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How to ask a teacher for an extension?
I failed an exam last year and now I am retaking it but in a different format.
Everytime I sit in front of my laptop to write the assignment I have anxiety. My anxiety is mainly caused by the fear I have to fail the exam or the fear to make the things wrong. The anxiety probably depends also on other reasons(I have a chronic disease plus other families related problems). I did not say anything to my teacher about the anxiety because I don't want he thinks I am using the anxiety as an excuse.
The problem is that I already asked for a small extension but now, I realized I need few more days. What should I do?I am spending all my days crying because I am stuck with this assignment and I cannot procede. I have the fear of the deadlines, I always wait the last days to finish an assignment because of my menthal status and the medical treatment the doctor gave is not helping me as I am feeling sleepy the whole day.
I don't know what exactly to ask to the teacher...If I can say the truth(stress/anxiety related problems) or if I can tell him that I need few days because I would like to achieve better result without talking about my mental status(which is something I need to fix as soon as possible).

Update 09/03/2020: I didn't receive any answer from the teacher :( I am feeling really really bad

Askng for an extension is fine, but asking for a second, or third is not especially when your plan is to wait until the time has run out - how much time was given for the original assignment? You should contact the teacher or a suitable advisor as soon as possible to deal with this.

yes, the problem is to ask for a second extension in this case :( I had around 1 months to work on the project (presentation + assignment) but after the last presentations I had to make some changes for the assignment...I asked for a 7 days extensions last week but I did not make a lot of work. Do you think I can ask him?or I can just write something and hopefully I will pass the exam

Why the downvote?

Most universities have an office dedicated to helping students deal with disabilities of various kinds. Perhaps you should visit them. They can probably help with stress reduction. In extreme cases a doctor's help might be needed.
But, you might also consider asking your professor for an alternate way to take the exam than online. Perhaps taking it on paper would be helpful. Perhaps having someone else in the room with you would be helpful. But think about more options than just additional time. There is something going on in your life that suggests that time, alone, isn't the issue.
Even an oral exam is better for some people, though not everyone. But it requires a certain amount of empathy from the professor that not all will exhibit.
But if you need to ask, do so in person if at all possible. It is more likely to be successful and the professor might be able to suggest alternatives that won't come up in an email exchange.

I already had 2 oral exams for this "project" and now, I need to write the assignment. I cannot change the format of it. How can I ask to the teacher for an extension? I don't want to mention the "anxiety" problems. I would like to tell him that I want to achieve a better result because I am spending a lot of time doing the research...but I also would like to ask him if the extension will affect my grade(I just want to pass the exam).

@Lisa Hiding your anxiety issues at this point is probably a mistake. You have tried valiantly to cope unaided, other than by asking for extensions. Unfortunately, that has not worked. The next thing to try is getting help, possibly from a disability services office.

I agree with you. I did not say anything because I did not want to expose myself or talk about my personal problems like a crazy person. I was also sick a lot of time last year due to my fragile body and I don't have a good reputation in terms of grades so I am feeling in a weak position. Last year  had the impression that not even the teachers believed me when I said I was sick and with the sick note in hand.I am also loosing the motivation because I fell myself wrong in everything I do

It is not ideal to ask for multiple small extensions.  Moreover, if your condition causes you to wait until the deadline to begin work, an extension may just push back the point at which you begin work, so think about what you really need here.  In any case, your options are either to ask informally for another small extension, or put in a formal application under the policies of your university.  The most important thing to do in this situation is to make sure you make a clear request, as early as possible.  If you decide to make a formal request, I would recommend the following:

Read the university policy on extensions/special consideration, and make sure that what you are asking for is consistent with the rules set out in that policy.  Ideally, you should frame your request in a way that makes it clear that you have read the policy, and that you are making a formal request under that policy.  E.g., "In accordance with Rule 4.3 of the University Special Consideration Policy, I would like to apply for an extension of seven days for my assignment."
Clearly state how much of an extension you are asking for (i.e., when do you propose for the assessment item to fall due), and the basis for your request.  Provide evidence of the adverse circumstances you are claiming --- for example, if you are suffering from a psychological/medical condition, then get a note from your doctor to this effect.  If you cannot get this in time, put in your application anyway, and tell your professor that you will provide a medical certificate at a later date.
You do not need to worry about whether or not the professor will take your application as an "excuse", or what "impression" it will give them.  Most professors are very matter-of-fact people who will assess an application for an extension/special consideration on an objective basis, based on the evidence in the application.  If they think the requested extension is not merited, they will reject the request and then they will probably just forget about it.  As the old saying goes, you wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you knew how seldom they do.

Regardless of whether you are able to get an extension on this piece of work, it is probably a good idea to go and talk to the university counselling service to deal with the broader problems you are having with anxieties over deadlines.  Regardless of whether you are doing assessments at university, or projects in the workforce, managing deadlines effectively is a skill you will need to develop.


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My supervisor is putting my name on a paper I disagree with. What will happen if it is found to be wrong?
My supervisor is publishing a paper and naming me as the first author. I did the data analysis for the paper but part of the interpretation in the paper I regard as wrong.
I argued with him but he insists that he would not change that point.  (The point serves many of his other papers.) The paper correctly attributes that I did data analysis and he designed and wrote the paper. It also says all authors agree with the content. Because graduation requires a paper, I have to accept that.
What if the point turns out to be wrong? There are numerous records showing that I argued with him and I disagree with that point. I have done my part faithfully.

Papers cannot be published without consent of all the authors.

@Bryan But I have no choice. I once told him to retract the prepint and he got mad and asked me to leave the lab. Graduation also requires a paper.

There are some rare papers where a paper explicitly notes that authors disagree on interpretation of data. At least in math, I've seen papers with conjectures where one author thinks a conjecture is likely false and another thinks it is true, and they note it explicitly in the paper. Maybe do something like that?

@JoshuaZ I asked him to remove the statement that all authors agree with it, but he wouldn't.

@JoshuaZ: I would definely NOT recommend doing this on a paper with your supervisor who recently got mad because of the paper. Also your case seems different: That a conjecture is true or false is not known yet. Here, the two authors disagree on what is expicitely stated in the paper. (It would be the same if there was a proof on the conjecture and one author would disagree with the proof's correctness).

Usually nothing happens to the authors if the paper is wrong.
Circumstances vary based on the topic and the way the paper is wrong.  So you, having read the paper, know more about the risks than we do.

I disagree with some of interpretation and conclusions. I couldn't say too much details in fear of him finding out this question.

@tom1994 I suggest approaching whichever co-author you think most clear headed, and tell them that you do not understand why the interpretation is correct, and hope the co-author can explain it to you.

This is an expansion of an earlier comment. You need to handle both the case in which you are right, and your supervisor wrong, and the other way round. It does not seem that further attempts to communicate with your supervisor on this will be useful.
I suggest approaching one of your co-authors, ideally the one who knows most about the interpretation. Call them Professor X. Explain to Professor X that you do not understand how the interpretation can possibly be right, and ask them to explain.
If you are right, there is a good chance that Professor X, in trying to explain the interpretation, will see the same problems you see. Professor X should take over discussing it with your supervisor.
If you are wrong, Professor X's explanation may show you in what way you are wrong.
To answer your main question, if Professor X disagrees with you and you let the paper be published, and it is later shown to be wrong, you are unlikely to face any consequences. You had your doubts, you discussed them with both your supervisor and Professor X, and in the end accepted their judgement.

