text:
How/where to cite corrigendum publication on CV?
Citations for my publications on my CV are listed in reverse chronological order, and I am wondering how/where to list the citation for a corrigendum.
Should I list the corrigendum and original article citations one after the other (even if the list would then not be strictly reverse-chronological because there are other publications in between)? Should I make a note about the corrigendum in/after the citation of the original publication (or maybe a footnote)? Should I list it all reverse-chronologically even if the corrigendum citation is then not listed close to the citation of the original article?

Personally, I would add the correction to the citation for the original article, since they really go together. I certainly would not claim it as a separate publication.

@JonCuster What if you published a corrigendum for someone else's paper?

I’ve never seen someone publish a corrigendum on someone else’s article. Those are Comments if you point out an issue. But I could well be surprised…

I would list them together, with the add-on content either a) in brackets, or b) indented with a tab to clearly mark them as part of the same work. You really don't want it to appear like you're trying to make your citation list longer by having published corrigenda.
Here's an example of how option (a) might look:

Rogers, M. E., Craig, A. C., Munns, R. E., Colmer, T. D., Nichols, P. G. H., Malcolm, C. V., ... & Evans, P. M. (2005). The potential for developing fodder plants for the salt-affected areas of southern and eastern Australia: an overview. [Corrigendum: 2006, v. 46, no. 12, p. 1665.].

Note here that really all you need for this paper is the latter details to find the best current version of the paper as the journal has stitched them together at least for the online version. You might opt to keep both details if the journal hasn't done that, though the corrigendum will at minimum include a citation to the full paper.
I think it's up to you whether you'd list this paper with other 2005 papers or 2006; I'd probably keep it with 2005, the original publication date.

Hi Bryan, what if I published a corrigendum for someone else's paper?

@HighGPA I don't know, I haven't heard of such a thing.


text:
About the use of the same lemmas in two different papers
I proved two lemmas that I need both in two different papers. The two papers will be submitted in the same period.
Is it justifiable to include the SAME proofs of the  two lemmas in the two different papers, instead of including the proofs in one  and then referencing to the other

I would delay publication of one in favor of the other, then cite the other paper and its lemma to avoid running afoul of any copyright issues. You also gain an easy self-citation this way (which is bad or good depending on your thoughts on the matter).

@Cameron Williams  The trouble with delaying here is that, for math papers, it can takes years for a paper to be accepted and more to get published.

@Cameron Williams Now I realize I am just guessing that these are math papers.  Lemmas show up elsewhere.

@Ayoub Ghx  Are this, in fact, papers in pure math?

@TerryLoring They are indeed.

This would depend on the length and complexity of the proofs. You would have to cross-reference the lemmata whether you include the proofs or not. Since Math editors are experienced people, they will understand your problem.
The argument against including proofs in both papers is redundancy. The argument for including proofs in both papers is self-containment.
Sometimes, you can compromise and give the proof-idea in one paper and a full proof in the other.
Your situation is complicated because there is no guarantee that both papers will be accepted. In Computer Science, we could solve this with a tech report. These days, arxiv will serve you well. Thus, you would publish a preview of both papers that you then can withdraw once your papers have been accepted.

By 'preview', do you mean 'preprint'? If so, are you suggesting to withdraw an arXiv preprint after acceptance? That goes against arXiv policy, so probably I'm misreading your answer.

A standard approach that solves this problem is to upload the papers to arxiv.org at the same time you submit them to a journal.  Then you can include the proofs in one paper and cite them in the other, and reviewers will have access to the proofs.

Indeed, this is the simple and standard approach in mathematics.

In addition to the issue of self plagiarism, which is solved via citation, there is the possibility of copyright issues. Normally when a paper is published the publisher takes over the copyright, yielding a license for some things back to the author(s).
So, when the first paper is published, containing the proof of the lemma(s), the copyright is now held by that publisher and even the author needs to respect that, limiting how much can be copied from the first paper into the second, even with citation.
The issues are less if the same publisher publishes both papers, but even then  some permission is probably required.
If both papers are to be submitted simultaneously (or nearly so), you may need to finesse this a bit. For first submissions, include everything in both papers, but give notice to the editor that changes will need to be made if the other paper is published first. Once the first paper is published (unlikely that such would be simultaneous given how publishers work) provide an updated version to the second paper with the proof removed and the reader referred to the first paper for details.
This would give the reviewers complete information on which to base the review and not result in either self plagiarism or copyright issues.
Short version: Use the time to publication to your advantage to make both papers consistent with all applicable rules.
It might be useful in some ways to delay submission of one of the papers until you get some indication from the publisher on the likelihood of publishing the other. You then have more information on which to proceed.

Do you mean to say "...you may need to finesse this a bit" ? or "...you may need to finesse this a bid" ?

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How should I mentor a PhD student?
I am a postdoc and I would like to know how to mentor PhD students:
Goal: Make the student as productive as possible so that he can reach his highest potential and provide us as much results as possible.
The student is smart, has no big personality flaws as far as I know. I was told by my boss that he is into gaming and that I have to push him so that he delivers. I do not want to micromanage him, I have heard that doing that is bad. Some say that we have to let the students figure things out on their own. However, when I let the student figure things out on his own, he will get stuck for days on something trivial. When I find out what he has been trying to do, I think
"Why did not you ask me before, you wasted days on this and we could have solved it in a few minutes"
So, there is this potential of the student wasting time but also the fact that they need to do it themselves to learn. Also when I go through his code I find stuff that I do not like, that is not well done. So I want to change every little thing he does, this is again micromanaging. On the other hand I do want things to get done properly and if I am going to change everything he does, then I might do everything myself, because it pretty much takes me the same amount of time. Then I do not know why we would pick a student to help us. However we cannot do this alone, it's too much work and we are supposed to mentor students and produce PhDs, it's even good for my CV to show that I mentored students.
I am not sure how to deal with this, there are many factors at play and I would like to know how people here deal with these problems.
Cheers.

What field? What part of the world?

"I was told by my boss that he is into gaming and that I have to push him so that he delivers." Are these supposed to be related? Or just two different thoughts?

I am a PhD student who is currently polishing up his thesis for submission. Here is how I think it should have been done.
Assume that they know nothing about academic work. You can even tell them that, if you do it in a nice way, they will understand that you are simply take care that they know the basics. Unless their Bachelor/Masters program specificaly teaches how to work in academia, they will have absolutely no idea. At our university only psychology students actually understand the scientific method, and only molecular medicine/biochem students are prepared to work in their respective fields. The rest learns facts and math. What I mean by that specifically is:

They do not know how a paper is structured and why it is done the way it is in your field. What belongs in the introduction? What belongs in the discussion? Andy why? Etc. Take a good paper, and go through it. Then take a couple of bad ones (maybe student submissions), and make them point out mistakes to them.
How do you find a research idea? (Relevant only after the first project)
How do you actually research a question? Some might never have used google scholar, and do not even know that you can look up "cited by". Why should you always try searching for a review? How do you stay up to date in a field? What are the top journals/people to pay attention to?
What tools are there? They might be obvious to you, but they are not to them. Google Scholar, Connected Papers, Zotero with all Plugins, etc. Whatever you use, show them.

Then, to start them off, give them a clear project, with a clear goal. They have no idea what is relevant in the field, and neither should they. A review of a very narrow field might be a great place to start.
My personal preference: Allow them to send you rough drafts. My prof wanted to see an almost polished version of everything, which meant that I wasted so much time ...
Once they wrote the first paper, they probably should be able to come up with original ideas and be very productive, and you will not need to guide them, but will be instead working as peers.
Make sure they are not afraid to come to you with ideas. If they have a very stupid one, explain why it is not feasible, instead of dismissing it. Never use your taste/experience as a reason to dismiss something without a good explanation. If they are afraid to come to you with ideas, they will not be having fun, and you will not be happy, trust me. This also goes for teaching. If they want to try a new method, either explain why you think it is not feasible, or just let them try it, and maybe crash and burn.

The title question is certainly too broad for an answer here: books have been written on effective mentorship. Instead, I'll focus on your comments about micromanaging.

I was told by my boss that he is into gaming and that I have to push him so that he delivers.

Set frequent goals. Let's do X by tomorrow and Y by the end of the week. If they meet these goals (or have convincing reasons for what they tried, where they got stuck, and how they tried to get unstuck), then there is no issue. As they come up to speed, they will start setting these goals for themselves and you can step back.
If they are frequently turning up with minimal progress, then you might consider some set working hours (e.g., 1-5 on MWF). This is not meant to be punitive, but helpful -- if they are just down the hall from you, you can check on them often and probably greatly speed things up. If there are other peers they can sit with, so much the better. Once the project starts moving, it becomes fun, and they will likely stay engaged on their own.

