like I will for sure go to that university, as I pretty much kept myself conservative. Now I've made up my mind to attend the first school already, so I want to know:

Should I send an email to the professor, besides one to the admission office, that I am about the decline the offer?
If yes, what content should be included in the email? How long should that be? Should I explain carefully my reasoning of picking school?

I well understand that it needs to be extremely polite, but other than that, I am not very sure what to mention.
Also, it would be nice if you can share some experience you have in general when you turn down your offers.
If it helps, I applied to schools in Canada, but I also welcome experiences in the US.

I think everybody want's to read a three page letter explaining why someone he's only seen on one occasion will also not come back.

Karl don't get you.

You are not breaking off an engagement. Common sense and also politeness dictate that you are curt. Heard about time-wasters? You already wasted a good deal of that profs time. She knew she took a 50% or so risk on that, but don't make her regret it by sending her some annoying three page letter saying you're sorry.

I am a professor and have experienced this situation from that point of view. Any experienced professor should be used to that, I would not worry too much about this.
I would suggest writing a brief mail to the professor to just inform her that you have accepted another offer. She might be interested to know what offer you accepted, so consider informing her about that, but you should not need to defend your decision.

Should that be formal, or can be a bit casual?

If you had a good chat with the person, a bit casual should work well.

Good point, leaving at least one relevant piece of info for her to remember you by, where you went.


text:
Structuring the statement of purpose
Problem
I am now applying for the Ph.D. program in electrical engineering.
Now I have a 3-page (2500 words) SOP that should surely be reduced to 1.5 to 2 pages. Now the structure of my SOP looks like

Paragraph 1: Why I want to do a Ph.D. (0.2 page)
Paragraph 2-5: Research experience A (1 page). "A" is the research that lasts the longest time and contributes to publications.
Paragraph 6: Transition from A to B, C, D, E (0.2 page).
Paragraph 7-10: Research B, C, D, and E (1 page, each about same length)
Paragraph 11: Why I want to the University. Which professor I would like to work with (0.2 page).

My issues is that the more important experience ("A") is not directly related to "B", "C", "D", and "E". But for sure they are all in the realm of electrical engineering. Therefore, simply aligning paragraph 7-10 does not seem to be a good idea.
So how do I structure my SOP. Any input is appreciated.

Keep in mind that faculty are very busy people who will most likely just glance over the statement, so less is more. Try to be precise and to the point. Also, wouldn't something like "In addition to working on A I have experience with B,C,D and E." or something like that?

I thought about this. But I am afraid that the review might think that I am just making up B, C, D, and E. Also, maybe a two page SOP looks more research dense than a one pager?

What I meant is that you shouldn't worry about how they relate to A. I do think it's important to explain what you've done in B,C,D and E. Claims need to be backed up.

@user347489 Thank you for this! This makes me feel much better about my SOP.

Sorry, but I don't understand your outline. Are B,C,C,E different research areas? Topics? What? It seems a bit unfocused, which could be a detriment. Can you clarify? Is there an overall "thingy" that covers all those possibilities, assuming they are different?

@Buffy Thank you for your attention. B, C, D, E are research experiences that focus on different topics. To be more specific, my main theme is control, "A" describes some theoretical contributions, and "B" through "E" are real-world control projects with different objects (for example, AC motors, drones).

So, are all of these, A - E, research experiences in your past? Things you have already done?

@Buffy Yes, they are.

You are confusing your CV with your SoP. Your CV details your past accomplishments. Papers and research reports of your experiences are listed there. Your SoP should be forward looking, not backward, so nothing in your list is really the right thing for the SoP. The "Purpose" in SoP is your goals for your education and beyond, including some idea of the area you want to work in.
Even something like "I want to study at MIT because..." is misplaced. Immaterial. Naming a professor may be necessary (some places) or not (other places).
But your past can be briefly mentioned in the SoP if it says why your background makes you a good candidate for success in your chosen field. "I want to explore F. B and E give be a good basis to begin that study..."
But you are wasting an opportunity if you just detail how A - E fit together.  If they support F directly, then say that and assume the reader understands the connections.

