text:
Going back to do a Postdoc at 35?
I have been offered a postdoc position at Cambridge University. That's great, because two years ago I wanted to go back to academia and went to see my PhD supervisor (I finished my PhD in engineering in 2007) to ask if he might have  or know of a postdoc position I'd be suitable for. The answer was no, so a few months later I got a job as a structural engineer in Tokyo and wrote the whole thing off.
Last year I quit the Tokyo gig and moved back to Europe, because I couldn't keep up with the working hours in Japan anymore. I was looking for a job again, when out of the blue, my PhD supervisor contacted me, saying that he now had a postdoc position. I applied, and I got an offer, although I don't know yet how much I will be paid.
Of course, as things always seem to go, I also got an offer to work as a programmer for an airline company, right here where I live. The pay is similar, and the training will be very good.
In my heart of hearts I would like to take the Postdoc, but I am very worried about what will happen after the three years are over.
I am 35, nearly 36 now, have worked as a structural engineer and programmer in the past. I have a family (two small kids) and need to be able to look after them all. Fortunately I have enough savings to be able to take a (small) hit on the salary whilst doing my postdoc, but... what I don't want is ending up doing the postdoc, and then being stuck.
The plan was to do the postdoc, then get a lecturing position. But I have read many articles lamenting how difficult it is for the majority of postdocs to find a long-term position. I could have done that in my twenties, maybe, but approaching forty that is pretty scary.
From a material point of view, I am already significantly behind my peers who went to work straight after they finished their masters degree and don't really want to fall so far behind that I'll never catch up.
My question is, how true are the reports of PostDocs being forced to move from PostDoc to PostDoc (especially in the UK)? Does anybody know of somebody who did something similar to what I am planning to do (and did it successfully)?

Do you have publications? Work experience? Do you aim to get a lecturer position at the very best universities at the end, or are you ready to compromise on rank? Are you obsessed with science, or is it just an option amongst two?

I have some publications from when I was doing my PhD and one I published whilst I was working in Japan. I have three four years experience  as a structural engineer and three as a .NET programmer. I'm not particularly fussed about where I get a lecturer position, as long as I do and as long as it isn't a dead end (otherwise I might as well work in a post office or similar place). Whilst I enjoyed working on complex buildings I didn't find it near as challenging or interesting as the research I did during my PhD. I am an engineer, so I'm not that interested in pure science, but I really...

... applied science, which is exactly what the PostDoc will be about. It's right up my alley to be honest. I would lie though if I didn't say that the freedom to organise my own work and to take ownership of a project isn't a big draw in doing the PostDoc. I would very much prefer grappling with an open-ended problem and trying to push boundaries, than doing data management or calculating the size of steel members to UK/EU/JP design codes. And if I were single, I wouldn't even be asking here, because the choice would be clear.

Your plus is, you have work experience. Your minus may be your age. There are no rules for this kind of business, but if you are very energetic, ready to churn out papers, work like a nut to build up a reputation, you could turn the wheel in your favour, but the odds are slightly against you. One thing in favour, though, is that currently all good coders are sucked in into industry (at least in the UK), so vacancies for lectureships are opening up. I doubt this will remain so, once the hype is over, but right now, it looks good. However, this is personal impression, so handle with care.

related answer: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/17462/19607

@CaptainEmacs Thanks for the advice. I wish this PostDoc was anything remotely using my coding skills, but it will be straight-up engineering, so unfortunately that won't apply. You pretty much summed up what my best friend said though: do it and you'll probably be where you are now in three years, but you will also be nearly 40. Depressing.

You might want to bring up your concerns with your professor, and ask him about his opinion about your future, since he probably can judge this situation best and can give you meaningful advice - although he certainly may be biased.

@Olorun yes, I have and knowing him from doing my PhD I know that he is overly optimistic as far as academic prospects go.

If I may know, what is your nationality?

@adipro I'm German. Does it matter?

I would only caution you to be aware that employment situations are highly field and region specific. From what I understand, if you were in social science or the humanities you would be being overly optimistic, and your thought that you'd be in the same place you are now after 3 years would likely be true (at best). On the other hand, in "science" (STEM) - and especially in technology fields, though I don't know how structural engineering is fairing now a days - things do not seem nearly so grim. With a family, if you can have a good plan B, you can afford a more ambitious plan A.

I am currently a postdoc in the UK. My situation is similar to yours: in my thirties, have a family and little children. This is my first postdoc, which I took in my thirties. I also wish to pursue a career in academia. But unlike yours, I have no industrial experience and I am not from the EU. Cost wise, if you and your family are non-EU nationals, you will need to pay a lot more so that your family can stay in the UK with you. Still, regardless of your nationality, it can be a bit hard to support the family if you are the sole breadwinner, but it is not impossible.
Do you intend to continue living in the UK, or are you open to moving to another country at the end of your postdoc? Your experience of living in different countries plus your industrial experience are an advantage should you find that there are no suitable academic opportunities in the UK after your postdoc.
What I would think is more important is to have an understanding and support from your wife. As a postdoc, you might have more freedom and flexibility over how you manage your time at work, but the pressure to publish may be high. It is important to know your limitations now that you have a family. It is likewise important for your wife to know what to expect. Having said this, considering you experienced Japanese working culture, what I have just said might not be a problem for you.
All in all, it looks to me that there is nothing for you to worry about going back to do a postdoc in the UK at 35, at least not from the technical aspects above. The deciding factors could be something more practical or personal, but it could be that I have said this from my own limited perspective.

That was a great answer, thank you! If I may ask: what field is your postdoc in and are you managing to balance work and family life to your satisfaction?

@user643192 My field is engineering. I had several papers and two children during my PhD. As a postdoc so far I had fewer papers and only one more child. Clearly there is not only an imbalance but also a deterioration in performance!

I should add that there is not only work and family life to balance, but also social life with friends, neighbours, and extended families. Sometimes you can get the first two to balance, but the latter may suffer.

For guys with PhD who pursuing academic career the age they should worry about is their 'PhD' age (number of years since PhD graduation), not their biological age. So, in your particular case the real problem is not starting first (it would be first, right?) postdoc at 35 but starting the first postdoc when you are already 10 years PhD old. To put simply, the concern (that many of your potential academic peers would have when evaluating your job applications, funding proposals, etc.) is as follows: why did this guy move back to academia in 10 years after obtaining his PhD? In essence (as I see it), if you know the legit answer to that in your mind and heart (and, you hope, that this answer has at least some sense to the others in academia :) then go for postdoc.
Speaking more practically, while considering a postdoc option it is a good idea to do the following:

Talk with your PhD supervisor (and expected postdoc boss; btw, while it depends doing postdoc at the same place where you did PhD is not great career-wise) about your career in academia. I.e. in his/her opinion, what are your perspectives after finishing a postdoc period with him? Ideally, there should be some 'career development' plan for your postdoc period prepared before your start date: i.e., participate in these projects, publish that many publications, apply at this number of funding opportunities, contribute to that many ongoing/expected research proposals, apply to that many UK lecturer (or elsewhere) long-term positions, etc.
You are PhD with a significant industrial experience. Typically, academia-wise, it is not that interesting since academia is all about publications and, much more importantly, funding. However, in your particular case (and in your particular area and within your research directions) it might be somewhat different. E.g. will you have good chances to bring more funding to your/your research group because of your industry understanding and experience, contacts, etc? Will you be able to come up with feasible collaborative projects, etc? The point here is that just another postdoc (doing research, publishing papers, ...) is not that interesting to anyone as there are plenty of those and most of them are expectedly 'better' than you (younger, with no interruptions and hence more on the research edge, etc). At the same time, a postdoc who can bring value (in terms of collaborations, funding from companies, etc.) based on his industrial experience is much more interesting (and, in fact, rather rare).


text:
What is the best way (terminology) for a postdoc (PDRA) to refer to their 'boss'/'supervisor'?
A postdoc, postdoctoral research assistant in a university on a contract has a supervisor or a boss. They may not be the PI on the grant which pays the salary as it may contain other universities as well.
In conversation and in email, what is the best term to use for your postdoc boss? Something doesn't seem correct with the term boss or manager, or even supervisor.

I always call mine "Pankaj".

"Commander", "chief", or "boss" are my preferred titles.

See also http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5166/which-is-the-correct-term-supervisor-or-coordinator for (I think) a UK-centric view on this.

I've heard "supervisor", "advisor" and "mentor".  They can be clarified as "postdoc advisor", etc, to avoid confusion with a Ph.D. advisor.
There's also the simpler "I work with Professor Smith."

I don't like to use 'supervisor' or 'advisor', because people already quite often think I'm still a PhD student, and I don't want to contribute more to that impression.  In conversation, adding the word 'postdoc' sounds funny to me.
'Mentor' is a good suggestion though.  It wouldn't always work, but as it happens, in my case my 'boss' is also my mentor (two different roles), so I might start using that.

What about "line manager"? On some office papers they refer to my postdoc's mentor as my line manager.

@AmirHoseinSadeghimanesh: That's a much more "business" term.  You might see it on internal paperwork from your Human Resources office, where they need to impose a similar management structure on all the university's employees (office staff, plumbers, etc), but I've never seen it when you're talking about an academic relationship.  If you wrote me something about your "line manager" I'd probably guess that you worked for a company instead of in academia.

