text:
How can I tactfully ask a professor to bring requests to me earlier?
I'm a PhD student. A professor that I collaborate with (not from my university) asked me on two separate occasions to help with grants that were due in a week. In both cases I managed to squeeze out 20 hours to help him, and he paid me out of his own pocket (not using grant funds).
How can I tactfully ask the professor to bring requests to me earlier in the future? I guess one way is to simply decline future requests that I cannot handle. But I want to preserve goodwill when possible - I could quote him an insane hourly rate if he again approaches me at the last minute, but some people might view that as me taking advantage of the situation, even though it's not my fault that he approached me so late. (The rumor mill can always turn white into black.) The best solution, in my opinion, is to successfully persuade him to approach me early.

Would it help if he alerted you a couple of weeks earlier, saying for example, "Can you help me during the week of April 23?"

Yes, that's precisely what I'm asking. Like if his grant is due on May 22, ask for help on April 22 (today).

Sorry, I don't understand your answer to my clarifying question.  If I were in your shoes, I would want a heads-up.  That is, I would want some advance notice, so that I wouldn't have my own deadlines and this collaborator's sudden deadline all raining down on me at the same time.  I would want the collaborator to look at his calendar and notice that he will need me to do a rush job starting April 23 (as an example).  I'd want him to tell me that by April 16 (or preferably earlier), so that I'd have this rush job on my radar screen.  However, for some people, that wouldn't be enough of ...

... a solution.  They would want to receive the draft by April 16, so they could spread the work out over two weeks (that's also an example).  Or, so they could put in more time, so as to feel more confident that the writing and editing (etc.) they are doing is solid work.  Because reading and writing frantically is very stressful.  So I'm asking which of those two changes is what you need.

Wanting to preserve goodwill is commendable. However, if this has now happened not once, but twice, you may want to ask yourself how much this particular individual's goodwill is worth. You have reinforced this professor's lack of planning twice by saving his hide, and you get more of what you reward. Do not be surprised if he does not change. After all, it has worked for him twice now.

Just tell him. Its not NOT tactful to want more than a week heads up if something takes a lot of time. Just because he is an professor does not mean he must be treated with silk gloves.

@aparente001 Ideally, I would want to receive the draft by April 16, though at the minimum I would want advance notice of a rush job

Well, the basic approach to asserting oneself, and I think it applies here, is: Step one, invite the person to talk with you in a stress-free time, away from the normal environment; it could even be to step outside to look at the daffodils for five minutes.  Step two, use an "I-message." Example: "I am glad to help you crank out a proposal.  It's rewarding work for me and I'm glad to contribute to the team effort [collaborate with you].  But I need a heads-up at least a week in advance, so I can clear my schedule.  Ideally, I'd like to have two full weeks to work with the manuscript."

Channeling JeffE, just ask him directly, as if he were human.

I was glad to be able to help with the grant proposal.  But if something like this comes up again in the future, would it be possible for you to give me a few weeks of advance notice?  That will help me arrange my schedule to make space for the work and avoid conflicts with my own teaching / research / dissertation / etc.

However, my guess is that prior to asking you, he thought that he could handle it all by himself and wouldn't need any help from you.  He probably found at the last minute that he couldn't, and had to scramble to look for help from anyone who could give it.  So if this is how he tends to operate, such a request may not help too much.  But at least it will be a nudge in the right direction.

+1. Professors are human beings, treat accordingly.

Also: this is the kind of request that is probably better handled in person or on the phone, instead of by email.

@aeismail: I guess that's a matter of personal style, and maybe anything you already know about the recipient.  Myself I wouldn't hesitate to do this over email.

"I like helping you, but I've got a very busy schedule. It is hard for me to meet the time demands of a grant proposal on such short notice. If I get these last minute requests, I might not be able to make time to help you in the future. If you give me more warning, say a month or so, scheduling shouldn't be an issue."