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Book suggestions for teaching science at advanced level
I teach in a university to Masters students in Science. I have taught courses from Physics, Statistics, Mathematics and Computation, and every time I finish teaching a course, I find myself unsatisfied. It is difficult to articulate what exactly I feel unsatisfied with, but it is probably a combination of choice of topics, the order in which I taught them, the total amount of depth I covered each topic to, the way I explained the concept, the type of problems I assigned for practice, the way I gave my feedback to student submissions etc. One thing that I always seem to fear while teaching is that even if I explained something, students may not have understood it. This makes me extremely conscious during the class itself, and once I start thinking about it while I am talking, I seem to forget things, which in turn leads to fumbling, and that feeling is disturbing.
Over the years, I have made active efforts to improve. However as the courses that I teach seem to become more and more difficult as I progress in my career, the improvement seems to be lagging quite a lot. During my bachelor's degree, I had devoured Feynman Lectures on Physics, and that motivated me a lot to become a good teacher. Even now while reading these, I "hear" the sentences in Feynman's voice with all ups and downs of the tone. I have also read the book "The craft of scientific presentations" by Michael Ally, and several other articles. Perhaps it is needless to say that I have tried to implement various strategies learned from these resources into my teaching. However, I still feel that my teaching is not up to the mark. When I think of some of the scientists I personally know, their teaching seems flawless (I have attended their actual in-person courses). Here I am not saying that each one of them mesmerize the students in the class, but that given their styles, everything seems to fall in place when they are teaching. Let it be a difficult calculation, or a complex explanation of conceptually difficult concept, they seem to get it done as if it is a piece of cake.
Given this, I am looking for books or other resources that specifically talk about great teachers and their teaching methods, especially in advanced science. The books should not cover just some algorithms which should be followed but they should emphasize how teaching can be approached as an art that can be learned and excelled. Two good books (about different topics) which are of this type are "Writing Science" by Joshua Schimel, and "Craft of Scientific Presentations" by Michael Ally.

I would say that it isn't necessarily good to focus too much on whether you "get difficult calculations or complex explanations of conceptually difficult concepts done as if it is a piece of cake". Instead, look at how students learn. Some difficulties are actually desirable for increasing learning and a presentation that is too smooth can backfire by making things look too easy. Not that this is an excuse for poorly prepared or executed instruction, of course.
Since you ask for a book recommendation, you might want to consult "Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide" by Felder & Brent. It contains many tips on getting students more actively involved in the learning process.

A little different to what you are asking about, but you may also be interested in "The sense of style" by Steven Pinker, which tries to motivate how to write from a psycho-linguistic and cognative science point of view. He makes a comment that the core style guides tend to not follow their own advice (even when giving that advice) because the best writers tend to instinctively know how to write and can only guess as to what rules they are following. This has helped me understand the root reason why I'm such a terrible writer. (I have no internal monologue, instead experience the world through more of a visual or kinesthetic, which possibly explains why I have a habit of using nominalised verbs.) This could be useful for making any lecture notes or slides you write clearer. Though this also suggests you should also be careful from just following suggestions from great teachers since they may only know how to teach well, but misunderstand why their lectures are great.
I have also found "Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning" by peter brown useful to understand how people learn. It tries to explain what our current understanding is regarding how learning works and also has a section at the back which tries to explain best practices for teachers/students/self-study.
I have also very recently come across a quote: "Play is the act of manipulating something that doesn't dictate all of its capacity, but does limit them" which I feel has something in it (though I haven't worked out exactly what yet). It might help explain why I found it so easy to learn maths and physics compared to others in my year levels, since it was all just play to me. I've also been teaching myself some machine learning recently and so the phrase sounds like its related to finding the sweet spot in the bias-complexity tradeoff in machine learning. And ties together ideas I've heard from evolutionary biology/psychology where play is motivated by learning (which maybe can be modeled as machine learning). This last statement is fairly wishy-washy and could very well be wrong (I'm no psychologist), so feel free to ignore it if you don't trust it. Though I am somewhat curious if the idea appeared at all in Feynman's lecturing style.

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Paper keywords: singular or plural?
When listing keywords for a paper written in English, is it better to write keywords in singular or plural form?
I am interested in both keywords stored in meta-data:

and keywords listed at the beginning of the paper:

I think a keyword search of a relevant database (e.g., ArXiv or PubMed) might be helpful,

Honestly, I think that keywords are now de facto irrelevant.  The issue is this: when was the last time that you actually searched for a paper by keyword?  In practice, literature discovery is now more typically done by means of modern search engines, which will generally disregard such minor distinctions as singular vs. plurals in any case.

I think that you are not really answering this question.

"searched for a paper by keyword" - if the keywords are contained in the full text of the paper (e.g. as a list right after the abstract), then every time I searched for a paper. While it is adviseable to stick to a uniform terminology throughout a paper, the list of keywords is the opportunity to mention synonyms for common concepts focused in the paper that would otherwise not appear in the text.

It doesn't really matter. Adopt the style that the journal or conference you are submitting to seems to prefer if there are no instructions given by the venue.

I would recommend checking the thesaurus of a database that is likely to be searched for your discipline for relevant keywords and compare yours to the keywords indexed within that database to match your terms to an appropriate taxonomy.  Singular or plural form is unlikely to matter, but listing phrases instead of breaking the keywords down to strict terms is unlikely to be useful to anyone at the publishing companies or managing your institutional repository that is converting the terms to a controlled vocabulary.  Speak to a reference librarian for assistance locating a database thesaurus.  Also, to the point above about the terms not mattering although this is true in disciplines with precise taxonomies which are mapped only to that discipline (as is often the case in computer science or engineering) many disciplines still use terminology that is not strictly mapped to their disciplines. In these instances controlled vocabularies (within the databases) remain relevant to resolve the ambiguity of terms from unrelated disciplines when searching.

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Personal web page vs Academia.edu vs ResearchGate
I will soon finish my PhD and start searching for a post-doc position and I was wondering which web-based solution is the best suited to present myself and my work (I work in plant biology).
I see two main options: social network type, such as Academia.edu or ResearchGate or a personal page (using  for instance Wordpress).
My concern is that social networking solution does not offer a lot of flexibility (attaching documents, presenting my current research more in depth), but I do not want to seem too pretentious by having my own webpage while I am just a PhD student.
My question is then:

Isn't it too soon to have a personal web page at this stage of my career (I am still a PhD student) to present my work or is the pre-made solution more adequate?

Doesn't your current advisor/department/university provide you web space?

Why not both? My Academia.edu site comes up higher in a variety of google searches than my blog/personal webpage, although as you noted I do not enjoy the rigid structure of the Academia.edu site.

@JeffE of course they do and I already used them, but it have two major drawbacks: it lacks flexibility and I will not be able to use it anymore when I will have a new position elsewhere

@CharlesMorisset i read that post already but the problem is not exactly the same. My question was more about how the solution will be received by people I sent it to (I do not want them to think I do too much by having my own webpage at this stage of my career). I am sorry I was not clear in my post in the first place, I will update it.

@CharlesMorisset Sorry I did not note i was your question :). Did you find any solution so far?

@JeffE A PhD/Postdoc will presumably lost their department's webpage rather swiftly once they move on.

Granted.  On the other hand, Most sane departments/universities will either forward links to a new URL or let departing students maintain their page for at least a few months.  On the gripping hand, a link from the advisor's page is enough to let Google catch up a few days after a move.

I am stunned that anyone would think that having a web page could be viewed as pretentious. My view is that if you don't have a web page, you may as well not exist :)

@Suresh I think the situation really differs from field to field. From what a read here (thanks to everyone) it seems more than common to have a personal webpage in fields such as math or computing. However, I know very few people in biology having their how webpage, which is why I asked this question :). Anyway, after reading all this, I will go for it so thanks for all the comments and advices.

