text:
Is Facebook a necessary tool for a student?
I'm starting a master's degree in the autumn, and I recently received an email from the university inviting me to join the Facebook page for the course.
However, I don't currently have an active Facebook account -- I deleted my account several years ago due to concerns about privacy as well as its overall usefulness.  (Mostly a case of "so why am I spending time on this site?")
Is there any explicit advantage I would get by joining the course's Facebook page, or equivalently, is there any disadvantage of not joining?
EDIT: I understand there is not likely to be an explicit requirement to join the group as official communication will be via email and university websites.  I'm asking more from the point of view of networking, socializing, etc.  Would the lack of Facebook be a handicap?
EDIT: Clarification: By "course" I mean the UK definition: The course is the entire year-long degree program.  In this instance, the department has created a Facebook page for everybody who is doing the same degree program starting this year, and that's what they invited me to.  However, my question applies to other possible applications of Facebook as well.

I think top-level universities actively discourage the use of any off-site resources for teaching. The Facebook may in fact have pretty dangerous impact on academic performance.

"Is Facebook a necessary tool for a student?" The answer is no.

It depends on what you study and whom you study with frankly. I've "needed" facebook, because for assignments with other people, we'd upload our part of the work on a facebook group we had created.
(I'd much rather have used OneDrive or another cloud-hosting service, rather than social media, but you have to go with the group I guess. )

Ive been pretty surprised by these answers.  As a current undergrad every student i know but a few (i mean like 2 to 3) have a facebook, and student groups have been noticeably useful especially for group work. Why NOT have a facebook? You can turn off the news feed and use it as a social tool, no loss at all in my view.

@TylerH The answer is no in my university, we have a facebook group for sharing important notes and notices that really help students. I can doubtlessly say that this group has taught me more and faster than any professor in a one-to-one tutoring.

@DmitrySavostyanov: While the statement on the effect on academic performance is very broad and would probably depend a lot on how you use it, I'm quite sure that it would be downright illegal to have any student sign up with Facebook in my place, as that would essentially mean handing out personal information to third parties (or forcing the student to do so with their own data, not any better) and thus infringing upon privacy laws.

You can open and account and use it only for this group, what's the problem?

That "course facebook page" -if you can discuss
"study things" with your classmates- is not different than StackExchange sites, just with a limited group of people a.k.a your classmates. If you find StackExchange is useful to discuss things, then you'll find that too in "that facebook course page". So, answering "is it necessary?" the answer is "no". But if "is it useful?" then "most likely yes". Most likely yes = "usefulness" depends on the quality of your classmates and the discussion going in the page, though.

I am not sure if it is necessary, but I am positive that it shouldn't.

Is there any explicit advantage I would get by joining the course's Facebook page

If you want to interact with your classmates on Facebook before starting the course, then joining the page would enable this.

or equivalently, is there any disadvantage of not joining?

If you don't feel a need to do the above, then no. There is no reason to expect this to be any kind of handicap. You will have plenty of chances to interact with your classmates face to face, when the course starts.
Facebook is a useful marketing tool for universities, which is why they invited you to join the page. If you personally don't want to interact with others on Facebook (for very understandable reasons), then there is no need to join the page.

He didn't even say which university and course he's talking about, you can't know if their use of facebook will be important or not! This is a very bad answer!

@Lohoris no it is not. No respectable university would force the students to join its page on facebook. If you are aware of one that does, please tell us, but I sincerely doubt it

@Ant the university would not force him, but the students theselves might do it anyway and important information could be shared there by the students themselves.

@Lohoris It is true. But apart from organisational issues, and maybe some advices from classmates (that are accessibile anyway) it is certainly not necessary, so knowing the university and the course is superfluous. So unless you can provide examples of some particular university / course, I have to say that your first comment is not pertinent.

@Articuno Experience is considered a valid source on Stack Exchange in general. The Question is is not about a rigorously defined academic subject, but about experience. I believe it is perfectly valid to counter an answer based on experience with something else based on experience. Claiming that the answer assumes near-perfect information would not be sufficient to make the answer bad, as it's possible the answerer does actually have sufficient information. An example of an experience counter to the one given, on the other hand, is enough to show that there is a lack of information.

I have cleaned up the comments, please move any new extended discussions about this answer to either chat or meta.

Without knowing how Facebook will be used by the instructor and fellow students in this course it is impossible to predict if you will be at a disadvantage for not signing up.
My school had some basic communication tools built into its course management software that were clunky and difficult to use, not to mention completely unavailable on mobile devices. This lead to many students turning to other more accessible, more  widely used means (like Facebook groups) to manage communications within their study groups.
You should contact the instructor directly before the class starts and ask how or if they intend the class to use the group. If they plan to rely on the group, that will be your answer. If they do not, keep hold of the reply. It may be useful to produce it at a later date if you do miss some important Facebook related communication from her.
Even if the group is not used in an official capacity, if a significant portion of your classmates use Facebook, you may miss out on a lot without the others even realizing they are excluding you. Or it may be that like yourself most of your classmates are disengaged from Facebook, and there will be no loss.
In either case, unless as ff524 suggests, you want to engage in networking with your classmates before the course starts, you can put off making the decision on joining until you know more.

I agree with everything you say, but final sentence could be better. What the instructor intends may not be as relevant if the students themselves find that Facebook is better than the school-provided online meeting place. They may discuss things on Facebook but only take what absolutely needs instructor input to the official site. Finding out from the instructor is useful, but not sufficient. Also check with your classmates.

@trlkly I had thought the rest of the answer made it clear that regardless of the instructor's intent, the other students might use it. Nevertheless, I expanded that sentence and reorganized to clarify. I'm happier with the result than the original, so thanks for the feedback.

Yes, there is an advantage besides the normal socializing one.
There will probably be a group for your year or the years before.
In this group people will share experiences with courses, questions&answers, solutions to homework and various other stuff.
Also, it could be that there might even be some teachings assistants in these groups which can help during homework and/or before the exam preparations.

Or you could, you know, hang out at the pub.

@JeffE Pups don't support asynchronous communication. In general I support your argument but this is the wrong place for it. It's like saying that SE is useless because "you could hang out at the pub" instead. The facebook groups simply serve as a localized forum in this place. In addition, it's highly attractive because everybody already is on facebook and joining a group is simple.

everybody already is on facebook — [citation needed]  Seriously, this is less and less true over time.

@JeffE: But the fact remains that a given group may communicate mostly on Facebook (or any other platform) -- if you are not on there, you can easily be left out. Yes, that's sad, but it has always been true: if you did not go to the pub everybody went to, you'd be left out, too.

My objection is to the opening sentence: Yes, there is an advantage besides the normal socializing one. "You might be left out if you don't" is the normal socializing one.

@JeffE I am not sure but maybe there is a misunderstanding here. "the normal socializing one" is for me the usual chit-chat which you can get either in the pub, on a party or on facebook. However, this is not what I am after about. It's more about the advantages it brings when you join a message-board-like communication platform. If you are one of the 1% of geniuses then you won't need it, but the rest definitely benefits. This is the same for tutorials or exercise lectures or any other form of help. Facebooks groups have simply shown to be an extremely convenient place for that.

I've never heard a pub called "a message-board-like communications platform", but from direct personal experience, all those advantages can also be had by hanging put with the right group of people at the pub.

@bamboon: During my studies, I had lots of contacts to foreign students, and they often were not on Facebook. In many cases because there were more popular local alternatives where they came from, and in some even because Facebook is not accessible from their place. So, no, not "everybody already is on facebook".

@O.R.Mapper "Everybody is on _____" is almost never a literal statement. It simply means that there are a large majority of people who use _____. It doesn't mean that there will be no one not using it. It is simply a statement of extreme popularity.

@trlkly thanks for bringing sanity back to this page

@bamboon While you have made some arguments for why the benefits of Facebook are beyond those of face-to-face conversations, none of them are actually in your Answer. Asynchronous communication on a platform well-designed for such, as well as having a larger audience than would be practical in an in-person setting are indeed benefits. The other problem is that these are not exclusive to Facebook. The main benefit of Facebook is its near ubiquity. It's one of the few sites that could possibly be the de facto online meeting place if the school-provided one is insufficient.

@trlkly Yes, that's right because that's not the question and such belongs into the comments. The question was what the benefits of facebook are in the given context - which I listed - and not the age old and never ending discussion whether facebook is good or evil. I realized too late that JeffE has pulled me into that discussion. Besides that, if would like to see these points mentioned feel free to edit the answer.

@trlkly: Indeed, and I was pointing out that the "large majority" is only true as long as you look at certain rather specific homogenous groups, not necessarily at "all students of a class" as a whole.