1) Doesn't blame the professor
2) Makes it clear that only the timing is an issue
3) Puts the problem on you so it doesn't seem like you're blaming him


text:
why should you tell on a cheater on a test?
how would you tell on a cheater?

Why?  Because the cheater is going to get an unearned grade, which, ultimately, will devalue your diploma.
How? Visit the professor and tell what you saw.  Be prepared to be asked to put it in writing, or to have a meeting with a department chair, dean, or academic conduct committee.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Best way to cite collaborators that are unaffiliated with an academic institution or business?
I am the lead author on a journal paper to the IEEE, and I'm trying to figure out how to cite other contributors in a way that makes sense.  Two of us are affiliated with a university, one contributor is a wonderful and knowledgable mathematician whose "real job" is in the service industry, and the other contributor is also a math nerd who is a barista in another country that did all of the proofs.
Would these non-conventional authors be "independent" or "unaffiliated" or some other term.  The affiliation is required by the journal.  Any suggestions (or a definitive source) of how to handle this issue would be appreciated.

In what sense is affiliation "required" by the journal?  A formal rule, or just a web form that can't be left blank?  In the former case, ask the journal what they want you to do.  In the latter, enter "none".

By the way, the word "cite" is not applicable here; that would be about referring to other papers by those people.  I would talk about how to "list" these collaborators.

@NateEldredge Two things, firstly, the affiliation is required, but mostly, I'd like a to be sure that protocol is followed, which leads me to the second part:  I was hoping for an authoritative reference.  As per that link, "Independent Scholar" is promising; however, I am still unsure if there's an official method.  An aside, "independent scholar" as a literal phrase translates terribly into the other language one of the researchers (one doesn't speak english), so a official reference would dismiss doubt about nuance.

Ok.  I don't know of any universally authoritative / official term or protocol for such situations.  The journal might have standardized on some specific term, but you would have to ask them about that.

@NateEldredge After a few rounds with the editors, we did decide on "Independent Scholar".

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


text:
Purpose of meeting with the dean and provost during campus visit
I was invited to a campus visit for a faculty position at a university in the U.S.
The visit will include a job talk, a class presentation to students, meeting with faculty members, meeting with the dean of the school and meeting with the provost from the university’s president’s office. This is by no means not a small university.
I was wondering what is the goal of meeting with each one of these parties. I do realize that I am being tested as much as I am also doing the same, but I would like to know what the dean and the provost would want to talk about with me.

I would like to hear from people who does the dean and the provost would want to talk with me about?.  = a job. In most US universities, departments don't hire on their own, they recommend for hiring, and final decisions technically come from above (deans etc).

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/80558/40589

That's interesting, we don't have a "dean" tag.

Perhaps they don't want to scrutinize your inability to comprehend the double negative.

Typically we only run candidates through all of these meetings - hiring committee, teaching example, dept. chair, provost, various AVPs and VPs, etc. IF we are paying them to travel to the interview.  For local candidates the provost, AVPs, etc. don't meet them until after most of the other process is complete

Meetings of this sort are pretty standard, but my experience is they're usually at a later stage of the process, like a second visit. Deans don't like to waste the time if the candidate doesn't pass muster of the faculty.
For better or worse, the Dean and the Provost carry a very big stick.  Your recruitment can be halted in a split second if one of them decides that way. The way it goes is that search committees make recommendations to Chairs and Deans.  At intermediate stages, they will advance a handful of applicants for consideration.  If the Dean or higher up says to the Chair "I would prefer if you don't hire that candidate"  that's usually a done deal.
In subtler cases, they can come up with "extra" resources to make your package a bit more exciting if they feel you're worth it, such as bumping the size of your startup package with discretionary funds.
If the Deans or other high level officers want to meet with you at an early stage, that's could be just due diligence, providing a reality check, but it could be almost anything.  Could be a young department or chair, and the Dean feels the need to keep an eye on the process.  It could also be an indication that the search has advanced to a fairly late stage, and they want to make a hire quickly.  It could also mean that these officers take a very active role in the management of their faculty, which could be a good thing.  It could mean that they take a very active interest in a campus with a family-like leadership style.  It could also mean that you're being considered for a very strategic hire and that they have a key interest in making sure just the right person is brought in to advance their programs.
There's also the possibility that you're a desirable candidate, and they want to impress you by showing high-level interest in your recruitment right from the start.
It's very hard to know exactly why they're directly involved without asking them.
In any case, be responsive to their questions.  Use earlier meetings with other faculty to try to get a feel for the slot you're being recruited for, and in your big meetings, be the person they're looking for.