The question in the title (and most of the body) is totally different from the one highlighted at the end.  But the one at the end is what all the answers apply to.  I suggest splitting this into two questions.

Why are you only considering one or the other? I have a personal website and a RG page. It doesn't take much time to make and keep them updated. The more self-advertisement you can do, the better. The more people have heard your name, the better. (this is assuming you will behave nicely on all accounts)

Perhaps it's different in other fields, but in math, it isn't pretentious for a PhD student to operate their own website, and it's quite common. (Most schools, at least in the US, provide the space for students to host a personal website.)
Furthermore, I'd say that after a couple years, a PhD student (again, in math) absolutely should have a personal website. Formats oriented around published papers or formal CV aren't very useful for giving information about a grad student because there isn't that much of either. If I meet someone or hear about them from their advisor, and want to learn more about their work, a personal website is best way to get some information about where they're likely to be when they finish.

I think it is indeed different from fields to fields. In biology, I have the feeling it is not that common in biology and I do want to be "the pretentious PhD student who already have a webpage and almost nothing to show on it compared to full time professors"...

Don't listen to the Impostor Syndrome!

@William In the parts of biology I've encountered, it's not uncommon for students to have a webpage.

@Wiliam Unless its a vanity webpage, I don't see how having a website can be pretentious. Even if you have no publications, but just once to introduce yourself as "I'm X Y, interested in blah-blah, and here is my e-mail". Especially as the last information may be very important (e.g. when someone wants to contact you after a conference talk or anything).

As soon as you have even a single preprint, people will begin searching online to find out who you are and what else you have done, so you must have a web page.  It doesn't have to be elaborate, and it's enough to start with a few lines of professional contact information and a list of links to papers, but you have to have something.
I think a generic web page looks more professional than one created using a social networking site, but perhaps that's because I'm old.  However, there is one absolutely critical issue: the page must allow visitors to download any content without logging in.  At least one of the social sites lets visitors view papers on the site, but insists that you create an account if you want to download anything.  This is terrible!  In my experience, nobody's going to create an account unless they really, really want that paper, and either way they are going to be unhappy at the imposition.  Offering access to papers and then harassing anyone who tries to download them leaves a very bad impression.

+1 for "Allow visitors to download any content without logging in." If I am looking browsing for various recent papers on a topic to get an overview of current work, and not specifically seeking out a particular paper, then I will not [register and] log in just to download a paper. So having to log in could cost you readers and citations.

Personally the professors and PhD students I remember well are the ones with an elaborate page for themselves. From what I have learnt from this site, a PhD is simply not merely about publications, citations and academic work. You need to build contacts, make friends and network in the academia, which as such is a small place.
Having a page for yourselves is hardly pretentious. It is just like having a Facebook profile or a Twitter account, a means to show others that you are alive and kicking. And publications are not the only thing you may have there. Add a lot of extra-curricular details, your non-academic passions and interests, some photos that may make people take interest in you as a person.
For further details, I would like to redirect you to some wonderful answers to the question I asked here.

+1 for "having a page is like having a facebook profile"

so, do you think one should put his musical pieces on his professional webpage? :)

You should be sure to make your papers available somewhere (to the extent the jounral policies allow, or more at your own risk). The options are:

Personal webpage – IMHO a must-have, but I'm in math/TCS, in other fields it can be different.
arXiv.org – open-access reliable scientific works repository, I like it.
LinkedIn – looks similar to other social networking sites, but is more carrier-oriented, you can put any publications there, and link them to either your homepage or arXiv or whatever, or don't link them at all, that's up to you.
ResearchGate – I have no true experience with RG since it's not so popular amongst my colleagues. But it seems to me that you can both put the whole article there, or just put the reference there with the option that people can ask you to send them the paper. This is very nice since you need not to break any journal's policies to make it work.
Academia.edu – IMHO a no-no since their Terms of Service are pretty bad.

For me, I have a homepage, LinkedIn and I put everything on arXiv. It seems to be a good amount of various resources, so that people can find me easily, but I don't spend too much time with maintanance.

Pretty bad seems like a gross understatement about the Acadamia.edu terms?

@StrongBad My recommendation is to put the actual articles only on very truthworthy places. I don't have a ResearchGate account for a reason, and I don't put the actual PDF files on LinkedIn. I have everything only on arXiv and on my personal webpage. For open-access publications, I link to the journal as well.

@Strongbad - I once really wanted a paper, so I allowed academia.edu to create an account using my facebook login. This led to an automatic creation of a profile page for me, which I was unaware of. It had my picture, it mentione a few of my papers, and it made up a list of completely nonsensical research interests, such as marketing (I'm a neuroscientist). I'd say that's pretty bad.

"just put the reference there with the option that people can ask you to send them the paper. This is very nice since you need not to break any journal's policies to make it work.": How often are authors not allowed to send their paper by email upon request?

RG is pretty open, I like it. You can post pre-prints for everyone, or you can post the pre-print without access to the actual file (If they want access, they send a message directly to you)... But it is a bit messy. Nonetheless, I think it is good and worth the time if your colleagues use it/ or researchers you know.

While sites like Academia.edu and LinkedIn offer built-in 'networking' facilities and mean that one doesn't have to learn anything technical, in using them as one's primary academic web presence one is handing over control of one's professional identity to a third party whose goals are far from guaranteed to be aligned with one's own.
If nothing else there is the obvious threat that they may go out of business and leave one's web identity untethered, so to speak. They might also decide to run adverts against your profile, sell your data to other companies, and so on. With a personal website on one's own domain there is a level of control and security that can't be obtained from these other services. Convenience and ubiquity are benefits, but they should be weighed against other considerations, not taken as overriding reasons for action.
To answer the question more directly: it is (certainly in my field, philosophy) perfectly normal and appropriate to have a personal website while still a graduate student, and there are numerous advantages to doing so.

I think that a web presence is a must in academia (at least nowadays!).
At the very least you should have a site for the current course you are teaching, as a graduate student.  This is not necessary, but it is starting to become expected by students (although, who cares what they think ;) ).  I think a webpage is good because you can update it at a moment's notice, almost everyone has access to it, and if not, it's easily done, and you can also provide solutions for problems, quizzes, and past exams, as well as have links for cool math-y things (my area of expertise), wolfram alpha apps, java apps, matlab code, etc.
However, I believe that this post was inquiring more along the lines of having a webpage as an early researcher.  In that regard, yes and yes (and dare I say yes again?).
Having a general page of your research interests, several sub-topics, collaborators, and even, (dare I say it?), a personal portion of it about you, is a good idea.  People expect to be able to access documents for pre-prints, post-prints (assuming you have the appropriate copyright), software, CV, etc., and at this point it is not unreasonable for them to think so.
I would also suggest having a site not at your university.  You can redirect your university site to your other site and you don't have to worry about migrating files over when you move from grad to post-doc to post-doc to tenure-track at a tier 1 research institution (except for maybe the last transition).
Also, if you host your own site, you can have your own diaspora pod running, and we can move more towards open-source networking.

Sorry, but "who cares what they (the students) think" doesn't look like an opinion of someone I wanted to hire to a teaching position in the future. I of course do care what the students I teach think, one only has to filter out "the cours is too hard" and "it is not fair that the 5-minute tests are at the beginning of the lesson, because I'm always late".

I apologize (and am not going to edit the comment) ... I actually do care about my students.  It is difficult to convey sarcasm via text.  Although, I would think that the ';)' would be some indication (or I guess it could be taken the other way . . . sigh well, once it's on the internet, you can't take it off).  Why would I advocate for a webpage for your class with solutions and other various tools for them to learn if I didn't care about them?

