text:
Where to go after academia in the humanities?
I am a full prof in the humanities at a small liberal arts college in rural America. I am relishing my sabbatical in a European country with a flourishing economy and appealing culture. I do not want to return home. I travel abroad every summer and so do not attribute my thoughts about a major move to reverse culture shock. I mainly want to stay for the benefit of my children where here they can get a better education and have better opportunities.
There are currently no jobs in my field that I have seen advertised in the country where we are living. I have also been putting the word out to my academic contacts here that I want to stay, but so far I haven't heard about any job opportunities.
I'm not certain I could compete for jobs when they come up given that I have devoted my career thus far to teaching and service, and I'm not a newly minted PhD. I have pubs and am doing research, but not on the level of what I'd have had I been at a research institution all these years. While I'm passionate about teaching, I'm far from retirement age and am prepared to make a career change.
How can I channel my training and work experience to something that would be of interest to a European employer (or an employer at a better city in the US to at least get us out of our rural community)?

This is going to depend a lot on what field you are in, and what your other skills are, I think. I know someone with a PhD in anthropology who now runs a specialized online store... and is glad to finally have found a job that utilizes all of their skills.

Not-academia is a pretty large and diverse labour market... I don't think there is one strategy that will work for that entire range of jobs. It also depends the country you want to go to.

Thank you. Both of you have made fair points. I'm holding back details for the sake of anonymity. I'm in a major European city and my field is in the visual arts. I suppose I was hoping for some sources/career coaches/websites that I have tackled this question already. I have also been thinking about the plausibility of a career in online teaching that could be done anywhere. The anthropologist's specialized online store sounds intriguing...

you can always ask employment agents, but do you have right on it as person on subatical. Getting in humanities with Fine art phd? can you do reaserch? can you publish papers? what is your H index? productivity of reaserch output? visual arts, can you be professor for IT sector? like graphic design ?

Are you ready to accept a salary decrease? At least in Spain native English speakers are appreciated at high school or freelance teaching, although admittedly the market is starting to saturate.

@SSimon in the humanities we don't really tend to pay attention to the H-index very much — it's a very sciences-oriented metric.

Check out resources from theprofessorisin on switching careers (she calls it post-ac)

Thank you for these good suggestions. I will look into them. Miguel, yes that is an issue (saturation of Eng speakers). I'm curious to know if there is a real place for someone from the humanities in the tech industry. Dawn, thanks for your suggestion!

Najib, that's an interesting statistic. On a related note, I've noticed much more fluidity in the European job market. It seems more common for people to change jobs and careers more frequently in Europe than in the US. Conversations I've had with friends here have inspired me to reconsider my own career path.

@guifa well yes, but still if we dont know more about OP we cannot help about europe.

Since you're in the visual arts, perhaps look into art galleries and museums? Plenty of them in most major European cities...

Thank you, all. Yes, I'm exploring the possibility of leaving my teaching position to do something entirely different so that my family can leave the US and live abroad. My career thus far has been spent teaching a wide variety of courses in the humanities with a focus on the visual arts. I am a full prof at a SLAC where the focus is teaching and service, not research. I do research, but the bulk of my cv reflects my institution's expectations (heavy course load and committee work). I do not think I can compete for positions in my field at research institutions in this European country.

Moreover, fluency in the language spoken in this country is a requirement for teaching positions at comparable institutions to my SLAC where the focus is on teaching, not research. So, I think a teaching position for me in this country is out. For that reason, I am open to a major career shift that repackages my skills for something outside academe. I have encountered countless blogs, books, websites, and lists of career consultants ready to charge me a great deal of money to coach me as I make the change ("post-ac").

Before I plunk down this money, I'm turning to this community to start a conversation about my options. I'm interested in reading "real-life" experiences of others who have done something similar or practical tips in helping me move forward. I'm also entertaining the idea of rebranding myself as an online instructor for US institutions and doing that full time in Europe (is that possible?). Of course, I imagine there are many others who are contemplating a move out of academia and so the comments here may be useful to them, too. Thanks so much, again.

What about positions teaching American Studies or related subjects? Even if you haven't focused on humanities in the U.S., would you be willing to teach something comparative if that was easier to find a job? (This is on the assumption that language fluency requirements might be waived for those roles.) I do bet that you could remotely be an online instructor. Two other possibilities that take advantage of your unique position and skills would be to coordinate study abroad opportunities or English-language tours (think a humanities-infused Rick Steves, perhaps?). Good luck!


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What is the meaning of Immigrant Background in a job application?
I am in the process of application for a job. One of the questions is about immigrant background as follows:

Applicants who state that they have immigrant background will be
assessed in accordance with the requirements of summoning at least one
qualified applicant with immigrant background to the interview
process. Immigrant background implies that you are born in another
country than Norway or have immigrated from another country or that
both your parents are born in another country.

Could you please help me understand what this is? Is this question for those who already live in Norway and want to apply for that job? I live outside EU.

Is this the original text, or a summary or translation of the original? For a legal document it’s unusually unclear: taken as written, a Japanese person minding their own business in Tokyo is an immigrant to Brazil (if we take Brazil as country X) by the first option given.

@gnometorule It is  complete text and original

@user40491: That is quite odd as other parts, such as the term “implies” in that sentence, are also used incorrectly (what is meant is something like “is constituted by,” the opposite of “implies”). Based on the above wording and its first option stated, you are an immigrant as long as you are not born in country X, which appears to apply to you. However, I suspect that this is not what the drafter intended to say.

@Araucaria: Yes, agreed, that is probably what they meant to say, but it’s not what the wording says. Based on what it says, my entire extended family and me are Norvegian immigrants. :) I think your answer gives the right advice considering the circumstances.

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text:
What is the meaning of "person specification" in a job advert?
I am going to submit my application to a postdoc in math. In support of my application, I have been asked about what I can do, and they have mentioned that

You should pay particular attention to the person specification as you will only be shortlisted if you can demonstrate that you meet all of the essential criteria.

But I do not know exactly what they mean by the above mentioned statement? Can I provide a brief description of my scientific background and its relation to the advertised project?
There exists a brief description of the project, including the area of research.

Does the job advertisement have a part that describes the criteria that a successful applicant needs to meet?

@lighthousekeeper As many other jobs they have mentioned some general "Main duties" such as publishing papers, attendance conference, preparation reports, being motivated and independent ...

Presumably the advertisement listed some specific requirements for the position and this is telling you that your application will be checked to see whether you meet those requirements.

@user40491 Out of these examples, "being motivated and independent" are not duties, but actual criteria for a person, so they are surely part of the essential criteria that you need to address explicitly.  The other examples, which are indeed duties, could be turned into criteria ("experienced in ....")

Is it a job specifically created to meet minority quotas? In some places it's legal to have jobs created for that purpose to specify something like "Must be black/female/LGBT/[insert desired minority group here] to apply".

As noted in the accepted answer below "person specification" is standard language in UK recruitment (in all employers, not just universities).

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text:
Is it acceptable, or advisable, to include self-assessed ratings of your skills on your CV
I am in the process of updating my CV. Since I often get labeled as "the bioinformatician" I get to play with many different languages and technologies, and similarly what people expect from a bioinformatician varies from person to person. So I figured it would be a good idea to indicate how much I feel I know in respective fields/languages.
Inspired by this question, I came to wonder whether or not its acceptable to have self-assessed ratings of your technical skills, such as: proficiency programming languages, familiarity with relevant software etc.
My own feeling is that such ratings are useful to indicate what you feel most confident or comfortable with. It would also be useful to show any potential future employer the level of competence you have in different fields. If you think about it a bit, it is common to have some type of rating for the languages one speaks, so I think an analogue to programming language proficiency should not be that alienating.
On the other hand there is the risk of rendering your CV like, as a friend of mine put it, a role-playing game character sheet.
Is it common to have such ratings on skills? Are there any potential problems with it?
Edit: What I was thinking is a small listing something like:

Is this CV intended for academic employers or industry? If the former, I think it's pretty rare for an academic CV to list skills; they generally focus instead on accomplishments. If the latter, you may get better answers at Workplace.SE.

@NateEldredge preferably for research oriented position at either alternative. I started with a template and modified as I moved along and I kinda like the idea of listing "professional skills" since my field is essentially too broad/cross-disciplinary

What scale do you intend to rate yourself on?  Maybe that sounds like a silly riposte, but that's a serious issue.  If you say you're proficient in Java, how does the person reading the CV know what on earth you mean (assuming they're willing to take your word for it).  I would be much more inclined to focus on what experience you have with a language (I have X many years of Java programming experience, I've done such and such projects), since that's actually something which people understand the meaning of.  You also don't necessarily need to cover this in a lot of detail in your CV, since if you're applying for a job where these skills are relevant, you can mention it in your cover letter.
EDIT: In response to the proposal of using stars or a 0-5 rating:  DON'T DO IT!  If you want to write "I'm proficient in Java and have some experience in C" that's harmless but won't make too much of a positive impression either without some more concrete information.  The stars will make you look eccentric at best, and lunatic at worst.  I know that some times the usual convention about how to do things seem constraining and silly, but if you've never seen something on a CV before (and I've never seen giving yourself numerical ratings on an unknown scale), there's probably a good reason.