Your experience is rather different from mine (US, math).  I've never heard of a faculty interview process that involved more than one campus visit per candidate - organizing one is hard enough!  And on that one visit, meeting with the dean is nearly universal and doesn't indicate anything special.  One would meet with the provost at a school that is small enough that the provost has many dean-like duties, or if the job is more of a leadership role (e.g. department chair).

Thanks a lot. Youve touched upon few possibilities that actually crossed my mind. The department is making a late recruitment of faculty members for 4 new classes in a new program that they are launching this year. The search committee search told me over the phone that because they want to move quickly with the process, Ill have all these meetings in one day. I was also told that I will be teaching graduate classes that will open next year. I am also bringing funding with me to the school.

Also, whether you meet with the dean before or after the faculty is, in my experience, usually just a matter of scheduling - and they don't usually communicate with each other about the candidate until afterwards.

@NateEldredge  -- our recruitments are almost always two visits.  The first throws a wider net -- maybe four candidates or so, and the purpose of the visit leans more toward "do we want you?", although is is still certainly a two-way conversation.  Second visits are usually for the strong favorite, or maybe the top two, and that visit takes on a "do you want us?" flavor, where we lay out physical space, go through the wish list, bring them to realtors....  The Dean's visit tends to take place more during the 2nd than the 1rst, but that doesn't mean the Dean isn't involved until then.

@Nate Eldredge: That's been my experience also -- I've never heard of more than one visit for a candidate in math. Also, for what it's worth, I've not only had provost interviews, but for several of the smaller colleges I've interviewed at I've even had an interview with the president of the college.

A lot depends on the size of the institution.  Compare a flagship large state university with 40,000 students to a small liberal arts college with 1000 students.  In the case of the small college, the dean is likely just a part-time administrator and the provost is probably the only full-time academic administrator.  At the large university, there might be a full-time department chair, dean, and maybe a vice president below the provost.
In my experience of running search committees at a small college, the dean
and provost typically interview all of the faculty candidates that come to campus and provide feedback to the committee.  They're mostly interested in making sure that candidates can communicate well and will fit into the campus culture.  They also make a point of explaining their expectations of new faculty.  At our institution, they're very interested in candidates who will be active in interdisciplinary research projects.   I've come to respect the judgments of these folks when it comes to communications skills and personality because they've had a lot of experience in hiring people.
As an applicant, I'd suggest that you focus on communicating clearly about
your teaching and research interests and how you can contribute to the larger mission of the institution.  Try to come across as someone who will work hard and not demand too much special attention.  Do not use this interview to start making demands relating to salary, start-up package, etc.- that can be a huge turn-off.
You can also look for any signs of tension between the administration and the academic department.  For example, are their expectations of your teaching and research activity in agreement?  If you get inconsistent answers from the administration and the academic department then that is an indication of discord within the institution.


text:
Can a college or university withhold your degree for non payment and change your degree?
Just to explain my question a little bit. I know that if you owe the school money they are allowed to withhold your diploma and  transcripts. My real question is if this is the situation and the college happens to change requirements for the degree before you fulfill your debt can they revoke the degree to make you take the classes needed?