CV = your past accomplishments
LoR = great candidate, certainly a success
SoP = goals and plans, research and career directed

Then a reader can get a complete picture

Thank you for making this clarification (which freaked me out). I have been following Prof. Philip Guo's samples and advice when crafting my SoP (he is a professor in computer science, these samples come from his current students when applying). In those samples, the applicants did spend most of the pages describing their previous projects. I am not sure whether this varies field by field.

See this other recent question along with my answer there: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/141593/75368


text:
Whether or not to include declined fellowship in CV
Problem
I am now applying for a Ph.D. program in United States.
I know a similar question has been answered here. But my situation is a bit different. Here is the difference

I managed to get a postgraduate recommendation in my home country. This means I could get enrolled in graduate program without any examination. This examination is very selective. Many people need to do it more than one time to get admitted. Moreover, this postgraduate recommendation opportunity is scarce, less than 10% of students in decent institutions could get this.
Accompanied with this recommendation, I am automatically entitled to a full scholarship worth of 5000 dollars, which is a considerable amount in my home country.

I am aware of the issues listed in already answered question. But could my case be anything different?
Thank you in advance.

List it -- your CV should list all honors that would help convince others that you really are as good as you claim to be. Having gotten a fellowship is such an honor -- whether or not you actually take it or not is irrelevant for your purpose.


text:
How to track the papers that cited one specific paper
Problem
In order to understand a paper better, someone suggested reading the commentary of a paper X first before actually reading the original paper. However, this seems to be a nontrivial task since there is no easy way to forward-track papers that cite one specific paper (i.e. paper X) while backward-tracking is straightforward.
More generally, is there tool/service that could build citation graph of a pool of papers, which might be one way to do both forward and backward tracking.

Google Scholar is one of several repositories that has such a citation graph (and I find it the most straightforward for doing the task you are suggesting).
Every entry in Google Scholar that has been cited and had those citations tracked in Google Scholar comes with a "Cited by N" link; clicking that link gives you a list of all of those citations.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=17803823686299873243&as_sdt=5,50&sciodt=0,50&hl=en
You can also search within those citing articles.

Indeed. Web of Science certainly has this same feature. Heck, the Citation Index reference books back in the dark ages pre-web also had that feature. Go ask your local research librarian...

@JonCuster Yep. My first reaction to this question was confusion that someone didn't know this, but then again someone has to be one of the lucky ten thousand every day https://xkcd.com/1053/

You could maybe use Google Alert mail service and set the title of the paper or identifying number as search term, than you get a mail notice. Problem being, the paper must have a clear identifier, some journals use the DOI in the references, many not. Some journals use non-DOI identifying numbers for their articles


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How to find the paper that initializes a new field
Problem
I am now working on a relatively new field in machine learning. My advisor suggested me to read milestone papers in this field. I think The first paper that proposed the problem is surely an important one. However, I do not know how to find it even after reading several review papers (actually none of them mentions the origin of the field).
Though finding the origin of the field may not sound useful, it is important to me since I have some fundamental doubts about the problem description, etc.
Could anyone help me, thank you in advance.

It's not clear to me how recent and how specific is this new field in ML, but in case it's significant enough this Wikipedia timeline might help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_machine_learning

It is quote possible that there is no "first paper".  Some topics and/or techniques and/or fields evolve organically from their predecessors over many years.

THe Wikipedia article on this topic is reasonably good and has some references.  I would look at that article and the references within.
Try tracing back "references of references" of reviews or important papers.  (You don't have to read in depth.)  But you may figure out the better papers.  May also find those that have a perspective on (3).
In general, I think "machine learning" is a misnomer and a buzzword.  Talking about it as some organic "thing" is not correct.  You should see it as a bit of a fad (especially the use of the term) and within the broader fields of statistics, algorithms, optimization, etc.  It's not like discovering X-rays or something.


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Notes taking and notes management
Problem 1
I have been struggling coming out an efficient way to take notes while reading papers, one commonly-used way is annotate the paper while reading, but some issues include

These notes are hard to organize since they are distributed through the text.
There notes usually could not include mathematical formula. However, it is the major part of my notes.
When paper is lost in thousands of papers, it is impossible to recover them.