@NateEldredge +1

I would lean toward "advisor," as that encapsulates the role best in normal circumstances. You should be an independent researcher as a postdoc, so you shouldn't need much more than advice from your PI.
I personally reserve the term mentor for someone who advises you about (and throughout) your career, not just for a particular project.

What??  Are you suggesting that postdoc advisors don't give career advice in your field?  Yeesh.

How much mentoring are you going to get when you're part of a research group with over 100 members?

Considerably more than when you're working alone, since after all you have over 99 potential mentors.  Right?

From the group as a whole, possibly. From the nominal advisor, probably not—and that's what the question is asking about.

But then doesn't the same argument apply to PhD "advisors"?

The issue is universality. Not all advisors act as mentors, not all groups are 100-person behemoths. I've known many advisors who have been excellent mentors, and I've known (but thankfully not worked for) advisors who fall into the "run" category.

One "clean" way is to use host.

I'm a Postdoc at U of U., hosted by Prof. P.

sometimes it might indicate that that's the guy who pays your money, but not necessarily serving as your mentor.

I think it is really up to you (both you and to some extent the "boss"). The term "boss" to me is too managerial. I don't like the sound of "my PI", even if the boss is a PI, they are not really your PI. I prefer advisor over supervisor, I think it sounds more supporting.
That said, since you think it is an issue, just refer to the boss as Dr. Smith and then say you are a post doc for Dr. Smith.

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text:
How to search in Google Scholar within a particular conference?
Using Google's search operators, guide, we can restrict our search to that of a particular web domain, eg: site:twitter.com Paul Daniels
Within Google Scholar, can we perform a similar in nature search but for articles within a particular conference (or journal)? I am looking an operator specific to Google scholar which I expect would resemble conference:NIPS Paul Daniels

if you are in a computer science related discipline, much easier to use DBLP.

To search within a particular conference, open the navigation menu on the Google Scholar start page, using the hamburger button (☰) on the top left, and click on "Advanced search". This will open an extended search dialog where a field "Return articles published in..." exists.

It doesn't appear this feature still exists in Apr 2021

Where is this 'triangle'? Can't see it.

@NathanB Thanks for the question. It turns out that my answer was outdated. I have now updated it.

You can use the source: operator. For example, search by source:NIPS to restrict  to documents published by sources containing "NIPS" in their name.

This operator does not appear to work in Apr 2021

@DanielKats Strange, it still works fine for me. Note that Scholar is sometimes very picky: Sometimes you have to use the source's abbreviation and sometimes you have to write it out in full. Either way, for me writing source:NIPS gives me results that all have NIPS highlighted in the source field (next to the author).

You're right. It appears you must not have a space after "source:" for this method to work

Better do: search terms source:NIPS OR source:"Neural Information"

Yes, good point. Google Scholar doesn't use abbreviations consistently in the source field, and does not match the full name if you write the abbreviation.

If I want to search a paper that was published in any conference (but not only on Arxiv) - how can I do that?

@NathanB In that case you can add a minus in front of the search term to exclude it, as in -source:arxiv.

From the main scholar.google.com page you can select "Advanced Search" from the menu on the top left side (hidden behind hamburger menu button)

This feature does not appear to be present in Apr 2021

Search by site
When we search for a keyword, on the right side of the search results we get for each entry something like [PDF] acm.org. This is useful to find the websites you'd like to add.
We can combine these sites: memory site:ieee.org OR site:acm.org OR site:usenix.org
Search by source
The search results have the name of the conference below the title of each entry. This might be a full title instead of only an acronym and that's what you need to use.
For example, attack source:ASPLOS returns nothing. But we get results using attack source:"Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems".
Using a more broader term for source such as attack source:"Operating Systems" gives you results for multiple conferences, namely ASPLOS and SOSP because both have operating systems in their name.

Even better: source:ASPLOS OR source:"Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems"

A complimentary, programmatic approach to all of the all great answers above using Python and Google Scholar Organic Results API from SerpApi.
It's a paid API with a free plan that bypasses blocks from Google and does all the hard lifting so the end-user only needs to think about what data to extract.
Code and example in the online IDE to extract data from all pages:
import os, json
from serpapi import GoogleSearch
from urllib.parse import urlsplit, parse_qsl

params = {
    "api_key": os.getenv("API_KEY"), # your serpapi API key
    "engine": "google_scholar",
    "q": "AI source:NIPS",        # search query
    "hl": "en",                   # language
    # "as_ylo": "2017",           # from 2017
    # "as_yhi": "2021",           # to 2021
    "start": "0"                  # first page
    }

search = GoogleSearch(params)

organic_results_data = []

papers_is_present = True
while papers_is_present:
    results = search.get_dict()

    print(f"Currently extracting page №{results.get('serpapi_pagination', {}).get('current')}..")

    for result in results["organic_results"]:
        position = result["position"]
        title = result["title"]
        publication_info_summary = result["publication_info"]["summary"]
        result_id = result["result_id"]
        link = result.get("link")
        result_type = result.get("type")
        snippet = result.get("snippet")

        organic_results_data.append({
            "page_number": results.get("serpapi_pagination", {}).get("current"),
            "position": position + 1,
            "result_type": result_type,
            "title": title,
            "link": link,
            "result_id": result_id,
            "publication_info_summary": publication_info_summary,
            "snippet": snippet,
            })

        if "next" in results.get("serpapi_pagination", {}):
            search.params_dict.update(dict(parse_qsl(urlsplit(results["serpapi_pagination"]["next"]).query)))
        else:
            papers_is_present = False

print(json.dumps(organic_results_data, indent=2, ensure_ascii=False))

Part of the output:
[
  {
    "page_number": 1,
    "position": 1,
    "result_type": "Pdf",
    "title": "Nuts and bolts of building AI applications using Deep Learning",
    "link": "https://media.nips.cc/Conferences/2016/Slides/6203-Slides.pdf",
    "result_id": "-x2la-_xce0J",
    "publication_info_summary": "A Ng - NIPS Keynote Talk, 2016 - media.nips.cc",
    "snippet": "Given the safety-critical requirement of autonomous driving and thus the need for extremely high levels of accuracy, a pure end-to-end approach is still challenging to get to work. End-…"
  }, ... other results
]

Custom solution:
from parsel import Selector
import requests, json, os

def scrape_conference_publications(query: str, source: list[str]):
    if source:

        # source:NIPS OR source:Neural Information
        sources = " OR ".join([f'source:{item}' for item in source])

        # https://docs.python-requests.org/en/master/user/quickstart/#passing-parameters-in-urls
        params = {
            "q": f'{query.lower()} {sources}',  # search query
            "hl": "en",                         # language of the search
            "gl": "us"                          # country of the search
        }

        # https://docs.python-requests.org/en/master/user/quickstart/#custom-headers
        headers = {
            "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/100.0.4896.127 Safari/537.36"
        }

        html = requests.get("https://scholar.google.com/scholar", params=params, headers=headers, timeout=30)
        selector = Selector(html.text)

        publications = []

        for result in selector.css(".gs_r.gs_scl"):
            title = result.css(".gs_rt").xpath("normalize-space()").get()
            link = result.css(".gs_rt a::attr(href)").get()
            result_id = result.attrib["data-cid"]
            snippet = result.css(".gs_rs::text").get()
            publication_info = result.css(".gs_a").xpath("normalize-space()").get()
            cite_by_link = f'https://scholar.google.com/scholar{result.css(".gs_or_btn.gs_nph+ a::attr(href)").get()}'
            all_versions_link = f'https://scholar.google.com/scholar{result.css("a~ a+ .gs_nph::attr(href)").get()}'
            related_articles_link = f'https://scholar.google.com/scholar{result.css("a:nth-child(4)::attr(href)").get()}'
            pdf_file_title = result.css(".gs_or_ggsm a").xpath("normalize-space()").get()
            pdf_file_link = result.css(".gs_or_ggsm a::attr(href)").get()

            publications.append({
                "result_id": result_id,
                "title": title,
                "link": link,
                "snippet": snippet,
                "publication_info": publication_info,
                "cite_by_link": cite_by_link,
                "all_versions_link": all_versions_link,
                "related_articles_link": related_articles_link,
                "pdf": {
                    "title": pdf_file_title,
                    "link": pdf_file_link
                }
            })

        # or return publications instead
        # return publications

        print(json.dumps(publications, indent=2, ensure_ascii=False))

scrape_conference_publications(query="anatomy", source=["NIPS", "Neural Information"])

Outputs:
[
  {
    "result_id": "hjgaRkq_oOEJ",
    "title": "Differential representation of arm movement direction in relation to cortical anatomy and function",
    "link": "https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-2560/6/1/016006/meta",
    "snippet": "… ",
    "publication_info": "T Ball, A Schulze-Bonhage, A Aertsen… - Journal of neural …, 2009 - iopscience.iop.org",
    "cite_by_link": "https://scholar.google.com/scholar/scholar?cites=16258204980532099206&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en",
    "all_versions_link": "https://scholar.google.com/scholar/scholar?cluster=16258204980532099206&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5",
    "related_articles_link": "https://scholar.google.com/scholar/scholar?q=related:hjgaRkq_oOEJ:scholar.google.com/&scioq=anatomy+source:NIPS+OR+source:Neural+Information&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5",
    "pdf": {
      "title": "[PDF] psu.edu",
      "link": "http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.324.1523&rep=rep1&type=pdf"
    }
  }, ... other results
]

You can also have a look at a dedicated, step-by-step blog post Scrape Google Scholar Papers within a particular conference in Python at SerpApi just about it.