However, when I let the student figure things out on his own, he will get stuck for days on something trivial. When I find out what he has been trying to do, I think "Why did not you ask me before, you wasted days on this and we could have solved it in a few minutes"

Beginning students do not know what is trivial, what is tractable, and what is hard. They similarly do not know what already exists versus what they need to do from scratch; so, they may spend far too long reinventing the wheel. Some inefficiency due to this is inevitable.
The solution is frequent, brief check-ins and/or asynchronous chats. Impress upon the student that if they're spending more than a few hours doing something, you should know what it is. That doesn't mean you need to micromanage their time -- if they are reading a paper and implementing it, that could take a week, and all is well and good; schedule a follow-up for a week later. But if in the course of this, they spend more than a couple of hours trying to understand a particular equation, they should ask you about it and get your concurrence before spending additional days trying to figure it out on their own. They'll eventually get a better sense of when to come to you versus when to dig in on their own.

Also when I go through his code I find stuff that I do not like, that is not well done. So I want to change every little thing he does, this is again micromanaging. On the other hand I do want things to get done properly and if I am going to change everything he does, then I might do everything myself, because it pretty much takes me the same amount of time.

Code is tricky for the reasons you mention. I have found a few guidelines.

Never debug your student's code.

If the code doesn't work at all, they should figure it out on their own or with their peers. At most, you can have them explain it to you; this may reveal conceptual problems that you can explain on the whiteboard.
If the code does work but the results are not reasonable, you can ask for cross-checks. Explain why you are skeptical and suggest some tests that will either make the error apparent or will allay your suspicions.

Never edit your student's code.

In most fields, most code is "private": everyone writes their own. This holds also for your student -- they should be giving you only qualitative outputs like charts, figures, or tables. The code they use to generate these is entirely their own; you never edit it, download it, or (in most cases) even look at it.
In other fields, some/most code is "shared": the lab has a complex codebase that everyone contributes to. In this case, your student's code will have to meet the group's quality standards -- but again, you should limit yourself to explaining what the problems are. You should be able to articulate the problem, even if it's just stylistic, and they can fix it from there.

Give lots of feedback

Similar to your comments above, students can spend hours writing a simple script that you could have written in minutes. Part of this is experience, but much of this is workflow. Students won't even know what a good workflow is until someone shows them.
"Research code" has its place, but it would be good if students had at least a vague awareness of higher concepts such as data structures, memory management, scalability, profiling, version control, IDEs, Linux and its native tools, advantages of different languages, etc. It is a real shame when students spend thousands of hours coding but never really get beyond functions and loops.

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


text:
How to approach bad communication with my department
I am a mathematics student at a top 10 math department in the US.  Something I have been struggling to handle is an on-going situation I have been facing with with the administration.
When I was accepted to this university I was instructed to submit the syllabi of the graduate courses I had taken at the institution I came from.  My initial email to them was in the beginning of this year.  After 1 month without hearing from them I sent another email following up.  The third email was done in the beginning of April with again no response.
I have tried to reach out to different people within the department, but I have gotten no response.  As emails are easier to ignore, I tried going to the administrative office in person.  The receptionist said that they were not accepting walk-in appointments and I should try emailing them.  I explained to them the situation, however the receptionist would not budge on their stance.
As this situation progresses I am getting increasingly frustrated and paranoid about my treatment.  These issues I did not experience at any of my previous universities.  As such, I am kindly requesting if someone has any suggestions or experiences on this matter.

I'm not sure what the issue is. You say you were asked to send something and you did. While a reply might have been nice, it may not have been promised. It sounds like a big department with a paperwork problem. What is your concern that you haven't seen a reply?

What makes it important (and I forgot to mention) is that the courses I submitted for review would later on be used to count for the coursework required for my degree.  When I spoke to them during a student visit they encouraged me to submit my course syllabi as they thought it would directly transfer, thus saving me time and repeating courses

Depending on who you talked to, the idea that grad courses "transfer" might be delusional. Certainly dependent on the judgement of the people in the department. So, especially if you're not directly talking to faculty in the math dept who are authorized to actually decide such stuff, it's just not gonna  happen... no matter what some well-meaning person (not authorized to actually decide) might have said. At the same time, that should scarcely matter, since you should be able to "test out"...

I'd suggest talking to your advisor about the issue. Maybe s/he can intervene and get  you the information you need. I went to a place with 150 doctoral students, but professors likely get better responses.

If your department is like any other US math department I’m familiar with, it will have a graduate program coordinator (or similar title), a graduate program chair/graduate vice chair, and a department chair. The first two on this list will usually have office hours you can visit to talk to them about any issues you need help with. The department chair ought to be available to talk to you, either as a walk-in or by scheduling an appointment, if you have failed in your efforts to get one of the first two to listen. Through some combination of email, phone, showing up in person and knocking on doors, and gentle assertiveness, it is difficult for me to imagine that you will fail in getting someone to hear your concerns and work out a solution.
Good luck!

I agree with this answer, and I'd add that the question Selig should ask any of these officials is not "What happened to the syllabi I submitted?" nor "Why won't the N people I've already emailed tell me anything?" but rather "Has it been decided whether my earlier courses, for which I submitted syllabi as instructed, will count toward my required course work?", i.e., the question that (s)he really wants answered. (This probably seems obvious, but the issue of whether these courses count was omitted from the original question.)


text:
What are the ethics of creating educational content as an advanced undergraduate?
I had the idea to create a series of short-form educational videos intended to de-mystify quantum computing. Ideally, these videos would be suitable for a wide target audience and consequently would, by necessity, involve simplifications and some lack of rigour, however I am adamant that they must not compromise on accuracy for the sake of accessibility.
For context, I am a 4th year (FHEQ Level 7) undergraduate student with a background in quantum mechanics and quantum information who aims to pursue postgraduate research in the field. My concern is whether it is responsible to create educational content at my level of expertise. All the content I produce would adhere to proper referencing conventions and be contextualised by my qualifications. Whilst I would obviously not publish anything I knew to be false, it would defeat the point entirely if I were to accidentally misinform my audience.
I would be grateful to hear perspectives on the ethics of such a project. Would it be irresponsible to assume a role as an instructor at this stage in my education? Would it be a good idea to ask an expert at my institution to review the content I create prior to uploading it? As an academic, is this the sort of request you would be happy to fulfil?
My view is that, provided I am faithful to established literature and what I have been taught, any inaccuracies would be considered 'acceptable' for people studying at my level and below; I would be considered qualified to tutor students at a lower level and I would not expect my peers to learn much from my content. Despite this, I recognise that simplifying concepts is a difficult task and a really solid conceptual understanding is necessary to make sure important details are not lost in simplifications.

For a good undergraduate it would be hard to make content worse than much of it out there…

From watching too much bad videos: take care with sound (and avoid adding loud irrelevant music).

About half the internet consists of people saying things about topics they have no formal education in, that they know very little about, with seemingly no consideration of whether they might be wrong, and they're often wrong, and often in ways that cause a lot of harm to many people. The fact that you're worrying that you might not know enough to educate others already suggests that you're approaching that responsibly.

"it would defeat the point entirely if I were to accidentally misinform my audience" - not really. Being misinformed is not a binary property. You might misinform your audience, but if you actually try then you will probably misinform them less than they already were.

I went to a school that was fairly highly regarded.  Some senior undergrads that were looking to continue in academia were often taken on as paid assistant TAs for large introductory classes, which sometimes had them preparing additional material for labs.  Everyone seemed to appreciate the system.  It took some work off the plate of the graduate students, gave the undergrads some experience, and the students often found it helpful to have someone who went through the same program they were just starting to assuage program-specific concerns.

I think that the ethical concerns for this kind of thing are far less than they might be for some other academic fields, such as teaching endangered languages or about other minority issues, where you have an ethical responsibility not only to the learners but also to the subjects of the discourse. (I could write or make videos about Deaf Studies, but I wouldn't. That should come primarily from Deaf people.)

I did something like this.  When I was an undergraduate student, I had a job as an assistant for the head of our physics department.  My primary job was to create for him physics demos (in the form of Java Applets) that would be used to teach other physics students.

There shouldn't be any ethical issue in a good-faith effort to educate others, especially when you provide proper context, including that of your own level of expertise.
Sometimes, in fact, a book or similar produced by a newcomer to a field can give context to other newcomers that can get them over initial blocks and problems. A "view of a novice" can be enlightening, as long as it is properly put.
But, yes, it would be good to have someone more experienced look over your shoulder as you do this. It will help you be a better presenter and also assure that your possible misconceptions don't get into the work.
Producing it, even if you never actually publish it, would also be likely to increase your own understanding.
What you suggest in the details sounds about right. Just. Do. It. (and have fun along the way)

A version of this is that I often find PhD theses to have some advantages when learning a new a topic compared to published reviews, since the thesis will often describe technical points that are too minor for a review, but are still essential to understand for someone who wants to work in the field. You shouldn't ever completely rely on any one source of information of course, but I've definitely found advantages from reading/hearing explanations from knowledgable people at different skill levels.

"Producing it, even if you never actually publish it, would also be likely to increase your own understanding." - I can confirm this. I create educational material myself occasionally. During that process I often discover gaps in my knowledge and understanding I wasn't aware of and fill them. There is an old saying: "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to someone else".