Therefore, I tried to use stand-alone notes written in markdown, but problem 2 arises.
Problem 2
As mentioned in problem 1, there are so many papers (and notes) I need to keep and it is just not feasible to keep hierarchy of folders, which could have up to 5 or even 10 hierarchy. Even though problem 1 is resolved, an effective and easy way to search and retrieve previous papers and notes is still needed.
Finally, any input about your solutions is appreciated.

Have a look at : https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/10578/72855

And this: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/83/72855

http://www.aibase-cs.com/index.html you can link pdfs, use formulas, but windows only

Org-mode, especially if you use emacs. Atlas.ti or similar QDA tools are another option.

This forum discusses software tools for note taking and other comparable needs.

I had your exact problems which is why I've been trying to develop an app for note-taking for researchers. You can join the open beta if you wish to try it out. @Mr.Robot

I highly recommend OneNote for note-taking. I really can't figure out how my life would be without it. You can categorize pages in different levels: section group, section, and subpage. You can also categorize your ideas within a page in different headings. You can even collapse or expand the headings as you wish.
It doesn't support LaTeX, but you can add math formulas with pseudo-LaTeX code in it. See Is there any way to get LaTeX in OneNote? in TeX SE.
It also seems that full LaTeX support is also available: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2017/07/30/latex-math-in-office/

I like taking notes separately in an infinitely zoomable online outliner and include hyperlinks there to the papers in question. Dynalist supports KaTeX and Markdown, and there's a MathJax Chrome extension for WorkFlowy called MathFlowy, although it's broken right now since WorkFlowy redesigned. WorkFlowy and Dynalist also have a lot of user-defined tweaks on Stylish. There's a zillion other outliner options, both online and offline, but I personally like these two.
Since you can hyperlink to other items in the outline and tag individual items, it's easier to keep stuff both organized and connected. It's also possible to export portions of the outline to plain text or RTF.
EDIT: I forgot to mention Gingko, which supports both Markdown and MathJax and has a variety of export formats. I haven't used it in a while, but it's an interesting UI which is especially useful for organizing projects and long notes. The dev also recently released a desktop version if you prefer something that works offline.

I am a huge fan of Emacs org mode for note-taking. There is somewhat of a learning curve, however. To use org mode, one must first install and learn to use Emacs.
Among the many benefits of org mode are the abilities to export to many different formats, such as ascii, latex, or html.

it's more about organizing notes rather than researching notes, isn't it? Because the two kinds of notes are hugely different

Org-mode plugins exists for other editors as well. I am a fan of Sublime Text 3 and I use the orgmode plugin. I like how I can link different notes and move between them in Sublime.

@Ooker org-mode can do basically anything.

@henning I think research notes need rich formatting, hyperlinks, web and mobile synchronization, etc. Can org-mode have these?

It has a markup for formatting and tables, it has all kinds of links, and it has mobile-org for synchronization. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I would say it is very complicated to find an approach that satisfies all your needs. Nevertheless, and if you can forget about LateX I would recommend you to use Papers3 or readcube, since they easily allow to organize all your notes and papers. Main drawback is perhaps the price, but you need to decide if you are willing to solve your problem or not, and what is the price you are willing to pay.


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Should I include papers that were published during first revision round of a literature review paper?
I submitted a literature review manuscript to a journal in September. In January, I got the result of the first round of revision. The result was conditional acceptance with a number of corrections and questions. During the revision, some papers about the survey's subject were published. Should I include those papers? Otherwise, is there a chance that reviewers would keep the conditional acceptance status and ask me to include these papers?

If time allows it I would certainly consider adding discussion of these new papers to your review during your revision.