I actually find this requirement a bit odd. Kids are leaving Facebook en masse for other, more private forms of communication (namely, tools their parents can't join and subsequently see what they've been posting). So assuming the whole class will actively use Facebook for extracurricular communication is almost old fashioned.
Edit: The moment your kids hear you say "I've set up a Facebook group for this class..." they will silently groan and think "This is why I quit using Facebook." To them, we are the uncool crowd. Just use your school's Moodle/Blackboard/whatever forum for that. It's kludgy and they hate it, but they have to use it for all their other classes anyway. That solution is already in place for just this purpose.

You are talking of facebook as if it was myspace.

@bamboon you're right, I am. WhatsApp has half a billion users, most of whom left Facebook for the service before it was bought. Not to mention SnapChat, which has over 200M active users. And kids who use these services talk of it with an almost bourgeois attitude, which helps drive the growth.

What requirement? Who said joining the Facebook page was a requirement for anything?

Yeah, but those are not the areas we are talking about here. Snapchat is anyway just for the lulz. Whatsapp has probably taken quite some share from the chat traffic of facebook but facebook-groups offers message board like features which are important for the group sizes we are talking about here(hundreds). Besides all of that, the question can easily be generalized to be about social service X.

@DavidRicherby fine, suggestion. It's still odd.

Those who go to WhatsApp for privacy reasons are hilarious. They could just have configured/used Facebook in just the same way.

@Raphael, but their parents/grandparents can't see the messages. That's what I meant by privacy.

@JonathanLandrum Me too. These are things you can easily control on Facebook. If you don't want your relatives (or anybody) to see some or any of your posts, they don't have to. (Messages nobody can see, anyway.) People need to check out their privacy settings.

@Raphael you're missing my point. Kids aren't leaving Facebook because of a single group. They're leaving because their daily use isn't private enough. Look at the stats for Facebook. The average user is getting much older. It is very quickly becoming the next MySpace.

@JonathanLandrum With the risk of driftig away from the issue at hand: yea, they leave. All I'm saying is that if privacy (vs people, not the platform) is the reason, then the kids are just dumb. I hope there are other reasons, such that other things being more posh. But your point is still important: if it's going to be useful at all, instructors need to support the tools the students use anyway, not the other way around.

Quite pointless to use the school's forum/whatever, if the other studends don't use it and use Facebook instead... you go where the users are.

I see there are plenty of answers already, let me provide my experience with a similar situation.
I used to have a Facebook account which used to be useful at the time for interaction with friends & distant family. I moved abroad for studies and the Facebook became even more important in terms of interaction.
However, the priority of the studies was much higher than the interaction; It took me about 3-4 months to notice that Facebook in fact was doing more damage than help. Everyone wants to check if you are doing fine in the new environment etc but to them it is just a msg, to you that is multiple of msgs to multiple people (quadratic or exponential work?!?)
Basically, I deactivated the original account, created a new one with different name/surname which I use for the course. If they are not strictly checking for the credentials do the same.
In the more general view; keep in mind that students create groups in Facebook where they share exam, housing, event etc info. That might be handy.
Long story short, account with similarities in name and details, without display picture, and NO ADDED FRIENDS

I think there are some terms which should be defined in order to understand the question:

By course do you mean a semester-long sequence of lectures and exams in one subject? This is the US usage, while in other places module is used.  In those places course means what in the US is called a degree program: the set of courses/modules taken to complete the degree.
Are you asked to "like" a Facebook page or "join" a Facebook group? Both have been used interchangeably in this discussion but they are not the same.  A Facebook page is used by an organization for self-promotion and broadcasting information.  It's mainly a one-way tool, though likers can comment and (sometimes, depending on settings) post.  A Facebook group can be official or unofficial but is used for multi-way communication among its members.

If a course-as-in-degree-program is asking you to like their Facebook page, it's probably just to open up another line of communication to you.  For instance, they might use it to broadcast that the university is closed for bad weather, and you can get that information before checking your email.  You can do this without using Facebook for anything else; you don't have to interact with the other fans of the page.  I believe fans aren't privy to who is and isn't a fellow fan.
If a course-as-in-degree-program is asking you to join a Facebook group, it might be more for discussion as for a group, but would still be non-academic.  Perhaps they want to collect opinions about services.  Group members are able to see the list of group members, so you would be known.  But you don't have to be (Facebook) friends with the fellow group members, so you can interact with the group and keep  the other members at arm's length.
If a course-as-in-module is asking you to like their Facebook page, it's going to be academic but still mainly broadcast.  I've done this in my large lecture courses to announce when slides are posted or reminders about due dates.  These are useful to get extra communication to the students, but they should not be used  to publish anything that's not also on a university website.  If you find that there is original course material published on Facebook, you might want to raise concern.
If a course-as-in-module is asking you to join a Facebook group, it's likely that it's for academic discussion.  This can be beneficial as others have pointed out.  And the interface is familiar to most students so the content can be quite rich. But if the Facebook discussion is to be graded that's the most problematic combination.  Joining Facebook requires individuals to sacrifice a considerable amount of privacy, and I think it's not fair for university officials to explicitly require that consent to participate in instruction.  If you have a problem with joining Facebook and the instructor wants you do so for a grade, you should definitely be concerned.

Thanks for your answer; in response to your questions, by course I mean the British definition, i.e. course means your degree program, and they have asked me to join a group for the course, not just like a page.  Although my question isn't specifically for "should I join the group", it can over other instances as well.

@CaptainCodeman: in that case I think there's no harm in joining and only good that can come out of extra communication with your classmates.

As Matthew's answer says, you need to better define the terms. That is an important research skill, anyway.
Obviously, there cannot be any official FB pages for courses-as-modules/classes. Instructors who use FB as their main communication vehicle can be easily found in violation of the university's IT security practices via exposing the educational material that the university collects the money for on a platform that is not protected well enough. Even if an instructor only runs a FB page for their convenience, they still cut you out, and you have all the grounds to file a formal complaint with them to their department chairs saying that they discriminate in access to the course information against FB non-users (although the remainder of the class will probably oust you out, and you will be considered a weirdo for the rest of your time in the program).
So having ruled a course-as-in-module/class page out, I can imagine a course-as-in-degree/program may have an FB page for intermittent announcements: news about a graduate being mentioned in NY Times, a faculty member receiving a good chunk of NSF money, a formal visit of the program by the Chancellor, may be more technical stuff like colloquia announcements. Probably nothing you cannot leave without. (Avoiding triple negations is another important practical skill that will definitely make your writing much clearer :) ). So they will give you a little nudge to join, but if FB does not fit your lifestyle, not having access to it will not be the end of the world.

Facebook pages for Courses offered by Universities are a advantageous for the University since

This a indirect mass media publicity.
This helps build a connected medium of students.
Opinions can come in a velocity not achievable by normal methods.

It is also advantageous for you

You get to meet your crowd.
There will be enough people to collaborate that you don't need another medium

About the privacy fear that we all have, it should be taken care if you only add people you know. Also there are options to share things only to people you specifically mention. Privacy is a great option which lesser amount of people use, but my personal advice is that since its a University just let it flow.

Isn't the "privacy fear" less about contacts that get to see the messages because we didn't properly configure the privacy settings (which we can do something about) and more about the company that runs Facebook, the legislation it is subject to and potential misbehavior of people within that company (which we can do nothing about)? At least that would be the primary reason why I probably wouldn't be allowed to provide any teaching materials for students exclusively via FB, thus forcing students to join, in the first place.

@O.R.Mapper Absolutely true, but I'd call that being paranoid unless you are doing something really covert in there. There are restrictions imposed on companies on usage of our personal data anything otherwise will entitle you to file a lawsuit against them. That being said it's completely normal to be paranoid, considering the advancement of AI, machine learning and that our data is with the behemoths of this field.

Handling data about students, what they are studying, and possibly how well they are doing, is certainly something that needs to be kept covert. If I were transferring such data via a 3rd party service, that would entitle the students to file a lawsuit against me.

@O.R.Mapper The real question is "How many of us read the Terms of Services?". The whole concept of social media and its data collection strategy flourished because of the "Terms of Service" where we are agreeing on usage of our data. But when we enable a privacy option there exists a scenario that those data will not be given away to any other 3rd parties by the service provider.

The terms of service are irrelevant. Handing the data to the third party is the critical activity that can lead to a lawsuit, as the service provider is bound to the laws of their respective country, no matter what they initially promise in the terms of service.

@O.R.Mapper True, I completely agree. This monopolistic way of treating us users will come to an end when we users will learn to be self sustainable. What i meant is 1. Usage of Open-Source and distributed Social networking like Diaspora  2. Usage of HTTPS protocol and embrace the encryption philosophy.

I don't see a big advantage to joining facebook. Not joining facebook is probably better on the longer term. Employers are looking at facebook pages of the people applying for work. So, unless you use your facebook account in a way that makes you look like a nerd who no one wants to socialize with, there are no points to be earned here.

This may be good advice in general but does not in any way answer the question.