Sorry for over-reacting then. You're right, sarcasm is sooo difficult to express over the internet!

In addition to the options listed in tohecz answer, it could be quite helpful to set up a Google Scholar Profile, see e.g. these links for details:

http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/citations.html
http://fyi.libmedia.nymc.edu/?p=2517
http://libguides.lib.uci.edu/content.php?pid=215869&sid=3311417

I'd like to add to @tohecz's answer that one important point to consider are the self-archiving policies of the journals you publish in.
E.g. Elsevier usually allows you to put your accepted manuscript on your personal home page but not into repositories like ResearchGate (exception is arXiv)

Elsevier's AAM Policy: Authors retain the right to use the accepted author manuscript for [...] permitted scholarly posting provided that these are not for purposes of commercial use or systematic distribution.
Elsevier believes that individual authors should be able to distribute their AAMs [...] e.g. posting to their websites or their institution’s repository [...]. However, our policies differ regarding the systematic aggregation or distribution of AAMs [...]. Therefore, deposit in, or posting to, subject-oriented or centralized repositories (such as PubMed Central), or institutional repositories with systematic posting mandates is permitted only under specific agreements between Elsevier and the repository, agency or institution, and only consistent with the publisher’s policies concerning such repositories. Voluntary posting of AAMs in the arXiv subject repository is permitted.

I was wondering which web-based solution is the best suited to present myself and my work

Advantages of social sites are only of technical nature:

Easy to get started
Currently (at least for ResearchGate) not cost of having the site
You don't have to deal with SEO / design / availability of the site

The advantages of your personal side are more interesting:

Flexibility: You can create the page like you want it. You can upload demos / focus on stuff you like.
Explorability: You can have your own e-mail address which you can put on papers (and not change it). If you have whatever@yourname.com or something similar, people might have a look at yourname.com when they see the email address on a paper.
No / other spam: You don't get spam from "social" features informing you of stuff you don't need to know (that was the reason why I quit ResearchGate). You might get more spam to your e-mail address, though.
In combination with ORCiD, you can get started relatively easy. You can manage your papers on ORCiD and link to your ORCiD account on your personal site. Your personal site is the one always being "the main thing", then you can also try other sites and just link to your profile there.
You own your stuff. A social site - no matter how big - might permanently go down or change it terms of service to something you don't like. When you have your own website, you are independent.

What I particularly did not like of ResearchID is that they created other links of my papers. They added another first page with their logo / link to the PDF and then came the arXiv PDF. People were asking me through ResearchID for papers which are easily available through arXiv.
What you might consider for a personal website:

Having the basic information: Your name, your research interests, your publications, what you're currently working on. You might have a look at other pages of people in your field / what you're looking for when you are searching for profiles.
Adding an RSS feed for your papers. Then people can follow you / your publications.
Microformats such as hcard-profile

The more platforms you use to present yourself the better. So the right question is not use 1 or 2 or 3 but use 1 and 2 and 3. It depends on a particular discipline but I would suggest to have profiles on the following resources:

Google Scholar: very useful for others to quickly evaluate your imprint (#papers and #citations)
ResearchGate: some sort of social network for researchers; saw lots of activities have been happening there for last year or so
Mendeley: a great organizer of research publications (typically in PDF format); it also positions itself as a social network for researchers; imo, as a research social network and activities on it Mendeley is rather declining
Academia: a competitor to ResearchGate; didn't use it so cannot comment on whether is growing or declining
Linkedin: while it is not focused on researchers, a lot of them are there; your profile there can be really advanced and even serve as a proper CV

Lastly, having a web page(-s) describing yourself and your projects is a must. As a very minimum, it might be just one (simple, non-fancy looking is ok) page with your contact information and links to your profiles on platforms mentioned above. Usually, one's department/organization/lab provides an easy way to create/edit such a page. Besides, it is very easy (with no special technical skills) to create your pages (in form of a blog) on some free blog platform. In fact, I would really advocate that PhD students would be pushed to write a blog post about each published work of theirs where the content/ideas/discussion/etc of a publication is described in nutshell.

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


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How do I find applied math tenure track positions at at liberal arts / four-year colleges?
I'm having difficulty isolating tenure track positions in applied mathematics at institutions with more emphasis on teaching than research.  I've heard that 'liberal arts colleges' and 'four-year colleges' are the way to go, but it seems difficult to find ones with openings for applied mathematics professors.
I tried mathjobs.org, but there seem to be an overwhelming bias toward research-oriented institutions and I can't seem to isolate the ones with less research focus.  How do I find applied math tenure track positions at four-year / liberal arts colleges with little to no focus on research?  Do they even exist?  Or these institutions prefer pure / unspecific mathematicians for general classes?
For the record: I'm starting a job search for fall 2015.

You can assume applied mathematicians are welcome to apply to any mathematics position that is not otherwise specified.  Mathjobs.org includes some teaching-oriented institutions, but it does seem to be less common among them than among research universities.  There are also jobs ads in various other places (e.g., the AMS, SIAM, and MAA web sites), and teaching-oriented schools are particularly likely to interview at the joint AMS/MAA meetings in January.  As a general rule, this isn't the right time of year to be starting to look for job openings, and you'll find more in the fall.

@BenCrowell: how can you tell if that is the case for a particular school ahead of time before even getting hired or applying?

Context: I'm a professor at a mid-sized regional university, non-research oriented, but taught for 14 years at small liberal arts colleges.
It sounded in the question like you have only just begun the job search process. I'll assume this is the case in my answer. With that assumption there could be a few things in play here.

Pretty much all small colleges have closed their searches for Fall 2014 by this point. There may be a few exceptions, but for the most part small colleges tend to adhere to the usual ebb and flow of the hiring process -- advertise in mid- to late summer, initial screening and phone interviews in the fall, initial interviews at the Joint Meetings in January, on-campus interviews in February, hiring decision in March. Unlike research universities where sudden influxes of grant money or sudden faculty turnover is more common, smaller schools deviate less from the basic pattern.
Likewise, if you are looking for a position for Fall 2015 and are early, most of these places won't have advertised yet. Check back in July. I know for a fact that MathJobs.org does get ads from smaller schools so it's not that you're looking in the wrong place. Also look at the EIMS, the Chronicle, and Inside Higher Ed.
If you are doing a search with the term "applied" it, take it out and see what happens. At smaller or non-research oriented schools, you'll see only ads for mathematicians, not "applied mathematicians" or "pure mathematicians". (There are exceptions.) In such places, like where I am, its expected that people will be generalists.

Good luck!

The current answer is very focused on the specific OP, but I want to write a more general answer. I am a professor at a small liberal arts college (SLAC) that hired a tenure track applied mathematician last year. Here are a few things to consider:

Advertising a position costs money. The longer the ad stays up, the more it costs. We advertised in math jobs, but perhaps only started to show the job a month before we started accepting applications.
I think we also advertised in SIAM. Honestly, I was less involved with the applied math search than with the stats search, where we advertised at the Joint Stats Meeting.
We also sent out emails to our professional contacts so that they could pass along the job ad to anyone who might be interested.
Some other SLACs advertised in other places, e.g., the Chronicle of Higher Education. We felt what we did was enough.