Yes, as you say, it is common that a university will refuse to issue a diploma or transcripts until you have paid them what you owe.
However, I've never heard of them making you take more classes if requirements change in the meantime.  Most universities have a policy that what you have to fulfill are the requirements as they were listed in the catalog of the year that you first entered the university / degree program.  The university can't change them retroactively.
But you'd better read your university's policies to be sure.  This should be explained in the course catalog.

Actually, it's pretty common where I've been at to have holds on student accounts for non-payment of, e.g., library fines. If you have a hold, they won't issue a transcript. Not sure about the diploma itself but sounds about right. You're correct that the requirements go by the catalog year so that won't by a problem.

@guifa: Right, it seemed like the OP already knew about holds on transcripts or diplomas, so I wasn't addressing that part at all.  But I've clarified the answer now.

What you're suggesting could happen, but it probably pretty rare in practice. Your school's policies will typically spell out the exact graduation requirements, including what happens when degree requirements change.
For example, My undergraduate institution officially recorded the "catalog description" of each degree every year. When changes to the degree program occur, they only happen through changes to the official catalog description. The school's policy was that you were allowed to graduate under any catalog description for a year in which you were enrolled, for catalogs up to 7 years old.
Suppose I enroll in school in academic year 2015- I'm entitled to graduate under the 2015 requirements up through the 2021-2022 academic year. If I'm enrolled  for four years, then I also have the option of graduating under the requirements for 2016, 2017, and 2018 if I so desire. The intent here is that your degree program cannot unexpectedly become more difficult to finish, as long as you finish in a timely manner.
This is pretty standard in the US as far as I know.


text:
Hourly rates for industry consulting?
I have a friend who is considering a part time (~10hr/week) consulting gig with a large, well-established software company, doing a mixture of research and coding.  However, there appears to be little quantitative data on past consulting rates for academics, i.e., professors, postdocs, and PhD students whose primary career is not consulting.
Q: How does an academic determine a fair rate for consulting?
...Assuming that a consulting gig is actually compatible with their academic contract! I do of course realize that in many circumstances external employment is prohibited by a contract with the university.  I also realize that consulting rates are largely a function of 1. perceived expertise and 2. negotiation skill.  But a key component of successful negotiation is an objective view of the facts—in this case, some kind of upper and lower bound on reasonable wages.

"Fair"? Fair to who? The hourly rate is "whatever the market will bear", unless your university is one of those that sets the rates that academics may charge for external work.

Right—I am trying to establish what the market will bear!

Maybe the people at workplace.stackexchange.com have more experience about negotiating rates for freelance consulting. After all if you remove the words "...for academics", the question makes perfect sense and has little to do with academia, so it looks very close to a boat programming question.

As Fomite correctly stated, it is going to vary a lot by field and also individual circumstances.
In my experience, if the consulting work is roughly equivalent to what a non-academic in industry might be able to perform, then the rates will roughly be equivalent, too.  This happens a lot in the engineering disciplines, and especially often in computer science (i.e., many computer science professors can moonlight as software engineers).  In such disciplines, I have found that companies in industry often classify their engineers into five levels.  These go by different names at different companies, but they usually are along the lines of: associate, full engineer, senior, lead, and principal.  Associate is the level a freshly graduated undergrad would start at. Full engineer usually implies three to five years experience and/or a master's degree.  That is likely the level equivalent to a Ph.D. student.  A fresh Ph.D. just having defended would usually start at such a company at the senior level, so it is roughly equivalent to post-doc and junior faculty.  The lead level is usually achieved 7+ years after that, so it is roughly equivalent to tenured faculty.  Likewise, principal is equivalent to full professors.
Once you have an equivalent job title in mind, you can use websites like glassdoor to search for average salaries for that job title (e.g., "Senior Software Engineer", "Principal Electrical Engineer", etc.).  I find that typical hourly rates are in the range of 0.1% to 0.2% of the yearly salary of an equivalent professional, but once again this may vary by profession; my experience is in the world of software.
I have found that some companies will allow a slightly higher-end consulting rate if you can demonstrate that your abilities are above and beyond those of a non-academic alternative.  This is especially true if the nature of the consulting work is research-oriented and/or directly related to your research, or if you can reasonably argue that you could complete the task faster than a non-Ph.D or a full-time employee.
You can usually charge a slightly higher rate for short-term work.
Many academics I know often do consulting in the form of acting as expert witnesses at trial.  Rates for that type of work seem to be more standard across disciplines, and is more of a function of how unique and qualified you are for the job.  Prep work for trial is usually charged at a standard consulting rate, but then days at trial can be charged as much as two to four times that rate.