I think there are no ethical problems here - I'd state your credentials, be cautious on over-emphasising your knowledge, and get someone to check them through for correctness.
However - If you have a friendly faculty member, there's no harm in asking for help! Personally, I'd love it - if they're good videos, I'd borrow them for educational content. If they're not, explaining to a wider audience is still sure to help your conceptual understanding of the subject. I'm also able to list things like this on the "community engagement and outreach" bit of my publication history, if it goes far enough.
I think most professors keen on teaching will be extremely encouraging of your efforts, even if they don't have time or resources to offer more direct support.
In universities I've worked at, we'd often also have some central resources for decent cameras that can be loaned, AV equipment that can be borrowed. It's worth hunting around for that kind of thing too.


text:
Academic Independence: Interaction with your Line Manager?
I am a University Postdoc (got my PhD a couple of years ago). Many of the fellowships/grant applications require that the new "sponsor" is different from my line manager. The line manager has the tendency to want to keep me and suggested that in case I apply with someone else and the proposal doesn't go through "there will be questions in future applications if we are seen to keep working together after your current application". This could be a genuine concern, but also sounds a bit like "if you apply with someone else we're done". You'd expect that your line manager would just want you to grow irrespective of the path you chose, but we all know life is not ideal. How to deal with such situations? Should one apply without informing the line manager? It sounds strange as you would probably need their recommendation letter. Should one simply start applying to lots of venues hoping at least one goes through, knowing they won't be able to go back to their current line manager? Can you all share some experiences from your labs on this topic? Thank you!

What does line manager mean? Is this your research supervisor/advisor?

I don't know your postdoc supervisor/line manager but I doubt that their advice has the subtex of "if you apply with someone else we're done."  Hopefully you have a good relationship with them and can discuss it with them. A good supervisor mentors their people to become good independent researchers themselves. I see it as training future colleagues and friends, not competitors.
I think their recommendation, to work with a new sponsor, is good advice. I would also advise postdocs which I supervise to do the same. This is because it is difficult to establish credible independence if you continue in the same research group. Working with someone else will also broaden your network, which is important for an academic career.
Some fellowships will explicitly forbid working with the same supervisor. For example the Imperial College Research Fellowship sponsorship requirements state:

Applicants from Imperial are required to move from their existing sponsor/supervisor to a new sponsor for their ICRF, to increase both their independence and their breadth of experience

Other fellowships may not explicitly state this as a requirement but could very likely view moving to a different supervisor as a positive.

Thanks for the reply. How would you approach things on your end if your postdoc applies to fellowships with other sponsors and gets rejected? Would you offer to keep them until they get a new funding or would you suggest they keep applying to move to a different lab?

P.S: sorry I don't have enough reputation to vote your reply yet.

@JasonBurton It's a difficult question to answer, and one you should have a discussion with your line manager about. Hopefully they can provide you with support and mentorship with applying (review your applications, offer feedback, etc). The success rate on most fellowships is pretty low, so I would expect most applications to be unsuccessful. I would try to support a good postdoc in any way I could. If funding allowed I would try to keep them on, recommend them to another colleague, even apply for new funding with the postdoc as co-PI. There are various possibilities.


text:
What should I prepare for a postdoc interview?
I am preparing for a postdoc interview. In the invitation e-mail, they send me a paper to read beforehand. My question is that:
What do they expect from me in the interview related to the paper?

What field is this? What is the nature of the postdoc?

Most likely they will ask you to quickly summarise the paper and then discuss strengths and weaknesses.
Usually is more important to get the idea of the paper and present your opinion on it than details.
But nobody can really predict what they will ask. It might also be worth checking if the paper comes from a competing lab or a collaborating lab (EDIT: or the lab itself!).
The most important thing (apart from the paper) is to show that you will be on fire for the proposed research (just to like it is not enough).

...or from the interviewing lab itself, in which case they might be looking for your ideas about that topic, and interest in/willingness to work on it.

And beside this, think about nicely presenting you and what done during your theses

Thank you for comments! I have only working days to prepare. I receive the e-mail on Friday and the interview is scheduled on Tuesday next week.


text:
Physics PhD switching fields after short career break?
I was hoping to get some advice from anyone here on a situation I find myself in. I am currently about 8 months into studying for a PhD in particle theory at a top UK university. The department is good, my advisor seems like a sound guy (though we haven’t had much contact, entirely my fault), and the culture of academia is still something I really thrive on. However, I have really not fallen in love with my field. I really expected to enjoy HEP, as I had dreamed of doing exactly this since I was in VIth Form, but the reality of the field is really not sitting right with me - I have found it’s too abstract for me to really enjoy.
I have just been offered a fairly well paid graduate role, however it is basically an IT support job. I’m really unenthused by it, in fact I couldn’t care less, however I intend to accept it and use it to save money for later in life (I have a wedding to pay for). There is of course scope for me to develop skills there such as C++/Python skills, so it would not be wasted time.
I have always had a big interest in the climate, meteorology, and atmospheric physics, and I have found myself reading more and more about it rather than studying my actual work. My current goal is to stay in this job until September 2020 and start up again in one of these fields, however I don’t know how:
a) Leaving this PhD will affect my application,
and
b) Whether the unrelated job will cast a shadow on my application.
I intend to study whilst working, both by reading textbooks and literature on climate physics, and also by developing my coding skills. Is there anything that anyone would suggest I do I addition? How should I explain this situation to potential advisors in the future?
Thanks in advance!

I spent my whole life studying to be a professor of History. I did my AA, BA, MA, and part of my PhD in various sub-fields of History. I was enthusiastic about the career for the majority of that time, but while in graduate school I began to get the sinking feeling that I was not as interested in the field as I'd thought. I also kept getting the unshakable feeling that I was wasting my life. My other friends were out in the workforce, getting married, buying homes, and I was still hobbling around a library writing papers in the wee hours that would ultimately never be read by...anyone.
I left my PhD after realizing that while I probably had the ability to finish it, I did not want to pay the expense of 3-4 additional years of virtually unpaid labor. The likelihood of landing a professorship was low anyway because of the state of my field and of academia in general.
Three years later, I am now a junior software engineer. My job is challenging, rewarding, and a source of pride. It pays me a livable wage. And it's a tremendously good investment for my future. I shudder to think of what might have happened to me had I stayed in academia: cobbling together a living in "adjunct hell" or moving to some Nebraskan cornfield for a tenure-track position at a community college. No thanks.
To be sure, Physics PhDs have more career options - but not as many as you'd think. You'd have to slide your way into a hard-skill position somewhere and lean on your math skill set heavily, in the event that you could not land a professorship or a research position in aerospace (or wherever your interests lie).
However, learning to code is a great idea regardless of whether you stay in Physics, because it is a highly employable hard-skill, even among scientists. I'd look into Python specifically for its role in data science and its usefulness in science research careers. You literally cannot waste your time (as it relates to money or career goals) by learning to code.
Leaving the PhD might not harm your future applications to PhD programs, but it certainly does not do you any favors and you'll need to explicitly address/justify this choice in your new application. The first question they're going to ask is, "Should we invest in this applicant, knowing s/he already left one program?" There are even a few folks in academia who snobbishly refer to leaving the program as "washing out." These people are urchins, but some of them hold clout and occupy positions of power in your target school/program.
You also need to consider how exactly to explain your decision to leave the program. The wording is critical. If you make any indication whatsoever that your decision was informed by whimsy, they might ball up your application and practice half-court shots with it into the trash can. Your decision to leave the program needs to be part of a thoroughly strategic plot to further your career goal: "As I proceeded through my program, I found myself gravitating more and more towards climate science [specific reasons/examples etc etc]." You decided to return to the private sector, brush up on your ancillary skill sets, and then move into a program that better suited your interests. And you loved your former program, advisor, and colleagues. You need to appear that you've got a plan and you've got yourself and your goals all buttoned up.
The "unrelated" job doesn't have to be unrelated if you can weave it into the larger tapestry of your career goal. If coding is relevant whatsoever to jobs in climate science (hint: it is), then you can swing that experience like a truncheon in your application. Plus, having any "real-life" professional-level work experience is a great thing on any PhD application because it indicates that you can work on a team, follow orders, and complete complex tasks. My university (in the US) would rarely accept PhD applicants from recent bachelor's grads because they had not yet had any professional work experience and basically had never "adulted."
One last thing to consider is the fact that you are being offered a job that will allow you to develop a critical skill: coding. That in itself can turn into an incredibly rewarding and lucrative career, if you cultivate it properly. You'll be making money immediately and your job options will open up over time. If you return to academia, you will spend years making very little money, with no real guarantee of a lucrative career afterwards (this point is controversial but the debate over whether PhDs have a good return on investment is something you should absolutely read about).
I mention this last bit only because I think a new career has presented itself to you and you might not have realized it yet.

Thanks for the detailed response! You make some very good points, so let me address you bold points. Firstly, I’m actually really looking forward to learning some more python and whatnot, however this will be mostly in my spare time I think because the job itself is basically just support in the first instance. Maybe the role will develop with time, but I’m going to be proactive with it. As for the whole “leaving previous PhD” conversation, my plan was to be honest: the field really wasn’t for me. Plain and simple. Maybe I’ll love the new job, but I still feel like I belong in academia.