Lots students use facebook to communicate with classmates, academic and social groups.  Some instructors create facebook groups to have central place for students to communicate.

This doesn't answer the question: whether OP will miss out on anything by not joining, etc.

I would rather say there is nothing in the world which do not have disadvantages or advantages.Its up to you how are using it. Take an example of a Computer , you can use it for programming,studies and hell lot of advantageous activities \at the same time u can it to waste your time by playing games and watching movies etc(Look playing game or watching movies etc are not bad at all but if this kind activities will not appreciated if you are doing them by ignoring the priority work).If You see it in a positive way Facebook is one the best way to stay connected with society but if we don't know value of time or have self control then I thinks its  our fault.
"Use the advantages and ignore the disadvantages."

This doesn't really answer the question about being invited to join university page, whether OP will miss out on anything by not joining, etc. It's just a generic comment on Facebook.


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Publishing a scientific article without being a student or a researcher
From what I got to see during my research internship, research master's students, PhD students and researchers, when they do some decent research work or project, they sometimes send a scientific article to get published (after a selection process). In the case of students, whether it be master's or PhD students, there are always mentors or advisers that direct their work and join their names to theirs in the published paper.
I would like to know whether it is possible for anyone (someone who is neither a student nor a research, and who is not even an employed person) who does a research or even an implementation-driven work (such as building an application in the case of computer engineering) to submit a paper for publication and get it published.
Of course I bear in mind that in order to gain some recognition and to be selected for publication, the work should contribute with some knowledge to the scientific community.
If the answer is yes, how to proceed?

In civil engineering, I have seen independent researchers who contribute to industry-based researches and publish good papers. Even some interdisciplinary researchers for instance developers of computer programs with aim to solve civil engineering problems. Also some of the researchers have literature review papers. However, I think the research work for such independent researchers is so more difficult. And, your question is so dependent on the major, because doing independent research in some majors is almost impossible while in some others, it is easier indeed.

Actually I am interested in the major of computer engineering.

You proceed in the same way a student or professional researcher would: write a paper and submit it somewhere.

outside of the research world, are there any magazines that publish articles illustrating engineering projects (like as I said, new software built by a developper, and such) submitted to them by people who did those projects?

Here is a list of journals that will publish articles that you write about your software that you think would be interesting to scientists.
http://www.software.ac.uk/resources/guides/which-journals-should-i-publish-my-software

source: Stack Exchange

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

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text:
How to mention a completely rewritten article in PhD thesis?
First of all, I am from Europe. At my university are hardly any regulations of the form of my PhD thesis, especially nothing that concerns the following question:
I published a paper as a first author together with my supervisor. I have rewritten my work of the paper, the structure, each sentence, and all images, because I didn't want to give a Journal the copyright of a part of my PhD thesis. However, the original methods and ideas are still the same. Currently, this rewritten paper is one chapter of my dissertation and I have not cited the paper.
Would you recommend to let the reader know that the ideas of this chapter have been published in a journal?

Edit: Thank you for the answer, here are some remarks that didn't fit in the comment section:

I asked the journal, they responded:

Permission is granted for you to use the material requested for your
  thesis/dissertation subject to the usual acknowledgements and on the
  understanding that you will reapply for permission if you wish to
  distribute or publish your thesis/dissertation commercially. You must
  also duplicate the copyright notice that appears in the Wiley
  publication in your use of the Material.

However, I didn't want to duplicate the copyright notice of the journal in my thesis.
I will now mention that the chapter is based on the publication. I thought its fine to not cite yourself, because it was mentioned in the first comment of the question How to reuse complete paper for my thesis? that it is common in UK to rewrite the article so heavily that citation is not needed anymore.

@Alexandros I have published an article in a journal and the journal clearly has the copyrights for it. If I would only copy/past the article in my thesis and add a copyright note, then the journal would have a copyright of a part of my PhD thesis. As a result, I could not publish my dissertation commercially withouth further request. Could you explain to me why you think I did not understand "AT ALL" how this works?

... in many disciplines, this http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/149/what-is-a-sandwich-thesis/150#150 is the norm for a PhD thesis.

@Alexandros I find your comments offensive and not helpful, therefore I will not respond to any further comments from you. I have completely changed everything of the paper, but the idea/proof is of course the same, I think that now the journal does not have the copyrights any longer. I do not plan to publish my dissertation commercially, this was just an example. However, this example is not unusual - because one has to distribute the dissertation at my university, either online as pdf or as a book. The second option would be commercially.

I deleted the comment you found offensive. I have provided you the necessary links to the correct information about inclusion of articles in PhD theses.  See also this: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1897/can-i-reuse-part-of-a-paper-for-my-thesis/1899#1899

because I didnt want to give a Journal the copyright of a part of my PhD thesis

Have you checked the copyright agreement? Various academic publishers explicitly make an exception of their exclusive right of publication of the material (although graphics might be a different question) for the author's educational theses.

Would you recommend to let the reader know that the ideas of this chapter have been published in a journal?

Yes, this is absolutely required. Otherwise, you are committing self-plagiarism, which is considered a form of academic fraud. This could have severe repercussions during your later career. The reason is that if no citation is given for something non-trivial and substantial, the reader will assume it is new and has not ever been published before it appeared in your thesis.
A good idea to handle this is to add a remark in the beginning of the respective chapter(s) that says that the following text is partially/largely based upon your journal article.

Thank you! I will add this line now to my chapter. I added something in the edit section of my question to answer your question.

"text is partially/largely based upon your journal article" might not be true, and is largely irrelevant even if it is.  The important point, in my mind, is that "(portions of) these results have previously been published as " or "an article based on this work appeared in ".

@BenVoigt: I consider these statements as synonymous. If the text is based upon the article, that can just as well mean that the information conveyed by the text originates from the article, not the actual words found in the text. And I would rather err on the safe side - maybe some of the sentences are indeed more or less the same as in the journal article.

@BenVoigt has a point, the norm is to indicate the results have been published elsewhere. The point of any journal article is to report new findings (unless you are replicating or reviewing earlier findings). Therefore using 'results' is more to the point. That is what I observed in many theses, when I was checking how to word this for my own thesis.

"Text based on journal article" might create an issue of whether the dissertation is a derivative work. The point is that the journal article and the chapter report the same results.

@PatriciaShanahan: The dissertation may well be a derivative work (unless I interpret this term differently than you do), even if it is not a "stapler thesis" in the narrow sense of the word. The point of these statements is to preemptively counteract accusations of self-plagiarism, both concerning republishing of results and copying (semi-)verbatim passages of text. Pointing out that results have been published before tackles the former, but fails to address the latter, while pointing out that the content of a chapter is "based upon" one or more articles addresses both concerns.

@O.R.Mapper The OP wrote "I have rewritten my work of the paper, the structure, each sentence, and all images, because I didn't want to give a Journal the copyright of a part of my PhD thesis.", so I am assuming there is no verbatim copying of passages of text.

@PatriciaShanahan: "rewritten (...) the structure, each sentence" can in practice mean various things, and I would rather err on the side of being more inclusive in my disclaimer than opening up an angle of attack in case there are some traces of the original structure, line of reasoning, choice of words, etc. left despite the attempt to completely rewrite the text. Of course, you are free to also mention that (some of) the results have been published before, but it does not really add any new information if partsof the text are already based on existing articles.

Let's start from the ethical and get to the legal. I have no experience in European law (a bit of experience with Israeli law) so I won't be able to contribute much - except for a perspective, which is often no less important than the legal details.
Ethically the problem lies with the fact that a Journal has copyrights on scientific research papers appearing in it. More specifically, in that the copyright mechanisms and the scientific publishing industry are having a chilling effect - justified or unjustified - on people like you. You should not have had to rewrite your article because of the fear of Wiley or whoever it is. In fact, in hindsight I would even have considered just using whatever parts of the text are scientifically relevant to the thesis, on the good faith basis that society will not allow you to come to any harm for doing your work faithfully as a researcher. On that note, did you know that Copyright (in England anyway) was originally a concession by the Crown to monopolistic book printers? So one monopoly on power props up another. Terrible.
Legally it is not entirely clear from your post what Wiley actually has. First, if they had you sign some standard form, there could be an argument against its validity from the get-go. The interpretation of what the form says can very well be thought of as having an exception for uses such as inclusion in Ph.D. theses, and that it did not occur to you at any point that they are allowed to make demands about placing notices on their behalf in your thesis etc. Then there's the copyright law itself in your country - see what exceptions and allowances it has for socially-beneficial scientific work, use in scholarly/research activities etc.
Finally:
Never ask them for advice on what you can do. They will tend to advise you in a way which is the most useful for them and with the legal interpretation most favorable to them. Also, if you do ask someone for legal advice, don't ask him/her "Can you guarantee that what I want to do is legal?" or "Can you guarantee that the publisher's demands are invald?" Ask him/her just this: "Will you be able to defend me in court if I do this and they sue?" The answers will typically be "Not really", "Not really" and "For sure" respectively. (Just to be clear, that doesn't guarantee that you win in court, but it does mean you're unlikely to get sued at all.)