See my answer about how to compute consulting rates here.  In my field (optical sciences) and related fields (software engineering and electrical engineering) the going rate for a newly minted Ph.D. is between $125/h and $150/h.  Professors, having more experience, can get more than this, but usually not more than about $250/h unless they are a well known "superstar."

130-300 an hour is what I would expect. Its hard to base it off a % of salary since being a professor has several other benefits and people don't do it just for the money, while consulting is often just for the money. As a graduate student my salary at times was 30k a year but I was charging 120$ an hour for consulting.

My % of salary estimates were based off of commercial salaries, not academic salaries.  So, for example, if one were a Computer Science professor, one would base one's consulting rate on the salary of a principal-level software engineer.

Ask around.
This is going to vary wildly by field, by sub-field, by school, by academic rank, etc. The best way to find out is to ask colleagues what they make, more senior colleagues what they'd expect and if they think a particular rate is reasonable, etc.
While people are occasionally hesitant about asking salary questions, I've not run into anyone whose adverse to discussing the mechanics of consulting with a colleague getting started.

Thanks.  Actually, that's why I created the question on SE: he asked, and I didn't know!  In the spirit of academia.se, I thought I'd try to distribute this "insider info" to the masses...

Mysterious downvoter - do you have a comment as to how my answer can be improved?

I would also add that it varies by geography. Some locations simply have higher rates than others.

In the legal arena, private practice rates for pure research start at about $40 per hour while the rates for research and writing are about $60 per hour, on average.  In academics, these rates are much lower such that you typically see only law students working hourly in an academic setting.

On the "ask around, it varies" answer of mine, these are way low for private practice in my area.

That is obviously the problem with this question: it varies greatly between locations. I would charge between 80-100 euro for consultancy. But this is in Western Europe (the Netherlands).


text:
Why are most papers not dated?
Many of the research papers that I have read are not dated in terms of publication date. By dating I mean including at least the publication year. The papers I refer to are mostly free PDFs from the internet on various topics, usually affiliated with some academic institution (mostly universities).
One can then only guess the publication date from the dates of newest references. Does this weird trend have some reasoning? If I wrote a paper or even its draft and made it public I would clearly date it.
Edit:
It seems I have missed the option of checking the PDF document properties which show a creation date. But this still does not answer the question of not including the date within the body of the document itself.

What is your field? In my areas of interest (CFD, finite elements, etc), submission or acceptance dates and publication dates are very common. Also, there's almost always a copyright statement on the article that includes the year.

Well I am a computer science student. The papers I reffer to are mostly free PDFs from the internet on various topics... I can not really understand someone writing a 5+ page paper and not dating it...

@Kozuch Is is possible that you are asking why the PDF of the paper doesn't have the date printed on it? On the publishers' websites, you typically find these dates. The PDFs on authors' homepages are typically self-compiled using the standard style used for reviewing, which simply does not feature the dates. Authors are often required to use a self-compiled version. Also, only few people see this is as a problem, as for a citation, only the year is mandatory to be included, and the authors' homepages, which link to the PDFs, have the years on them in most cases.

Yeah, if you're not looking at the officially published version on the journal or conference page, then you're not looking at a "published" article but a preprint or a draft. You need to get to the original source which will be the publisher's page.