Disclaimer, I work for SerpApi.

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text:
Common for department guidelines/traditions to require tenure track academics rotate courses?
In the context of academics in research universities on their tenure track; how common is it for their promotion and tenure to be conditioned upon how many courses they have taught?
Is it more or less likely that they are given an initial set of courses to teach and that this remains as the class set continuously? Would it be normal to find that a department explicitly requires academics to rotate courses throughout their tenure track experience?

This varies a lot- I've seen departments where there is a strict rotation of faculty into lower level service courses and other departments where everyone teaches pretty much what they want.  In some departments, it's very important that new faculty teach undergraduate gen ed "intro to" courses, while other departments want assistant professors to be teaching senior capstone courses.  In my own department, we expect assistant professors to slowly expand their teaching repertoire so that they teach no more than one new course in each semester.

@BrianBorchers, make it an answer?

I voted to close as “depends on a particular institution’s rules.”

Almost all top research universities also have a teaching mission. Most have an undergraduate teaching mission as well. Some of those have a special faculty track for the lower level courses (Professor of the Practice, say, at Duke), but many also require senior faculty to teach a few courses per year. For some courses it is common for certain faculty to specialize, say the Compiler Course in CS, for example. But, in the absence of specialized track faculty, everyone has to have some contact with undergraduates, even if it is as a coordinator of all the TAs teaching, say, Calculus I.
Eventually junior faculty need to be integrated into this system. Given that the tenure probation period is typically about seven years, only the earliest part of this is likely to be free of teaching responsibilities. But for a new faculty member, it is common enough to get a year without teaching duties and another year or so of teaching easier courses for which a lot of resources already exist. Of course, you can probably request a specialized course as well.
But, in many and I hope most places, the teaching assignments are more or less decided by request and consent rather than being imposed, as long as every course has coverage. An especially collegial place will likely give new faculty first choice (or second,...) of courses, rather than dumping the hard ones on the new faculty after the "plums" are chosen by the senior faculty.
And, of course, in some fields, having extensive external funding can relieve you of the need to teach at all.
But a new faculty member teaching an intro level course will find a bit of shock when they find out there are 500 students in the course and you need to manage 20 or so TAs as well as give lectures.
As to the question of tenure, some places don't care too much about whether you can teach undergraduates effectively provided that you are a superb researcher and can effectively teach grad students and, especially, direct doctoral work. Others will place more emphasis on teaching. Most will also place at least some emphasis on flexibility. How willing are you to "take one for the team" and teach a difficult course? Everyone needs to do this occasionally, of course, and refusing shows lack of collegiality that can lead to problems at tenure time.
But, also, I hope and expect, that most research universities will find ways to "nurture" tenure track faculty and integrate them into the local culture as well as supporting their research goals.

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text:
Is it unwise to list coursework on CV for PhD application
I'm a Master's student currently applying for PhD programs. I've seen conflicting advice about including coursework on my CV.
I'm wondering whether it's ever helpful to have relevant coursework listed. In my case, for example, I'm applying to programs that are more computation-based than my current program, and I'd like to show the CS course that I took while here.

No.
Admissions committees can read your transcript.  That's why they ask for it.

In my experience, most applications ask for your coursework separately so it might be a moot point. However, in case it's not:
I wouldn't list everything. I wouldn't even list all of my CS courses. I would only list things that are particularly interesting or unique, such as courses that had relevant projects that you can describe. Seeing a big list of courses without anything to differentiate it will probably do little to improve your chances, but if you have something like
CS 520 - Operating Systems -
Implemented a complete rewrite of the Linux kernel that does computation in negative time.

you might consider including it. I've found that it's more helpful to include projects (things you've done) rather than courses (things you've sat through).

+1 on including projects. This is what I've done in the past, and it's seemed to work well.

Precisely what I think.
Courses don't prove as much as succesfull projects IMO. Projects also show more dedication etc :)


text:
Is there a community driven unified article database?
I am using Mendeley to keep track of my papers. It allows me to group the papers in folders, and I can easily export BiBTeX for a folder which I can include in a paper I am writing.
However, almost always I need to fill in all the details when I add a new paper to my library. "Search by Title" feature does not do a great job.
I think everyone around the world is creating their BiBTeX (or any other format) entries by hand. Is there a community driven (wikipedia like) website/service that unifies this process?
What I have in my mind is something like this: People add article meta information (title, authors, year etc.) to this public DB, if they see a mistake they correct it, if they see duplicates they prevent it by deleting one. And one can export entries as BiBTeX, etc.
The closest thing I saw is Google Scholar. But because it tries to automate nearly the whole process there are still lots of mistakes.

+1 to @CharlesMorisset I also download all my papers either from ACM DL or IEEE Xplore and the metadata imports perfectly in Mendeley. Its only when downloading papers off Google Scholar that the problem seems to manifest itself.

My papers doesn't appear from one source, I need to chase them from various sites. Besides, this approach is not unified. And often I see errors in BiBTeX on publishers like Springer.

I don't create my bibtex by hand, I get them from online sources — Really?  DBLP and ACM DL (like Springer BibTeX) is horrible — misspelled author names, incorrect proceedings titles, missing page numbers, using - instead of -- to separate page numbers, ....  I enter my BibTeX data by hand.

@CharlesMorisset: See http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/a/6613/74

Sadly, not yet...
Many publishers view their bibliographic metadata as commercial property and hold-on to it fairly tightly.
Mendeley will release little bits of the article data they have accumulated from all their users, but they will not let anyone download all of it - it's valuable property that they want to keep 'in-house'.
There are a few truly community-driven projects trying to change this e.g. Open Citations & Open Citagora.
These projects aim to build truly public & open databases for anyone to build upon & annotate. The other tools mentioned in the question aren't really public or fully open.

You might want to check out the "Initiative for Open Citations"
https://i4oc.org/

The Initiative for Open Citations I4OC is a collaboration between
  scholarly publishers, researchers, and other interested parties to
  promote the unrestricted availability of scholarly citation data.

It seems to be growing in coverage. It could form the basis for more open search tools.

This applies only to mathematics.
Personally I get most of my bibtex entries from Mathscinet where one can search for a particular article and then ask for bibtex. Here is a related question on MathOverflow; some of the answers there seem transferable to other fields.
[I agree that these are not community-driven resources, but address the related question of where to obtain bibtex entries.]

I use citeulike. Their smart bookmark lets me create an entry automatically from most articles on the web. Once it is in your library, you can easily export it as BibTex (1 click). I almost never have to type in BibTeX entries anymore.
Although, a number of journals which do not have DOI support, and conference proceedings, unfortunately it comes down to editing the BibTeX entry myself. (Sometimes someone else who uses citeulike would have already done that and you can search for the entry and copy it to your library.)

JSTOR and many publishers include BiBTeX format for articles on their webpages:
Example from Cambridge University Press (click "How to Cite This Article"): http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=92189
Example from JSTOR (click "Export Citation"): http://www.jstor.org/stable/2585925

I find that Jabref's import from pubmed (pubmed search -> display list of pubmed ids -> copy to Jabref)  does a very good job for the bio/medical fields.


text:
Is it possible for a student to TA their entire way through graduate school?
Or is it usually not possible?
Does this also depend from department to department? I'm in a geoscience department, and I was recently advised that due to a limited number of positions, students can only expect to be TAs for 1/4 of their time here. Geoscience does tend to have significantly fewer courses than most other fields though, so I wonder if it varies from field to field?
Does it also vary depending on whether the school is public or private?

I can't tell from your question what happens the other 3/4 of the time. Are you promised funding from other sources?

And it certainly varies from school to school. At the Geosciences department of the school where I did my PhD, they were so short of people they had to ask graduate students who had/were on other outside funding to also TA.

Even if it is possible, that is a serious time commitment.

The ability of a department to fund TAs depends on the courses being taught, the number of students in a class, and the overall budget. Often, a department will use this number in combination with the amount of funding faculty are pulling in as well as other sources to decide how many students to admit and how much TA funding support to provide.
Independently, a department might make a determination of how long any one student might be guaranteed a TA position (this is often detailed on the admissions letter), with the expectation that students will look to be supported by research funding, or are expected to support themselves. Again, this depends from department to department and from university to university.
I don't think there's any area-wide standard. In computer science, I see all kinds of models, ranging from full support through the entire program to no funding at all (although this latter model is rare).
So to answer your question: maybe, it depends.

When I was a grad student in health sciences, almost no one got TAship because there was no course to teach (my program doesn't have a corresponding undergrad program). So students' funding usually comes from supervisors' grants or scholarships. So yes it really depends on the department.