"Will you be able to defend me in court if I do this and they sue?" I think you imply success, but you did not make that explicit. I would think any competent lawyer would be "able" to defend anyone. Perhaps you should clarify.

@AaronHall: If you ask lawyers "will I win the case", you won't get a straight answer... I did imply that the defence would be worth-while, i.e. not just say anything trying to defend the indefensible also, see edit.

You are right, but not everybody thinks normal these days. A study of the copyright should be done.

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


text:
How to think while comparing approaches
I'm a CS master student. Now I'm doing my masters thesis and the contribution of my thesis is to compare different approaches/methods of one topic (e.g. clustering of text documents). What I have done so far is look at the state of the art on the topic and read the papers. However, now I need to think of what to compare. Of course there is the obvious comparison question: which method gives the best results? But that is so obvious. My supervisor once suggested to see how those methods compare their results and see if maybe there is a better way to compare the results of the methods. It was helpful to me to think about questions like this. But still I'm so stuck and I can only think of obvious stuff. This is the first time I am doing something like that.
I'm sure some of you went through something like this, so I was wondering if you can even tell me some /basic/ stuff and questions that people address when they compare methods in computer science. My main questions to you are:
1- When I read the papers of the methods to compare, in which way I should read it? Critically? Questionable? What exactly to look for in them?
2- Is there a general scheme for comparing methods in academia?
3- As for a masters thesis, what stuff is a must-do for comparisons?
4- Any great references/papers related to comparisons that could help me?

An useful contribution would be a comprehensive benchmark in which new algorithms can be tested. You would have to prove that your sample is good enough to cover anything useful.

Not knowing the details of your project, I'll offer some general suggestions.
In a sense, it seems to me you're asking two problems:one question is how to read papers, the other question is how to compare methodologies.
As far as comparing methodologies, the key concept in my mind is that of a "metric" or some means of judging/ranking methods. In CS, for example there are many such metrics: computational complexity, run time, stability, theoretical results regarding convergence, etc. Metrics often are often context dependent, meaning that different classes of users may have different ways to rate/rank a method. An algorithm may give an exact answer, which to a theoretician may be great, but if the algorithm can't function in real-time, another use may prefer another method that gives an approximate answer but quickly. So know who is going to use the methodology often helps you understand what metrics are really significant. So two thoughts to keep in mind are the methods you learned in class for judging how good an algorithm was and also who is going to use the algorithm (what are their concerns/needs and which methods best addresses
them).
A suggestion in this regard that will also help you with your paper reading is to look at what the authors of each paper say are the advantages of their method. In the introduction every author will give a reason why their method is "better" than the other (existing) methods.

One way to approach the problem is to ask: what can method A do better than method B?  What can B do better than A?  Can we devise a test to measure it quantitatively?
Then you may find that A beats B at everything all the time, or that A only beats B in cases that seem relatively unimportant.  In any case, you'll then have something interesting to say regarding A vs. B.
Now consider C.  Does it do anything better than A and B?  Maybe you can use an existing test, or maybe you need a new one.  And so on for C and D.
Now, that said, very often you have standard metrics that you should use instead (e.g. look at a ROC curve or % errors or execution time or whatever).  But when you're unsure how to form a comparison, inventing one that demonstrates a difference in some aspect of behavior (correctness, speed, memory usage, etc.) is often a good place to start.


text:
Cambridge Dress Code
I've got an admission to Cambridge University and have been asked to attend an afternoon tea event at my future college, it is a matriculation event. In contrast to all other invitations there has been no reference towards the expected dress code.
Are there any implicit/explicit expectations on what to wear as a female attendant? In many pictures I saw people wearing hats to such an occasion. Is it compulsory?
Thank you for any answers and your help.

Have you considered asking them?

Don't wear a silly hat :)

Hats certainly aren't compulsory, it's not a wedding... Are you matriculating as an undergraduate or a postgraduate? Either way, something "smart"? As @StrongBad says - ask them, the colleges will be more than happy to help out!

I think a hat would be overdoing it. Men will typically wear chinos, a collared shirt and a jacket to such things. Ladies have somewhat more choice: perhaps a dress, or smart trousers and a nice jumper. Colleges vary; some are smarter than others!
Ultimately, the most important thing is to be comfortable - the point of the reception is to meet people and make new friends, so you want to feel as relaxed as possible! So don't feel you have to dress up unduly if that's not your style.


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How to turn down a Postdoc scholarship offer after signing a contract
How you as professors would prefer to be informed in this case? That is, how to turn down a Postdoc fellowship offer that you have already signed a contract.
The reason in my case is I get an even better offer at another fellowship foundation. But the fact that I contacted the professor, we applied for the fellowship together, I got it and accepted it, make me feel quite awkward...

It sounds like the professor has already invested significant effort specifically on your behalf. This means you are well past the point where you can just pull out without burning bridges.

Thanks. I don't think he invested significant efforts. It's more like half day lab visiting/discussion + altogether half day or one day of proof read of the proposal + recommendation letter. So one or two days together at most, that's why I am daring to think about this possibility. But yes, this is still bad that I am at the edge of burning bridges...

OK, so this is your money he helped you get, not his money he got for you. That does change things. The size of his research group will also play a role: losing your only (potential) postdoc hurts much more than losing one of ten...

Yes, exactly. Thanks for asking to clarify this. It's in written contract. Otherwise it should not be a problem;)

(Well, maybe not a legal problem, but still a personal problem.) In this situation, @BenWebster's answer mostly still applies, but be aware that with a  contract already signed, such a request would much more likely to be taken poorly. A better option if you want to keep a working relationship is to take the position and either negotiate a year of (unpaid) leave or negotiate an early release to go work in the other group. Although I wouldn't bring this up the first day at work...

Thanks, I really appreciate this option you bring out. This could be the best...

When you signed the contract, you indicated your agreement with the terms. That gives you certain rights (that the university will provide you with work to do and pay you for doing it) and certain responsibilities (that you will turn up and do that work). One of the clauses of the contract will deal with termination: both you and your employer can presumably terminate the contract at any point, with a certain amount of notice, which might range from a couple of weeks to a few months.

@DavidRicherby: interesting point, but xLeitix and Pete L. Clark below have both made statements that suggest to me that they believe backing out now would be to breach the contract, not merely to terminate it under its own terms. Words like "major breach of trust", "that's what contracts are for", and "renege" are in the air. Not being an academic, I wonder whether they're working on the assumption that in a typical contract the questioner has already contracted to work for the full duration of the scholarship without notice period. Of course "typical" is regional.

... I also observe from Pete's comment that he is entirely open about the fact that he would make a written note to bear a permanent grudge just for hearing about this action in his field, never mind it happening to him as the professor in the equation. As such it seems likely that even if the contract does allow for termination, that contractual right is of limited use to anyone who wishes to remain in academia, since it would be rather harmful in certain circles.

@Steve: "Bear a permanent grudge" makes what I said sound personal or emotional.  In academia, there's liking people and then there's hiring them.  This is someone who in a public forum has said things like he doesn't think that a faculty member who jointly applied with a fellowship for him "invested significant effort", who is wondering if it makes a difference if the contract he has signed and mailed has not arrived yet, and so forth....

..... Most places get hundreds of candidates for every position.  The hiring process, even for postdocs, is arduous and requires the expenditure of political as well as financial capital.  Whenever a top candidate reneges, you usually have the hard decision of filling the position with someone much worse or leaving it vacant.   Someone who doesn't understand that at all and who is willing to back out of a written contract to entertain a somewhat better offer is quite a risk.  It just doesn't seem rational or wise to hire such a person.

@PeteL.Clark: Sorry, I take back "grudge", I had no basis for phrasing it that way. Keep a written record of fact. I think my point stands in reference to what David said, though, that anything the employment contract or the law says about a right to terminate, is pretty much unusable for those wishing to remain in academia, if your reaction is the norm. At least, it is if they're public about what they're doing.

@Steve: I agree with your comment.  On the other hand, there is another route for the OP to take, which I explained in an answer I just left.

While this does not answer the question, I think it is important to point out that this situation should have never happened in the first place (unless the other offer came out of the blue). Once you accept an offer (which happens way before signing the contract), you need to inform all other places where you have applied that you are no longer interested.

@SteveJessop I may be wrong but, in the UK at least (and, I would speculate, in any modern democracy), I don't think it's legal to have an employment contract that doesn't allow the employee to quit with reasonable notice. Certainly, every employment contract I've ever seen has such an option, including fixed-term contracts. The fixed term is an upper bound on the duration: the job automatically ends after X years but either side can end it earlier, with notice.