I think it's noble that you want to be honest about it, but from the perspective of an admissions employee or the senior faculty that will be reviewing your application, I suspect they might be like "Not for you? How do not realize particle physics isn't for you only after working on the PhD?" I'm assuming worst-case scenario for top-tier universities, but if you're okay with doing your work at a tier-2, honesty might be the best policy because you'll have less competition

That's a fair point to be honest. I guess I'm just unsure about how to play it. Since I posted this I have spoken to my supervisor to get the lay of the land and he was absolutely amazing about it - I couldn't have asked for more understanding. He's said he'd be happy to provide me with an LoR for any future applications I make, so with him on side perhaps the honesty policy is the only one open to me after all, haha. Both my current uni and my UG uni were top-tier, so hopefully this will offset some of the doubts that the admissions tutors may have. I guess I'll have to just wait and see!

If you can get your current advisor to be a reference on your new PhD application, that is an excellent thing. Probably the most valuable thing in your application.


text:
Can we submit comment paper to some other journal other than the paper's journal on which we are commenting?
Can we submit comment paper to some other journal other than the paper's journal on which we are commenting ?

It's not clear what a "comment paper" is. You need to clarify what you mean to get a good answer!

comment paper just points out flaws and incorrectness in someone's paper.

It might be allowed from journals of the same editorial group (cf. example) if there's a scientific reason to frame the discussion in another journal (e.g. interdisciplinary publications and the comment pertains only one part). Aside from these cases, no.
In other journal is of course allowed to submit full fledge articles that critique or initiate a scholarly exchange with respect to a paper appeared elsewhere. The "comment" format, is specific to articles appeared in a journal and should not be placed elsewhere. It should also be timely, and be submitted within a certain time frame from publication.
You can find the rules specific of your case in the journal webpage and contacting the editor.

Yes, you can submit it anywhere you choose. The question will be only whether it will be accepted there. If your paper has substance then it has a better chance, but that is no different from any other paper.
The original journal doesn't "own" the ideas in any sense at all.
But make the comments substantive. If you can extend (or refute) the original paper, all the better. But bland comments won't likely see publication.


text:
Choosing the content of the preprint
A paper was submitted to a journal, and now I am thinking of submitting a preprint on ArXiv. However, I wouldn't want to release publicly one of the examples in the paper yet, and would submit the preprint without that particular example (it's probably 5% of the paper). Could this be a problem given the reviewers might check the preprint? Is there any rule on the level of similarity between the preprint and the journal paper, or they are fully independent?

Are you sure the journal would allow you to publish a preprint? Not all do.

I am sure the journal is okay with this, I did it before and others do it. However, so far the preprint contained the same content as the journal.

I think that most preprints are papers still a bit "in process". Therefore it is natural that they aren't in the same form as the published version, which is likely to be changed on advice of the reviewers in any case.
So, assuming that the journal permits preprints that they don't control themselves, it should be fine. A preprint isn't intended as an alternate publication method (though used that way often enough) but a PRE print: an early version.
Your usage is a bit non-standard, but no one, including reviewers, will likely notice nor care.
In math, for example, preprints are favored so as to give earliest notice of results that might be useful to others, given the somewhat long publication process.

I don't see any problem with this. The submitted version and the arXiv version certainly do not need to be exactly the same, although in my experience it is more common the other way around (something in the arXiv version that was omitted from the submission).
A few possible issues this might cause:

A referee might see that there is an arXiv version and assume it is the same, therefore that everything in the paper is publicly available, not realising you are trying to keep that example under wraps.
Once the article is accepted, if you want arXiv to count for "green open access" you would need to update the arXiv version to match the accepted version, including the example.
Seeing the arXiv version might prompt someone else to come up with the same example and write it up (either publicly or just sent to you), assuming you don't know about it.

Thank you for analysing the possible issues. I will indeed update the ArXiv once the article is accepted. I would say the chance that someone else comes with that example are slim, as they would either need to use my new method in the paper, which would still give me credit, or use a different method, meaning it will have the disadvantages of the existing methods.


text:
Abstract accepted for full paper development; how to report it in a CV?
My proposal for a  book chapter call for papers has been accepted, and I'm now writing the entire paper. I want to report in my CV. Is it appropriate? If yes, how can I do it? I'm thinking of creating a "work in progress" section to list it together with the wording "accepted for submission", what do you think of this solution?
Thanks

Does this answer your question? Is there a difference between "forthcoming" and "in press"?

If the connection is not clear, this question (which is very similar to your question) was recently closed as a duplicate of the above linked question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/187101/should-i-place-an-accepted-but-not-yet-published-presented-paper-in-my-cv?noredirect=1&lq=1

I don't think there's a universal indicator here. For articles, the only tag I've seen that carries any weight is "[in press]", which generally indicates that the article has been accepted and is being readied for submission. The actual publication date (in the future) would be indicated in the reference itself.
As such, given that your CFP response was accepted, I would indicate that in somewhat long form... "[abstract accepted, chapter in preparation]". Provide enough context that the reader knows what you're saying.


text:
My supervisor is forcing me to change my PhD thesis to masters after 4 years of my PhD and passing all of exams, is that possible?
I am student in one of Australia Universities, my PhD supervisor is forcing to change my thesis from PhD to masters and this after 4 years of my candidature after passing all of my exams of conformation, mid candidature and final review, is it possible that he recommended that at thesis submission point? or it is examiners decision and does he have an authority to force my examiners to just give me master? and according to what circumstances they may recommended masters? noting that my thesis contain chapter of review, and 3 expiremental chapters. Thanks

This is a local question to be worked out with the university.

I would interpret this as your supervisor is considering you as having failed the PhD, which indeed they may have the power to do though you may have avenues to appeal or have an alternate sponsor. Like Buffy writes, this is going to depend on your university's policies.

Yes, it is possible.  It does not matter how many internal reviews you passed.     What is important is the recommendation of external examiners.  If your supervisor(s) deemed that you have not carried out enough work, and does not meet the examination criteria, then he/she may advise you to submit as a Master.  You can still go ahead and submit it as a PhD but you may fail.


text:
Innovative uses for a large donation for my department
Thanks to a large donation by a generous donor, my department has an "institute" that they use to host seminar speakers, subsidize student travel, support postdocs, and host social engagements.  I have been asked to administer this institute for the next two years, and have to give a presentation on my plans for it at an upcoming meeting.  My problem is that I do not have any additional creative ideas to use this donation beyond the uses I just listed.  Has anyone had past experiences for creative/innovative ways to use donations of this sort?

Have you tried soliciting input from your faculty?

@Roland it's about $100K per year...I guess that seems large to me :)

The field of research would also be relevant. Different disciplines have different funding requirements.

Do they want you to do more or different things?

I might add more ideas later if they come to mind, but here’s a few off the top of my head; you may find them interesting depending on whether something already exists at your institute/department.

Nursing room: At the (academic) research institute that I work at, we’ve been working on establishing and maintaining a nursing room for members of the institute. Some space with privacy, comfortable seating, a sink (for cleaning) etc. (Your university might have guidelines for how to setup a nursing room.)
Conference room with good hybrid meeting equipment: Given that so many talks (including Ph.D. defenses) are hybrid lately, it might be worth it to upgrade an existing conference room with good audiovisual equipment. Good audio speakers, microphones that allow for remote audiences to hear questions asked by in-person audiences etc.
Awards for students: Depending on how much money is available and depending on existing institute/departmental awards, you could consider setting up awards for students for excellence in research and/or service.
Physical spaces for students: Since in most departments/institutes graduate students don’t have individual offices and undergrads have no offices at all, it could be nice to setup lounge areas/rooms for students to convene at. If such spaces already exist, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind a new couch if you’re able to fund it!

There are certain things that professors and departments are not particularly good at, but that can be addressed with money if you're willing to hire someone -- and depending on how generous the donation really is.
Specifically, what often does not work well at all in academia is strategic planning. (That's because the reward structure for professors does not provide much support for long-range planning in both their own careers and, in particular, in support of the department's mission. And departments these days largely no longer have anyone else who has the stature to address strategic things.) So things such as "Where do we want to go with the department?" and "How do we reform the Calculus sequence?" or "How do we help faculty bring modern teaching methods into their classrooms?" are the kinds of questions that just never really get addressed.
As a consequence, if your Institute also has a teaching mission, then you might want to consider hiring someone with, say, a PhD and who sits between the disciplinary aspects and the educational aspects to take a holistic look at the course offerings, course designs, and other aspects of those courses that fall within the Institute's area. If they are also teaching these kinds of courses, the Department will likely be willing to co-fund their teaching duties whereas the Institute will fund the planning and design aspects of their work.
In the research realm, one could hire a coordinator to build inter-displinary and inter-departmental connections, support collaborative grant writing, outreach to industry partners who may be interested in the research produced by the Institute, etc. There too, the "long range planning" aspect is something one could ask that person to do, and if they do not have teaching responsibilities and only a small research expectation, they may have the time and energy to do the planning that faculty often don't.


text:
Is it a good idea to omit the structure of a paper from the introduction?
It seems that most every paper – at least in my field of computing – has the same structure for its introduction; first comes a global prosaic overview of the problem, then a bullet-point list of contributions, and the final paragraph of the introduction summarizes the structure of the paper. Invariably, these paragraphs start with a sentence like "The remainder of this work is structured as follows..." and then describe the structure of the paper.
Personally, I never really read these paragraphs, and I do not particularly enjoy writing them; they rarely provide information that is useful to me personally, and they take up precious space in papers. If it were up to me, I would prefer to skip this paragraph both when reading and writing a paper. However, such paragraphs are ubiquitous in manuscripts in my field, and deviating from the norm can lead to unintended side-effects.
I am often tempted to take one of the following three approaches:

Omit the structure of the paper from the introduction entirely.
Incorporate the structure of the paper in the more prosaic part of the introduction: "Therefore, a solution to problem XYZ (which we describe in Section II) would be beneficial to ABC."
Incorporate the structure of the paper in the list of contributions: "We show that XYZ holds (Sections IV and V)."