This does vary from school to school and field to field, and it would be difficult to classify public or private schools as being in one camp or another.  I have known people who never TA'd and I've known people who have TA'd for their whole graduate career.  Here are some plusses and minuses (and certainly my own opinion):
Plusses to only TA'ing:

You spend more time teaching, although some TAs spend all their time grading, which can be tedious and not particularly beneficial to you.
If your advisor isn't paying you from his/her grants, you could have more leeway for a more self-directed PhD.  Obviously, your advisor still has a large roll to play, but ultimately less control if you want to push the issue.  This is generally more true if your funding comes from an external fellowship.
If you're in a field where grant money is limited, this is a good way to get funding for your degree.

Minuses:

TA'ing takes up time that could be spent on your own research.  The point of Research Assistant fellowships is explicitly for you to do research.
As a corollary to #2 above, your advisor might not feel as much ownership of you, and you might find that he/she isn't as willing to spend the time to help you with your research.
Other students might wonder why you can't find research funding.

I know students who love being TAs, and they actively try to find new TA positions because of that and not because of the money.

A minus for being a TA in my department: the stipend is significantly less.

@AustinHenley Interesting!  The TA positions actually pay slightly more at my former school.

Is it possible for a student to TA their entire way through graduate school?

Yes, it is possible.
I did it. I'm betting most academics can list someone they know who did it for whatever the reason might be. I did it partly because I enjoyed it and partly because the grant money was tight. I was able to do it because there were not enough first year graduate students to fill every open TA position. I suspect that the situations the lead to someone teaching their way through grad school have some features in common with my situation.
You don't say so, but the tone of your question implies that you might want to do this. If so, ask the appropriate person who controls such things - the chair, assistant chair, undergraduate coordinator, or even the professor of the class you want to TA for. If you are good at it they might let you with your thesis adviser's support.
The extra teaching experience will be beneficial if you intend a career at a 4-year liberal arts school.
However, if there are a limited number of TA positions, those will go to the first year graduate students because those students 1) are not likely to be supported by grants or fellowships, and 2) probably have a TA requirement to complete the program.


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Switching between different graduate departments within the same graduate school?
How difficult it is to switch between different graduate departments within the same graduate school? And how can a student initiate the process?
Some have told me that it's easier than getting into a graduate department via PhD admissions. But I do wonder - does it depend on what school it is? (I'm at Brown). What other factors determine how easy it is to get into another graduate department? Would they look at your transcript/GRE scores/etc? I have GRE scores of 96th percentile Verbal/96th percentile Math/99th percentile Analytical/89th percentile Biology. My grades are weaker though. I'm currently a student in a Geoscience department and am considering switching to Physics or a Biology-related field.
Of course, one has to convince someone else to be able to take them on. Most of my experience is with Physics and Scientific Computing, however, and a lot of fields really value the skills that people in Physics/Scientific Computing have.

What did your target department's office say when you asked them?  (You did ask them, didn't you?)

Maybe this differs between departments or schools, but in my experience transferring between departments is exactly the same process as applying from the outside.  If faculty in the new department know you and are familiar with your work, then you may have an advantage (or disadvantage), but there is no advantage from being already enrolled in another department.
If you want to do something interdisciplinary that could fit in either department, it's usually easiest not to switch (so you don't have to deal with applying again, fulfilling different class and exam requirements, etc.).  Instead, you can try to arrange a thesis committee with representatives from both departments.
If you want to start over in a new field, then the only option is to apply to the new department.  You'll need to convince them of two things: that you are changing departments because you now understand better what you would like to do (rather than because you are doing poorly in grad school), but that you will complete the new program rather than changing interests again in a few years.  This means you need a compelling story to explain the shift.

One mitigating factor here is if the two departments have a history of traffic between each other. In that case, it might be easier to move from one to the other.

It's definitely easier to move between departments at my school, but not all that much easier.


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Balancing coursework, research, and teaching
I'm a first-year graduate student, and I just joined a computational chemistry laboratory. I have three tasks now: pass all my courses, fulfill my TA duties, and start research. I'm finding that I'm spending all my time doing the first two, and very little doing actual research. I'm worried that my advisor will be upset that I'm not getting up to speed quickly enough on my research (currently, learning the python programming language and reading a whole bunch of papers). Are first-year graduate students typically expected to do a lot of research, while still managing their grades and TA duties?

I think the answer lies in what your PI thinks you should be doing and how well you can, at least, appear to be doing it while doing things other than research.  Even if your PI doesn't enforce a certain allocation it's in your interest to do as much research and little else as possible. You won't get a PhD by teaching or taking classes. An overload, in my experience, is unavoidable first year. Is is possible to take electives that your PI teaches? That's about the only coursework he or she won't begrudge you.

In France coursework is anecdotal since PhD students are supposed to follow only one course a year, and the validation is decided (without grades) by the professor giving the lecture (and attendance generally means validation).
However, the question of balancing research and teaching is of importance. Those that are TA during their PhD have typically 3 to 4 hours a week on average of presence in front of the students during 6/7 months, and most colleagues agree on the fact that 2 to 3 times this amount is spent in preparing/grading (for beginners). So it is on average between 1 and 2 days a week for teaching. I strongly advised my own students not to cross that line: you don't improve significantly your lectures by working more than that, but you clearly decrease the quality of your research work (again, this is for newcomers in academia).

Is that a broad French practice, or does do different departments and universities treat courses differently?

The structure of the graduate studies in France is a little bit different: the standard PhD duration is 3 years (before you have 3 years for the BS and 2 for the MsC). Having 1 course during each year of the PhD is recent (uh, I mean, I graduated in 2003 and it was the first year we had to do this). This is now the case in (almost all) universities. In theory you have to obtain good grades, but in many places I saw that the PhD courses are in fact courses that the PhD students follow with the MsC students and the grades are given..., well, given is the good word I think.

From my experience: You just have to make it work. You just have to balance all that is thrown at you. Believe me, it is a character building exercise, getting a PhD is. It's not just about publishing journal papers. A PhD degree is also about time management, people skills (which can be tested when trying to appease your advisor!) and learning how to communicate effectively (even if you get only 10 hours work done in a week while the expectation was 15 hours, it is how you communicate your results during research meetings).
After a year or so and once you have your qualifiers out of the way you will emerge a stronger person who would suddenly even have downtime! Good luck!

I think it's fair to expect a first-year student who has course obligations to spend some time on course work, but along the same lines as if it were another course—and by no means the majority of time. When the department requires coursework, it's kind of unfair for a faculty advisor to complain about you having to spend your time taking the required classwork. Particularly in a department like chemistry, which tends to have comprehensive qualification requirements, expecting a first-year student to devote more than a modest amount of time to research is rather unreasonable. If you spend too much time on research, and not enough on classes, you could end up failing your qualfiers. If you don't pass those, you won't get your Ph.D., either!


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What are the consequences to the researcher in cases of academic fraud?
The purpose of this question is to attempt to generate a concise but comprehensive answer to the question, what happens to the researcher after fraud is discovered? I'm familiar with some consequences:

Listing on the NIH Office of Research Integrity website
Retraction of relevant publications
Prevention from publication in journals for X years

What other are some other typical (and atypical) outcomes?

Retraction watch (http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/) follows outcomes for a lot of researchers involved in fraud cases. I don't think you'll be able to get a complete or concise answer to this one because each University and research center has its own policies, and often adherence to these policies is uneven depending on the perpetrator.

As I posted in answer to another comment, more often than not, schools want to avoid the dramas associated with plagiarism scandals. That is why schools like Harvard will prompt researchers accused of fraudulent behavior, such as Marc Hauser, to resign, rather than go through tenure revocation procedures.
But losing one's job is fairly likely, and an unofficial blacklisting is almost certain to result.
One other consequence, though, is often forgotten: the peripheral damage of academic fraud cases. Sensationalized results, such as those in the Jan Hendrik Schön and Hwang Woo-Suk cases, led many graduate students to embark on projects in those disciplines trying to reproduce and expand upon the promises implied by those projects. When those projects collapsed, a lot of graduate students were left in the lurch.

You would probably find it very hard to find a job or may even get fired from your job, depending on the severeness of the fraud.
Your employer might start a formal investigation into your behaviour.
The party you defrauded might sue you for damages.
Your reputation in your community would be at least severely damanged. Other researchers might refuse to collaborate with you.
You might be banned from applying for grants and/or have trouble getting grants you apply for.

I'm sure there are lots of other things. Basically, unless you have a very good explanation for it, you're done for (at least in your particular area of research).

I've never heard of a fraud case resulting in a damages lawsuit within academia.

Me neither, but it's certainly conceivable.

I believe granting agencies have sued Universities/labs for grants given to fraudulent applications. I'll see if I can find examples...


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Ph.D. adviser or Ph.D. advisor?
I think I have seen it spelled both ways.
Is one spelling more common or formal than the other ? (e.g. in the U.S.)

Similar question in [english.SE]: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2714/whats-the-difference-between-adviser-and-advisor-are-both-interchangeabl

I grew up learning the spelling as "advisor," which goes along with "supervisor." I've never seen "superviser," either, and "adviser" just looks strange to me.
This may actually be a field-dependent issue: in academia, I've always seen "advisor" as the preferred spelling (and a number of schools agree with that assessment). However, outside of academic contexts, "adviser" seems to be preferred, both in the UK and the US, as shown here.

In my high school, my teacher said it is British English Vs American English.