@DavidRicherby: right. Now that Pete has added his very informative answer, I no longer think the issue is that they expect the contract to have no termination clause, it's that they expect someone who signs a contract to show up for work as an ethical obligation, regardless of whether the contract itself legally binds them to do so. So while it's nice for the questioner to know his contractual obligations, there seem to be consequences of backing out that behave as if there were obligations beyond what's stated. Abruptly exercising the contractual terms would be viewed most dimly.

I upvoted both of the other answers, but in my heart I agree with xLeitix: academics live and die by their honor in a much more extreme way than is the norm in the contemporary Western world.  I should admit that my views on this are more absolute than those of some of my colleagues (with whom I have had occasion to discuss issues of reneging on signed contracts).  When I hear people say that it is okay to behave absolutely unethically -- even illegally, but counting on the fact that your former employer is not going to hunt you down and pursue a surely thankless legal action -- because they have to look out for themselves first, it really worries me.  Such a person is baldly stating that ethics can be thrown out the window when the consequences are important...which is of course the time when ethical considerations matter most.
What stops a person who has reneged on a job from reneging on a future job?  What stops them from engaging in unethical academic behavior in any of a hundred different ways?  Beyond the student level, academia is almost entirely self-policing.  In my field, if someone releases a preprint, and I respond by saying that I have independently proved the result but hadn't released it publicly yet, there will be some followup questions and discussion, but unless I give them an excellent reason not to, people will believe me. In science, every time you write a paper describing an experiment you did, you don't submit a videotape of yourself doing the experiment, you submit a written description of the experiment...and people believe you unless they have an excellent reason not to.  Whenever you submit a paper, it gets sent to a referee, whom you trust not to try to steal the work.  And so forth: only a small amount of "justified unethical behavior" brings this crashing down.
Once upon a time I was myself in the position of having accepted -- via an email correspondence, not via filling out a contract -- a postdoctoral position.  Just a few days later I got offered another postdoctoral position.  The first position was a great one, but it involved moving to Canada.  The second position was probably even better: it was at a top 10 math department in the US.  (Financially the second position was significantly better.)  But the first position was one that I hadn't even applied for originally; rather, my thesis advisor had made some phone calls and the offer came quickly: people had taken some trouble on my behalf.  What did I do?  I told the people offering me the second job that I was grateful for their offer but had to turn it down because I had already committed to another.  In retrospect, I still feel like the second offer might have been even better for me.  But a tremendously eminent mathematician went on the line and offered me a job when -- for a few days -- no one else would.  Anyone who knows me knows who this person is.  I can be a prickly person at times -- I certainly felt like the "loud American" during my 2.5 years in Canada -- and I imagine that this guy and most of his colleagues know me as slightly eccentric but professionally reliable.  Having people know you as professionally reliable is really priceless if you plan on staying in the profession: for instance, we later arranged for someone to transfer part of his NSF postdoc from this Canadian department to my own department.
What should you do in academia if you want to back out of an agreement?  It's simple: you immediately contact the party you've made the agreement with, you explain why you want to back out of the agreement, and you see what they have to say about it.  They're not going to be thrilled, but they can convey to you how much hardship they will actually incur by your backing out of the agreement.  If it is only a moderate amount, they will probably give you their blessing and the agreement can be mutually dissolved.  If however backing out of the agreement would turn out to really be a significant, tangible, medium or long-term loss for them, then you should honor it.  The OP has done something in the comments which he surely does not realize sounds absolutely obnoxious to more senior personnel: he's made all kinds of assumptions that his reneging will not be so bad for his employer.  And he's making them in the face of evidence that this employer actually did go to trouble: applying for a fellowship is certainly trouble!  If this is an externally funded position then it cannot easily be filled with someone else, and the faculty supervisor may well already have made plans and committed resources for the OP's arrival.  Or maybe not, of course.  Ask!
Finally, the OP doesn't seem to understand why getting a tenure-track job offer might make a difference.  The difference is that every postdoc wants to get a permanent job eventually, and every postdoctoral supervisor and institution wants that out of their postdocs.  Therefore, if you ask to renege on a postdoctoral job because you'd like to take a tenure track job instead, it is much more likely that the response will be: "Bummer for us, but congratulations for you!" or "Well, can you come work here even for a very short time?  That will inconvenience us minimally, you'll get some further training and experience, and we'll be able to say that we placed our postdoc in a tenure-track job.  It's a win-win!" It is however still possible that reneging on a postdoc for a tenure-track job may be unacceptable to the employer.  If they tell you that, then you go back to the tenure-track job and say "Look, I really want this job, but I have some prior commitments.  I am the type of person who honors my prior commitments even when it conflicts with my short-term best interests.  Surely we can work something out?" It is likely that the position can be held open for an extra semester or year.

How to turn down a Postdoc scholarship offer that you already signed the contract for?
You don't.
I am all but a hardliner when it comes to such topics, but signing a contract and then not taking the offer is a major breach of trust. This is not "close" to burning bridges. Unless the other side is the most understanding person in the world, this is going to go down really badly with the other side, and mark you forever as an utterly unreliable person, whose word cannot be trusted even after the paperwork is already filed. Frankly, if it is just about location and salary, I would strongly advise against changing your mind. The only time when this could be acceptable is when you get offered a faculty position instead of a postdoc.
Some Edits:
After some more discussion, reading Pete's answer, and a good night's sleep, here are some additional clarifications to my answer:
Steve Jossup: "I wonder whether they're working on the assumption that in a typical contract the questioner has already contracted to work for the full duration of the scholarship without notice period"
No, that's not my assumption at all. I think it is perfectly ok to quit a two-year scholarship after one year, because something better has come up. However, to me there is a world of a difference between quitting after a year and effectively handing in your notice before your job even started. I do remember that there is a question here somewhere about what the shortest acceptable timeframe for quitting a postdoc is, but I can't find it currently.
Also, the comparison between postdocs and professional contractors is in this context quite helpful. I have been an software engineering contractor for a short time, and I would have never signed all the legalese paperwork for a customer and then immediately backed out because a better-paying customer came around. As a contractor, like a postdoc, you are living off of reputation, and this kind of thing is not good for it.
"Isn't there a chance that the other person would be ok with the OP cancelling the deal?"
Of course there is. Maybe the OP's original postdoc advisor does not care so much about this position anyway. Maybe the original postdoc advisor is really just that happy for the OP that he found a better post. However, in all the discussion so far, the OP has to the best of my knowledge never indicated that he plans on discussing with the other person. This question is all about telling the other person that he has changed his mind. There's an important difference.
Stephan Tarasov: "Why should it "could be acceptable is when you get offered a faculty position"?"
This is really just an amendment of the previous point. Even if you get offered a faculty position, you should not just tell the other person that you're out after all. You explain your situation to them carefully, and maybe they will understand and you will be able to renege without burning any bridges. The probability of the other person being understanding is much higher if the other post is objectively much better than the original one, which would be the case if comparing a tenure-track position and a postdoc position. A better-paying postdoc does not qualify.
Stephan Tarasov: "this should not hurt anyone!"
I am not sure why you would say that. The other person thought she is going to have an additional postdoc for a specified time frame, and now she isn't. How is that not very bad for her?
Stephan Tarasov: "Are you saying you keeping all of your promises all the time?"
I would say I try to. Anyway, a signed contract is certainly more than just a promise.
Anyway, I feel like I have said all there is to say on this matter. Still, I have created a chat room for this question, and should the OP or anybody else want to discuss this issue further, I invite you to discuss it in the chat room. As the commenting escalated a bit last night (surely my fault as well), I will not be answering any comments here directly anymore.

I signed a contract in a week ago. But there might be a chance that it's not there yet. Would you see it differently if I contact the prof. in very short time from now and explain him the situation?

@StephanTarasov Not really. You are in a phase were there is no turning back anymore. That's kind of what contracts are for, right?

"no turning back anymore" This I cannot agree. You also said "this could be acceptable is when you get offered a faculty position instead of a postdoc." This conflicts your opinions on the contracts. Right?

@StephanTarasov What I meant is that when you get offered a faculty position, people in academia tend to be rather understanding because those possibilities are extremely rare. Backing out of a signed contract is still really bad, but there's a higher chance that people would be understanding.

I understand you want to make a strong statement there. And after reading your comments I agree with you regarding the fact that I might have burning bridges. That's why I want to find a way out of it. In this regards, for people have similar situations here, your answer might freak them out. But my point is that here one should consider more his own career. Because this should not hurt anyone. Of course, at the same time, considering to keep one's promise as far as possible.

"But my point is that here one should consider more his own career." I disagree wholeheartedly. But ok, opinions have been exchanged. Let's leave it at that.

Are you saying you keeping all of your promises all the time? And you never break any of your promises even in cases of no one gets hurt?

I don't think that was what he said. I agree with this answer and, without any more information about your circumstance, I think the point of his answer was that it would be better for your career if you kept the contract you signed...