I would be very interested in learning more about academics' opinions about the "structure of the paper" paragraph. Do you see it as a critical piece of the paper or is it a waste of space? Are there good alternatives to it? Does it hurt the chances of a paper being accepted if the structure paragraph is missing?

Formulaic structure is often makes it easier to read the paper, since one knows what to expect where. The specific formula differs from field to field (or sub-field to sub-field).

Related: What's the point in "the paper is structured as follows"?

I think this question can be marked as a duplicate of https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3501/19627 as indicated by @Anyon.

In my papers, my list of contributions function as the 'structure of the paper' paragraph.  Personally, I don't read that paragraph. It can be omitted but I think it acts more like a 'breather' or a comma before a reader hits the 'hard' technical parts.

This is easy to test and will apply to conventions in your field. Write the introduction as you like, omitting the structure phrases if you like.
If no reviewer objects then it isn't a problem. But if they do, be prepared to respond. They well help you understand whether it is a good idea or not.
I think you are suggesting that some things are just done out of habit and institutional inertia. That is almost certainly true. But if those little "hints" are useful to readers then reviewers might notice, especially if the structure of the paper is a bit different from the common case.
It is unlikely to, of itself, result in a rejection and the first submission normally needs some editing in the common case, so you lose little by writing it as you think it should be written.
If you use other stylistic hints, such as bolding section headers, the structure should be easy to see in any case.


text:
Accepted a PhD offer but no reply
I got accepted to a PhD program in England. I received a formal offer letter on January 20th, which stated that I was supposed to contact the Graduate Studies Administrator via email in order to accept the offer. So I sent them an email on January 24th, telling them that I intended to accept it. However, I have not yet received their reply, and I am wondering if my email was properly delivered to them. According to the letter, the deadline to accept the offer is February 14th. Should I send them a follow-up email?

Check your spam filter (in case you haven't already done so)

No.
It's only been four days. In fact it's been less than four days, since 24 Jan to 27 Jan includes a weekend.
Be patient and they'll get back to you in time.


text:
Is it appropriate to ask a professor for publication opportunities?
I am an undergraduate engineering student. Last summer I was working on a project in a lab that was not particularly novel - it had already been published by another group, and it mainly involved implementing that group's results with minor changes. This summer, I have been given the opportunity to work in a different lab. I presume that I will be given the opportunity to discuss various projects with the professor when this job begins. At that time, is it appropriate to ask whether I can contribute to a publication, and if so, what is the most tactful way to do so?

Nobody gives a damn if an undergrad has a publication. You won't have time to write it yourself, so your name will be somewhere inbetween five others. Look for interesting projects, the chance that your name does land on a publication afterwards is certainly higher there.

Thanks, that's a good way to look at it.

There is nothing wrong with asking about the contribution to a publication. This shows your interest and that you will work for it. Also, you have nothing to lose. Think what's the worst that can happen if you ask! They'll say no, right? So, what happens if you don't? You still won't get the experience you want and the publication! So, your best bet always is to discuss your interest.
How to ask? Just show your interest in the project and that you are willing to work for it. Since you are an undergraduate student, you may face some skepticism at first, but if you show dedication, that'll prove your sincerity.


text:
Applying for a PhD in Europe as a South American. Do i convert all my grades to GPA or ECTS scale
I'm applying for a PhD position in Europe. I'm from South America and our grading system is quite different. As a requirement i need to send a transcript. Do i need to convert all my grades to GPA or ECTS? (Also, do you have any useful information on how to do it?)
Thank you.

Actually, the institution you apply to normally does this themselves from official transcripts that you have sent from your earlier education: undergraduate, masters, ...
Depending on the program you apply to some courses will be more important than others, and the receiving institution knows what they are looking for. When necessary, they will discuss the grading system with the other institutions as needed.
Schools around the world are quite good at this, actually.


text:
Can I email a professor from a different university about a proposed course project?
I am currently taking a math class and saw that a professor from a different university had some ideas/open questions for final course research projects on his page. I began working on one of these project ideas but I ran into a problem that I couldn't overcome (basically a certain type of equation doesn't seem to exist for the object proposed in his question).
I asked my math professor about it but they weren't sure. Would it be inappropriate to email the professor from a different university about it and ask them if this is the correct direction to work in for the problem? It would just be a one time email, not like expecting him to answer all my questions, but I understand how he could take it as such.

I would say go ahead. Just make sure that you ask your question clearly: describe the approaches you tried and what you have stumbled upon. Professors are usually delighted to see the interest in their subject, and moreover, such questions from students help to improve their courses. The professor might not necessarily reply to your email due to lack of time, but you lose nothing by trying.

Agree. Main thing is to keep your e-mail very concise: "I'm working on the X project from your website, encountered Y problem and got stuck, wondering if you could point me in the right direction. Happy to send you a more detailed write-up of my work if you're interested. Cheers, --Name."

I wouldn’t say it’s inappropriate (that mostly depends on the Professor) but I would not expect an answer. Professors teach classes at their home university and are not obligated to attend to students outside their class. If you found a mistake, or are contributing to the class in some way that’s another story.


text:
Correctly adding publisher information to BibTeX bibliographies
Certain bibliographic item classes in BibTeX require or recommend the inclusion of a address field which (as far as I can tell) is supposed to contain the city in which the publisher is located. However, it is often unclear to me what the best practice is for determining the location of a publisher.
Take, for example, a paper published by the IEEE Computer Society, there are no less than three possible locations that could be used for such a paper, namely:

New York, New York, United States of America (IEEE headquarters)
Piscataway, New Jersey, United States of America (IEEE operations center)
Washington, D.C., United States of America (IEEE Computer Society headquarters)

It's unclear to me which of the above would be most appropriate.
In a similar vein, Springer's automated BibTeX export uses the location Berlin, Heidelberg, but this clashes with the commonly used schema of City[, State], Country, i.e. it implies that Berlin is situated inside Heidelberg, which is untrue. Is there a more clear way to describe that Springer is, indeed, settled in both of these cities, but that they are both in Germany?

You can get it "straight from the horse's mouth":
The address for books is usually found on or near the title page of the book that you are citing. You cannot go far wrong by using what they came up with.
Springer is difficult, because they list now many locations starting in New York and ending in Tokyo. It used to be just Berlin, Heidelberg, New York. Only an automated parser would assume that Berlin is in New York, so I would use that for Springer. However, you can also trick bibtex by leaving the address field blank. If you do not include it, it often prints a nasty triple question mark.
IEEE Press (as opposed to IEEE Computer or IEEE proper) lists its address as Piscataway,NJ on its books.
For articles:
If you go to the digital library of IEEE, you can find an extensive bibtex entry for the article. It does not seem to be behind their pay-wall. However, it does NOT give an address.

Berlin, New York does exist, but yeah, if Heidelberg is in the mix it's hard to parse it that way.


text:
How does CiteSeerX's DOI parameter work?
For example, the DOI of "Disclosive ethics and information technology: disclosing facial recognition systems" is 10.1007/s10676-005-4583-2 but the parameter needed to reach the paper on CiteSeerX is 10.1.1.153.9046 as in https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.153.9046. Would someone explain the difference?

Perhaps CiteSeer could answer?

The DOI resolver on citeseerx seems not to work anymore. See https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/35421/what-happened-to-citeseerx-is-there-a-way-to-fix-those-links for ways to transform these to URL's.

CiteSeerX seems to use its own identifier system, running on their own databases. By using their own system they guarantee that all indexed objects have a unique identifier. While they happen to call this identifier DOI, it appears to be unrelated to the regular DOI system. Perhaps they use the same name because "Digital Object Identifier" is still a good description of its role.
Anyway, CiteSeerX's source code is available at their GitHub. Of particular relevance is their DOIHandler.java class, which provides the following description:

Singleton class for thread-safe DOI service. This class is intended to  maintain a database containing service configuration and records of the DOIs that the service has given out.  Each service using this class should have a unique combination of SITE ID and DEPLOYMENT ID attributes set in it's database (see external documentation) and multiple instances of DOIHandler should never share databases.
The handle syntax is SITE_ID.DEP_ID.DOI_TYPE.BIN.REC, where all variables are integers and the definitions are as follows:

SITE_ID: unique site identifier
DEP_ID: deployment identifier for multiple servers on a single site
DOI_TYPE: marker to determine the type of object that this DOI references
BIN: top-level ID space, each bin can contain only 9999 REC
REC: low-level ID space, record identifiers

I don't know what external documentation this refers to.


text:
How can I write a thesis if my master's program does not offer it?
I am thinking of one day doing a PhD in the area of counselling psychology in Canada, however my masters program does not have a thesis option and having done a thesis is a requirement it seems for almost all PhD programs. I would be willing to write one independently or do other research if it would be accepted?