I can answer from two perspectives:

What is necessary to get published in the journal currently considering your article? If the peer-reviewers didn't ask you to add the new articles, then there is no need to do so. They probably aren't aware of the articles---you are almost certainly more up-to-date on the literature than they are, which is why you are doing the literature review. In the worst-case scenario, if one of the peer-reviewers or editors later becomes aware of new publications before final publication, then they might ask you to add them, but I can't imagine that that could possibly be a reason for rejecting your article since they've already conditonally accepted it.
What should you do for the highest quality literature review publication? Of course you should add the new articles. To be as complete as possible in reviewing the literature, a literature review should include all relevant literature, even after the article is accepted all the way until final publication. However, I do understand the conflict between trying to do research perfectly properly versus the practical constraints of time, resources or energy (e.g. too much work too late in the game when you want to move onto other stuff). If for whatever reason you decide not to add the new articles that you are aware of, then at the very least you should explicitly mention in your article the end date (year and month) of your literature search or the date of the last included article, so that readers will clearly understand that there might exist some work published after that date that you explicitly state. That way, you can honestly state that you included all the work you are aware of up till the date you specified.

There's one more important consideration: although it probably doesn't matter for the journal peer-reviewers and editors (because they probably wouldn't know), it certainly does matter for your readers. In particular, it is highly likely that the authors of these recently published articles would be your potential readers, since, by definition, they do research in the area. Once they find out about your literature review published after their own work is published, they would probably get excited, expecting their work to be included. But if it isn't, supposedly because they just barely missed your inclusion cut-off date, they would likely be quite disappointed. It's not a good idea to disappoint your potential readers.
So, my final recommendation is that if it will take you only two or three hours to incorporate the newly published work (perhaps one hour to read each article, another hour or two to appropriately incorporate it into your review), then I think it is certainly worth the extra effort.

Thank you very much! That's exactly how I feel about this. I will put more effort on the other corrections that I must make and surely I will include the new papers if there is available time.

I revised my answer to add another important consideration: the authors of the left-out articles will most likely read your review, and you might not want to disappoint them.


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Include unofficial publication in CV
Problem
I am now applying for a Ph.D. in electrical engineering.
I have read Mor Harchol-Balter's very helpful guide in applying for computer science Ph.D., where she said

...Note that prior research experience does not mean that you need to have published paper...Create a website that has links to all of your papers in English. Explain in your application that all of your papers can be found on your website... (Page 12-14)

Even though I am not applying for computer science, but I guess the this piece of advice also applies in my case, where I have a undergrad thesis and several preprints I am proud of.
The question is how do I list these works in my CV, there seems to be two options.

Upload these papers to arXiv and then generate citation in my CV. The concern is that these early works may make me look bad if I get my Ph.D. (hopefully) and go onto the job market (maybe I am worrying too much).
Include some links in my CV. I do have a personal website to demonstrate my academic history. However, the issue is that I am not sure the committee members will actually type the long link in their browsers and read these works (someone told me a CV is at most skimmed 30 seconds), especially knowing that many other applicants have already published in some big famous conferences.

I would suggest a slight variation to how you can present such work: Research Projects section in your CV. Give a short (1-sentence like) info about each research project and your contribution right inside the CV and include a link to your website, where these unpublished papers/reports are available.
Reasons:

you want to show the research experience that you had
this research is not published formally through a peer-reviewed process and you are unsure if that publication record (even if it is mere arXiV one) will serve you any good after being admitted to a Ph.D. program
you want to provide an opportunity for a potential advisor to take a closer look at the details of your previous research

Really good advice! I have never thought about this. Really helpful.


text:
Recommendation letter submitted by applicant in application
Problem
In one of the research internship programs I am applying for in Japan, the institution requires me to directly upload recommendation and, otherwise the application will not be reviewed. However, I think this is not quite appropriate since generally applicants should not know the contents of the recommendation. I contacted the admission administrators to discuss other options but they said it was that institution's policy.
Now I am wondering if I could ask for the professor's recommendation. Even though I think he will understand the situation and there are examples that the professor voluntarily send students a copy of recommendation (i.e. the students receive the letter passively), I feel actively asking for the copy truly unprofessional and may make myself look bad in professor's eyes. This matters since he will provide recommendations to other institutions, where they follow the convention and accept recommendation through direct email with the professor.
Do anyone else have similar experiences and how do you do with that? Thank you in advance.