Thanks. I know. He has a strong suggestion. That's why I am trying to argue.

Let's say, what if one don't get the fellowship. He puts a lot of time (far more than the administration oriented time) and finally ends up with nothing? Will this hurts the applicant more?

Also, you seem not to be aware that this answer is about considering your own career: Your reputation is one of your most valuable assets in academia, and what you want to do will definitely give you a bad reputation. You do not want to be known as the guy who backs out of a signed contract the second a slightly(!) better offer comes around when it's time to apply for faculty positions.

I appreciate your suggestion. But I really cannot follow some of your very strong argument. It simply because the fellowship means much more to the applicant than to the founders. I think we should make this points very clearly.

I get this point. Sorry, I just want to argue. It's only because your point is too strong;) I mean one should say first a sentence maybe like: there is an exception for everything...

Guys, way too much arguing has happened here in the comments. Let's move this over to chat (http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/15245/getting-out-of-a-signed-contract) if you want to continue the discussion.

Ok, my last comment. Why should it "could be acceptable is when you get offered a faculty position"?

@Pete L. Clark: I set your answer as my accepted answer. However, as I read through your comments again, I really don't understand this comment (Never offer a job to Stephan Tarasov). I would now be writing a note to myself if we are in the same field: "Never apply a job to Pete L. Clark". For he is likely to be unreasonable about the contract and he might care less about the future of his coworkers once it comes to his credit.

@Pete L. Clark: As I commented, I respect your comments. I explained you that I set your answer as my accepted answer. I don't know if you understand, it actually seems, saying something like Never offer a job to Stephan Tarasov is not really helpful, right?

@Stephan: Upon reflection, your retaliatory comments constitute a sufficiently firm denial of my help that it no longer seems appropriate for me to continue to offer it.  I have deleted them.  I wish you the best of luck in what is a very challenging job market.

@Pete L. Clark: Thank you. It is very nice of you to offer helpful suggestions and be kind at the same time.

I think the main thing is "as quickly as possible."  You can either call or email, but don't wait any significant amount of time.  It will be awkward, but too bad.
EDIT: I'll note that when I wrote this answer, I think the question didn't specify that an actual contract had been signed, so I assumed that the OP just meant an informal acceptance.  Obviously, once the contract is signed, you're bound to follow its terms, and as Pete and xLeitix say, there are certainly ethical considerations beyond that.  I would probably state things in somewhat less absolute terms; while I think Steven Jessop is missing some aspects of academic culture, I think the question of precisely where this obligation ends is a good one.  Does signing the contract create a moral obligation to do the full term of the fellowship no matter what the contract says?  I don't think that would be most people's position.  xLeitix says it's OK to quit after a year but not immediately, (which I think is mostly a convention based on the fact that in the US jobs go on an annual cycle, so a year later an employer can position themselves better).  What about after six months?  The very fact that there isn't a precise answer shows that it is a judgement call, but you do need to exercise judgement in a way the OP seems not to be.  You are, when considering a change like this, obligated to assess what kind of damage doing this switch would cause (for example, to the research of your prospective sponsor) and judge whether the benefit to you really outweighs this.  It certainly hasn't yet sounded to me like it would. END EDIT
Rather than just bluntly specifying that you're backing out, you may want to lay out the situation with the first professor, and ask if there is a way to reconcile things (maybe you can spend some time in professor 1's lab with funding from the second fellowship?).  I think it will "save face" if you can think of it as some kind of hybrid of the two positions rather than you simply dropping the first professor.
I would also think carefully about just how much better the other fellowship is.  I'm not an absolutist about changing your mind after accepting a job, but it is a pretty major step and one only to be taken if the other possibility is much better.  You run the risk of seriously burning bridges, especially if you don't have a compelling reason (say, strong personal considerations, or a permanent job vs. a temporary one).  You don't indicate what the difference is, but if it's just a bit more money or slightly better location, then you should probably just suck it up and stick with your original commitment.

+1 -- and make sure you (the OP) don't present him with a fixed decision, but involve him in getting to it.

Thanks! These are very good/important points for me. I found I am in a difficult position because I would be happy if I get any one of them. The reason that I prefer the second offer, is he offered me (orally) a few PhD students to supervisor. And I feel the chance for me to make a high-impact research is more in his lab. But yes, the best solution maybe I work first a few months for the first project and then go to the second. This would be the ideal case. However, chances are this might conflict the policy of the fellowship foundation, which I have to check now.


text:
Are IELTS past tests available for students preparing for the exam?

I want to know a way to find past IELTS questions. If they are available freely?
Are there good exams for all modules? (Specially Listening)

You may use the books available in which some preparation exams (sample tests and past tests) are published and you can study those exams and sample tests. Some of these books and preparation materials are available in How do I prepare? page on IELTS official website, Cambridge English Exams and IELTS books and books about IELTS by other publishers.
If you are seeking for free online sample exams and studying materials, there are some preparation materials for exam available in different websites over the net, which you can find by a simple search.

It is well worth investing in at least one IELTS past examination book, make sure the CD is included in the price otherwise you'll have to pay for it separately and that single CD can be ridiculously high-priced.
A word of warning for candidates who are self-studying,  some IELTS websites are truly awful. Their suggested sample essays, for example,  are an embarrassment and should not be touched with a barge pole.
On the other hand, there are professionals who genuinely care, and are also native speakers. Flo-Joe and IELTS Liz are among the best in my experience. Liz's videos, especially, are very useful, clear, and straightforward.
I am not affiliated with either website. But I have used these resources in private lessons to help Italian candidates pass their exams, or obtain that elusive 7.0 grade (IELTS).

You can find some practice tests for each module here.
Even though they're not free you might want to consider buying books, including official practice materials.
And of course, as it has already been mentioned, a quick simple search on any search engine might give you enough preparation materials.


text:
How do you find interdisciplinary collaborators for your research?
I would like to know if someone knows whether there are IT solutions (websites etc) that help with meeting interdisciplinary researchers from local academic institutions (socal).

Interdisciplinary collaborators don't necessarily have to be local; even international collaboration is far from uncommon.

If you really want them local, the best social network is actually being social.
You can either attend conferences and university events in your city, attend seminars at other departments (some are announced in their webpages), or just send a series of polite emails to researchers working in thins you want. Just list the departments that may be doing something you like, browse their personnel, and skim their last publications to see if your research interests may be aligned.

In my case, through my universities intramural cricket league!  Seriously, getting to know academics in a social context not directly related to work is an excellent way to find people to work with, and if they are people you get on well with, that makes the academic collaboration more enjoyable and productive.  Most universities have social clubs and societies (and e.g. language courses) that are open to staff.

I would suggest you try finding researchers on Academia.edu. Generally, you will find a whole host of researchers who have similar research interests and who are willing to collaborate. You also might try to find email or snail mail addresses of researchers you are already familiar with in order to establish links with them. If you don't attend conferences and network, I believe the above are viable options you should consider.

Yes, Twitter is good, too.

Attend a hackathon or tech event, or atleast attend the last day (presentation) of these events, you are bound to connect with people various background and research area.


text:
How can I show my potential in my mail to the professors?
I am hoping to continue my masters in machine learning or data mining. So as a part of the process I am mailing to professors. I have a decent GPA and GRE score. I have research experience in these fields but no publication. I am not an extraordinary student but a motivated one. If any professor see my profile they may find it very ordinary. How can I ensure him that I will do my best. I know that knowing the research works of the professors will help you to get a professor's attention. Is it natural to grasp his research work completely? Though the track might be same, but the level of research is more deep than my previous experience. Is there any way to show him I am worthy?
I am not sure whether this type of question is appropriate for this forum. But hope that someone will enlighten me.

I don't feel its inappropriate. From a CS view, I think it would be interesting if you described a specific research topic you're interested in. If you can sell even an idea to a professor (as opposed to actually implementing said idea), it shows you understand what you're talking about and didn't just read his website or past works.

What professors are you emailing (in the department you've applied to? Potential thesis advisors? Potential research assistant job-givers?) and what is your relationship to them (haven't applied yet? Applied but not yet admitted? Admitted but not yet enrolled? Enrolled, but never met this professor? Current or former student in professor's course?) and what do you hope to gain by emailing them?

I am emailing to potential thesis advisors and I have to ask them  for research assistantship. I haven't still applied. Professors are very busy and they take few students. I thought early contact might help my chances.

Read a recent paper (e.g., one authored by the professor you are planning to contact or one that is otherwise very closely related to their research interests). Then do a little bit of actual research. Think about the paper. Try to find something interesting and non-trivial that you can say or do about it. If unsuccessful, think harder and/or read another paper. Once successful, write the email and tell about what you have discovered. In general, give a concrete proof that you have got both interest and skills to work in the field.