While it wouldn't be, formally, a thesis, you can always write and publish your research. That would actually be preferable to a thesis that might get buried in university files.
But you probably need some guidance in going about it the first time. I'd suggest that you talk with a trusted faculty member to see if you can get advice and feedback if you want to do that.
But if a thesis-based degree is actually a hard requirement, you may need to study elsewhere, as you probably won't convince your university to change its policies.
However, your dilemma surprises me, assuming you are now studying in Canada and wish to stay there. I wonder if you have accurate information about the requirements for entry. If you do, I wonder why master's level place would be out of sync with what is required for doctoral education.
I would understand it better if you are studying outside Canada and want to later study there, but still wonder why they would have such rigid requirements.

However, this might not suffice for entry to a PhD program, if it specifically requires that you have completed a thesis-based masters program.

@NateEldredge, I wonder, actually, if that is as prevalent as the OP suggests. It seems more rigid than is my general experience. But, yes, it wouldn't be the same.


text:
How to denote remainder in a paper in science?
I want to write a result in a scientific paper that contains the remainder of X (a real number) divided by R (another real number), i.e. X - [X/R]R, where [X/R] is the floor function. Is there an appropriate notation for this? For example, X%R?

X mod R is often used.

X mod R. But this is probably the wrong site, the https://math.stackexchange.com/ or https://tex.stackexchange.com/ might be more suitable.

@Buffy Isn't X mod R only for integers?

Not really. But if you are doing computing, rather than mathematics, note that there are various inconsistent definitions depending on the language. Especially for negative values.

I use X % R much of the time (with the caveat that it's "%" in LaTeX, since "%" alone starts a comment). Do not use "mod"; it already means the residue class, which is not the same thing. (2 % 5 + 3 % 5 is not the same as 5 % 5; but 2 mod 5 + 3 mod 5 is the same as 5 mod 5.)

You can write it out in words as you did in the question.

Or define any symbol you want to use in a foot or endnote.

@Buffy in my field symbols are defined in the text.


text:
Best way to read academic/scientific books
I’m a computer science student in the second semester. I passed all my first exams fairly well and can follow my lectures quite decent (usually).
But whenever I want to dig deeper into a topic and try doing some studies on my own reading books it’s often hard for me to follow the author’s points and I often lose interest.
So my question is how do you read scientific books/paper?
Is there any pattern you follow and how do you keep yourself motivated and what’s your strategy to get the most of a book for you.

At your stage of learning (early), I suggest that you focus on doing exercises based on the texts you read. I assume that most of them are textbooks and hopefully they include many exercises.
In CS, you can write a lot of programs at this stage to solidify your learning.
Another option is to take notes and, especially, make notes on the questions you have that you can get advice on from a professor. I find it useful to use index cards for such notes. Initially write on one side so you can revisit the idea on a card and update it.
But reading is, in itself, too passive for deep learning and building insight. You have to move to some form of active learning. Exercises and sample programs are good for this.
If you are reading books that go beyond texts, one way is to form a small study group. Even two people is enough, three probably better (best?). Read the article and discuss it with your group. Others may understand some points better than yourself and you can help them understand other points perhaps. Again, take notes to capture insights. Ask someone knowledgeable (the professor) for things left unresolved.

I think this may vary a lot from one person to the next, but my preferred method is to first read through the text from cover to cover.  When I do this I am not attempting to fully understand the specifics as I go, I am trying to see the big picture and connections between things, as that is the framework that my deep understanding will be anchored to.  I can't understand the detail if I can't see the big picture, but there are others that can't see the big pictures if they can't assimilate the detail.  Don't force yourself into a method that doesn't suit you.  I try to read a textbook or two each month, usually reading a few chapters each lunchtime, so this passive reading stage is not unduly onerous - I find it quite relaxing.
Then I write programs (if it is a programming textbook) or I solve maths problems (if it is a maths textbook) and go into the material where I am interested in more detail.
I don't take notes, and I don't try and remember details.  That is what books are for, what I try to remember are the fundamental concepts and methods.  Especially for programming, don't try and remember details of APIs!
Buffy's suggestion of a study group is a very good one.


text:
Do PhD advisors support students taking some time to prepare for interview and find a job before graduation?
Finding a good job after PhD seems to require devoting a few months to preparation and interviews. Are PhD advisors typically understanding of this? Or do they expect the PhD student to continue doing research as much as before? I’m specifically interested to know about the norm in engineering fields (CS, Mechanical Engineering, etc).

This is a huge problem in CS right now, where students want to spend days on LeetCode.  That's all fine and well, but I tell the faculty they can't be funded by grants then. This is where the problem is.  The PI is often understanding until no work is done on their projects.

By "devoting a few months" do you literally mean doing nothing, or just making it a priority?

This is one of the benefits you get as an academic, and which is not customary in any other type of employment scenario. I worked for 6 years outside of academia after my BS. At that other job, even thinking of applying to another job would have been grounds for firing. In academia, I've seen postdocs and graduate students who take 2-6 months (!) of time in which they do nothing but look for another job, in full view of their employers (=advisors). But academia is also special in that your own graduate students and postdocs later become collaborators, so as a PI, you are much better off if your students and postdocs land good positions and become co-PI, co-authors, and in general, collaborators with whom you keep the paper machine fed. Most PIs understand this, and help their students. My own PhD advisor read and edited some of my application materials, sat through practice sessions of my interview talks, and suggested places where to apply. And it was the norm (I am a biologist, but my second postdoc was at the CS dept at an R1 engineering school, and I also worked at MIT, and this also seemed to be the norm at those schools as well)

Part of the PhD learning process is project and time management (at least in the UK where it's emphasised).

Are PhD advisors typically understanding of this?

In my experience, that depends on the supervisor. Some guide their students through the process. Some use their networks/circle of influence to assist/jumpstart their students.
Some bring their students on board collaboration engagements to boost their students research skills and outputs.
In brief, some supervisors support. Some in their supporting, does it in different ways.
All the best with the job hunting.

Mostly, it depends on how your advisor views you. Does s/he have positive opinion about you? If so, s/he will be supportive of you taking a couple of weeks time away to prepare for job interview. S/he might even suggest you some good prospective employers, although, if you are looking for industry job and your advisor is in theoretical research, then s/he might not be resourceful in this regard.

I think it depends partly on where you do your PhD. At least in my case (I am doing my PhD at a university in Germany), my supervisor is very supportive and has also offered to contact some of his co-authors and/or forward me emails about vacant PostDoc positions. As far as I am correctly informed, the employment contract I signed with the university also states that I should actively apply for open positions already during the PhD phase, so that I do not slip into social security once the employment contract expires.

Mostly PIs want to use you till the last day of your work and want to get as much as possible from you before you leave. So I would suggest don't expect your boss to help. If he offers you it's good otherwise don't trust.


text:
Difference between campus police and campus / public safety
Why do some American universities have actual campus police, with guns, while other American universities have "public safety" officers who don't have guns?
For instance, Georgia Tech and the University of Chicago have campus police.
Is it determined by the level of imminent danger that surrounds the campus?

Possible duplicate https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/99763/what-exactly-is-campus-security/99764#99764

This can get complicated. At the University of Michigan, there is a university police department ("Officers have full authority to investigate, search, arrest and use reasonable force, if necessary, to protect people and property" according to a university web site), which is part of a Division of Public Safety and Security.

In the US, most state universities will probably have police, but it is a state matter so it varies from state to state. Private institutions probably don't have police, but still need security for students and otherwise. Private institutions could, in theory, contract with local police for coverage (some places) but can't form their own police forces.
At state universities it is the state that is responsible for safety and security and it is probably cheaper/easier to integrate training, etc. if they are police. They also can speak and act with the authority of the state if they are sworn officers. And use deadly force, of course.
In New York, for example, the police on state campuses are separately organized from the town police where the campus is, but they have all police powers both on and off campus. They carry guns, tasers, etc. and wear bulletproof vests when on patrol. I think they have special training so that they respond more appropriately to young people than municipal police might.
But many of the campuses are in small towns, even villages, in which the overall danger/threat is minimal.
It is probably more of an administrative matter, combined with the paranoia of politicians who don't want to be blamed if something really bad happens and they can't claim to have taken all possible precautions.

MIT has campus police from what I remember.

@darijgrinberg So does Harvard, BU, and Northeastern, UPenn and other private institutions, see Wikipedia for an extensive list.

This is just wrong, both MIT and UPENN have accredited police departments. As I say here UPENN has police and security  and other things.