For the job candidate this means you should check mathjobs frequently; at least once per week. You can filter mathjobs by the postdate, and only check jobs posted since you last checked. When you first search, you can filter mathjobs by job type, to focus only on tenure track jobs. You can also filter based on location. I am unaware of any way to filter to only see liberal arts jobs, but it's honestly not that much work to read the name of every university hiring (there are often only around 300 for tenure track jobs) and click the ones you think might be SLACs. You can tell quickly from the job ad if it's a SLAC, because the job ad will probably say "liberal arts" or "excellence in undergraduate teaching", etc. It's good to get into the habit of recognizing liberal arts colleges, if you plan to work at one. I'm sorry I don't know a way to limit the search.
Do not assume that a job ad that says "mathematics" excludes "applied mathematics." Generally speaking, it's harder to hire an applied mathematician at a SLAC than a pure mathematician. In most searches, if we get an application from a strong applied mathematician (meaning: we think they'll be an excellent teacher, able to teach and develop applied math courses, will have sufficient research to get tenure, and might be able to include undergrads in some aspect of their research) then we take it seriously. Sometimes, the search will be limited to a certain area (like: topology) but this is rare. Most SLAC searches are open to a mathematician in any research area and applied mathematicians have a leg up because so many undergraduates want to take courses in applied math, but pure mathematicians are not sure we can properly develop and teach such courses. One last point I want to respond do:

How do I find applied math tenure track positions at four-year / liberal arts colleges with little to no focus on research?

I guess the answer hinges on what you mean by "little." At most good SLACs they will want multiple publications before tenure. At the place I did my undergraduate, teaching and research were weighted equally, and the teaching load was 2-2. At my university, teaching is more but it's probably more like a 60-40 split; the teaching load is 2-3. At my university, to pass your third year review, you should publish a paper from your thesis (or postdoc) and work out something else and get it submitted, within the first two years. To pass tenure you should have at least 4 publications in good journals. Some professors have many more than that. One upside, for an applied mathematician, is that it is quite possible that the norms in your area will be to publish more papers than a pure mathematician, in which case this number might be easier for you than, say, a logician. But, if you want a lower load, then you need to look at lower ranked SLACs, where the teaching load will be 3-3 and you can probably get tenure based on 2 good publications (or 3 to be safe). If you want even less of a research focus than that, you can find colleges with a 4-4 teaching load where 1 publication (namely: your PhD thesis) suffices. But tenure is only useful if the university stays in business, so I'd be leery of places with a small endowment, where they accept 90% or more of applicants. Places like that can sometimes fail, or shrink (and therefore lay-off faculty), or change focus and lay off entire departments (including tenured faculty), etc. It's wiser to plan to maintain enough of a research program that you can land on your feet if things go sideways.


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Is there such thing as a person who books guest lectures?
I'm a professional photographer. I have done numerous lectures at colleges and high schools about photography and photo assisting. This has always been for ex-professors or peers that have become professors. I thoroughly enjoy it and looking to branch out beyond my personal contacts to do about 4 of these a year.
Do you know if someone exists that is a guest lecture booker or guest lecture PR type person? I imagine this person would contact schools and try and set something up. I guess they wouldn't have to have industry-specific experience but I imagine that someone in academia with previous relationships may be more effective.

welcome. Can you edit your question to be generic and not an ad for you?

Do you mean a technical lecture, or about like careers?

Are you asking if there is such a thing as a talent agent that books talent? Yes, there is.

There is an "agent" of course, who you pay to give you visibility. We should all be so in demand that we need one.

What is your goal? Are you looking to make money in the form of speaking fees? Drum up photography business? Persuade students to enter the industry? Or do you just enjoy giving talks, and are you willing to do it for free?

There are certainly professional speakers, who make their money by giving paid seminars, speaking at conferences, and providing bespoke training. That said, their target audience is rarely (though not never) universities, but rather companies or industrial conferences.
The problem with making speaking at universities as a career is that, in order to actually live from this, your fee needs to be high, much higher than the regular honorarium given to university speakers (if there is any honorarium at all, oftentimes the university can only cover travel). In my experience most universities will only shill out this kind of money for very targeted kinds of speeches or trainings that fill a specific, concrete need, and where they know there is a lot of interest. For example, when there is a new European funding framework coming up, many European universities will pay for a consultant to come in and hold a half-day seminar what the new rules are and how they will likely be interpreted in practice. Another exception may be very high-profile seminar series, which are often seen as publicity events for the general public.
In summary, it can't hurt to keep your eyes open, but before you take this any further you should figure out whether there really is sufficient money in this line of business.

Guest speakers are common place. Their bookers vary between (internal) faculty and administrators. Search for listings of departmental speakers. From there, find a faculty member or administrator responsible for making arrangements and contact them. That's not quite the approach you've considered (external bookers), but I think it is more typical in academia.


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Apply via headhunter vs. directly
While looking for a new university position in Germany, I was contacted by a recruiting agency ("headhunter") for a position that is also advertised on the university internet page directly. It is a senior physician/researcher staff position, may translate as consultant.
What are the advantages/disadvantages of applying via a recruiting agency vs. applying directly? How does this affect the picture the university gets of such a candidate?
Another thought is: does the university have to pay a higher fee if they hire someone via the agency vs. directly, i.e. success-related payment vs. payment for service? Is this relevant at all, compared to the picture of the candidate"?

The headhunter has an incentive to sell your 'head' as quickly as possible.  However, if there are better candidates, then you'll probably lose because the university will more likely listen to the headhunter.   The question would be more interesting if you know someone on the hiring committee.  Then it's a fight between asking that someone to champion for you or the headhunter.

Thanks - just to clarify: you think that the headhunter may do better to "sell" me than if I apply on myself, but I may loose in case there are more headhunter candidates against I may loose in case the headhunter has a worse picture of me thanthe university itself? (I do not know someone in the hiring committee)

There are too many possibilities.  It's possible that when you apply directly, they may direct you to apply via the headhunter given that they've been paid to hunt.

Which country is this in? In places I’m familiar with, headhunters are not used for anything below the level of a dean. I suggest you schedule a call with the headhunter and ask them to convince you that they have a successful track record and can help boost your application. Even then, apply healthy skepticism.

Some times universities (or any organizations) outsource this part of the HR job to an external company.  It may cost a small fortune, but they save on hiring one or more permanent staff, which they cannot easily made redundant say during a pandemic.

If you can save the university a fee, do.  I'm not sure if you can.

Did you learn about the position from the headhunter? In that case, they might be entitled to their fee even if you apply directly.

Many times a headhunter will get you to the head of the stack of applicants. The reason being is they put forth a quality person rather than anyone just applying for the position. The uni may pay a fee to get said job filled with their referral however this is all a part of doing business and they will likely not think any more or less of someone being referred this way. They however may look at your application quicker and with more interest because the headhunter has weeded out the less qualified people already by reaching out to only those who meet the grade of person the school may be looking for. Good luck in your search.


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A number of students requesting a number of reference letters. What to do?
I teach two medium size groups (~100 each), supervise BSc and MSc dissertations, and have ~35 tutees. When applications to postgraduate programmes open, I tend to receive a number of requests for reference letters due to a combination of several students asking me to write letters for them, and them applying to a number of places (usually 30+ students × 5+ programmes), so I need to spend quite some time writing and submitting reference letters.
Are there any guidelines in terms of how many reference letters lecturers in UK should write per year?

What does your department say? Generally, if you do not have to write a letter for all, it is a good idea to only write LOR for students you can write something helpful for. A single strong paragraph with demonstrated achievements for someone you had only a short time beats a lukewarm two page letter.

@CaptainEmacs In a department meeting, the HoD said "write as many as you can", keep it as short as possible, but try to personalise your letters ... So, I think there is no real guidelines in my department. We actually try to keep it to one page in most instances due to the large number of requests.

Your literal question is about "how many are expected". You don't ask for advice about how to handle a large number. I suggest you edit if that is your real concern. Do you want advice about how not to write letters, or about how to manage the numbers?