The scale is the problem, I agree. The way I looked at it was to rate them on a scale of 0-5, based on how familiar I am with the environment/language in question. So it isn't os much what I know, but more like how fast I can learn and start producing in a particular environment.

@posdef That's fair, and not an unreasonable thing to try to explain, but do it in words, and with evidence of how you got those skills.  This is precisely the sort of thing cover letters are for.

"but if you've never seen something on a CV before ... there's probably a good reason." I would disagree with this; it could just as well be so that nobody tried, or did it in a pleasant enough way. But yes I think I get the point with your answer, and I can see the reasoning behind it. Thanks :)

@posdef But a CV isn't like a steam engine, where coming up with a unique design is good.  It's socially constructed what a good CV is (and indeed it depends a lot on what community you're applying for jobs in what sort of CV you'll write).  I'm sure there are occasional exceptions, but part of what you're trying to prove with a CV or any part of application package is that you understand the community you're in.  Trying to do something unique is much more likely to distinguish you in a negative way than a positive one.

@BenWebster HR people hate nonstandard CVs because it means they have to spend a few minutes trying to decipher the CV to get the information they want, and that few minutes of brainpower can be used to decide to throw the CV in the trash. Academics are similarly picky and somewhat old-fashioned, and tend to resist trying to parse things that take too much time to understand.

@Irwin: that's true, but it makes us sound bad.  Academics treasure innovation in our job candidates -- in many contexts, that is what we're looking for above all else -- it just so happens that the CV is not the place for it.  There are other places for it within the application.

Let's get some terminology clear. A self-assessment is something like this:

I am proficient in Java and Python, and have a good working knowledge of C++.

You don't want to self-assess, if only because, in the absence of an external standard, self-assessments are difficult for others to evaluate. What does "good working knowledge of C++" mean, for example? If my work depends on a program that involves many thousand C++ lines across dozens of files, can I count on you to maintain, debug, and expand it?
What you want to do is accomplishment-listing, which looks like this.

I took CS304 "Advanced C++" (grade: A) and CS407 "C++ Applications in the Life Sciences" (grade: A+) in Alma Mater State University (2010-2011). At BioInfo Inc. (2011-2013), I helped develop the C++ backed of the following programs...".

This is much more helpful for prospective employers.

+1 It is easier for an external party to evaluate facts rather than a subjective personal assessment.

The problem here is that I have taken quite a bit of courses in CS, not all of them have left as much. Likewise I worked with certain languages more than others, naturally. If I was writing a paragraph I would probably formulate it like you do here but what I did was to just list the skills I consider to be relevant and familiar, on a small column to the side of the main text. please see the edit

I would also add that a grade in a class does not necessarily reflect your ability in the language taught in the class. I don't consider 'CS304 "Advanced C++" (grade: A) and CS407 "C++ Applications in the Life Sciences" (grade: A+)' to be evidence one way or the other of C++ skills.

I do think there can be some value to listing skills and your confidence in them, especially if they're not immediately obvious from your accomplishments.
But, I agree with the others that the stars are not useful and do not work in your favor.
For example, if your CV lists: "Project X: Did A, B, C, (implemented in Ruby)" and "Project Y: Did D, E, F (used HTML, CSS, Javascript)" that doesn't really  tell me much about how much you've really done with each of these languages. In Project Y, did you really design your CSS or did you find some nice templates and modify to suit your needs?
It's not always appropriate to describe in  such detail what each project entailed. If I'm looking for your expertise in a particular skill that isn't obvious from your experience, then a listing of skills and confidence levels is helpful.  But, there's a better way to do it than with star ratings.
Google's self-rating scale (reportedly) goes like this:

0 – You have no experience
1 to 3 – You are familiar with this area but would not be comfortable implementing anything in it.
4 to 6 – You are confident in this area and use it daily.
7 – 9 You are extremely proficient to expert and have deep technical expertise in the subject and feel comfortable designing any project in it.
10 – Reserved for those who are recognized industry experts, either you wrote a book in it or invented it.

On your CV, a textual description ("Ruby: I am confident in Ruby and use it daily") is more useful and also makes you sound better than saying "Ruby: 6/10"
(Of course, the rest of your CV should go on to present your experience in Ruby, so the reader becomes confident that your self-rating is reasonable.)
You didn't ask about this, but I would also strongly advise against listing "Microsoft Office" as a software skill if you are looking for a technical job in a technical field.

I would also leave off Microsoft Office unless the job ad specifically mentions it. You don't want some braindead HR software to bin your resume automatically because it's "not a match." Otherwise though, it's pretty obvious that anyone who can muddle their way through a Scala program can also throw together some powerpoint slides.

It seems like you need a second opinion so:
No way should you put the graphic you added to your question in your CV.  It looks very strange and does not help you.  When I see it:
(i) My eye immediately notices that there are a lot of missing stars.  Altogether you are giving yourself 63.3% of the maximum possible programming proficiency [whatever that means!].  That sounds really mediocre.  Most other candidates' CV will contain only 100% positive information about them.
(ii) While my eye notices that you haven't rated yourself so highly, my brain is very frustrated that it doesn't know what any of the ratings mean, high or low.  You give yourself 3.5 out of 5 stars on LaTeX.  If I want to take your LaTeX skills into account in my decision on whether or not to hire you...then what on earth am I supposed to do with 3.5 out of 5 stars?!?

I agree: "No way" or "absolutely not" is the only appropriate answer to including any info graphic remotely similar to the one presented. In addition to everything mentioned here, it suggests that the person presenting the CV is still set in the undergrad mindset that grades and numerical ratings of one's performance is paramount as opposed to a project outcome or process.

@MHH and using GPA or GRE scores isn't about numerical ratings? How about the impact factor or the h-index? We all use numerical information to rate things, regardless of the level of education. If you claim that you dont, consciously or unconsciously, look for some sort of numerical rating to judge the quality of something, I would seriously doubt your sincerity. In this case, however, it so happens that the lack of a proper baseline scale is what sinks this idea, not that it's "undergrad mindset" as you condescendingly put it.

You should not put your h-index or GRE score on a resume and for academia you should also not include your GPA. Of course we use these things to some degree (although less than one might think), but any scale you make up yourself, regardless as to whether the scale has a proper baseline or not, should never go on a resume. I am sorry, "undergrad mindset" was a poor choice of words; I did not mean it condescendingly.

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What is the process for getting sponsored by big companies for PhD research?
I am doing PhD research. My PhD fees are covered by the government.
I have seen other PhD students got sponsored by big companies such as IBM, so they are working with IBM and at the same time do the research. It is important to me to get such a sponsor, as I am working and studying part-time now.
Is this something I can apply for (to each big company) proposing my research? Or there are certain programs I apply for? Or it is my supervisor who applies?

It may depend on the contract / agreement you have - talk to your advisor.

only trough advisor or PhD mentor this is possible

IBM Research in particular has a rather competitive fellowship program that requires nomination by your PhD advisor, or some other faculty member. They also limit the number of nominations from a given department.

This is country specific. Also domain-specific (even within computer science). For example, machine learning or cybersecurity research would get sponsored easily, but AGI research is less likely to get sponsored.

In order to do research with a big company's research arm you need to make contact with them. A blind request is probably not going to go anywhere. You need to use some intermediary who is trusted by them. Much of their research is proprietary and so they are required to be secretive about it.
Your advisor or another professor at your university who already has contact with the company might be a good way to get a proposal heard. Another way, oddly enough, is another graduate student who is employed by that company in an important position.
Such companies also have occasional public events, even at your own university, where their researchers look for talent and ideas. Sometimes their researchers will be presenters at conferences (as happens frequently in CS) and you can meet people there.
However, these days, many big companies that did basic research in the past have focused quite closely on product oriented applied research. There is less of an opportunity now for them to spend time and effort on your ideas unless they already align with their own.


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Is it possible for a scientific article to lose citations?
I have just noticed something very weird, some months ago, I was looking in google scholar an article of Irving Langmuir called "The Vapor Pressure of Metallic Tungsten", it had 761 citations, some time passed
and I searched the same article again and now it has 744 citations. I don't know if maybe I didn't see the correct number of citations the first time, but that make me question myself, is it even possible for a scientific article to lose cites? does that make sense?

My article on Google Scholar was cited, and it took Google Scholar about a week to notice it, so I had 1 citation. After a month or so, my citation count went to 0, I was worried and checked elsewhere and the citing article was still there and taken into account into other counters. That citation never came back in Google Scolar. I have lost all faith in the number of citations in Google Scholar since then (almost 2 years now.)