It's not. Maybe British English only uses "advisor," but Americans use both variants.

http://www.michigan-proficiency-exams.com/american-and-british-english-difference.html

And as a counterargument: The Grammarist gives examples of UK papers preferring "adviser."

I think you typed your first comment wrong, it should be "Maybe British English only uses 'advisEr' ". And this will end our discussion because I dont care if people call it Financial Advisor or Adviser in America, both are acceptable for me.

I think the posts above suggest that "advisor" is more common in the US. But it doesn't sound like it matters very much.


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Mail forwarding after graduation
It's been less than a year since I graduated and my university e-mail address is still active. Therefore, I have been able to receive invitations to review papers (presumably from my publications).
As per university policy, the e-mail account will be terminated soon. They offer an alumni.xyz.edu account but do not offer any forwarding for the xyz.edu account.
Apart from petitioning the university to change this ludicrous policy, has anyone else experience this problem?

Incidentally, I used to think this sort of policy was impossible to justify (offering, say, ten years of forwarding would cost almost nothing, and the inability to reuse these addresses in the meantime would not be such a great loss). However, a few years ago a prominent US math department caught someone fraudulently claiming to have a current affiliation with the department and using their old but still active e-mail address as evidence. I doubt this happens often, but it's a genuine downside to allowing forwarding, and I can understand why the potential for confusion worries administrators.

Whatever one may think of this policy, I think it is fairly standard - whether from a university or any other workplace. (well, most commercial organisations wouldn't give you a year - if the address still existed the day after you left, it would be redirecting to somebody else)

Policy Note: Yes, this is happening all the time. However, each university policy might be different on its students/staff data. Also, might be different in each case, based on the level of education. For example they might do this for their previous postgraduate students; but not their undergraduates.
You need to send an email to the system admin of the university and ask him/her very nicely to forward all the upcoming emails to your current account. Something like following:

Dear Mr/Miss X,
I was a student/staff at the university from 20?? to 20??. My university email account was me@uni.asd.edu. Could you please forward all the upcoming emails to this address to my alumni/current email address (e.g., alumni@x.edu/currentemail@site.com)?
Kind Regards,
Me

Tried and failed. Response: this is part of xyz policy and cannot be changed. Yay.

@Jacob All people I knew from the past, including myself could do this, by sending a very polite email to the system admin of the university.

You can also ask for an alias to forward your non-alumni email to your alumni account and then manually forward from your alumni account to your personal email.


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How can I get the most out of conferences?
I recently attended a very large conference in my field (SfN, ~30,000 attendees), and after I got back I was thinking about what I had gained from the trip, and I realized not that much. I listened to a few different talks, and I saw a whole bunch of relevant posters, but on reflection I don't think anything I did progressed my knowledge/career that much. What should I do in the future to ensure that I make the most out of conferences?

Know why you're going in the first place: only go to conferences where you can get something useful out of it. You can usually get access to the proceedings (and at lower cost) without going to the conference. So just access to the proceedings is usually not enough. You're there to present your stuff and get feedback on it, and/or for networking, and/or to hear specific speakers talk insightfully on a subject important to you, whre you've got an opportunity to ask clarifying questions directly of them, and to participate in a discussion with others, afterwards, on the content.
Be the first after a presentation to ask an insightful, relevant, informed question. Catch the speaker's eye as you ask the question. Go up to them after the session ends, thank them in person, exchange business cards
Network like crazy
Have a big stack of business cards. Give them away liberally to anyone vaguely connected to your field. Get some more printed. Repeat.
Collect business cards of anyone vaguely connected, voraciously. Add their email addresses to your database of interesting contacts. Follow them on your networking sites of choice. (Twitter, CiteULike, Academia.edu, etc). And when one of your papers gets published, email them a link to it, and let them know that it may be of use to them.

From my own experience I get the most out of conferences which are not organized as conference expos. There's a big difference between conferences created for income (yes, even in academia) and those created to promote new discoveries and knowledge.
Of the latter type I find the presenters are generally excited by their opportunity to meet others in their field. It's more of a grassroots type of experience and you find that you naturally start to share in the discussions. No networking is needed.
What should I do in the future to ensure that I make the most out of conferences?

Choose a conference that's in your field. Prepare a paper or two of your own on a subject that really interests you. Discuss it with colleagues. Get it published. Present it at a conference. The critical thought you put into this process will help you to pick conferences more suited to you and stimulate your interaction with others.

On top of all the answers above, I would add very selfish points to expand on meeting like-minded people from user107 answers.

Avoid destination conferences(or The location is time)! The best conferences are the ones you can spend the most time with the people you want to network with and not where people will count seconds to leave and go sight seeing. For example, if the conference is in San Fransisco, without a doubt everybody is excited to bring a +1 and go about seeing friends in the area or sightseeing. You will have a lower chance of spending quality time with the researchers in your field. Meanwhile, people from Google or Uber or local equivalents of your field might not even show up to present their work cause they are busy(real story)! On the other hand, if the conference is in some center of nowhere, with literally nothing to do except the conference activities, you will have a high chance of getting to know your colleague very well. And people who are there are serious about their business. You have all the afternoon, night, and late nights to know who is who, and what they have to say that they can not publish yet(including politics of the field)! The catch is that conference organizers might spend more money to plan events that bring you guys out of your hotel rooms and bring you back again to such a location.
Find and meet people who can give you recommendation letters later on based on your work. People who have genuine appreciation of your work or methods or even your adviser and are nice enough that if needed to read your work for feedback or writing you a nice recommendation you can actually count on them. Someone would add avoid snobs or super-busy ones, you will not hear back from them soon enough.
Find fellows (same level as you maybe a couple of years ahead), who also have a genuine interest in your work, that also can play the role of proof-read or an extra pair of eyes for you. you can easily cut the time of your publications by sharing your work with such peers and make your papers ready nicer. if their English or experience in writing is more than you its a plus.
Talk with people in the industry or application world (or vice versa), who you can talk to you about what is actually needed out there and if they are also willing to use your work or test it or give you comments. These people can help you explore alternative career paths as well.
Don't be negative(snob) about presented works. everyone knows some works are worst than others, but cynicism or negative attitude scares most people and will isolate you. There is so much to learn even from works that look not ready, or complete or even wrong! Be positive about all works and try to learn from every single presentation rather than ignoring their efforts.
Collaboration with other institutes is always a great experience item. see if you can establish such opportunity for yourself. Maybe a visiting summer or just working on a piece of open source code together.
Avoid politics. most likely your source of information is not perfectly aligned with locals and you can hurt mis-represented and already-harassed people!
Branding. Have a letter-sized summary, quadchart or an executive summary of your work copied in color and enough number available. It can be a great branding if you are serious about your ideas. Business card or LinkedIn will not go anywhere in academia.
Go out and make memories with your peers, go see a random part of the city. It will be a better way to network than staying in the hotel's bar(except if it's too late at night).
Don't miss the elders of the crowd. Remember some people come to this conference every year for last 30 years. Some of them really appreciate new people who do the effort of introducing themselves.
Make as much notes as possible, cause you WILL forget, even the most important things.


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How to allow survey participants to contact me without breaching anonymity?
I started a survey yesterday as a part of an empirical experiment, using an online questionnaire. It is among the employees of the institution where I work to pay the bills (that's not the university at which I'm doing my Ph.D.).
Soon I not noticed that there is a problem with the survey. 2/3 of the responses are empty from page 3 on. These are not people who chose to hit the "exit and clear" button, because then the responses won't land in the database. They either closed the browser window, or had a technical difficulty.
Totally stumped at what is happening, I set up a second "survey" with only one question: What problems are you experiencing with the original survey?. I sent it out asking people who experienced a problem to tell me about it. And now I have three attempted answers there - empty.
Now I don't know how to let people tell me about the problem if this isn't working either. If I ask them to tell me per email, I will see who is sending the mail, breaching anonymity. The survey software runs on a university server. If I tell them to write to the university admin, they won't trust him because they don't know him and cannot know he is not going to give out their names. I don't know who I could ask from our institution to assist - nobody here is part of my Ph.D. project, and nobody has any responsibility for the university server. If I ask somebody close to me to act as "problem relay" only as a personal favor, the trust of the participants will be eroded again, because people close enough to me to do me this favor won't be seen as impartial.
Any ideas how to get the problem reported? It doesn't matter if it is technical or the questionnaire is so unreasonable that 2/3 of the participants change their mind about completing it. I need to know what is wrong, as this survey is pivotal for my dissertation.

I have thought about running a pilot study? Bring in 5 or so people for one-on-one survey filling out. Let them know the results will be discarded.

This sounds like something that needs to be discussed with IRB

This answer may depend on how many participants your survey has in general - but I think one of the main objectives of conducting a survey "remotely", online, rather than personally, in a controlled environment, is to gather an exceptionally large amount of participants. Therefore, I'll assume a sufficiently large number.
Note that online surveys are quite an exception here in that you never get into contact with the participants. In general, you always know to some extent who participated in the survey (hardly anything else is possible when you have to meet in person with the participants). And even for online surveys, contact details are often required if there is any compensation for the effort of taking part, or only the offer to be notified once the results of the study are ready (which is generally the least that should be offered to participants in response to the time they reserved for you).
Therefore, the anonymity assured to participants generally does not mean that researchers never learn about any of the personal data of the participants; it means:

Responses will not be connected to the personal data of participants.
The personal data will never be published in detail, just as aggregate values (e.g. age minimum, maximum and median across all subjects).
Any identifying data (e-mail addresses etc.) will be erased as soon as possible.