If any professor see my profile they may find it very ordinary. How can I ensure him that I will do my best. — I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but by far the most effective way to impress potential advisors is to have an impressive application.  Motivation is not enough.  We need to see evidence that your motivation leads to good results.

I was fearing this might be the problem. Maybe I should retake GRE because other things are now out of reach. Can a moderate GRE alone compensate the loss? If I want to persuade in these field what would be a decent GRE score? My GRE score was 306(v:150 q:156). Do you know any university in these areas would accept that score in masters. I can apply in them. In the meantime I will prepare for GRE. What do you think of that approach? If you have any suggestion share with me. Thanks to all of you for your valuable comments.

To summarize some other advice, attend weekly departmental seminars and ask questions (during or after) the presentation. These meetings are designed to inspire, and you need not be an official student to attend.
Professors really like what they do, and it is flattering when students ask honest questions about their research. Taking the initiative to attend another department's seminar and being inquisitive will raise your status from ordinary student to extraordinary student. Finally, befriending a faculty is a huge step towards acceptance into any graduate department.

In does not make sense. OP is clearly stating that the contact is by mail (as in most cases). He might even not be in the same continent. This surely work within own faculty but if you're planning to move there's no way this can help.

Another way to get the attention of the professor is a recommendation email or phone call from your bachelor advisor. This shows you're so worthy for your advisor that he takes time to recommend you.
Note: In case the professor does not already know you, it might be somewhat hard to get his/her attention just by mail as they receive a number of such mails every day.

When applying to graduate school, I read two recent papers of every professor I wanted to work with.  Of course, I only picked professors that were interesting to me.  Then, I read those two papers thoroughly (which, in itself requires some explanation; basically, produce a one page precis containing a summary, the weak points, and possible extensions) and emailed the professors with questions on it, both clarification and analytical.
If you want to grab a professor's attention, show him that you're a student who is thinking along similar lines, who is competent, and will require little energy to motivate and train.  The demonstration of a synergistic relationship is important.  Ultimately, that's not only what professors should want out of students, but what students should want out of the professor.  Entering into an advisor-advisee relationship is a serious commitment and personality clashes make that difficult.


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Is it plagiarism to publish a table that was published earlier in a different journal?
I need to a include a table which contains the basic characteristics of study participants. However, in a related previous publication that dealt with a different hypothesis, the table was published. The present submission deals with the same study population but a different study than previous one. I need to give the basic clinical characteristics of the study population.

Will it be appropriate if I just cite the previous publication in the table title?
Will that prevent me from getting accused of self-plagiarism?

The fact that you deal with the same study population means that you have the right to show information about the population just as much as in both studies. To cite the other study, particularly the table, is perfectly fine. But, if the table is key to the paper, for example, in the methods section, it seems more appropriate to include the information in your new paper. It is also perfectly fine to reproduce the table just as you can reproduce a figure from another paper but then the table might include or lack information that is superfluous or needed, respectively in your new study.
I would therefore suggest that you create your own table and format it to suit your purpose best. You should also cite the other study and state that your new study is based on the same study participants as the previous study and then also refer to both tables to indicate the kinship. That way it is obvious that you are not trying to conceal that the tables contain the same information but that the information is key for both studies. It should be clear to the reader that there is a common basis for the two studies.


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Why does arxiv.org not assign DOIs?
I know that arXiv have their own identifier system, but considering how widely adopted DOI is, why do they not use DOI perhaps as a supplement to their own identifier?

Because DOIs cost money.

How much per paper, I wonder?

Also note the arXiv (1991) began before DOI (2000).  I knew about DOI's much later than arXiv ids.

I also think DOI's would just complicate things (they're not clearly pointing to the arXiv, wouldn't always point to the most recent version, ...)

The cost of a DOI is seemingly variable, but an open-access journal as for example the Winnower pays about 6 cent per doi.

@Kimball - there are plenty of DOIs from the 1600s, e.g. http://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/11666-000

The fact that someone is making money selling numbers to mathematicians makes me sad.

@FedericoPoloni Well, you are not really paying for a number. You are paying for someone to make sure that number actually takes you where you want to go...

@ThomasArildsen I don't think it costs per paper; I think it just costs to purchase a DOI "subdomain".

This behavior changed in January 2022. ArXiV now assigns DOIs, as well as arXiv IDs. The change was supposedly made to improve discoverability, and to "help arXiv meet the ‘FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship’".

Starting in January 2022, arXiv began registering DOIs and submitting associated article metadata to DataCite on behalf of (and at no cost to) arXiv authors. The first articles to receive DOIs are those with 2201.NNNNN identifiers, with all new articles receiving DOIs going forward. Following the successful launch, we will begin minting “arXiv DOIs” for the approximately 2M articles in arXiv’s corpus published between 1991 and 2021. The article abstract (/abs) pages are also now updated to display the arXiv DOIs following the registrations.
Why add DOIs when there are arXiv identifiers? Are arXiv identifiers going away?
The arXiv identifier has existed for more than 30 years; we will continue supporting it and you may use it in your citations as an alternative to the arXiv DOI. We are issuing DOIs for several reasons:

Making article metadata available in DataCite’s centralized location allows research outputs to be more discoverable and harvestable.
Some funding agencies require DOIs for the research they are supporting.

The DOI is constructed from the ID according to

An author can determine their article’s DOI by using the DOI prefix https://doi.org/10.48550/ followed by the arXiv ID (replacing the colon with a period). For example, the arXiv ID arXiv:2202.01037 will translate to the DOI link https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2202.01037

At least in mathematics, the arXiv is a pre-print server --- papers are mostly eventually published, and receive DOIs then. In fact, the arXiv encourages authors to add these DOIs to the arXiv metadata when they become available.
I think it could be quite confusing for papers to end up with two DOIs. Given that the arXiv numbering scheme works quite well, and in practice everyone knows how to resolve handles of the form arXiv:NNNN.MMMMM, why add the complication?

(I'm on the mathematics advisory board for the arXiv, so I'm quite interested in this question, and very happy to consider other positions. It's certainly something we could think about doing, if it made sense.)

'Avoid duplication' is a key point. The DOI wasn't intended to be a unique identifier, but it inevitably gets used as one, and duplicate assignment complicates things.

@NajibIdrissi this is indeed correct, but if we provide two DOIs people will probably find it tricky to maintain that distinction. Having a separate type of identifier avoids a bit of the confusion.

To the extent that the preprint and the published paper have distinct identities, remember they already have distinct, globally unique identifiers (an arxiv id and a DOI).

A proposal: any arxivv paper with a handle of the form arXiv:NNNN.MMMMM could be assigned an unique doi handle in the form 10.XXX/NNNN.MMMMM (could be done a posteriori + include revisions) - this would make these widely more accessible to the academic world (and in practice to current bibliography management tools ) - still they would be unique and not complicate anything (easy, unique conversion from one to the other).

in practice everyone knows how to resolve handles of the form arXiv:NNNN.MMMMM, This must be field specific, because I've never had cause to resolve a handle like that.

@meduz That's basically what they opted for: 10.48550/arXiv.NNNN.MMMMM.

DOIs have a technical purpose and a bolted-on social purpose.
The technical purpose for DOIs is to be an actionable identifier for intellectual works (such as articles) that outlives technology changes, domain-name changes, business-model failures, mergers and acquisitions, and all the other stuff that makes ordinary URLs 404. (Thinking of it as a URL-indirection layer is not a bad way to get your head around it.) The thing is, DOIs are not the only scheme that accomplishes this technical goal. (In fact, technically? DOIs are actually handles.) arXiv appears to have rolled its own scheme with underlying infrastructure to match.
The bolted-on social purpose? In the early days of web-accessible journals, it wasn't always obvious what was a legitimate journal and what was woolly-wild-Web content. (Not, obviously, that such things are exactly clear as crystal now! However.) Because nobody making woolly-wild-Web content bothered to buy DOIs, DOIs became a convenient heuristic for determining whether online content belonged to a journal.
In so doing, they accreted Mystical (but let me assure you, wholly imaginary) Powers of Reputability in the eyes of many people who really ought to know better... to the extent that anything without a DOI started to look fishy, including in the eyes of many people who really ought to know better.
So. Where does that leave arXiv? With an adequate technical solution to the 404 problem, but without the Mystical Powers of Reputability that DOIs are (erroneously) thought to confer. I hypothesize that arXiv doesn't think it needs to pay for Mystical Powers of Reputability... and it's flourishing, so if that is indeed what arXiv is thinking, arXiv appears to be correct.

In my field (where arXiv is widely used) I don't think DOI's are generally perceived as granting any reputability factor (and arXiv only a minimal amount).  In fact I often prefer not to include DOI's in my references because I think it makes my references more cluttered and ugly.

@NajibIdrissi Form and function are not entirely separate.  But if links are included, one can also click on the arXiv id to go directly to the paper.