Google Scholar's citation counts are based on the number of citations found by Google's web-crawler. They tend to fluctuate up and down a little. This is usually either because documents such as internal reports or theses disappear from their authors' websites, or because Google's algorithms identify certain documents as duplicates of one another and 'merges' them.

I lost my only citation in Google Scholar for none of the reasons you mention. I had a citation for about a month long and then it went away for no apparent reason. It's been 2 years now and it's still not back. No merging, no disappearance anywhere else, etc. Just went away for no apparent reason.

@thermomagneticcondensedboson What sort of publication cited you, and how well established was the venue? Each citation system has different inclusion criteria for publications.

@thermomagneticcondensedboson It's possible that the web server is (mis-?)configured in such a way that Google's crawler does not "see" the document any more, even though it is discoverable by a human, or that some change in Google Scholar's algorithm left it unwilling/unable to recognise your citation. Like any tool, Scholar has its strengths, weaknesses and quirks.

@jakebeal The article citing mine is published in AIP Advances.

@thermomagneticcondensedboson Yeah, that certainly ought to be getting picked up.  Sounds like you are indeed experiencing a curation failure.

Once indexed by Google, sites do not stay in the index forever these days, it seems. Old websites that still exist can and do disappear from Google's index. So this might be why…

In addition to the inherent curation problems of web-crawling, determining duplicates, etc, it is quite possible for a document to truly lose citations.
For this to happen, a citing article would be withdrawn or amended such that the citation is removed.  If the article is withdrawn for error, one might argue whether it ought to still count as a citation or not, since the article may leave some trace. In the case of, say, entirely fraudulent publications being used to pump citation counts, however, those citations would certainly be well and truly gone.

Withdrawn articles do not vanish, they stay accessible in the online repository of the publisher just as they do in the printed journal in your library.

@Karl For a "normal" withdrawn article, yes. When a pattern of citation manipulation appears, however, the offending publications will sometimes be entirely suppressed from calculations.  See, for example: https://retractionwatch.com/2020/07/28/the-positive-case-for-suppression-a-guest-post-from-the-editor-in-chief-of-clarivates-web-of-science/#more-120147

I don't know wether "normal" retracted articles count towards impact factors etc. But the article not only leaves a trace but stays fully accessible. What google does then is anyone's guess.

To directly answer the question:

Is it possible for a scientific article to lose citations?

Not except in rare cases. For the most part, citation is a permanent thing. This also depends on how citations are counted: if an article is published but then updated to a new version (say on a preprint site) which removes a citation, does the previous version count as a citation or not? Citation databases like Google scholar have to make a decision about such matters, and whatever they choose, they try to apply it in some consistent matter. But it can be hard especially as article titles can change between revisions.
Because it is fully automated, Google scholar is likely to be less stable than the "real" citation count as measured by some objective criteria (making a decision as to whether, e.g. preprints or website pdfs are counted, whether updating or retracting a paper removes old citations, and so on). I would guess that the "real" citation count almost always never goes down.


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Age limit rules for postdoc position in China
I got a postdoc position at age 34 years in China. My documents are verified and I got the invitation letter. My employer applied for a work permit which is in process. I am waiting for that to apply for Z visa. But it is delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and travel ban. If it is delayed further I will be more than 35 years which is supposed to be maximum age limit for postdoc. Can I still get the position?

Ask the institution offering it. They should know if anyone does.

Age limit set by whom?

Universities follow a rule of the age limit

In general Chinese universities are rather ageist, and treat age restrictions very seriously. It is likely that you would not get the position due to your age. However, there are many workarounds you can discuss with your potential advisor, such as getting a position as a 研究员 or 副研究员 (like a staff researcher or staff scientist) that don't have age limits, but also might not have the federal government salary support that foreign postdocs are eligible for in China. You would have to discuss with your potential advisor to see if such an option is available to you.
Having said that, the pandemic changes the rules for everything, so there is a possibility that in this special circumstance an exception might be made, you'd have to discuss with your advisor and see how willing they would be to spend political capital to secure the exception for you.

But I already have the offer letter. I just wait for my visa application foe which I need the work permit that is still under process. I am 34 when I was offered the position

if you already have a contract, then you should be fine, assuming the government allows foreigners to enter China again within the contract period.

@SayanBiswas If you know anything about the government,  you will know they can change the rules whenever they feel like it.

It is the University that has the age limit, not the Chinese government who issues the visa. For example, the postdoctoral research fellowships offered through the PIFI scheme at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have an age limit of 40 years (current announcement).
If your employer is still offering you the position, and you don't have other reasons you would be rejected for the visa, I expect it should go through.


text:
In the related work section of a dissertation, can I use images and source code from other articles, with attribution?
I'm brushing up the related work section of my master's dissertation, and it would be very useful to include some diagrams and code snippets from other articles on that section (and that section alone), to better help explain them. I go into some detail about what some articles propose and how it would relate to my own work, but I find it rather bland and quite hard to just explain them using words alone, since they all center around source code manipulation.
As you'd expect, they are all properly cited, but I am wondering if this is still unadvisable? Should I redraw these diagrams and rewrite this source code myself? Or should I just abstain from including them at all?

Ask your advisor.

A separate issue to consider is copyright. Even if you, your advisor, and the original author agree, you may still need to get permission from the publisher of the articles from where you intend to take the figures from.

A bit different, but related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16107/68109

As far as plagiarism is concerned, proper citation is an absolute defence. Note that for figures, there needs to be a citation in the label - merely citing the source in the running text is insufficient.
If you care about copyright law, or if someone forces you to care about it, you'd need to check the licences for the original figures. Unless it is licenced in a way that allows you to use it, it would not be legal to include it. Copyright law pertains to the particular expression, not the concepts conveyed by the figure. Thus redrawing the figures puts you on the safe side here (you'd still need to cite the original to avoid plagiarising). For small code snippets, fair use exceptions or similar should suffice.
Including well-chosen diagrams (and potentially code snippets, but they are often less useful) can definitely be a huge improvement. In some cases, the figures from the literature will not actually be the best suited for inclusion in your thesis. For example, you may be interested in discussing only one aspect of the related work, but the figure shows several and thus more complex than needed. In such a situation, recreating the relevant aspects will be the best choice overall.


text:
How to stay calm for a 7 minute scientific research talk?
As I wrote few days ago, maybe someone remembers, I am waiting for a date to be set up and to present my scientific research on the Congress.
I have never done this before, they give me 7mins to show my introduction, aim, material and methods, results, discussion, conclusion and literature.
The research is huge but my main problem is being nervous and too emotional. Does any of you have any tips how to make myself more relaxed and somehow bring myself to state "its gonna be ok"?
My main problem is my devotion to the subject since there is some molestation and neglecting recorded and law violation. It is very hard for me to stay "normal".
I would appreciate any advice
Thank you, all.

In my field (mathematics) a 7-minute talk would probably consist of introduction and results, probably not even all of the results. If it's possible in our field, I'd suggest doing only those and omitting the rest of your list (aim, material and methods, discussion, conclusion, and literature review), though perhaps something about your aim could be in the introduction and some discussion might accompany the results.

I read your question as saying your presentation starts in 7 minutes, and I was quite alarmed. I'm glad you have more time than that to prepare!

Can you explain what you mean by "since there is some molestation and neglecting recorded and law violation." If there are any issues regarding sexual assault, video recordings, or concerns about criminal laws related to a talk, those are quite different from the first part of the question and might require more specific guidance.  There is no need to respond with details about your specific case if it makes you feal uncomfortably, but I'm concerned that you won't get very useful answers here if this is an important part of your question.

The research is about Animal Welfare and Law has been violated. For me, it is very sensitive topic.

The solution to worry is work.  Write your speech. Practice it at least three times.  Treat the practice as if you were actually giving the talk.

(For context: I am a mathematician in the U.S.) For many reasons, I make my research students "rehearse" their presentations many, many times. It is of course all the more challenging to have a ridiculously short time in which to say anything. So, yes, crazy choices must be made. A more experienced person could coach/advise you on what to leave out.
Crazily-enough one of my students has won some presentation prizes for super-short talks by ... as she and I said to each other... "leaving out all the math". Definitely as opposed to trying to cram toooo much in.
Do not think in terms of giving a lecture for students. The only sane way to give such a short presentation is to think in terms of addressing people who already know enough so that the new parts of your work can stand on their own. It is obviously impossible to explain almost anything at all. No "background" on basic grad-level material. No time!
So, absolutely, find a more senior person to "rehearse" with. Your own peers may not have a clear-enough idea of what should be included to really help you. "Experts know what experts know."
(And, to be clear, rehearse the talk over and over and over and over... with your coach/advisor/critic... until you can do it in your sleep, etc.)

Doesn't relate but I always feel that maths (and also physics) lectures or talks are the best where maths is neglected as far as possible. These are the most vivid and sustainable lectures.