And, if you are looking for advice on preparing a large number, it would be useful to know whether you have TAs who may have closer contact with individuals than you do.

If there are really so many, you might suggest that an admin be assigned to take care of the uploading etc. Although this could be tricky because the darn forms often ask for additional ratings on the upload form. How we have handled this is that the students enter departmentreferences@university.edu and the admin manages that account.

@dawn That is an interesting suggestion, thanks!

Your director says "As many as you can" - in my philosophy these would be those where I think the letter would easily help and, as such, easily written.

Create a spreadsheet with comments, and evaluations, possibly link collections if that's easier than to search through mail.

Use automated template generation for the reference letter outline, possibly electronically added signature, and write short, crisp paragraphs on what impressed you about the student. One, at most two paragraphs are perfectly enough if you have something good to say. It's like feedback for an essay. "This student performed well because they ..., were able to ... and showed skilful handling of ... Whatever is relevant, give facts and a brief evaluation, this is perfectly fine.

Any awards, just mention them.

End on a standardized positive note. This is not a tenure reference. If you have to write many references, you cannot spend much time on refined formulations.

Group the references together for the same website/uni and fire them off.

For very strong students, usually it is possible (and pleasurable) to write more, as you will know more about what they have done. They can be treated in a more individualized fashion.

References for weak students, on the other hand, are very difficult to write, and so they will burn a lot more of your time if you want them to help at all; this will be like squeezing blood from a stone. I do not recommend doing that, unless you have some simple and strong thing to say about them and you wish to do so.
Although it's not up to you to decide whether they should proceed with a graduate education or not, if you yourself do not think they should continue, it is in your right to choose not to be part of the process in that case.

This is complementary to the answer of Captain Emacs.
For those students for whom your only contact is a class or two, tell them when they ask that your letter will need to be fairly pro-forma, describing the course and how they did in it. Tell them that other writers may have more valuable things to say about them. Then ask if they are still interested.
The best letters come from those with the most contact, I think. That may not be you. Make sure they understand that "full marks" may not be enough to judge future success.
This might cut the numbers down a bit and also permit you to give honest appraisals as far as you know about their likelihood of success.

I think this is good advice. Students may not always have a good understanding of how reference letters work, and who they can ask to write one. They may also be afraid to approach certain individuals. Providing some advice, guidance and encouragement here may reduce your workload and get the students stronger letters.


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How do I convince a colleague that plagiarism in a grant proposal is bad?
I frequently find myself editing the grant proposals of a colleague of mine for English grammar. Each time, I find that he has copied sections of other peoples' writing wholesale, usually in introductory sections. This plagiarism is very easy to spot, as the writing style and diction often change dramatically for a few sentences.
I have tried multiple times to convince him that this is plagiarism, and that it's wrong. Despite this, I keep finding new instances of copied material. He claims that it's fine because it's not copying ideas, just introductory information, but I disagree.
How can I convince him that this is wrong and that he should stop?
If it matters, both of us are Chinese, but I grew up in the US and he grew up in China. He claims that this is just a "cultural difference," but I think that this is still misconduct, however minor it may be.

Just to make sure I understand it properly: Is the plagiarism in parts describing the research or in (required) statements about ethics or something similar? I think that for the latter, there are some standard phrases which are used and this seems to be acceptable.

Try a few of the most clearly copied phrases in your favorite search tool.  When/if you get a hit on one of them, show it to your colleague.

These grants are submitted to grant agencies in the US, yes. The plagiarism is almost always in introductory and background paragraphs, not where new ideas are presented and not in the standard boilerplate areas.

Do you share in the grant if awarded?

It seems that you have already tried to convince him, and it has been unsuccessful. I don't know what else you can do to convince him.
I would say that if I found plagiarism in any part of the work, the entire work, as well as the authors become suspect. It would very likely be automatically rejected.
My advice to you, is to stop working with him or, if you continue, to make sure your name is not affiliated at all with those proposals.

+1. Elsewhere at Academia.SE (IIRC) I found the comment that plagiarism is easy to spot if the English suddenly gets much better. One possible argument to the OP's friend: (1) OP finds this plagiarism objectionable (whether or not friend agrees). (2) OP easily spots it. (3) Reviewers may be similar to OP. Conclusion: reviewers may also find this plagiarism objectionable, easily spot it, and therefore reject the proposal. I would say this is a pretty good argument.


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Is the honors program worth it?
Chemistry major here, let preface this by saying I don't know anything about anything. That being said, as a student attending a school that is not very well known for its academics, I always figured that I needed to do whatever I could to be competitive. My fear is that I'll get into the world of academia and find out that I'm leagues behind my peers in terms of education. I'm probably overthinking things, but I just don't have enough information to know where I stand. So the honor's program sounded like the obvious decision at the time. In addition to the sweet-sounding benefits listed on the program page, it would maybe help close the gap between the difficulty of my school's chemistry program vs a top 50 program.
I did some looking around, and it seems that at most schools, an honor's program is something that students are jumping to get into. It's considered a pretty big deal to be part of it. But from asking around my school, the sentiment seems to be the exact opposite. Most students here don't tend to respect the honors program from what I can tell. They say that the extra work isn't worth it, so most tend to drop out after sophomore year. And I think that's because the benefits aren't as meaningful to, say, a CS major. I think to one entering the workforce immediately after graduation, honors college holds much less weight. My guess is that because my peers are here to put in their 4 years and join the workforce, they don't really care about things like prestige or standing out. Which makes sense for them, but coming from someone who has different goals, I don't know if their opinions are applicable to me. I have yet to talk to a hard science major about this, so I don't know how much importance something like honors college carries to us.
To be perfectly honest, a lot of what honors college entails just sounds like fun to me. I would love the opportunity to do it. But I can't say it's worth it if the extra workload has the possibility of tanking my GPA. Does anybody have any experience with an honors program at school, and how it's affected their career and their enjoyment of college? Thanks in advanced.


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Does publishing a paper on arXiv prevent me from submitting it to a non-open access journal?
If I publish a pre-print paper on arXiv, how can I guarantee exclusive rights to the publisher afterwards? Am I unable to publish on non-open access journals after I publish a pre-print on arXiv ?

What does a preprint mean? Does it mean that it has been accepted by a journal and you can send it to arxiv etc. or does it mean that you are first submitting it to arxiv and then later to the journal for review?

You are generally allowed to publish even in a non-open access journal even if a pre-print is on the arXiv.  Most journal copyright agreements explicitly allow the authors to post the article online.  Here's an example of a fairly generous one:

The ASL hereby grants to the Author the non-exclusive right to reproduce the Article, to create
  derivative works based upon the Article, and to distribute and display the Article and any such derivative
  work by any means and in any media, provided the provisions of clause (3) below are met. The Author may
  sub-license any publisher or other third party to exercise those rights.

and a less generous one which still allows the author to post a copy online:

I understand that I retain or am hereby granted (without the need to obtain further permission) rights to use certain versions of the Article for certain
  scholarly purposes, as described and defined below (“Retained Rights”), and that no rights in patents, trademarks or other intellectual property rights
  are transferred to the journal.
The Retained Rights include the right to use the Pre-print or  Accepted Authors Manuscript for Personal Use, Internal Institutional Use and for
  Scholarly Posting; and the Published Journal Article for Personal Use and Internal Institutional Use.

I've seen examples where the journal actually did some genuine copyediting beyond what the referee did where the author wasn't allowed to post the version that benefited from the copyediting, but could still post the earlier version.
So, for most journals, the answer is that you're allowed to post the article online because it's specifically allowed by the document they ask you to sign.  But it is possible that posting on the arxiv will rule out particular journals that have more restrictive policies.