Is there a way for the recommenders to directly upload to your application themselves, rather than have you do it?

Unfortunately no.

Then just do it, as the answers suggest. I actually believe that students should be able to see letters of recommendation. It can sometimes dispel misconceptions that might arise. I once had a serious career issue because of phrasing by a non native speaker that was misinterpreted to my detriment. Had I seen it I, or some other professor, the phrasing could have been changed. The intended meaning was very positive. The actual expression used was not.

@Buffy Thank you for sharing. It is nice to know the complexity this issue.

In spite of what you feel, follow their instructions.
I wrote a reference recently and sent it to the student... If the university wants to check, perhaps it looks tampered with, then they can contact the Academics dept or the faculty who wrote it. I have had phone calls in the past about what I wrote...

Thank you. It is nice to hear about this from a professor. Now I feel better.

Instead of asking the professor to give you the letter, tell him about your predicament. Mention that you checked with the internship program and were refused any alternative, and ask for advice. Be clear that you completely understand if the professor is not comfortable sharing the letter with you, and consequently would be unable to help you with this particular application.
If the professor is fine with you seeing the letter, he may offer it anyway. Even if he is not, it should not look bad on you, since you were left with no choice and were just trying to work around the program's requirement.

I will contact the professor in this way. Thank you.

This obviously depends on how the form is processed, etc., but perhaps you could offer to fill out the form fully, bring your laptop to the professor, and have him copy-paste his letter into the form and hit submit in your behalf?


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Rejecting a Paper from a Prestigious Lab as a Reviewer
I am now serving as a reviewer at a computer science conference. I could identify that one of the papers I am reviewing comes from a prestigious lab based on

The type of research problem the paper is trying to address is in line with what they have always been doing (I am working in a relatively niche field), and the research methodology looks quite familiar.
The list of papers they cite bias towards the publications from their lab.
The style of graphics and presentation of the contents look pretty familiar.

However, as much as this lab previously generated many good papers (in fact, they opened up the area I am working on), this particular paper is quite borderline; I am leaning towards rejecting it.
What concerns me is there may be some way they could know who gave this rejection decision, given the fact that they may know the PC member (the person responsible for matching papers with reviewers), who could incidentally and subconsciously  give them a few names. I hope the academia is better than this, but I could not help thinking of the bad consequences like my own paper and even myself will receive unfair treatment in the future; even if these things happen, I do not have any solid evidence to prove it.
I am not sure what I should do at this point. Should I go against my initial judgement and accept this paper (there is a "weakly accept" option for my conference).

Paper tanks can generate manuscripts that have a distribution of quality. The fact that some are excellent does not mean they all are. The challenge as a reviewer is to give direct feedback on what would make a particular paper excellent even if it's not. I saw a paper with such horrid writing, I wanted to just recommend rejection, but I said the writing needs significant improvement. By the third round of R&R it was clear they did as much, and ultimately it got published.

You've seen the good papers... Who's to say other reviewers have not rejected the poor papers?

You mention PC members, so I assume you are a subreviewer for a CS conference. In this case, the PC member relies on the subreviewer to carefully read and assess the paper, but they are ultimately the person responsible for the review (or at least co-responsible with the subreviewer). So it's highly unlikely that they would even disclose their identity (and consequently any subreviewer's) to the authors.

Prestigious labs are prestigious because they do good work, not because people blindly accept their papers at good journals / conferences. Be critical and recommend rejection if you believe it is warranted.

If the journal’s editor is even somewhat ethical- you should be fine. This is the point of anonymous review.
I don’t think anyone can 100% absolutely guarantee that your identity will not be exposed, but again this is really unheard of. If the journal is reputable, exposing reviewer identity is grounds for removal from the editorship position most likely, and other consequences might arise.
On another note, if the lab is truly prestigious they should welcome critical, constructive feedback on their work. You learn a lot from rejections, they can often make the paper better. Even if I knew the identity of my reviewers I would not take negative reviews personally, as long as their tone is constructive and polite.
Finally, an editor can theoretically ignore the reviews and just accept the paper. This kind of bad behavior has far fewer repercussions towards them than revealing your identity. If authors have so much leverage over the editor that they can get reviewer names, they also have enough to just get their paper accepted despite bad reviews. Again this last point is irrelevant if the journal is halfway reasonable.
Edit:
When reviewing for a conference there are usually several more checks and balances in place (at least for CS conferences). There are reviewers, meta-reviewers, area chairs and program chairs. All of them are expected to report and handle inappropriate behavior on the side if authors/reviewers.