Probably too late for your talk, but you might profit for your next time: Learn from other presenters. When you visit the conference, a lot of talks will be 7 min in length. Try to concentrate how others are presenting their work:

How do they split their rare minutes to introductions, maths, results, and outlook?
How deep do they dive into their topics and their specific terms, methods etc.?
If you like a talk, ask yourself whether it was the topic, the presenter, or something you could adapt to your next talk. Similar if you dislike a talk, can you identify why you disliked it and whether you can avoid such things for your talk?

If you know people on the conference and they attend your talk, you can ask them to provide constructive criticism. Either in talk or via email.
This will boost your confidence and thus keep you calmer next time.

This might be useful, but most people give terrible talks. Better advice might be to reflect on your favorite 3 talks and try to emulate those.

Practice makes perfect.  First practice your speech over and over again in the privacy of your own office, with no-one watching.  Make sure you have the length and speed of your speech right, so that you are not rushing through it.  Once you feel you have it right, practice it several times in front of some trusted colleagues, and make any necessary changes based on feedback.  Practice it enough times to get used to presenting while nervous, and get used to the feeling of "butterflies in your stomach".  Ideally, this repetition will allow you to commit most of your speech to memory, and get you used to speaking to an audience on a topic that is sensitive to you.  If you are to speak in a large venue, it can also help to go there in the morning before anyone is there (assuming you can get in) and get yourself used to the space.  Try standing where you will stand and looking out over the empty venue.  That way it will be a bit more familiar to you when you do your speech.


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Shall acronyms in scientific papers be expanded exactly once?
There's no way to evade having a lot of acronyms in a scientific paper, often already in the title.
I use the latex package glossaries to automatically expand the first use of every acronym (except usage in the title), but for a scientific paper, I do not include a table of acronyms (for my thesis I do).  In a long paper, if someone does not remember all acronyms or does not read sequentially, it could be difficult to look up the meaning.
If I use a not very well known acronym in, say, line 100, and again in line 500, should I expand it again, or is it a better style to stick with expanding only and exactly once?

First, try to avoid acronyms unless you repeat it frequently.
In the case you mention, occurring twice, an acronym is not warranted. New acronyms may be useful if it is likely that it will be used over and over again, both in your paper and in subsequent ones. It is difficult to say how many repetitions is needed before an acronym may become a viable option.
Acronyms generally make a paper less readable. We all know some like DNA or UN and particularly in the first case the acronym is easier to remember than the actual words. So use acronyms sparingly, be careful about what you abbreviate, and avoid publishing acronyms that only your research group uses unless it starts to become a standard (identified by other people also using it in presentations etc.). I think many acronyms start by it becoming jargon first. Trying to be restrictive is the best measure.

In addition to universally known acronyms like DNA and UN, there are also acronyms that have become so common that they're regarded as ordinary words and  many people aren't even aware that they are (or were?) acronyms.  Examples include "laser" and "scuba". There's surely no need to expand these.

I rented a satellite phone where the manual talked about the Subscriber Identity Module card.  I had to think a few seconds before I realised what they were referring to.

(I've been using a table with abbreviations also in a paper, that was no problem at all)
For longer texts (thesis) I give long version and abbreviation again if the abbreviation has not been used for "a while" of the text. E.g. introduced in the introduction, but next used in chapter 7 (400 lines ≈ 10-11 pages, that I'd consider probably close enough for not giving the long form again).
It may be a good idea to have the long forms in parts of the text that are expected to be read without the rest (obviously in the introduction, but also in summary and outlook)
I also consider how widely-used and how ambiguous the abbreviation is: Does PCA mean principal component analysis or polymerase chain reaction? Is LDA linear discriminant analysis or latent dirichlet allocation?

Ask the journal or conference where you're going to publish the paper.  Some specify that it is, indeed, exactly once at the first use.  (Shorter-format journals especially prefer this.)  Others prefer "upon first use and where necessary for clarity" instead.
Regardless, in a long work with many acronyms that may be referenced out of order, there is no substitute for a table.  Likewise if you define specialized symbols, a table of symbols greatly simplifies out-of-order reading.  It's often worth devoting a table to such things even if your allowed number of figures and tables is limited.

It appears that other answers have confirmed that the definition of an abbreviation can be used multiple times. In that case, I suggest defining the abbreviation wherever you think the readers may read it individually.
For instance, I typically read most papers by only reading their abstracts, figures, tables, and conclusions. As a result, I redefine or avoid abbreviations in these sections to make the reading experience more efficient.

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


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PhD in pure mathematics for a student in computer science
I'm a student currently pursuing my masters in computer science.
My present area of research is computational algrebraic geometry (theory of grobner bases and tropical geometry).
Afterwards, I'm interested in pursuing my PhD in pure mathematics.
I would like know if I'll be elligible for applying to pure math PhD programs?
And if yes, do I have any realistic chance of getting into one?
What else can I do to improve my chances of being accepted?

I've heard of plenty of cases of the other way around i.e. switching from Mathematics to theoretical computer science, but not sure whether what you are proposing has been done successfully before - In any case, this is the right forum for asking that!

Yes, I'll be taking Math Subject GRE.

What does "eligible" mean in this context?

By elligible I mean will the selction commitee even take a look at my application after seeing that I don't have bachelor's degree in math. Is a bachelor's degree in math an absolute necessary for applying to pure math phd programs?

@user774025: A bachelor's degree in math is definitely not necessary.  If your degree is in something closely related (like CS or physics) then the committee probably won't even blink (though they may take a careful look at your coursework to see how much math you've really seen).

I'm not a math professor, but I don't see why not; your research is basically math already.

Short answer: Yes.  Absolutely.  You are already doing mathematics.
A few bits of advice:

Ask your advisor and other references to specifically address your mathematical depth and maturity in their recommendation letters.
Include a technical summary of your past research, including pointers to ArXiv preprints if possible, in your statement of purpose.
Apply to math departments that employ computational algebraic geometers.  Three that come to mind immediately are Saugatu Basu at Purdue, Frank Sottile at Texas A&M, and Bernd Sturmfels at Berkeley.

(I know at least half a dozen former CS grad students who successfully switched into mathematics.)

I like your answer.

I've served on graduate admissions committees for a math department in a research university.  It really won't matter what your degrees are in, as long as the substance is there, but you need to be careful of several points:

You need recommendations from people the committee is familiar with, preferably at least one or two mathematicians.  The more they committee knows about your letter writers, the better.  (For example, if someone says you are one of the best students in recent years, is that because you are great or because they give inflated praise to everyone?  There's no way of knowing if the committee hasn't seen previous recommendations from this person.)  It's also important for your recommenders to have enough of a feeling for math grad school that they can confidently address whether you will be successful; for example, theoretical computer scientists can probably do this better than people in more applied areas of CS.  Finally, many people believe recommenders are a little less selective about recommending people for things outside of their own area, so recommendations from other fields are often given less weight.
You need to demonstrate that you have mastered the undergraduate material that is less relevant for computer science.  For example, mathematical analysis along the lines of Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis.  Even if you know a lot about algebra and discrete math, you might still not be in a position to pass some first-year graduate courses in pure math, or you might discover that you don't enjoy them.
You need a compelling story for why you are changing departments.  If you focus on not liking what you are currently doing, or on wanting a fresh start, then it will not go over well.  There are much more positive stories, about gradually coming to appreciate that pure math is your real interest, but you should write carefully.  This is tantamount to admitting that the last time you entered a graduate program, you didn't really know what you were interested in, and you don't want to leave the committee with any worries that this might still be true.  If you can say this honestly, then it might help to say something along these lines: when you finished your undergraduate degree, you were unsure about pure math vs. CS, so you decided to write an extremely mathematical CS master's thesis, and this experience has helped you decide where your real interests are.  (Being unsure in the past comes across better than having thought you were sure and then realizing you were wrong.)

Thank you for your response.
Well, I'm changing departments not beacuse I dislike what I'm currently doing but because I like what I'm currently doing. I'm working in the field of computational algebraic geometry and tropical geometry, so in future I'm more interested in working in pure algebraic geometry.
Well, I can get letters of recommendations from mathematicians, but I doubt commitee will be familiar with them.
But, I'm going to get some of my results published in a math journal. Will that help?

Definitely, a publication is extremely valuable here.  You should be sure to put it on the arXiv, or at least on your own web page, so committee members can easily take a look at it.  (They aren't likely to download it unless they like your application, but this can easily mean the difference between admission and the waiting list, say.)  And it's great that you are thinking of moving into an adjacent field, since that's the best case scenario in terms of chances of admission.

As for whether the committee is familiar with your recommenders, it's not a matter of personal familiarity, but rather whether they have sent previous letters.  If someone regularly recommends candidates for admission, then it's very easy to evaluate their letters by comparison.  If someone occasionally sends letters (once every few years, say), then there's still a good chance some committee members will know the context.  If someone has never sent a letter to this department before, then the first letter is much harder to judge, although it can of course still be very valuable.