The mystical thing is something Crossref is trying to counter, e.g. http://blog.crossref.org/2013/09/dois-unambiguously-and-persistently-identify-published-trustworthy-citable-online-scholarly-literature-right.html . DOIs also provide another function: a cross-publisher metadata store in which you can look up information about publications regardless of who published it or where.

I would like to emphasize what D.Salo wrote: DOIs are more about intellectual property than about journal vs preprint distinction. For example, the preprint system of Open Science Framework automatically assigns a DOI to new preprints and new projects, and depositing these preprints is not subject to any review, and (luckily) not even to screening or filtering, as it is for arXiv instead.

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


text:
How many professors are children of professors?
I am a professor. Anecdotally, about half the people I know in academia have at least one parent who was or is a professor. (I was not born to any professors, for the record.) And then you see families like this.
I'm curious to what extent my anecdotal impressions align with overall trends. Is there data out there about which percentage of professors are children of professors, how being the child of a professor might influence your chances of getting tenure, and how such trends within academia compare to those for other professions (e.g., how many doctors are the children of doctors? do they earn more? etc.).

Comments deleted. Please use comments only for their intended purpose and do not use them for speculations around the subject, half answers, and particularly accusations against entire groups.

I've noticed this too. There is a longstanding literature (mostly in sociology) about social mobility that looks at parents' and children's occupations. Beller and Hout (2006) report that father-to-son occupation correlation was about 0.30 to 0.40, and Piketty (2000) gives an overview of intergenerational mobility for a handbook chapter.
Getting closer to your question, Torche (2011) finds that in the U.S. there is a "U-shaped pattern" of occupational (and other status) similarity, when child education is on the x-axis. For those with just bachelor's degree, their outcomes are barely correlated with their parents', but people with advanced degrees or low education are much more likely to be similar to their parents.
Through Google Scholar, I did not quickly find related literature about whether academic careers stand out from this trend in some way. However, I believe academia would have even higher intergenerational replication, for the following reasons.

First, academic jobs require high levels of formal education, and education is one resource that is often transmitted across generations (cf. Roksa and Potter, 2011). (Professors could especially set up their kids for success while advising on what kind of college to attend, or whether a university offers good undergraduate research opportunities.)
Further, academia has more or less an apprenticeship model and has many unwritten rules to navigate; growing up with that as the "family business" should help one navigate that career path.
Finally, while there are lots of doctors and lawyers on TV, and those are professional careers many are familiar with, being a professor is a bit more of a niche career, and it may be harder for people from non-professor families to even think of it early on.

Probably true.  If there were more flashy professors in popular culture (like Indiana Jones or Robert Langdon) then maybe more kids would see that as a desirable career.  Not just (kid's choice) astronaut and fireman or (parent's choice) doctor and lawyer.

@NajibIdrissi I wanted to be a detective when I was a kid... and research can be surprisingly like that! ;)

@GEdgar Not as much as I a friend that I had who wanted to get a PhD to pick up new partners...

What about the Professor from Gilligan's Island?

@JosephDoggie Well, it's not like Gilligan's Island showed what a career as a professor looks like nor was the professor treated as a super cool dude

@AzorAhai-him- Russell Johnson (who played the Professor) was told by many real-life scientists including PhD's that they inspired him.  How is building a battery with coconut shells NOT cool?

The New York Times have an interactive analysis based on the results of the General Social Survey you can use to query this data. Most jobs exhibit some amount of "heritability", so the observation that many professors are children of professors is not particularly notable. Professors have slightly higher heritability than average, but far less heritable than some other professions requiring advanced degrees:

"Professors and Lecturers": 5x more likely to have this job if you have a parent that had it than not. NYT says this is "higher than average"
"Elementary and middle school teachers": 3x, which NYT says is "about average"
"Doctor" (presumably medical): 25x
"Lawyer": 18x

Note that this data contradicts some of the speculation in the other answer. For this reason, I will refrain from speculating on explanations for the relative heritability of these professions without further evidence.


text:
How do I quickly describe the timeframe a topic became relevant?
In a single sentence in a homework for a historical overview I mention that:

Video games [in academia] became relevant only after the new milennium. Before that, topics concerning video games mentioned them mostly as an application of computer graphics, but did not as a major part of research, maybe with a few minor exceptions.

I don’t want to linger on this topic at all but I am making myself crazy about how I can prove the correctness of the broad scope of that assumption without performing a whole study on when what paper handled what topic in what timeframe. How do I do that?

Ah, finding citations to back up generalizations. I know that annoyance, and I'm glad you're alert to it. When I'm editing my writing and find something like this, here's my thought process:

Do I really need to establish this time frame in the first place? If I can delete this part without negatively affecting my argument, all the better.
What would a really picky person respond and how do I deal with that? ("Actually, video games have been relevant since Pong!" "OK, I should narrow my claim substantially...")
Who would have written about this authoritatively in a way I can reference or quote? (For instance, look for a review article on video games in academia: someone reviewing the field systematically or a long-term contributor to the field could say the same thing with more gravitas.)
Is there systematic evidence I could use, such as the founding dates of academic journals that are specifically about video games? (Perhaps the first issue editor's note would say something relevant.)
What examples am I thinking of? How can I reference them without claiming to be comprehensive?  E.g. "Video games were used in academic studies on computer graphics (see Mario 1987 and Luigi 1993), but it was a major breakthrough when articles began dealing with video games as an art form (e.g. SuperMeatBoy 2013)."

More generally, timeline statements should usually be deleted out in the editing process.
It bugs me when my students make historical-ish claims without having a true historical perspective. ("Nowadays, computers are more and more important!") These usually happen in introductions, where people are getting warmed up writing about the topic.
"History" is rarely an interesting hook for a paper introduction, unless the whole thing is a nuanced historical analysis or there are interesting anecdotes that highlight a contrast. ("When Don Knuth began working with computers, it was standard practice to X (Knuth p. XYZ). Even though today computer scientists often do Y, implementing X in an object-oriented programming language can help us understand [topic].")

The topic is actually a historical overview of videogames using a certain current topical technique ... , so history is actually exactly what I ramble on about for the next 20 pages ...

Ah.  In that case, hopefully the content of the paper will help you pick out key milestones to highlight, a la point 5.  :)

+1 especially for Do I really need to establish this time frame in the first place?, which generated the OP's clarifying comment and edit of the original question, and which resulted in my more focused answer. (I thought I had already upvoted your answer, but as I was heading out the door to the gym this early a.m. morning, I realized that I had overlooked doing so.)

You could consider softening the assertion to something like the following.

Literature searches indicate that published academic research in video games, excluding applications to computer graphics, is confined mainly to the new millennium.

This replaces your assertion about actual academic research with an assertion about what literature searches reveal. If your field of study allows some informality in writing, then you could further soften the assertion to something like “Our literature searches . . .”, and now the claim is made only for literature searches that YOU have conducted.
I recommend omitting the filler phrases “but did not as a major part of research” and “maybe with a few minor exceptions”. Your previous remarks, and certainly my use of “confined mainly”, does not suggest the absence of minor exceptions. Besides, depending on what “minor exceptions” means, this could be said about pretty much anything, and thus these phrases add essentially nothing but extra words.
If you have access to ProQuest, which is likely if you have access to a U.S. university, then you can conduct full-text and title searches for “video games” (for title searches, use “TI(put search words here)”). Not all results of such a search will be available to you, but from among the theses that are available to you, there might be some which give historical overviews and/or literature searches that could be helpful, not only with relevant literature and research results but also with examples of the kinds of sentences you’re trying to write.


text:
Do I need permission from my past supervisor?
I am currently a postdoc in computer science. Last year I completed my PhD. I have published one research paper during my PhD with my research supervisor. I am trying to work on that paper. I mean I have got something and I think it is going to be an incremental result of the previous research paper.
Question: Do I need to get permission from my past supervisor to publish a paper that builds on our previous co-authored paper?

I don't think you need to, but if you parted on good terms, why not check in with him/her once in a while?  She/he might be interested in collaborating on this with you, on a more equal footing with each other than when you were a student.

If your past supervisor made a significant intellectual contribution to the new paper, then he should be a coauthor.  And then, yes, you need his permission to publish the paper, because publication requires the consent of all coauthors.
If your past supervisor did not make a significant intellectual contribution to the new paper, then he should not be a coauthor.  And then no, you don't need his permission to publish the paper, because he is not a coauthor.
In short: The fact that he is your former supervisor is utterly irrelevant.  (This would also be true if he were your current supervisor.)

If he contributed, you have to ask him for his permission, if not, then not.
However, even if not, it would probably (depending on your relation) -- if this work is closely related to his -- be nice to tell him. I know people, who extended their PhD work after graduation and thus, unknowingly, studied the same problem the supervisor gave his new students (and thus scooped them). Your supervisor may also be able to give you valuable feedback on your draft.