Unless there is just a small total number of participants, participants can feel reasonably safe that even though the researchers know both their personal data and their responses, those two won't be connected in the future.


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What are the benefits and drawbacks of a professor being interdisciplinary when they seek tenure?
Possible benefits: More grant money through other departments
Possible drawbacks: A significant fraction of their research might not be seen as research that benefits the department's standing in the area.
But what about others?

The biggest problem of interdisciplinary research ... is that most departments feels like its the other departments responsibility.

If you've been doing interdisciplinary research for five years, and now approach the tenure process without a clear idea of how to sell your case, consider it failed, and start looking for a job elsewhere, before you are under an immense pressure of finding a good job in a one-year grace period after the end of the world as you know it.
If you were hired specifically for interdisciplinary research, and your offer letter stated that, and your time was split "50% + 1 hour in computer science + 25% in department of Roman languages + 25% in agriculture", with a clear explanation as to how you are to be evaluated by each of the parties involved, then these explanations should have served as the guidelines to build your research program. If you were hired to do the theory of parallel computing, but later decided that it would be cool to do some extra work in Roman languages because you liked their research questions, and thought you could contribute with your data mining algorithms that would uncover nuances of how Latin and French are interconnected (and you did, by their standards); and you proposed some GIS tools for horticulturalists to use that have become the industry standard software -- that's all fun and fine, but if you did not discuss that with your CS chair, this was likely a waste of time, as in terms of parallel computing, this time was as good as playing squash. Your annual reviews in the main department should have indicated so, if your department would ever care to guide you (not all departments do, though).
Spending time in another discipline is very fruitful for finding interesting research problems (as typically most disciplines don't talk to one another, and there's a wealth of problems to be solved using other disciplines' tools), but it also means that you have had less time to spend in your home discipline, which nearly inevitably means a weaker CV: fewer grants, fewer publications, lower quality research. (That's essentially Suresh's last point).

I don't think either of the points mentioned above are relevant. If there's the potential for more grant money there should be evidence of it by tenure time. As for "benefit to the department" the real question is how good the work is, and if it's recognized in the larger communities.
From the tenure-seeker's perspective, one potential benefit is a much larger pool of letter writers. A downside is the "jack of all trades" problem, where each community can only comment on a portion of the work, and the work itself is not perceived as excellent in any individual community.

Your last point will of course only apply if there isn't a substantial subcommunity around one's particular intersection of disciplines.

Yes. although "a substantial subcommunity around one's particular intersection of disciplines" starts to define the intersection as a new discipline in and of itself.

Sure, but not to the extent that a university would have a department for it.

Right: I guess my thought is this: the main problem is getting letters that can attest to the quality of the work, and if the community is well defined, that's not too hard. The challenge there is knowing who to ask I guess.

Regarding the "much larger pool of letter writers", could that not be as much of an advantage when the letter writers are from different departments and unknown to the people in the department?

Interdisciplinarity can help or hurt, depending on how your work is perceived by the experts in each of the two (or more) fields. If you are seen by the experts in field A as doing excellent work in A, and if you're also seen by the experts in field B as doing excellent work in B, then this situation improves your chances for tenure.  If, on the other hand, the experts in field A say something like "not so great in A, but it's impressive that (s)he also does B," while the experts in field B say something like "not so great in B, but it's impressive that (s)he also does A," then you're in trouble --- the people evaluating you for tenure will see "not so great" and ignore "impressive". So, if you can do excellent work in both areas, do so, but if you can't, then it's better to do excellent work in one field than mediocre work in two.


text:
What are some good writing tablets for taking notes that are heavy on math/physics?
For the record, I'd like something to replace notebooks. I'm accumulating more and more notebooks, and they're a pain to tug around everywhere. Plus, notebooks are easy to get lost (I've lost notebooks by accidentally leaving them in restrooms), not easily-backup-able, and non-searchable.
So I'd like a tablet that allows me to read PDFs heavy on math/physics, that allows me to easily annotate notes, and that has a thin stylus that allows me to write subscripts and superscripts with ease.

Maybe this Mathoverflow thread adds to the discussion.

it seems like this (closed) question is right on target..

There are also similar questions, with useful answers here and here.

I believe the limitation is more on the software that you are using, rather than the tablet itself. So, if you are using an iPad, you can use UPad, whereas android tablets users should be looking at something like Repligo or ezPdf Reader.

Regarding the stylus, this review from MacWorld strongly recommends the Wacom Bamboo stylus for writing notes.

I found this Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet, which designed specifically for stylus use (iPad and the likes are not).

I got one specifically for the active digitizer - what allows it to use a thin stylus instead of the fat sausage ones - and I love it. The writing is very close to natural - not absolutely perfect, it's still a stylus on a hard surface. At the moment, I think it's the best on the market.

Try the samsung galaxy note 10.1. With a wacom s pen it seems to be the right choice for people who do write a lot of equations/ want to annotate lecture notes.

lecturenotes app is particularly useful

Check out this question and my answer: Device for writing a lecture with a stylus for video lecture recording
Short version: any professional tablet pc with an active digitizer (the Wacom ones are the best on market). They cost only a little more than an iPad. IPads are good for goofing off and clicking on your virtual farm but there is an abyss in terms of writing quality.


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How often do graduate students help connect professors with each other?
I know that a couple of UChicago professors told me that, especially if a graduate student ends up co-advised with two professors. Maybe there's an additional factor too: maybe students actually have the time and flexibility to communicate with other professors, which could possibly help initiate collaborations between them?

It happens, but rarely through co-advising.  In my experience, co-advisors usually know each other before the student enters the picture, and the student has little effect on how much the faculty collaborate.
More often, students create new connections by becoming active independent researchers and working with a diverse set of collaborators.  The various actors' roles as "student" and "professor" are simply irrelevant.
(I'm speaking for theoretical computer science, where PhD students are expected to become full-fledged independent researchers before they graduate.  Your mileage may vary.)

In my experience, this is not the case. I was co-advised by a professor from another university, but no collaborations resulted from this. You could probably facilitate such collaborations if you really wanted to and put in lots of work though.

In my experience, getting a grad student or postdoc involved is often the best way to kick off a collaboration between two busy PIs (primary investigators).  For any researcher with a large lab, their attention is often divided between many ongoing projects.  A new collaboration often requires a significant investment of time and energy that may simply not be practical.
In this case, getting a grad student or postdoc involved can be good for everybody.  The junior researcher can invest a lot of time and energy, receiving advice from both PIs, and see if the proposed collaboration is productive.  If it doesn't work out, it's no worse than trying out a non-collaborative idea that doesn't work.  If it does work, then the collaboration expands, benefiting both PIs. The junior researcher benefits even more, as they are now at the center of a growing new cross-disciplinary venture that clearly differentiates their work from both of the PIs involved.
Whether this involves formal co-advising or not is less important and a situational choice.  Certainly, no such decision should be made until it is already clear that the collaboration is being productive and successful.
Things are different when you've got professors who have few graduate students and have more time to invest directly in collaborations, e.g., a professor at a primarily undergraduate institution who is still expected to continue doing research.  In that case, the professor is likely to have more time available and should probably invest themselves.


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Email etiquette for requesting a meeting with a professor who one won't do research with or take a class from?
What is the proper etiquette for requesting a meeting with a professor who you don't do research with or take a course from?
Say, the professor is doing something you're interested in, and you just want to talk to them just to learn more about their research (you might be interested in their research out of pure curiosity, or might be wanting to find a possible connection between their research and your potential research). How should one phrase the email?
In particular, I'm interested in trying to find a way to set a particular time for a meeting. Sometimes I ask "are you available next week?" and they say they are, but it's possible that they could be away for most of the week (for unexpected meetings and the like). Should I request a time of my own in a reply? (especially if they don't give a time).

I'm assuming that you are a graduate student.
Simply send a short, polite email expressing that you are interested in his/her research and that you would like to talk about it. If you share a coffee machine, lounge, canteen, etc, you could suggest to talk over coffee. Certainly, say who you are and what you do in the email, and indicate why you are interested.
Don't ramble on in the email. No one has time to read long emails.
Showing interest in research and showing that you won't be wasting his/her time are main points to observe. Most researchers (unless they are ridiculously famous and super busy) would be happy to explain their work and create new avenues for future exploration.


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Is it ever advisable for graduate students to go on sabbatical for several months?
Undergraduates have several-month long "sabbaticals" every years. While graduate students shouldn't expect to have the same thing, could it maybe be justifiable for them to take a several-month long sabbatical in the middle of graduate school? These things can be really helpful for things like evaluating whether or not you're trying too hard to reach a dead end.

Um... This looks a question for your advisor.

@JeffE True that!