(I speak from limited experience, and none on the "reading applications and deciding" side.  Technically my undergraduate degree was in a program somewhere between math and CS, but I'd taken a fairly math-oriented slant on it.)
Having a masters degree in a related field certainly doesn't make you ineligible to pursue a PhD in math.  The only disadvantage I can see for taking time to do a masters degree in a slightly different area, as opposed to, say, working in industry, is that you may need to work harder to explain why you're changing areas.
(Also you'll have some record of doing research, and you might be judged in part on the quality of that research where an undergrad might be given the benefit of the doubt.)
If you want to continue working in a closely related area that's a bit more in the mathematical direction, it shouldn't be very hard to explain why you've decided to continue that work in mathematics rather than CS.  It's a bigger issue if you want to do something very different in math---the worry would be that whatever caused you to lose interest in computational algebraic geometry will happen again.  That's not insurmountable, but it will be more of a hurdle to convince the faculty you're really interested enough in the new area to stick out a PhD.

I wouldn't rate your chances as very high, but the following factors might help nevertheless:

Your credentials (where you did your BS/MS from), and what balance of mathematics courses did you take - were there any electives, and of course, how you fared in them.
Since you didn't mention it, I'm assuming you haven't published in any decent mathematical venues - it helps your chances a lot if you had publishable results prior to your application. If you find it difficult to get published, post (interesting and useful) results to arxiv - that would boost your case in any case.
Mathematics is a vast field - it would help a lot if you were to continue along the directions to which you've already had some research background in (and maybe published on), and could get an interested faculty to have a look at your profile.


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Benefit of a 1-year MSc in Comp Sci in the UK
I hope this is the appropriate stacksite to ask this question.
I have a BSc in Computer Software Development and would very much like to study another year for an MSc in Computer Science. I had the choice of an MEng but decided to take the separate MSc.
I've heard mixed opinions on the subject but considering the climate I personally think it would be a good idea to gain a post-graduate degree. I've heard from Master students who were able to open many more opportunities from gaining an MSc - such as successfully entering the Game Industry which I know is very competitive. Although I'm not one for Game related modules, I chose more software engineering, database, and programming modules instead of rendering and games design modules throughout my BSc.
I will be getting into a considerable amount of additional debt to fund this year, but I feel like I'd be much more employable so the debt wouldn't really be a problem.
What do you think? Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated. I am 23 and an Englishman, just to put things into perspective.

You write that the MSc program is 1 year. Does it include research/thesis or just courses?

I don't think it was worth turning down the MEng for the MSc, especially considering the fact that a MEng would have been fully funded.

@KillaKem, can you explain more please?

@graphtheory92 If the OP had opted for MEng, he would have been able to finance the MEng tuition fees and his living allowance through a student loan, but now that he is opting for an MSc he will have to finance the MSc out of pocket.

You didn't mention if you want to do an MS in the UK or the US. If the former, I have no experience of how it works over there.
In general, an MS in CS does improve your chances of getting a decent job, but a lot depends on where you're getting an MS. In the US, the masters program is often viewed as a way to generate revenue via tuition, so your main benefit from the program is if it's very good at placing students. Obviously an MS from a place like Stanford or Berkeley will help you immensely because of the proximity of many tech options. But if you don't go to a place that has a good track record with placement, then the degree itself, while opening some doors, will not have provided you with maximum benefit for the price you're paying.
Also, make sure you go to a place that has strong ties to industry in the areas you're interested in. Since you mentioned games, many universities (including mine!) have specialized MS programs in game design (and we have fairly strong ties to local industry in the game world). That might be too specialized for you, but you get the general drift

Thanks for your answer Suresh. I will be studying at my local University in East Yorkshire. I'll make sure I look more into my university's specialities and ties to industry. I often hear how good ties they have with IBM and Microsoft since we often get visits from them as well as many of our lecturers being fellows in their hierarchies. Having good relationships with local businesses is also told of - I wouldn't mind specialising in web development, there seems to be plenty of those types of firms around here. I've been freelancing for a while and have been doing quite well on my own.

In general, I believe, that graduate science education is not a good choice from a purely financial standpoint. Not only do you have the fees, but also a lost year of wages and experience. If you are looking at a year of un/under employment, then it is easier to argue for graduate education.

I understand your points. Do you not think I'd be at an advantage over the BSc graduates applying for the same job? This is my main concern.

@Lee it depends what you mean. A graduate with a BSc and 1 year of real world industry experience will win out over a graduate with an MSc and no experience almost every time. Two candidates without any experience, but one with an MSc and another with a BSc, isn't even clear cut. Often the person with the MSc will be panned for being over qualified.

That's interesting. I always thought "over qualified" was an excuse people use who don't get their wanted job. Can you elaborate on that? I have a few years of web development freelance experience, i.e. finding my own clients from all over the globe, drafting my own specs. and contracts, communicating and developing to a deadline. Providing I can show proof of these, maybe through references and a portfolio, am I right in thinking this would be of help too?

@DanielE.Shub: As a general rule, you may be right.  However, in my experience, having an MS in computer science (from a strong department) does open doors that an additional year of real-world industry experience does not.

@JeffE not to mention the future promotion possibilities/advantages open to those with post-grad. degrees, correct?

At least in the UK, most MSc are done by people that don't have a BSc.   So I read BSc as 3 years leaning about computer sci, and a MSc as 1 year.   The other time someone gets a MSc is when they have failed a PHd.

Given a 24 year old with a BSc a year in industry, and a good reference, and a 24 year old with an MSc but no reference beyond their tutor's (who has a stake in his student being hired), I would take the industry kid any day.
However.
Given a 34 year old BSc with 11 years of experience and a 34 year old MSc with 10 years of experience, I would promote/hire the MSc any day.
However.
Given a life where my activities are dictated by a potential future HR employer and a life where my activities are directed by myself and myself alone, I would choose myself over HR any day.

There are two factors at play:

It is going to be the cheapest point in your life to get one.
Once you have it you've got it for life, like learning to ride a bike.

If you have the chance to do the course and you have the intelligence to complete it then its a good idea. The extra year not working is nothing compared to the 40+ years you are going to be working afterwards.
An MSc will make you stand out against a BSc for those jobs you actually want. Plus it should allow you to progress faster, not because you have it but because you are actually more capable and able to think with more depth.

I was always taught that a year in industry is worth LOTS more than a MSc. 2 years industry experience will bring your salary to £35,000 - £45,000 range, whereas MSc guarantees very little.
If you did a BSc with a year in industry then I would forget a master's all together and just resume looking for work. Only apply for MSc if you cannot find a job.
Also consider that you can study yourself from home, and actually pick topics which are actually used in industry. My popular example is that in university they teach SQL which is old as OO-SQL is out, but in industry it's normal to use NoSQL. So will extra education from a university help with your career...?
After all, have you ever seen a job which requires a master's degree? I have not!
EDIT: First edit was removed. Here is another point: does a computer science course actually teach skills you will need in industry, as it is such a generic course? I would often recommend master's degree, but I do not see how it helps you get a job when it teaches stuff which is outdated or not used in industry...
They teach Java at uni, yet in industry you'll most likely be using a framework like Spring which you either will not be taught at uni, or you will do barely a few weeks.

have you ever seen a job which requires a master's degree? Yes, I do. See C++ Developer (Senior) C++ UNIX MSc / PhD

To the user who attempt to edit: I rejected the edit because I have no way to tell if you are the same user as the OP of this answer. I found this job ad using Google after I read this answer. It is not an exception. It is an example. There are always employers looking for people with MSc. You want to go to graduate school to receive formal training so that you have better skills.

@scaahu yeah, but that example is for an experienced, senior-level developer who also has a MSc/PhD, not a fresh MSc with no experience.

It looks like you might have multiple accunts. Also, be careful about where you are editng. Edits should be edits and not new answers.


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Is it acceptable for a lecturer to refuse to allow their qualifications and work experience to be placed on a university website?
There are several universities which have a staff profile page on their websites. Lecturers usually list their academic qualifications, work experience, the modules they teach and the papers they have published there.

Since the page is public and qualifications and work experience are private information, can a lecturer refuse to provide this information?
Is a university allowed to disclose a lecturer's background to the public or other staff members without said lecturer's consent?

I assume, at the very least, that the students should be given a chance to verify the qualifications of the lecturer, i. e. that he studied in university X and worked on project Y.

Welcome to Academia SE. Your question smells of being an XY problem – you are very likely to get more helpful answers if you elaborate why you are interested in this. Moreover, it may help if you specify your question to a jurisdiction as laws regarding such matters may strongly differ between countries.

@Wrzlprmft The reason why is that I found some lecturers omit those details in top US/UK universities. The question is can they be forced to divulge personal details in public. It's a general question about privacy.

@svavil Why should they?

@user161869 it's more likely that they just never bothered to fill out that page, than that they actively refused due to privacy concerns

@fkraiem As I see it, it's because the money lecturers earn come from the students (in private universities) or taxpayers (in public ones), so student/taxpayers have the right to know who gets the money.