Yes, there are exceptions to the general rule. Up until the 1960's, police on campus were probably rare. There was controversy when it started to change.


text:
Partial Credit Retake
I want to offer my students a chance to correct their exam problems (with explanation) for partial credit in lieu of a curve. I was thinking of the opportunity to get half of their points back. However, a 90% can only go up to 95%, whereas a 50% could become 75%. Is there a more fair way to offer exam correction?

I'm not sure I understand what's unfair about the scheme you propose?

I'm worried about a student who had an 16 turned into a 18 being jealous about his friend turning a 12 into an 16.

For what it's worth, I've never had students voice that complaint (anonymously or otherwise) when I've done the same "50% of your missed points back" scheme. And even if that were not the case, I don't think feelings of envy are a good enough reason to not help student demonstrate learning and growth.

I recommend doing exactly what you say you're going to do in your syllabus, unless it's to fix an unanticipated problem, especially if the problem is to correct an unfairness.

What did you end up doing?

I'm not sure if this answer would help or if it is too late for this semester!
However, I just started a new retake approach that I learned from a colleague. I am now offering all of the students a chance to retake every exam. The retake is per question, so they retake only the questions that they did not do well in. I would only give them 80% of the difference they score. In order to be fair to those who are not retaking the test.
In order to demonstrate their mastery of the necessary method, students must successfully complete the question or questions they wish to retake in order to register for the retake!
I think this is helpful for the students because they will have the opportunity to study a certain topic again, ideally!! However, it is too much work (I would not recommend it for large classes).

how does this work? "In order to demonstrate their mastery of the necessary method, students must successfully complete the question or questions they wish to retake in order to register for the retake!" -- if they completed it why would they need to retake it?

Sorry, mastery may be the wrong word.
I indicate to the students that the retake involves the same topic. They have to demonstrate that they are able to solve it. So, they practice answering the question they failed (& want to retake).
I will review their approach and mistakes when they register. Sometimes they are unable to resolve it; hence, we review the concept.
I received positive feedback from engineering students. They felt this method helped them review a topic they didn't comprehend. After the exam, students usually ignore it because restudying it is pointless! (their own words)

It was the other clause I was asking about, not the "mastery" one

I think that homework assignments are just give-aways for students (at least in STEM). So in order to make them restudy the topic, I give them the option to retake it.
The other benefit is that no one is asking for a curve to push up the grade; the retake is the curve!

Resolving the questions (which they want to retake) on their own time is like an uncredited homework assignment for that particular topic!

I used to use a more generous option to all students on exercises, but not for exams, though exams were only a small(ish) part of the overall grade. If you announce such a policy at the beginning of the course it is best, though you need to be careful that you don't encourage people to slack on the first "taking", expecting to make it up later. Not allowing "full marks" on a retake helps encourage better behavior on the first take, I find.
As long as you don't disadvantage others, such as those who don't need such an option, you should have no ethical considerations.
If you aren't tenured, I'd chat with this with your department chair before instituting it, however.
But a focus on learning, which repetition helps, is better than a focus on grading. If they can show they have learned then I never had any problem with being generous with points. Just don't disadvantage anyone.
Again, they are there to learn, not to "beat" others, though not everyone will agree.


text:
Strategies for postdoc/tenure-track reference letter requests
Each individual seeking academic positions has to go through applications several times during each year they are applying. In Math the average might be around a hundred positions and this process is repeated every 2-3 years until the individual finds a permanent academic job.
This makes it annoying for the referee to write hundreds of letters every couple years. I know Mathjobs or euromathsoc may help them to upload once but recently, I see many positions that they require submission of the letters through their own systems.
I wonder if there is a effective strategy to apply for the maximum number of available positions, with minimum amount of annoyance for the referee. One possible approach is maybe submitting the applications only on October 1st, November 1st, December 1st and January 1st  so that the emails get sent to the referee's inbox only four times in a year. Is this functional? or there might be a  better idea?

You have to pay, but Interfolio offers a service that will collect letters from your referees and send them out and or upload them for you.

The mathjobs.org website allows a reference letter writer to prepare a single letter and share it with many hiring committees.


text:
What should I write in my biographical statement for a paper submission if I have no prior experience?
I'm a high school student with no prior experience related to this field. I worked on a project over the summer with some PHD students at a lab internship and it was good enough that I can publish it as a conference paper. However, I'm at a loss on what to write for the biographical statement.

What's wrong with "Lunaarke is a senior at Rainier High School in Seattle, Washington."

They ask for a biography of several paragraphs in length.

@Lunaarke That sounds very unusual to me, I've never seen a "biography" in a paper of that length. Does the journal provide some guidance for their unusual request?

I also guess that once anyone from the conference team reads that you are in fact a high school student with not much more to say biography wise they will be ok with a shorter than normal version.


text:
How to make the most of my PhD?
I have recently applied to a PhD program (computational chemistry) in the United Kingdom. I am from the United Kingdom and I have autism. I have asked this question because I would like to build a scaffold of sorts as due to my autism I find it easier to understand when I have things planned in advance and know what to expect. I have listed below some of the things I am aware of and I would greatly appreciate if someone could point out things I may have missed or expand on the parts below (or both).

From my understanding, my main priority is my research project.

However, I've read online that people publish and review papers
during their PhD. Is this something I should be doing and how do I go
about doing it?

Also, I've read people go to conferences, network and present their
research. How do I know which conferences to go to and the best way to network?

Also, will I have time during the first year to familiarise myself with the research material?

Published papers are the output of the research project, telling your peers what you actually accomplished. Some will say that you don't really understand an experiment until you write the paper...

In a doctoral program you aren't a fish swimming alone. You will have assistance in the second and third bullet points. If you choose the right advisor and learn to interact with them well then they will advise you on lots of these things, including your research. With autism, that communication may be a difficult task until/unless you learn to master it.
Other students in the program can also be a resource, pointing you to things, say. But it requires communication.
Many of the tasks you learn by doing; reading, reviewing, writing. Don't worry that you don't start out with those skills. They are attained over time with practice.
The program is usually structured so that you have time for all of the important tasks, but you will be very busy and need to manage time effectively. But, through any available coursework, reading, and research you want to become a (novice) expert in your field. It can be done.
One problem you might actually wind up with is being too focused. Take time for your physical and mental health.
At any university you wind up at look to see if they have a counseling office that can give advice on managing autism. You aren't alone among academics by the way. Many top academics/researchers are on the spectrum. They have found ways to interact with people so that it isn't obvious. Some are quite famous speakers, actually.

I already gave Buffy a thumbs-up. Just want to add some other stuff. The advice Buffy gives about getting assistance is very good.
Most PhDs have course work plus a thesis. While you are doing your course work you may or may not have a lot of free time. One class I took was given by a brand-new fresh-caught assistant prof. He had something to show us. He was proud that his one class managed to keep all the PhD students in our subject completely occupied for 3 straight months. One of his homework assignments took everybody in the class a full 60 hours to finish. The take-home final exam consumed about 80 hours of my time, and I was about in the middle for effort. We loved it and bragged about how much work we had done. Your mileage may vary.
Happily, the bullet-point items you list go together quite well.
For example, many people find that an excellent way to organize thoughts in your own mind is to write them down in a way that can be understood by others. Making it clear for others makes it clear for you. So writing journal articles and doing research are usually thought of as a very good pairing, even a required pairing.
Conferences are another form of this. Preparing a paper for presentation forces you to do another "run through." It may uncover things you didn't see the first however-many times you went through it. It's a different focus, a different light.
Seeing what other people are doing is also interesting. It may give you ideas about research you could do. Or it may just be interesting to know something you did not know before.
Conferences are also about contacts. Science has an aspect of exchanging ideas with other people. And it has the aspect of getting a job after your PhD. So brush up your social interaction skills and see if you can meet somebody at that conference. If they like your presentation maybe you can get a post-doc position with them.
Reading research journals is useful, even necessary. If you don't know the general trends of research in your field you are apt to try to publish stuff that has already been beaten to death.
Probably you can't read the entire literature in depth. Not unless you are truly unusually fast. Maybe start by looking at the table of contents, then read more detail in articles that seem to be interesting to your work.
You might try starting with some review articles. Depending on your field there will be journals that specialize in them. These are survey articles that give "the state of the art." You can also look for reports produced by working groups at various universities or labs. You can likely find reports from various labs and experiments that explain what they have been up to recently, and what they hope to do in the near future.

OP says they are in the UK; PhD programs in the UK may not have any coursework associated (I think it is most common that they do not).


text:
Submitting an abstract to a workshop without approval from all coauthors
I am submitting an abstract to a workshop (not a proper conference) and unfortunately it is looking like I won't be able to get approval from all the coauthors before the deadline. I do have approval from the key coauthors, and the only ones that are missing are people who provided the data. So I have two (or three) options now:

submit the abstract first with everyone, and only update it if any of the coauthors decide to drop out
submit the abstract without the ones that are still pending, and update it once they have sent their approval
not submit anything at all

The caveat to (1) and (2) is of course that I assume that it is possible to update the abstract once I have submitted it. Given that it is not a formal conference but a workshop, I would like to think that this is possible.
To give some context, in my field it is fairly common for people not to approve at all, especially when it comes to studies with a long list of authors. This has happened before. I am not saying that this is a good practice, but everyone is busy and this is not uncommon.