Student sabbaticals can be great and productive: http://mathgradblog.williams.edu/summer-math-beach-thailand/

We encourage our graduate students to take internships for 3 months during summer (at Microsoft Redmond and MSR Cambridge). This is a bit like a sabbatical. In our experience, these are extremely valuable for the students and for fostering research collaborations. Usually one publication results for the student, but the experience and the contacts they gain cannot be measure in the regular units.
We do not allow our students to go on such 'sabbaticals' if they are not already performing well. The lucky students who do get to go need to act as ambassadors for our university. We do not use internships as a way of kick-stacking the research of a student-gone-astray.
Unless by sabbatical, you mean vacation, in which case, I've answered the wrong question. Students are entitled to 6 weeks vacation per year (not including Christmas). They may take it in one chunk if they wish. Whether we allow it depends on what project deadlines need to be met and so forth. Generally, we encourage them to split up their vacation into smaller chunks (1 week here, 2 weeks there).

From my experience, academic sabbaticals have a direct, stated purpose; for example, performing research (and having some fun) in a different country with a different academic environment, casting your hand at doing some work in a completely different field, taking a break from work to write a few long review papers. To this end, I'm not sure what a student would do on a sabbatical; most graduate students have a single project, and they haven't been involved in research to be able to try something else–they're still learning their first field, for goodness sake. I'm not sure how anyone would benefit from a student taking a sabbatical. On the other hand, there are numerous downsides, the main one being that there is a definite chance that the student will not return to their research after doing something else for a few months. I can't think of any reason why this could be a good idea.


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Etiquette and guidelines for asking someone if they might be doing work potentially similar to yours?
So, say, if I want to start on a new research project but want to be sure that someone else isn't doing the same thing that I'm doing, how should I phrase an email to them, if at all?
Oftentimes, this could lead to a collaboration between the two. But in a few cases, this could also be a case where someone might be competing with you for the same research finding, and where they might want to "take the glory" so to speak.

I'd recommend against sending such an e-mail to someone you don't know well.  If you've got serious reason to fear there may be competition that neither of you wants, then perhaps a mutual friend could help sort it out; if you don't, then I wouldn't worry about it.
One danger is that the e-mail can come across as aggressively staking out territory.  Even just asking whether someone is working on this topic can be read as "speak now or forever hold your peace", with the implication that unless they announce it now, you'll be seriously offended if they end up competing with you on this topic.  This is not a fair position to put someone in, since research can be unpredictable and their work may end up having consequences for these topics that they do not yet foresee.
Collaboration can also be a touchy issue.  It's sometimes a mutually beneficial way to resolve this sort of situation, but not always.  It can be awkward when someone you don't know well suggests a collaboration, since no matter what excuses you offer, it's hard to avoid the appearance that declining a collaboration request is a negative judgement on the person making the request.
If you know someone well, you may be able to avoid these difficulties, but I wouldn't try it otherwise.
If you're a graduate student, then your advisor should help with situations like this.  For example, they should make sure potential competitors are aware of your thesis project (at least in mathematics, it's considered extremely bad form to compete with a grad student, and part of the advisor's role is to minimize the chances of accidental competition).


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What are some tips for crowdfunding science off websites like PetriDish?
What are some perks that would increase the amount of dollars that people spend on a venture? And what level of transparency would be useful?
Petridish is a recent KickStarter-like startup for crowdfunding science.

I'm not familiar with any other funding mechanism for research similar to PetriDish, and PetriDish itself is in its very infancy. I assume you're referring to crowd-funding of research in general... are there any other venues that have had success in generating crowd-funded research?

@InquilineKea: Could you please explain what the connection of this question to the Academia.SE is? At the moment, I don't see it.

Well - funding science is an important part of academia. And it's certainly an alternative to having to apply for grants (well, only in the future, but we've seen that the future can explode in unpredictable ways). PetriDish does have some features that other sites don't have, so a question specific to it is appropriate.

I think this question fits within the site guidelines... the question relates to the funding of scientific research, just not within the common mechanisms of pursuing government or private grants.

@InquilineKea: Okay, thanks for the clarification. However, it would be nice if you could make that connection more explicit in the body of the question.

The approach is too new for this question to generate useful, rather than speculative, answers.

These funding mechanisms are in their very infancy, so I don't know if there will any "tried and true" techniques for a few months, assuming the funding model proves to work at all. That being said, it will be very similar to that on Kickstarter:

Advertise in numerous channels. People can only support you if they know about you. Getting the word out is the primary goal in the beginning.
Provide an engaging, easy-to-understand description of:

What you want to research
Why you want to research it
How humanity will benefit from your having researched it
What success will look like
(Note: This last point is often ignored, but it's crucial for the lay-audience. They may expect a particular cancer research project to end with a cancer cure, whereas in reality it will end with the identification of a particular protein responsible for a particular mutation. Stating this will avoid making you as an individual and scientists as a whole from looking stupid in the eyes of the public.)

Offer a constant (strictly defined, e.g. "weekly" or "biweekly") updates to backers

Regarding useful perks, I've noticed that a few of the successful drives offered things such as:

Engrave the name of the backer or a loved on the instruments being used
Paintings of the organisms/landscape/imagery being studied
Naming a star/organism after the backer/loved one

The final topic, transparency, is more difficult. On the one hand, you will need complete transparency. On the other hand, there is such a thing as too much transparency. In brief, your updates should serve to inform the backers about your work, while simultaneously and more subtly serving two other goals as well:

Convince your backers that you're actually doing work
Maintain their confidence in your ability to do the work

tl;dr -

Make everything  - everything - about your proposed project crystal clear for the layperson
Make the prizes cutesy and attractive, but not too lavish; they're investing for science, and secondarily maybe a little gift
Your updates should, in order: (1) inform about your research, (2) convince the reader of your scienceness

There's a blog post looking at the results of #SciFund! that might be of interest to you: http://www.imachordata.com/?p=1156
It looks, to me, like the predictors of success are probably having a robust social network presence, etc. and modest funding expectations.


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Should an applicant to an university mention that her spouse is currently a student in the same University, as part of her SOP?
While writing one's Statement of Purpose for applying to a grad program, should one mention that her spouse is also a grad student in the same university? What are the pro's and con's of that approach - while on one hand, it shows that the candidate is very likely to accept an offer made by the dept, it might also imply that the presence of her spouse is the main reason the applicant wants to get admitted, which might not sit well with the Admissions Committee?

Often web-based applications have a separate field to indicate this kind of prior relationship to the university. I would be inclined to put it there, if possible.

I don't think there is anything whatsoever negative about the fact that you are applying to a particular school so as to live in the same town as your spouse. I feel many in academia share this view, and you would probably not face any negative consequences if you explain this in your statement.

I've found many departments try to keep families together considering a phd is a muliyear commitment. As long as you have a strong application, I say mention it.

This really can be a two-edged sword.
Pros: You are likely to really come and stay since your spouse is there. You can argue that you know much (positive) about the place through your spouse which has made you select the place.
Cons: You may be seen as applying because your spouse is there and not because you think the place is exactly where you want to go and be. In other words, you make a choice out of practical and not academic reasons. (largely what you already stated)
So, first of all, it is no-ones business why you apply to go to a certain place. Of course the people who read your application will evaluate your interest and so anything that strengthens the application is good anything that doesn't can be left out. Although the location of one's spouse should not be grounds for admitting (or not) a person, it is possible people read things into the fact that you did not originally anticipate. If you want to state that you already know the place is good, you may do so by demoting your spouse to a friend. I have to confess I am not at all happy about writing this which seems so negative towards mentioning your relationship but it stems from knowing that you cannot predict how people interpret things and it is therefore better to be neutral and focus on the academic rather than putting up personal reasons for a choice.

I don't see "demoting" the spouse to a friend as viable. If I read an application that mentions that a "friend" of the applicant is at the same university or in the same town, it would kind of weird me out... My first thought would be "what kind of person discusses his/her friend on an application to grad school?" Even saying that your friend said the school was good sounds somewhat unprofessional. Overall, I second Peter's suggestion to focus on the academic angles and leave the spouse out.

Peter Jansson's answer is the most comprehensive. I would mention the spouse to your POI during a one-on-one interview / conversation -- but otherwise keep the information private.
The rationale: The only stage at which this information could possible is important is the final rankings. At that point, we do want to know whether the student we are going to make offers to are going to come. If there are two otherwise equally ranked students on the cusp, we'd make the offer to the one we're more sure will come. The POI can make the case then that you would come based on his/her inside knowledge.
Otherwise, that information is (mostly negatively) prejudicial for the reasons that Peter Jansson mentions.

From an HR perspective, you also might want to leave out your marital status to preclude any possibility of discrimination. I am applying to grad schools now and will leave out the fact that I have a husband so that they cannot worry about my hypothetical pregnancy or marital situation affecting the timeliness of completion for the PhD program. Of course those things shouldn't be considered against you...but it's safer to leave them out, I think.

Very sad, but true.

Are you attending the same courses? If so, it might seem like you are applying to be with him. If not, then you could state he was really positive about it which made you interested.
Like Peter said, it can go either way.


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Does Google Scholar link to post-print PDFs lodged on academia.edu or ResearchGate?
I'm a big fan of how Google Scholar puts links to full text PDFs of journal articles that are indexed on the internet next to the link the publication page of academic publishers. This means that people who find a reference to a paywalled article in Google Scholar that they do not have access to can still read a PDF from elsewhere on the web.
I've been preparing post-prints of various articles for this purpose. If I post them to academia.edu or ResearchGate, will Google Scholar index them?

whatever you do, don't use research gate. put your papers on a personal website (if you own the rights) and create a google scholar profile to ensure that the papers are indexed by google scholar.