Thank you so much! What you said is really assuring! I am gonna give my honest review anyway.

The answer is for a journal, not a conference.

Same idea in both

"if the lab is truly prestigious they should welcome critical, constructive feedback on their work": agree! I've gotten lots of rejections in my career; my first reaction is to be defensive, sure, but after I sleep on it I use their comments to improve the manuscript as much as I can.

"an editor can theoretically ignore the reviews and just accept the paper" -- a nuance of this is that the editor might consider the reviewer's reason for recommending rejection, but not agree, and still accept the paper (especially if the other reviewers are more positive, and the reasons are somewhat subjective).

"Finally, an editor can theoretically ignore the reviews and just accept the paper." happens often enough in conferences, especially if the interest in the conference is low and the chair wants to get good names in to the presenter list. I have never ever heard anyone revealing the reviewer names.

There do exist instances where ignoring reviewers is acceptable, even preferable. My point is simply that there are far easier and risk-free ways of manipulating the review process

Ethically, you should deal with the paper as it is and ignore the other aspects. If you aren't comfortable with this, then you should quit reviewing, as such decisions affect what is published and what is not.
If the paper is worthy recommend acceptance. If it is unworthy, recommend rejection. The lab from which it emerged, and the authors, themselves, should be irrelevant in any decision about the paper.
You can, of course, ask the Program Chair to take special precautions about your identity and that you don't want it known. This should be standard for a reputable single blind conference in any case, but it is ok to remind them.
If you can't do the job, quit. Sorry to be blunt.

Thank you! I will ask PC to take precautions and give honest reviews.

I don't think it's very responsible to advise an early career researcher to quit reviewing. They may take you seriously!

@jakebeal, actually, I think the OP got the intended message, which is to do the job properly.

They are not the only one who will read your post. I have known early career researchers who are highly competent but struggle with self-confidence and imposter syndrome who would, in fact, likely choose to simply not peer review based on your advise.

@jakebeal If the alternative is for them to "peer-review" by focusing on the name of the lab rather than the math and experiments, that's for the best. Either way, they aren't writing a real review.

@Ray The alternative is to coach them on how to review well, as most of the answers here are suggesting.

What concerns me is there may be some way they could know who gave this rejection ... I could not help thinking of the bad consequences like my own paper and even myself will receive unfair treatment in the future

Let's assume for the sake of discussion that they will know it was you. If you do not feel you can stand behind your review in this situation, and live with any potential consequences - then, frankly, you are ethically compromised, and should have a long hard look in the mirror.
Peer reviewing should be considered a sacred public duty. Something that you do for humanity, for science, for posterity - not in the sense that it has to be extensive (because people can always read the paper for details), but because of the weight your reviewer opinion will carry.
Now, you might say I'm being too strict and idealistic; but inappropriate reviewing is part of what makes many conferences so full of fluff and junk which should have been rejected - often because it comes from the lab or research group of somebody important.

This may be received as a stupid idea, and it possibly is.
However, it could be a test of the peer review process: If they are so prestigious and they acknowledge this, they could be afraid that peer reviewers are disinclined to reject their papers, just because they are who they are.
So, by sending in a bad paper, if accepted they know the peer reviewer is biased because of their reputation.
Rejecting it as you should, sends the signal back: We don't care who you are, send in garbage and we reject it!
As I said, maybe this is a bit far out, but it could be a possibility...

Usually prestigious labs have a lot of people in them, not all of whom are up to the perceived standards of the lab. If a PI isn't micromanaging all the members of their lab, it's easy for a substandard submission or two to get out the door.