@svavil Would you demand similarly that the qualifications and work history of all employees at any company of which you are a customer, or of all public servants in any county in which you pay taxes, be disclosed to you?

@shane Knowing their background will help in building rapport and working with them. e.g. for a PhD student looking for a supervisor.

@user161869 I think "lecturers" as usually defined do not supervise PhDs, they just lecture.

@fkraiem In my country, high-ranking officials disclose their qualifications and financial information prior to being elected. In case of private companies, company history (as opposed to employees history) will be a factor in choosing the company to work with. Mind you, I'm just giving you reasons why other people might want to know your background as a lecturer.

"qualifications and work experience are private information" - qualifications, as in, earned degrees, are not exactly "private". In a commercial setting, companies usually do not wish to serve as a platform for the individual presentation of (each of) their employees, but as soon as some kind of a personal contact is established, as a customer, I can very well expect to be informed about relevant degrees that my contact person at a company holds. Furthermore, in academia, it is questionable whether the work history is private, given that every publication probably publicly gives away the ...

... author's affiliation at the time of writing the respective paper.

@shane: "doesn't care enough about publicizing his or her work to be bothered filling out a form and posting a cv" - I think you seriously underestimate the kind of issues that some CMS (allegedly introduced for simplifying things) pose.

Wikipedia tells me that the word "lecturer" has a significantly different meaning in the UK and Ireland vs. in other countries, it would probably be useful to know which of the two we are talking about here.

@fkraiem A member of the staff at a university who teaches and/or does research. I find that the research papers are displayed but mostly the academic qualifications are skipped.

To be a bit blunt for the sake of discussion...

Academic work - teaching and research - is public work in its essence, regardless of the material ownership of the university. Consequently, an academic staff member's qualifications and work experience are (or should be) essentially public information, or rather, the part of them relevant to the rest of the academic community. Thus it would be inappropriate for a lecturer to hide this information.
As far as that background is relevant to the staff member's research and/or teaching; and unless s/he specifically objected with reasonable cause, then the university can certainly assume it can present this background information on the web page. However, the university should be required to indicate which parts of the information you provide go on the web page, and write up that specific part yourself. IMHO.

@NajibIdrissi: I was talking about qualifications and relevant work experience. I would not think marriage status is part of that.

@NajibIdrissi: No. My argument that since it is public and relevant, it should be published. Also, if some information is public in some country which should probably not be, that does not mean that in other contexts we should default to supporting no information being public.


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When money is discussed in a book, what currency should be used for a book translation covering many countries?
For book translations, what currency does one reference when translating for one language that covers a bunch of countries?
What I am alluding to is this: suppose someone is referring to something as costing four rupees. In the English version of the book, there is an editor's note explaining that it is the equivalent of U.S. .06, in order to give U.S. reader's an idea of how little that amount is. If you are translating the book into a different language that covers a lot of geographical territory, say, Portuguese, what currency would you use for the editor's note for areas and countries that are not pegged to the dollar, and use a different currency in every country where Portuguese is spoken? (i.e. Brazilian Reais, Euros (Portugal), Mozambique Metical, Angolan Kwanza, West African CFA franc (Guinea-Bissau), U.S. Dollar (East Timor), Central African CFA franc (Equatorial Guinea), Cape Verde Excudo, São Tomé and Príncipe Dobra.) The book could be available and read in any of them, so there isn't just one country to consider; however, different versions will not be available for each country (there won't be a "Portugal version," am "Equatorial Guinea" version, etc.)--there will simply be a Portuguese version for anyone who speaks Portuguese.
This doesn't just apply to Portuguese; this will be problematic in many other languages too.
It's a nonfiction book, if that matters.

Why not keep US dollar? The book is already using it for many people for whom it is not the local currency.

My concern is that in just keeping it in U.S. dollars it gives no relative equivalent to the reader, like how I would have no idea if something quoted to me as 20,000 Baht was expensive or a great deal.

I don't think e.g. Portuguese are any less aware of the value of the US dollar, or less capable of finding out the conversion to/from their own currency, than English-speaking residents of the UK, Irish Republic, Canada, New Zealand, Australia etc.

You will never get it perfect. The problem is that 4 rupees can probably buy a lot more in the country where rupees are used, than 6 US cents in the United States. Trying to convey the amount of money by doing a currency conversion is entirely beside the point: if you really want to convey the amount of money you should compare it to something more tangible, like how many average meals you can buy with that money. // On the other hand, if the currency conversion is intend to give the feeling of "relative wealth" (for example, imagine a fictional piece where a middle class American realizes...

... he can live like a king in some other country based on his savings), then doing your "accurate" conversion again may distort the feeling the author was trying to impart. // If the work is a scholarly work and is giving US dollars as a "relatively stable currency" to document the actual monetary amount, then there's no point trying to translate the currency: readers who care can easily look it up.

I recommend either US dollars or euros (but favor dollars)

I've had similar issues with translating currency in the past.
I believe that as a general rule of thumb, if the text has a worldwide audience, using US Dollars is the best choice. Many countries will have a general grasp on the value of USD and those who don't can simply use conversion tools to guide them. If the book applies to a more narrow geographical area, you can use the currency for that area (e.g. Euros for a European Audience)
No currency is accepted and understood worldwide. However, US Dollar is probably more global than the rest.

Thank you for responding. I'm relieved to know I'm not the only one who was so stuck on this seemingly minor detail!


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Should conference abstracts be included in profiles on sites like ResearchGate and Google Scholar?
I think it depends on the field. in physics i don't see it as much, whereas in life sciences it is quite popular.
Is it cluttering the profile of a postdoc applicant (let's say in biophysics)?

Just to clear, you are specifically talking about conference presentations/posters where there is no full-text publication? I think it's important to distinguish between conferences that result in an archived full-text publication and those that do not.

"should"? no idea, but a lot of people do it and both mentioned pages have labels for conference abstracts and such when you add new information to them.

I agree with @AnderBiguri. should implies there is a correct answer. But, this is opinion based (and also off-topic for this site). For Google Scholar, Google auto indexes them so, so why would it be bad, per se? (Personally, I don't like them cluttering my profile). Research gate lets you do it is well.

At my university, the gold standard is peer review. So, if the conference has a peer-reviewed proceedings and I'm able to publish an extended abstract there, then I do list it in my CV. If I can, I'll upload it to Research Gate to make it easier for others to read it and cite it. Often, such conference proceedings have a DOI. I don't think it's possible to force Google Scholar to index any specific publication, but if it appears on their system, I'll link it to my profile.
But, if it's just the abstract of my talk, published on the conference website, then I won't "count" that as a publication in my CV, Research Gate, or Google Scholar. I think there's a way to de-list an item on Google Scholar. It's only happened to me once that Google Scholar chose to list an abstract of mine (for a talk in Spain in 2013) that didn't go through peer review, and I think I was able to "delete" the listing. To me, this is less about decluttering and more about having an honest publication record, and not avoiding confusion where people think I wrote a paper with some specific title, but no such paper exists.


text:
How to cite reference in APA style when author names form part of sentence?
When a citation reference is an integral part of a sentence, such as:

Gordon and Metric provide a wide review of the key mechanisms...

Where and how is it best to place the citation reference (in APA style)?
A) Place the citation as part of the sentence:

(Gordon & Metric, 2012) provide a wide review...

B) Place the citation right next to the authors' names (the repetition seems a bit awkward to me):

Gordon and Metric (Gordon & Metric, 2012) provide a wide review...

C) Place the citation at the end of the sentence:

Gordon and Metric provide a wide review [...] of the financial crisis (Gordon & Metric, 2012).

Isn't it "Gordon and Metric (2012) provide a wide review of the key mechanisms..."?

In this specific case, as is pointed out by @JeffE, it should be: "Gordon and Metric (2012) provide a wide review of the key mechanisms..."
For a reference, please visit the following page to have a comprehensive collection of APA citation examples.
APA Citation Examples - University of Maryland University College


text:
OpenOffice Vs. LibreOffice Vs. MSOffice for academic writing
What office package is good for academic writing purpose? These three are the most popular for a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) style rich text editor.
PS: Avoid LateX reference please. This question is for lazy writers like me who wants to write rapidly and with ease!

Use the same package that your co-authors are using.

Why voting to close?

To those voting to close: please voice your opinions here.

LaTeX is hard to learn at first, mostly because it has a completely different philosophy from Office-like apps. But once you "get" it, you will dump every office applications except for compatibility's sake.

LaTeX has a steep learning curve, but it will pay off in the long run, even if you're lazy:-)

A great reason why you may not always be able to use LaTex is simply because your co-authors can't. See http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1261/319 for a pretty good discussion on how to get around those issues.

@Md.GolamRashed Since you have some responses below that seem to answer your question, please consider marking one of them as ‘Accepted’ by clicking on the tickmark below their vote count. This shows which answer helped you most, and it assigns reputation points to the author of the answer (and to you!).