Yes, it will.
See for example:

Or:


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Why using ORCID iDs instead of DOIs to identify researchers?
DOIs are used to identified papers, presentations, datasets, programs, figures, audio files, video files, amongst other things. ORCID iDs are used to identify researchers.
Why using ORCID iDs instead of DOIs to identify researchers?

Because people are not things.

@jakebeal If you consider this is an answer, you're welcome to write one.

@NajibIdrissi E.g. to any digital location the researcher wants to. (by the way I don't understand people downvoting before getting the answer to their question)

@NajibIdrissi I didn't say so.

@NajibIdrissi The DOI of the researcher would point to some resource containing information about the researcher, just like the DOI of a paper would point to some resource containing information about the paper. I agree that in the case of a paper, the information is more complete that in the case of the researcher (ignoring paywall issues).

Why should DOIs be used for this purpose?

@NajibIdrissi: technically a DOI is a "digital identifier of an object" and not an "identifier of a digital object". So if we consider people to be things, then we would fall under the purview of DOI which recommends a digital avatar representation of non-digital objects. It may be worth pointing out further that the DOI Metadata Kernel is designed in such a way compatible with use for identifying people/parties/organizations.

It is perhaps more clear to point to this link instead: one of the required fields for DOI metadata is a specification of the type of object that the DOI refers to. Currently the two registered possibilities are "creations" (everything from articles to videos) and "parties" (which include people, animals, organizations etc.)

@ff524 To avoid having different identifier schemes.

Because I would rather be an Orc than an Object.  [/joke]
More seriously: from the horse's mouth

Our members will be aware that CrossRef has been exploring the possibility of creating an “author DOI” or “contributor ID”  system. In doing so, it has become clear that the issues and use-cases involved in identifying researchers span a broad collection of stakeholders including libraries, institutions, funders, publishers and, of course researchers themselves. In short, this is not primarily “a publisher problem.” As such, we believe that the ORCID approach to creating an inclusive and open organization representing all the stakeholders in the scholarly communications process represents the best chance of creating a successful contributor identification system

The main problem with using DOI to identify authors is that the DOI model dishes out DOI identifiers through registration agencies, which usually charge some fee for the assignment. The use of registration agencies is fundamental to the design and operation of the DOI scheme. The main advantage of the ORCID scheme, as indicated above by CrossRef, one of the DOI registration agencies, is its openness and inclusiveness. Obtaining an ORCID is relatively simple.
As an aside: ORCID is a subset of the ISNI and is used for identification of researchers. For more general contributors to media, the ISNI is preferred.

Thanks, very interesting. My take away is that, following CrossRef's rationale, there is no strong technical issue, but mostly political ones (lack of openness of the DOI system, fee to create a DOI, absence of some key stakeholders).

There are technical issues here.  ORCID offers an extensive set of APIs and metadata tailored to the use cases it serves (identifying people and their activities).
Put simply, it's not a one size fits all world for these things, and identifiers are supplemented by specialist services and metadata.
Crossref focuses on services/metadata around identifying papers while Datacite (another DOI registration agency) offers different metadata and services for the identification of (mainly) data.


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Persistent URL for each DOI pointing to open access papers when available
The Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) maintains a persistent URL for each DOI. Example: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06849. However, the link often points to some pay-walled article, even when it is freely accessible somewhere else. Is there any alternative service that maintains a persistent URL for each DOI, which points to a open access article whenever possible?

This doesn't answer your question, but in practice Google Scholar does a good job of linking to freely available versions.

@DavidKetcheson Thanks, I indeed typically link to it. But Google has a notorious history of killing its services.

I'm not completely sure what you mean by "maintains a persistent URL for each DOI" - the point of a DOI is that it is the persistent identifier and the underlying resource can be shifted around as needed.
But answering the question...

Why, yes, there is - doai.io
This takes the DOI, looks for an OA version (loosely defined), redirects to that if found, and falls back on the original DOI target URL if nothing is available.
Two examples from a randomly chosen issue of Nature last year:
doi:10.1038/nature14178 > http://doai.io/10.1038/nature14178 - no OA version so falls back on Nature, the original DOI target
doi:10.1038/nature14260 > http://doai.io/10.1038/nature14260 - OA version available on PMC, so directs the reader there

Thanks. Example of DOI: 10.1000/182. Example of persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06849

A new open access DOI resolver was launched this week: http://oadoi.org/
It claims to be "an improved version of the ingenious http://doai.io/". The development documentation provides a bit more explanation but is still in the process of being written.
Example:

DOI gets you a paywall page: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2007.03.007
oaDOI gets you a PDF: http://oadoi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2007.03.007


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What are the steps to find a publisher and strike a deal to publish the proceedings of a workshop?
I help organize a workshop in a conference on machine learning where the conference doesn't publish proceedings for the workshops: the workshops have to do it themselves if they want to.
What are the steps to find a publisher and strike a deal to publish the proceedings of a workshop? (where to find the list of publisher in a given field, what are the typical contract clauses and negotiation points, etc.)
I know that we can publish it ourselves (since in the end publish = hosting some PDFs online) but I'm curious to know how the old-fashioned publishers work.
If that matters for the answer, all papers are written in English and one requirement is that papers are open access or allowed to be posted on arXiv.

Consider http://ceur-ws.org/ - OA, DBLP-indexed and easy to get into if certain quality requirements are fulfilled.

Does the overall conference use a particular publisher?

IME, personal connections

@lighthousekeeper thanks, looks great! If anyone else is aware of other such options, very welcome.

@Buffy The main conference is organized that a society that has their own press (in this case, main conference = AAAI-21 ; society = AAAI ; press = AAAI Press).

As the lighthouse keeper mentioned in  the comment section, there is no need to "find a publisher and strike a deal to publish the proceedings of a workshop". Instead, for the sake of making science open access and not wasting research buget paying for open access as authors/editors, you should:
Use CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org) (gratis for readers/authors/editors/etc., started in 1995, contains over 2500 workshop proceedings).
Workshop proceedings published on CEUR-WS are indexed by DBLP, Google Scholar, and the process to upload workshop proceedings is quite straightforward. Example of workshop proceedings hosted on CEUR-WS: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2831/.
For more details on CEUR-WS, see https://zenodo.org/record/3556678#.YHzKge5KjnJ (mirror) and http://ceur-ws.org/HOWTOSUBMIT.html#FAQ.

Sorry for accepting my own answer, typically I don't do it but I want the open access solution to be the most visible since spending research budget on paywalls is a shameful waste of funding.

I went through this a few years ago for a conference for which I was the program chair.
Since you want open access, you'll find that the big commercial publishers will want to charge quite a bit (thousands of dollars per paper) to publish your conference proceedings.  For open access publishing, there are a few reputable publishers and lots of disreputable publishers that you'll want to avoid.
One reputable publisher for topics likes yours is Dagstuhl's LIPICS series.
If the society that sponsors the conference has its own in-house publishing arm then that can be a good choice too.

There's nothing special about this - go to the publisher's website, find the "contact us" form, and write to them. They'll tell you what they're looking for. Each new project is a approved on a case-by-case basis.
Typical questions to resolve would be whether there's a bulk purchase (without this, chances are very good that the project will not be profitable) and if so at what price, whether you want the book to be open access and if so how much the article processing charge (APC) will be, what format the raw manuscript will be submitted in (can you get all participants to submit camera-ready copies?), and how quickly after the workshop you want the proceedings to be published.


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How does the class time in the day and week impacts the students' learning outcome?
Is there any research/study/survey that looked at the class time in the day and week impacts the students' learning outcome? E.g. students often complain when class are too early in the morning, students on Monday might be more rested than on Friday, etc.; I wonder whether there exist any significant impact on how well students understand and remember the class materials.

It's hard to measure the effect of learning at a given time of day separately from the effect of a time preference (the latter was shown to have an effect on school achievement). You would need a scenario where students can't choose classes, which is not typical at the university level.

At least in Germany, many STEM bachelor programs have a pretty fixed schedule for the first year or so - you're free to make your own schedule but it usually doesn't make sense to do so. So I guess if faculty conspired to switch slots every year, you'd get a pretty good experiment. Trouble is, most other STEM departmens will kill you if you move CS 101 or Analysis 101 around, because their students need that and so they'd have to rotate their schedule, too. For advanced classes, other departments won't mind but it'll be down to time preferences again.

@ff524 schedules are normally tightly bound for 1st and 2nd year medical students so I assume studies may have been done for at least that subset of graduate/professional students.

I've never noticed it outside of Monday morning.

I came across the following study:

T McElroy, L Mosteller
  The influence of circadian type, time of day and class difficulty on students' grades.
http://vjbennett.pbworks.com/f/circadian+rhythms.pdf

In the conclusions of the work, they mention that the students have a best performance if their optimal time-of-day (i.e., if they are monrningness type or eveniningness type) coincide with the class schedule. By contrast the classes that require less cognitive functioning are less sensitive to the advantage and disadvantage of optimal and non-optimal time-of-day.