You might get in trouble for submitting something without everyone's approval. Do not submit without everyone's approval. Can you maybe call them for a verbal confirmation?
These situations where there is a deadline and not everyone replies can be difficult to manage.
For the next time, do the following: Give everyone a very reasonable timeframe with a clear-cut deadline date to reply within. Write down a consequence if they do not reply, e.g. "I will submit this abstract by xx.xx.20xx, so please let me know your comments or objections until yy.xx.20xx."
If the above strategy is what you want to follow this time is up to you.

Thanks for the advice. That's a good point and I did state in the email what the deadline is, what I didn't do is say outright that I will submit it with your name on it if you don't reply before then. I don't think it is possible to call them for verbal confirmation.


text:
Given a DOI, how can I programmatically obtain all the relevant dates from a paper?
I have to collect the relevant dates (date submited, revised, accepted, published) from a large amount of papers. I would like to do this using R but I could adapt to any other suggested method. Many thanks in advance.

I'm with Crossref's tech support team.  I can speak to what's possible via the Crossref metadata APIs. (with the caveat that Crossref is only one DOI Registration Agency out of several, though most DOIs for scholarly publications are registered with us)
Our metadata schema allows publishers to supply publication history with any or all of those dates, but it's entirely optional.  So, you're not going to find that kind of metadata for every DOI you query.
When publishers do include the publication history data, it'll look like this in the JSON output from our REST API, using the DOI 10.1128/mBio.02819-18 as an example
"assertion": [
{
"value": "2018-12-15",
"order": 0,
"name": "received",
"label": "Received",
"group": {
"name": "publication_history",
"label": "Publication History"
}
},
{
"value": "2019-01-24",
"order": 1,
"name": "accepted",
"label": "Accepted",
"group": {
"name": "publication_history",
"label": "Publication History"
}
},
{
"value": "2019-03-05",
"order": 2,
"name": "published",
"label": "Published",
"group": {
"name": "publication_history",
"label": "Publication History"
}
}

query via https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1128/mBio.02819-18
or like this in the xml API
<assertion group_label="Publication History" group_name="publication_history" label="Received" name="received" order="0">2018-12-15</assertion>
<assertion group_label="Publication History" group_name="publication_history" label="Accepted" name="accepted" order="1">2019-01-24</assertion>
<assertion group_label="Publication History" group_name="publication_history" label="Published" name="published" order="2">2019-03-05</assertion>

query via http://doi.crossref.org/search/doi?pid={your-email-address}&format=unixsd&doi=10.1128/mBio.02819-18
some other examples of DOIs with publication history metadata are
10.9758/cpn.2014.12.1.8
and
10.5155/eurjchem.13.1.iii-vi.2233
And you can find our API documentation at api.crossref.org.
There may be other sources which map DOIs to publication history dates more thoroughly than what the publishers opt to include in Crossref.  If so, I'd be interested in hearing about them!


text:
If someone upload their submitted journal both for peer-review and as a pre-print, how they are sure that their work will not be copied?
If someone upload their submitted journal both for peer-review and as a pre-print, how they are sure that their work will not be copied from random readers that have downloaded the pre-print in order to read it? I mean, if the paper is finally rejected and a reader has downloaded the pre-print paper, they can copy any part of the document they want and use it in order to to submit for publishing "their own" journal, since it is will not be published....Am I losing something here?

Because it is extremely rare that your concern plays out in real life.

Anyone that copies the preprint and submits it under their own name commits plagiarism. Plagiarism is a serious academic offense. If detected it'll usually lead to instant rejection of the paper, possible blacklisting by the journal, and very likely disciplinary action by the plagiarist's institution.
Before those consequences happen, plagiarism needs to be proved. Having a preprint is an easy way to prove priority - the author wrote the paper first, on this exact date, and if the reader's version is after that date, the onus is on them to prove they didn't plagiarize.

+1 Good answer, simple and to the point. Might add, established services like arXiv have a date stamp to prove priority.


text:
How can someone write an "outstanding" paper?
There are very difficult and well known journals where they demand only outstanding work in order to publish them. What characteristics/standards should a submitted work contain in order to be "outstanding"??

The major characteristic is to be considered outstanding by the editor and referees...

What are the criteria of the editor and the referees to say: "Ok, this work is outstanding, I will accept it"...? What they search/see on the work?

Is it a significant result (compare with what the journal usually publishes). Does it open up a whole new area? Is it clearly written so most readers of the journal would recognize the importance? Does it solve some long-standing problem? Is it likely to get 1000 citations? Do we just think it is a cool paper?

If a journal has too-high standards it would be very thin and only publish rarely. That is seldom a good business plan. The standards are as high as they need to be but no higher, with a desire to raise standards over time. Some journals publish a lot of very high quality work. But other things, of lesser "quality", perhaps, also contribute to the forward advance of science and scholarship.
I've found that the journals of large professional societies are high quality, though that may be field dependent.
Giants stand on the shoulders of others, only some of whom are also giants.
If a person wants to publish outstanding papers they need to learn, over time, to do two things, primarily. First, do good research on hard problems. But even finding hard problems that are current solvable is hard in itself. For most of us it helps to have a wide circle of collaborators and to hold a lot of discussions.
The second thing is to learn to write clearly and informatively, especially with difficult material. This is also hard as it is more than a technical skill, requiring some knowledge of the audience.
And then practice, practice, practice. And listen to the feedback you get.
Most of us strive for this (I hope). But whether we achieve it is up to others; our readers.


text:
If I want to write and publish a book where I use C++ code for GPUs, what are the steps?
If I want to write and publish a book where I use my examples with C++ code that I have written  for specific GPUs, what are the steps? Is there an infringement, because I will base the examples to GPU code??

What sort of infringement are you worried about?

For instance, how possible it is to use code for not-open source famous GPUs? The same happens for famous FPGAs, where the code is not open source...

How is this related to academia?

Of course it has relation with academia, since the book will have code inside, and I am asking If this can cause me problems....

I don't understand your use of "code". When you say "not-open source GPUs": The GPU is a piece of hardware. There is no code involved, so there is nothing that could be "open source". So I'm confused about what you refer to.

When you want to make good use of a GPU, you write C/C++ that engages GPU processing on what you want to compute: either image processing or Machine Learning or DSP in general...And my question is what happens if someone want to use C/C++ code targeted on this specific hardware (GPU, FPGA, TPU,...) and put it in his/her book.

Manufacturers of GPUs do not sell you their product with a condition attached that you cannot publish code for them. In any case, this stipulation would probably not hold up in a court of law. Thus, providing code written by you for a patent and trademark protected GPU is not a violation of your purchasing agreement.

there are a variety of book using/showing proprietary codes (abaqus, comsol, matlab). OP: go to the library, grab a copy of this book and check what disclaimer they add (usually something like "the coe is provided as is, with no endorsment from the code publisher/manufacturer")


text:
Validity of a publication record
Google scholar uses statistics, such as h-index and i10-index, to encapsulate the publication performance of academics.
Is there a way to check the breakdown of an academic's research record? For example, software that shows publication breakdown into peer-reviewed journal, non-peer-reviewed journals, conference papers etc.
When an academic has hundreds of papers, it is a time consuming exercise to review. This is the motivation for this question.
Apologies if this has already been answered!

If an academic has hundreds of papers, and doesn't have a reputation - if you're an outsider, evidence for this reputation might be invited talks and the like, but it's better to just consult insiders - then I think it's safe to conclude their work isn't all that worthwhile.  And if they have a reputation - that reputation counts more than the publication record.  What problem are you trying to solve?

Google Scholar does not offer data about document types.
Web of Science offers good disaggregations of publication types:
First, go to a researcher profile. Then, on the right menu, click on "View Citation Reports". Here is an example of Anton Zeilinger (see bottom right):

Next, click on "Analyze Results".
You can then choose "Document Types". With our example of Anton Zeilinger, we see (out of a total 453 publications) 332 articles, 82 proceeding papers, 21 editorial materials, 14 letters, 10 book chapters, 6 notes, 6 correction etc.:


text:
How is a PhD by publication valued in the US?
A PhD by publication is more common in Europe. I am expecting a few first authored publication this year in decent journals, but I am not sure of the value of this. Thanks!

I think that you will find that such degrees are accepted at face value just as you would expect. They are different systems and different ways to guarantee quality, but don't represent any difference in quality as compared to the US model. In fact, having those publications reviewed by independent (journal) reviewers is an added guarantee of quality.
But if the faculty of a respected university has granted you a doctorate in Europe, you can expect it to be valued in US.


text:
Cloth poster- attach to board
I printed a poster on cloth for easy travel. Now the conference says that they will provide Velcro patches that attaches well on paper only. What kind of tape should I bring with me?

Magnets could be a solution if the boards are metallic or have metal frames.

Visit your local hobby/craft/sewing store for something like this https://www.amazon.com/velcro-fabric/s?k=velcro+for+fabric