If you are in a field with lots of equations, the journals you are going to publish in will almost certainly take .tex.  So write in LaTeX.  Otherwise you will not be writing your equations rapidly or with ease (compared to those who know LaTeX)*.  Use a front end like LyX if you want some WYSIWYGness.
If you are in any non-equation-heavy field, use MS Office, for the simple reason that every journal takes .doc files and only some take other formats.  OpenOffice and LibreOffice are not yet compatible enough for publication-quality work.  (I have tried repeatedly.)  It's not that OpenOffice/LibreOffice can't do the right thing, it's that the journals only support Word.  And so either your manuscript will be full of errors that you have to hope you will catch and correct when you get page proofs, or you will have to end up using Word anyway.  Kind of sad, but that's the way things are (and have been for the past decade).
*Once you know LaTeX, everything is faster and easier, especially because you can save old solutions for formatting, shortcut macros, etc. etc., and import them with a cut and paste.  But it does take a non-negligible amount of time to learn, so if you're too impatient to learn new skills or under a very tight time deadline right now, LaTeX is not for you.  Unless you're doing equations--LaTeX still does those enough better that you may as well just use it regardless.

Get in mind that time have passed and the compatibility of OpenOffice/LibreOffice with Microsoft Office have been increased.

@PhoneixS - Last time I tried was early 2014 and it was not flawless.  Has there really been much improvement since?  Of course it's better than, say, 2008, but it's still not good enough to count on unless your paper is really just text.  Start doing math or automatic references or something and sooner or later you'll hit a problem--or at least I do when I try.

Yes, maybe I have been expressed wrong. I want to said as you said, that it have been improved, although it still have flaws. And thinking in it, maybe better to remove my comment.

The answer depends a lot on one's field of work, where the end product will appear, whether the collaborator's mutually agree upon the package and finally the OS one use.
Most journals or conferences accept manuscripts in DOC or DOCX format; other than TeX. Native formats of OpenOffice or LibreOffice are not [always] supported in most DTP centres/print or publishing houses.
Say, for example if you are in Science; esp in Physics or Mathematics, most of your academic writing will have lot of equations. In that case it better to opt for MS Office (along with MathType). This is because the equation editor that comes with OpenOffice or LibreOffice is not compatible with MS Office and vice versa. The equation either get converted as a figure or appear scrambled when opened in a non-native package.
If the collaborator uses a different package, compatibility is a big problem.
If one has to work in different OS's; compatibility issues comes in there as well. For e.g. MS Office cannot function natively on Linux systems.
So considering the fact that the academic work always reach a different kind of post-processing mechanism, it is better to use the  most popular package, MS Office.
If typesetting and publishing are done by self/in-house, compatibility is not an issue and any package is as good as any other package.
(As question is about three specific office packages, references to LaTeX is avoided; which may be the best choice, irrespective of one's field of work/typesetting environment as @marc-van-dongen has already pointed out.)

Actually, MS Office does function in Linux with no issues. From my personal experience with MSOffice 2007 and Ubuntu.

@Kurt True, but with emulators. Does that work perfectly as in windows?

Extensive comments on http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=10

all the major conferences and journals provide templates to use in order to format properly a submission, and they are circulated mostly in doc (Microsoft) and tex (LaTex) formats.
That said, LibreOffice and OpenOffice are mostly identical, but they're divided by a large political/philosophical diatribe (see here). Generally Libre-/OpenOffice can open the doc templates without problems, but they tend to loose some formatting against the latest docx format (see here), and they sometimes "break" the docx files that coauthors give back to LibreOffice users (like in here)

I would highly recommend using a LaTeX whenever possible or Lyx. For Lyx you can also export to LaTex. A recent submission actually only accepted word, but that is not a problem if you start in Lyx or LaTeX. You can export for Lyx to Tex. I have found that if I do need to move to Word for submission or having someone help with editing, I can take the LaTeX/Tex file and use a converter (there are a lot you can try, here is an open source one on SF) to get RTF which will open in Word just fine.
There are also other editors, Such as Scientific Workplace which are more geared towards technical writing.
Another thing you may want to consider is using something very simple like Markdown with some extension for citations and the such. Here are some related links:

Academic writing extensions to Markdown‘mandown’
Writing and Footnotes in Markdown
Pandoc

You may also want to check out this Stack Overflow question on WYSIWYG vs WYSIWYM

+1 For Pandoc. Write in whatever you want, then pandoc -s sourcefile.xxx -o outfile.yyy.

Preamble
I wrote my master's report in Microsoft word.
Then I moved on to better environments -- I wrote my PhD dissertation in latex.
My take on which to use: MS Word/Libreoffice
If you are short on time and are fine with sleepless nights, definitely go for Microsoft word. However, if you have lots of equations in your work, MSWord will just make it look very unprofessional and ugly (but may still be acceptable by your committee).
Your  grad school may have "how to do it" videos for MS Word. Have you checked with them to see if they have appropriate templates/packages for MS Word? What does the majority of you group use? If you are short on time, do what is tried and tested, do stuff that you have help readily available for (peers, adviser etc.)
Advantages of using LaTeX (I had to provide it just for completion)
The other option (much harangued obviously 1, 2) is LaTeX. It takes the strain out of writing as you have to only provide content and can concentrate on actually writing instead of spending a lot of time on formatting.
There is a world of difference with LaTeX far superior to Microsoft products, for academic writing. Yes, lots (don't quite have a number right now) of people still use MS Office. They write their theses/dissertations/reports, submit it for review to gradschool, it comes back with formatting corrections (even though they use templates provided by the gradschool). So then they spend countless sleepless hours jutting their images around.

This does not address the variety of Office suites… which is the actual question.

@F'x But this doesn't either. My answer, like several of the up-marked comments received drives home the point that one would perhaps want to use that suite most er... suited for/to their research/group while pointing out the various differences in as short a treatise as possible. Thank you for your comment though! :)

well, that comment is a comment, so it's fine… but your answer isn't an answer!

@F'x Please feel free to mark it down. This is the internet after all. Besides, that would actually help put all the answers into perspective as there are more than one.

If you really don't want to have LaTeX, then also GoogleDocs may be an option. It has a big advantage, when it comes to collaboration (even for real-time; no problems with mismatching versions of editors, no problems with "which version is the most recent?" or "where (s)he made the changes?").
But also you might consider LyX:

LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents (WYSIWYM) and not simply their appearance (WYSIWYG).
LyX combines the power and flexibility of TeX/LaTeX with the ease of use of a graphical interface.

So, in short, you can at the same time write in the way you are used to (without learning anything just to start) and use benefits of LaTeX (formatting, bibliography (!), formulas (!)).
Quite a few of my friends started their adventure with LaTeX with LyX.

Is there any reference management software for Google Docs? I.e., equation numbering, citation numbering, chapter and page references handled automatically? I imagine this will be quite high-rated on the list of anyone using it for publications.

Does Google docs have any reference manager? LyX is resource hungry as it depends heavily on Java.

@Md.GolamRashed AFAIK not.

Apart from formatting, I think the presence of a full blown reference manager in the to be used writing software is a must have.

I am down voting since this question explicitly focuses on 3 products and you mention none of them.

@DanielE.Shub Maybe you are right. But I'm not sure if "X, Y or Z, which one is better?" is a good question by the SE standards, so I took some liberty to propose not pure-LaTeX solutions.

LyX is the way to go! @Md.GolamRashed in my experience Lyx is not resources hungry at all, and certainly does not rely on Java (it is written C++). I have used LyX for all my papers, for my PhD, and I suggest it to all my colleagues. Everyone that used raw latex before seems quite happy.

As kena said, there are other ways of producting documents. I personnally use org-mode. There are saveral reasons :

The document you type can be exported into another formats, including HTML, OpenDocument (LibreOffice / OpenOffice), or LaTeX. In that way, your can publish your document without restriction.
This language is much easier than LaTeX, and you can write directly in plain text.
As you write in plain text, any editor can fit (even though Emacs has the org-mode by default).
As you write in plain text, an editor in wide screen prevents you from disturbances (and this is a main point).
With the references system, you can also write notes and outlines in separate files, as in Scrivener for example.
The syntax for tables, pictures and links is simple, so you shall write the whole book in org-mode, then export it directly. Few processing may be necessary then, you only have to set your environment in LibreOffice or LaTeX.

When I tried that, I enjoyed it at once :-)
Note : Of course ReStructuredText and Markdown can export to HTML, ODT and LaTeX, but I prefer Org-Mode for its flexibility.

Nice point, but this is not in direct response to the question, asked.

To add to the answers, I would definitely NOT use LibreOffice Writer. It is extremely unstable and my Bachelor student and a friend of mine writing his Master's thesis messed up their files completely last minute. The windows version crashes when a large PDF is to be generated.
I had to help my friend convert all the thesis to LaTeX last minute, which worked perfectly, and I'm using it right now to write my dissertation.