I would add one word of caution: in addition to checking that the copyright agreement with the journal allows it, you have to check the journal's editorial policy regarding prior publication. Even some journals (ACS, for example) that allow to post preprint do not allow them prior to journal publication. See Anonymous' answer which hints at this, or my answer over there going into the details.

Not necessarily, but this is to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. You can have an idea of which policies have been adopted by which publishers/journals by having a look at the webpage of Sherpa/Romeo.

You should ask senior people in your field, or look at the polies and publishing agreements of journals you care about.
In math, every major journal will accept submissions of papers that have previously been posted to the arXiv.  (I'm pretty sure that every journal will, but I suppose I can't rule out some obscure exception.  If any journal tried to enforce a policy against submitting papers that were on the arXiv, there would be a big uproar and they would have no choice but to allow it.)  I believe the same is true in physics and CS.
But keep in mind that this may vary between fields.  For example, my understanding is that the American Chemical Society has particularly draconian copyright and dissemination policies, and that they may object to arXiv posting.  They are on the wrong side of history, but it doesn't mean they can't still cause trouble.  And then there are journals like Science, with embargo policies and corresponding rules about what constitutes prior distribution.
So the answer is that this is very simple if you're in a field in which the arXiv has become widespread, but much more subtle otherwise.

Asking other researchers on what is essentially a legal issue is misguided.

Yes and no.  You're right that you can't defend yourself in court on the basis that you asked some senior mentors what to do.  On the other hand, nobody's going to take you to court over posting one of your papers to the arXiv, so this is not a big risk.  One reason why consulting senior colleagues is helpful is that they have experience interpreting and dealing with publishing agreements.  It's not as reliable as consulting an intellectual property attorney, but for a beginner it may be easier and more reliable than just reading the agreement and trying to discern what it covers.

The Ingelfinger rule is generally disregarded now by scientific publishers. F1000 has done a lot of research into this for their poster repository. Of the few notable publishers who do suggest they do not allow preprints, blood was singled out as apparently they said they wouldn't allow it but appeared to have no way of checking this and so do allow it, albeit by default. The following 2 links from the embargo watch blog describe the story:
Faculty of 1000 strikes a blow against the Ingelfinger Rule
F1000 vs. Ingelfinger, part two: Blood and The Journal of Proteome Research respond

Defining the "Ingelfinger rule" and "F1000" in the answer would improve it.

A standard workaround is that you post a draft of your paper on the arxiv and assign the copyright in the final version to the journal. You can't update the arxiv with your final version, but the journal publishers will only be able to enforce their copyright on those parts of the final version which are not already present in the arxiv prior art.
Since you will almost inevitably make some revisions as part of the submission process, you don't have to explicitly plan to leave anything out of the arxiv version.

Many journals' policy don't allow to submit material that was already published, and state explicitly that online publication in repositories such as arxiv would bar papers from consideration.

Right. But often the prior publication of a different work, on which the submitted work is based, is not ruled out. From an academic point of view they are the same work, but from a copyright point of view they are not. Note that to close this loophole journals would have to exclude the prior publication on the Internet of eg. slides of a talk about the work in the paper.

Although most journals allow publication of the pre-print (before peer review version) elsewhere, they only do so after they accepted and published the final version of the paper. Otherwise they might take it as previous publication and reject the manuscript. Russel O'Connor ran into this problem with the ACM when he tried to secure open access and free use by putting the material into public domain by uploading it to the ArXiv before submitting it to the ACM.

I believe the story you link to is really about CC licensing, not about uploading to the arXiv.  There are plenty of papers published by the ACM that have previously been uploaded to arXiv.


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Are there any experiment reproducibility databases?
Quite often when I read a medical research article I wonder whether other researchers tried to reproduce the experiment. I could go through the list of papers that cite the article but I find this solution a bit tedious and inefficient for this task.
Is there any database that lists reproduction attempts (with ideally the number of fail and successful reproductions)?

I like that idea. I don't think it exists, but I would like to have something like that for economics, too.

@TheAlmightyBob Yes definitely not restricted to the medical domain!

This sort of meta-analysis, especially in medicine, is done in review papers. The good one include objective metrics comparing the results of multiple experiments about a given effect.

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/12520/can-up-to-70-of-scientific-studies-not-be-reproduced

@Hauser Thanks, yeah I had indeed read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility#Reproducible_research recently, which has pretty much the same great references.

While not a direct answer, publishing failure to reproduce can be difficult as a standalone activity (think cost, time, and rewards), and where reproducibility information does exist, it may be field or community specific (like blog-syn for organic chemistry).
But there are a few large and well-funded studies that aggregate information simply because their purpose was to replicate big studies- eg the Cancer Biology Reproducibility initiative, and perhaps some of these studies will grow over time.
You may also want to check sites such as Pubmed Commons and PubPeer, which increasingly are gathering discussion of papers.

In clinical study in medicine, meta analysis, accumulating data on several different papers on the same theme, is the methodology to find the overall effect size of the intervention. Cochrane database is most famous one which gathers such systematic review.

The quick answer is, there does not seem to be a database concerned directly with reproducing experiments in medicine.  The closest seems to be what is done in just about all meta-analysis papers - they do repeated keyword searches in MEDLINE, EMBASE, Science Citation Index, Cochrane registry and similar.  The Institutes of Health have a clinical trial registry that's worth looking into, because some trials may never end up being published.


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Attending graduate school at my undergraduate university
I've been told by numerous people that (1) my undergraduate university will be disinclined to bring me on as a graduate student, and that (2) it's a bad idea to attend grad school where you completed your undergraduate degree, anyway.  Is that true? If so, why?

You did not specify if your goal is to obtain an academic position. Many people who answer this question assume this.

Pros

If you stay at the same school (this applies even more when you join grad school immediately out of your undergrads), it'll be a matter of remaining in your comfort zone - same department, a faculty who know you, even the same apartment/neighborhood! This can be a major factor, depending on the person concerned - the pros of staying at your Alma mater are all about convenience IMO.
If your UG department has an influential professor with whom you've worked before and are planning to continue as well, that can be very advantageous -  as having such a faculty get to know a student's work as an undergraduate can lead to a very strong recommendation (since he has accepted you in the grad program, it is reasonable to assume your work had impressed him during your undergrads).

Cons
An important advantage of going to another school is that you will be exposed to a completely different department, with faculty who may have diverse research ideas for you to work on. The department, in turn, will benefit as well as a new student from another school will cross-pollinate their department with fresh ideas. This is so important that some top universities have a strong bias against accepting their own undergraduate students into their graduate programs.

Your first "pro" is actually a con—you can't grow as a researcher (or as anything else) without leaving your comfort zone.  And your second "pro" is more an incentive for undergraduate research than for staying put.

I was actually talking about non-academic convenience - maybe one has family residing in the same state, or that it might be expensive to move to a different state etc... But yes, I agree that one does need to move out of his academic comfort zone to effectively grow as a researcher.

As Henry points out in the response to Artem's answer, many graduate departments—especially at top schools in the US—have a "no undergrads admitted from our department" policy. Both my undergraduate and graduate schools have adopted such policies.
In general, unless you have a very strong reason for staying at your undergraduate school—either a personal situation, such as a spouse who has a job in the area, or the opportunity to work on the world's only "X" (whatever "X" is)—then you are much better served by going somewhere else for graduate school. You will have the advantage of working with new people, plus you avoid the very strong stigma attached to having all of your educational pedigree at a single location.

It's not a stigma everywhere; a significant fraction of MIT faculty were both undergraduates and graduate students at MIT.  (Of course, MIT is an outlier.)