I am surprised no one mentioned reStructured text (here, here). This is a markup syntax where you can write your paper using pure text only. It also support math, automatic conversion to both LaTeX and PDF, and rendering on web pages. Check it out!

the question is explicitly focused on OpenOffice Vs. LibreOffice Vs. MSOffice.

@Md.GolamRashed I would suggest a down vote as this doesn't answer your question. I am down voting it just for that reason.

I wrote my Master's thesis in ReST and did not particularly enjoy the experience. I needed Cyrillic and (at the time) that was poison to every tool I tried. In the end I had to import to OpenOffice to get a final paginated PDF to hand in.


text:
Is seeking co-advising encouraged during Ph.D?
I'm an undergraduate student about to apply for a Ph.D program this year. I am interested in knowing whether seeking co-advising from a related, but different department (in my case I'm applying for econometrics but thinking about looking for co-advising from the statistics department) is seen as a thing to be encouraged in graduate schools in the U.S., or is it considered a violation of the division of departments?
Also, would it make sense if I mention in my personal statement that one of the consideration of my applying for this school's economics department is that it also has a very good statistics department, from which I can potentially seek co-advising? Would the graduate admission committee be happy to see this kind of statements?

Very closely related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1639/what-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-having-multiple-advisers

It is perfectly okay to have a co-adviser from another department. Econometrics and statistics are very close areas and often students pursuing PhD in Economics and Industrial Engineering (such as Reliability Analysis) have co-advisers from Statistics.
Often acceptance of an applicant in the program differs from department to department. However, you may mention an intention for collaborating with statistics department in the research statement. Also, if you do things appropriately you may have scope to get into the statistics department as a PhD student and pursue your research in light of economics. In other words, you may have greater chance of getting into the university as a PhD student. You may have to inquire about the possibility with the Statistics department. I guess you have good background in both statistics and economics so this seems to work out for you.

Cooperation is normally considered a desirable trait in academia these days, and collaborations between colleagues is generally a good thing. So, there is some advantage to working with multiple people.
The challenge, however, in such situations, as in many others in academia, comes down to the problem of funding. Unless you're able to provide your own, in the form of an external fellowship, it may be difficult to convince an advisor in your "home" department to "share" you with an advisor in another department, unless the other advisor is willing to pick up part of the funding. Normally, this requires that the two advisors have already thought about and worked toward a collaborative effort.
On the other hand, it may be substantially easier (and in some departments, required) to obtain someone from outside the department to sit on your thesis committee. While these people are not formally your advisors, they are resources to draw on, and may satisfy your concerns about level of involvement, depending on how active you want the co-advisor to be.


text:
What are typical formats of “scholarly work”?
Regarding the meaning of scholarly works in a job application I found What are typical examples of scholarly works?
But I have been confused about the format of this document. Is it just listing my peer-reviewed paper and presentation? I have been asked to provide up to ten scholarly works and an overview of them and also "a complete list of publications." I do not know what I shall write exactly.

It would be helpful if you provided additional information about what, exactly, you're trying to do. From the tags in your post, it seems like you're applying for a faculty position in mathematics. Is that correct? If you're applying at the university/college level, "scholarly works" is likely going to refer to your published articles, book chapters, and other peer-reviewed documents.

Yes, a simple list of citations of your scholarly works. In most fields, that's journal articles and books, in others it would also include conference papers. If you have a small list of papers, you could also include poster presentations.
Even if your field typically uses really brief citations, I would suggest something like APA with complete author names.
If possible, people often bold their names in the list of authors, or star their first/shared-first-author papers.

But they also ask for complete list of publications. What is the difference between them?

@user40491 I think it's fairly clear - they want 10 of your "best" or most representative works, and then a list of all of them. The former is a subset of the latter.

Can I put submitted papers in the scholarly works? (For example submitted book chapters and papers)

@user40491 That's probably field-dependent. Because book chapters are usually requested, that seems fine, but papers I would not include until they are "in revision" or "in publication," since "in submission" is meaningless. I would check with a trusted advisor.

In math, you're expected to include submitted papers.  They won't count for much, unless your recommenders praise them highly, but they do indicate continued research activity.


text:
Time overlap between two postdocs? Simply keep two affiliations or quit the first position earlier?
My current postdoc position will end in few months, so I started to apply for another postDoc position abroad. Shortly, if I would get the second position, there might be about two months overlap between them.
What is your advise on how to deal with it? What I am considering:

End the first job two months earlier, and start the new one.
Keep both positions during those two months: start the full-time the
second one and continue the first one on weekends, until it "dies"
naturally.

I think the most honest would be the first option (opt#1). However, as my manuscripts were submitted for publication, I will work on them no matter where I end up (likely the second position). The finalization of those manuscripts is my main responsibility, and I cannot be sure about the each review processing time and schedule.
In this case, I would get at least paid for my publication finalizing (opt#2), which would not happen if I will officially quit my first postdoc earlier (opt#1). And I can use two affiliations during the time overlap.
Should I notify my future employer about my postdocs position overlap and my potential plan to keep two affiliations?
My expertise is in ecology, therefore I am transferring neither extra secret information nor some commercial patents between positions.

Acknowledging two affiliations (i.e., on a manuscript) or finishing work at Institution B that you started at Institution A is not quite the same as being paid by two institutions at the same time without some understanding between you them (e.g. a partial appointment in each). Can you clarify what you are asking about?

@BryanKrause, my question targets the possibility to continue on a publications within the Institute A, while working at Institute B. I appreciate your interpretation of "finishing work somewhere else" but I don't think that this is my case. I have completed all my duties within position at Institute A, and little projects I am working on now are under my leadership and go beyond my formal duties.

If you are being paid at institute A, you are being paid to do something there, even if you feel like you have completed all your duties. I'd recommend not being paid at the same time by two different institutions, and rather ask Institution A if they have a way for you to temporarily maintain affiliation with them (this is not uncommon).

Thank you @BryanKrause, that's what I will do.

Around here (in Nordic countries), many institutions and non-academic workplaces include terms about informing the employer of other work besides the one the contract is for. As such, I would be contractually obliged to inform the university that I am also emplyed (presumably full-time) by another institute. Since both of them would have a claim to my full time work, it would be unlikely that I could satisfy that requirement, I would expect them to not accept the situation.
In your case, I would discuss the situation with my current and future superior and give up one position at the same time as starting the other, so that I am only employed once. At least in mathematics, there is typically flexibility to adjust the starting and ending times of the contracts by a month or two, as convenient for everyone.
Also, you can just resign. Out of courtesy, as Buffy noted, please make a clean exit where you finish as much unfinished business as possible and take care that all duties you have (teaching, running a seminar, etc.) are transferred to someone else. Make sure your data or code is available and documented and your collaborators and superiors know where to find it, if this is relevant in your field and country.

At least in pure and applicable mathematics, it is expected for one to continue previous research projects at the new institute. This might be very different if you are hired for a concrete job as a part of a team, but I would guess that most academic jobs allow a measure of flexibility in the matter, as outside collaborations are usually valued. Discuss with your future supervisor if you are in doubt.

You don't mention whether you have obligations that you need to fulfill in the first job. You need to deal with any of that, of course and not leave others hanging if they depend on you.
One option you have is to inform the supervisor of your current position that you have another offer and that they overlap. They might ok not resigning early if they want to be acknowledged in a certain way on your publication when it is finished.
But if you take the second position while still having obligations in the first, then the second employer might object that you can't spend full efforts on the new position. They should probably be informed, even if informally in a conversation. I suspect that if the only "obligation" is to finish a paper, that it wouldn't be a blocking issue.
I suspect that if you are valued by both institutions, one for your past work and the other for your expected contributions, that something can be worked out.
But it seems to me, at least, to be a mistake to just make a decision without either institution having any input. But the underlying situation is common enough that both places have probably dealt with it before.

Thank you @Buffy, yes, I will definitely inform both employers. Of course, my current teamleader is acknowledged about my application for the second position, as he provided me a reference letter. My main responsibilities now is to publish one manuscript.


text:
Should I include a synonym in parenthesis in abstract of a PhD thesis?
Should I include in parentheses a synonym I will use in the main text already in the abstract?
Example:

The atomistic scale (micro-scale) shall be considered ...
The atomistic scale shall be considered ... (Then introduce the synonym in the main text?)

Your university may have guidelines about this. Ask your supervisor. If not, use your own judgement. Does the synonym help with understanding the abstract?

I checked, university has no word on this. It would maybe help the reader.

Helping the reader is a good thing. Is the synonym better understood in your field?

Well, it is well understood in the field, that is for sure.

@Gamora thanks. That would be a viable option. Could you make this an answer with a reference of "wide" usage?

You can always edit an abstract slightly to your benefit using square brackets:

The atomistic [micro-]scale shall be considered.

It's a widely accepted way of editing abstracts to help with context.
For example it's used when written news wants to add clarity to direct quotes.