Even MIT is starting to rethink its position on taking its own--at least in a number of departments, both as graduate students as well as faculty hires.

@aeismail: This seems to be very USA specific (which should be mentioned). In Europe the situation is very different. No idea how it is in Asia.

@MartinScharrer: The situation in Europe is starting to change post-Bologna. International experience is being recognized as increasingly important, and "in-house" promotions are also frowned upon. (The habilitation system in Germany, for instance, forbids its recipients from working at the same school where they get the habilitation!)

Could you please explain why this stigma exists?

The stigma is there because not leaving suggests that you are too "indoctrinated" in that particular school's style, as that's the only one you've been exposed to. As JeffE points out, that's not true of all departments, but in some fields, it can be a problem.

I will address the two points separately:

If you have a strong application, then your undergrad university will be more inclined to take you as a graduate student. The reason is that to have a strong application, you need very good reference letters. The reference letters are probably from professors at your undergrad school, and thus they will carry a lot of weight there (compared to other schools where your former supervisors are less known). Thus, it is often easiest to get into the school you graduated from.
I've heard the second point myself, and I actually advice it/try to follow that advice, too. The reasoning behind it as that at the school you graduated from, you already know everybody. Thus, if you stay you will continue to work with the same people and won't meet new collaborators. If you go to a new school, you will have to meet new people and expand your network.

The first point isn't universally true.  Many schools have a policy of actively trying not to take their own undergrads as grad students.

@henry - That's what I was referring to in my point (1), and I was wondering whether it was true. They actually have it as a policy?

@eykanal: I don't mean policy in the sense of "written down in the formal list of policies", but I mean that it's an accepted practice that people will openly discuss as being part of how they make decisions.

I believe Stanford has a formal written policy forbidding accepting their own undergrads for grad school (at least in CS).

@Eykanal: A similar policy exists at most graduate departments in ChemE.

Answering (1):
Staying at the same place is very uncommon in the US, where there is a presumption against it. It does not mean that it is impossible or never happens, but it counts against you in admissions.
This is mostly true when referring to doing undergraduate and PhD studies at the same place. Normally it's fine to do your Masters and undergraduate at the same place, or to move between undergraduate and Masters and then stay at the same place for PhD.
*
The situation is very different in Europe. In fact, professors may attempt to recruit their best undergraduates to work for them as graduate students and this is seen as a positive thing for all involved.
There is an increasing stigma against hiring faculty that has no experience outside of a given university (derisively called in-breeding), but I do not think that it applies to undergraduate->graduate transition.
Others have answered (2) in more detail.

The only advantage I see in entering graduate school in the same university where you completed your undergrad program is having a continuity between your undergrad research programs and graduate research.
Typically it takes some time for a new grad student to get accustomed with research activities, with the routine of a new lab or research group, getting to know your advisor, etc. Also there are some adjustment of your personal life: you are probably moving to another town, choosing another home, finding a new favourite grocery store, a new gym, etc, etc. This takes time and certainly impacts how productive you are.
If you are enrolled in undergrad research programs, and you're already well adjusted to your lab's/research group routine and workflow, it might be that you'll feel much less of an impact of changing from undergrad to grad research programs. It might be that you can start being productive right away because you don't have to worry about a lot of things.
On the short term, it might be that you manage to turn this into one extra article published at the end of your PhD. It's not improbable. But it's not incredibly probable either.
You incur in a lot of risks if you don't change. If you spend too much of your formative years working on the same research group, you risk becoming too well adjusted to its workflow and research programs, to the point that you can't see alternatives.
Also, the real impact of a few months of advantage and an extra article, if it really happens, is probably offset by the advantages of moving to another university. A couple years after your PhD the time you lost finding an apartment and banging your head against the wall to understand your new research program will most likely be forgotten and will not influence your career at all.

Here's an intermediate step that some of my friends took: they stayed on to do their Masters in the same lab where they did their undergraduate study, then moved college (and country) to do their PhDs. That way, they got more research experience in an excellent lab in their home country (keeping costs down a bit), then used their PhD stipends to offset the cost of living abroad.


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What are the negative effects to the first author when adding coauthors?
There are many questions on this site which involve authorship disputes and ethicality.
In fact, there are often people who are greatly distressed when their contributions to a paper are "lesser" than they expected, for whatever reason. This could range from having a co-first author added, or having other secondary authors added to the authorship list. Another famous example woudl be the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper regarding Big Bang nucleogenesis, where the first author Alpher greatly resented the addition of Bethe to the authorship list.
However, I do not understand why adding co-authors would be a bad idea. Surely, the fact that you were helped by another person means that they should be co-authors on the paper, as long as they made significant intellectual contributions.
None of the fields mentioned in this question regarding authorship norms had any explanation of the potential detrimental effects additional authors have to the first author.
What, then, are the possible negative effects that the first author can suffer if other authors are added to the paper?
Note: I do not intend to ask regarding issues where the original author is removed from consideration, only those where the first author is kept, but other coauthors are added to the authorship list.

It should be mentioned that in the famous Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper, Gamow added Bethe's name to the paper just to make a (relatively funny) joke. Bethe contributed nothing to the paper. Which makes that situation very far from the typical case IMO.

"co-first author" How do you list both authors first? Do you set it up so when someone downloads it it picks an order randomly?

@PyRulez The question of co-first-authorship has been asked here a number times.

I think for some people, the principle is important: they didn't feel that the person whose name has been added contributed enough, and humans hate the feeling of giving up something unfairly.
That said, there is a very real cost in terms of credit.  This will not be consistent across different people looking at your record, but every new co-author decreases the chance that the important part of the work will be attributed to you.  There was actually a recent study about this which found that women pay an especially large price on this score: when they do joint work with men, the evidence suggests the men tend to get the credit (the actual observation of the study is that their chance of getting tenure do not improve).  You'll note though, even for men a solo paper improves chances of tenure by more than a jointly authored paper with anyone.

+1 for the principle of the matter. Giving someone credit for little to no work devalues your own contribution.

Journals are increasingly combating this outcome by asking authors to declare contributions. On a 2013 paper where I was one of the co-first authors, we had to state something like: BNN and TYM designed the study and wrote the manuscript. BNN, SZ, and JTA performed the synthesis. GRH designed the computational model, and CMC performed the calculations. PCM performed electrochemical analyses. of course such practice does not prevent lying, but that is a different ethical issue.

+1 for the TIL re: females suffering when coauthors are added.

@BenNorris I agree that's an improvement, but it requires people actually read that portion of the paper.  They might not always do that when reviewing job applications.  It's also when integrating little bits of information (like what someone did on a bunch of papers) where bias can easily slip in.

Following the link to the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper I found that there is an answer for this particular case that seems important. From the Wikipedia page:

He [Alpher] felt that the inclusion of another eminent physicist would overshadow his personal contribution to this work and prevent him from receiving proper recognition for such an important discovery.

For this paper is seems save to assume that many people will consider that the order of the authors has not been decided by contribution. I am not sure about the rules for author order in physics at that time but for sure people would immediately get the intended pun. Hence, I can understand Alpher's concern.
So in fields where order of the authors is not by contribution (or for special paper like this one), having one more big shot in the list of authors may really lead to the wrong perception. In fact, for PhD students in math is in not at all unusual to have papers written directly under the supervision of the advisor appearing with only the PhD student's name on it, even if the supervisor may have contributed some ideas. In this way it is ensured that the work will be perceived  as the PhD student's work.

Note also that Bethe didn't contribute anything to the paper, his name was just added to make a joke...

Read the Wikipedia page for the full story.

Also relevant for this case is that Alpher was a PhD student at the time.