I am really not sure what you are talking about. Many journal styles have a submission / acceptance / publication date on the PDF. Even for the ones that don't (typically workshops and conferences), finding the year of the conference only is a trivial Google search. And if you can't find anything about the paper either in IEEEXplorer, ACM, DBLP, etc. - well, chances are it's not reliable anyway.

I don't have Acrobat Reader readily available, but on my pdf reader (evince, part of Gnome) I can access a creation date and a modification date in the menu entry file->properties. In case you are wondering, they are different from the file creation/modification date recorded by the filesystem.

Are you talking about the random "free tutorial" someone writes up (which rarely has a publication date), or are you actually reading research/peer-review-quality papers?

This sounds very odd. I can't recall ever seeing a paper that doesn't have at least a date of submission or publication somewhere in the text. Can you give some examples?

I don't think you should trust a computer science paper which in a DOC.

A PDF file normally contains the date of its creation in its Properties (which can be accessed, e.g., using Ctrl+D in SumatraPDF on Windows, or using "pdftk [name of PDF] dump_data" on Linux). This is at least an upper bound on when it was actually written (but so are publication dates).

PDF creation date is easily changed, and may be inaccurate in case of re-created PDFs.

Because the papers you are talking about are not papers / publications. A random PDF which is not per-reviewed, not even on a preprint server, is not full scale publication in the academic sense.

"The papers I refer to are mostly free PDFs from the internet on various topics" – then it's most likely one or both of:

It is not a peer-reviewed paper published by a reputable journal. Be careful what you read, there are plenty of quack theories out there
You are viewing a preprint, and by finding the article on the journal's website you will find the date. Also, the final version of the article will probably be better formatted, and may be better written and have mistakes corrected (this depends upon the stage of publication at which the preprint was circulated).

Many preprints are circulated prior to publication, so you may not find a better version yet. It's still really poor form for an author not to date a preprint. If a preprint is a few years old and has not yet been published, you have to wonder why.
I can not recall ever seeing a journal that does not put the journal name, date, and issue number on at least the first page. It would be very poor practice not to do this, because taken on its own it is impossible (without further research) to tell where the article came from. It's common even to date every page with the journal name, date, and issue number.
I suspect that if you're seeing this trend in most of the "papers" you read, that you really aren't reading research articles written by legitimate researchers. Ask your advisor or lecturer for the names of the most relevant journals in the field, and start from there.

In my area (pure maths), many preprints aren’t dated, and even for published papers, the preprint is often the easiest version to find.  So while most of the papers I read have a date in principle, the specific pdf I read them from is very often undated.

@PLL, but when you cite them, you go find the publication date, right?

@BillBarth: of course, yes — one cites the journal version, not the preprint.

Since the OP is a computer science student, one of my CS professors told my class that most of the top tier journals in our field are published by the ACM and the IEEE organizations. Searching Google Scholar for the ACM and the IEEE brings up plenty of high-quality peer-reviewed papers.

Most PDFs you find are pre-prints, and the standard workflow of many journals and conferences does not include dates in preprints.

@PLL: In my experience, preprints are usually ciriculated using arXiv, and you can see the submission dates there and every paper (and every version of paper) is automatically stamped with submission date.

@jakebeal "Most PDFs you find are pre-prints" – the only preprints you read should be the ones that are not yet published or that you don't otherwise have access to. I still find it hard to believe that it is not possible to find the date of a journal or conference preprint – if not in the PDF, then obviously available on the website. What's next, omitting the author's names?

@Moriarty I highly disagree: when I search online and Google Scholar pops up with a PDF, it's probably a pre-print, not the paywalled final version.  That's the one I'm going to read, even when I have journal access, because it's one click rather than a bunch of fiddling with library portals.  And those preprints are almost always missing the final date.  The date is then easy to find online, it's just not in the PDF.

@jakebeal A "bunch of fiddling" with library proxies can be reduced to a browser bookmark, if all you have to do is append a proxy address to the URL: javascript:void(location.hostname=location.hostname+'.yourproxyhere'). I don't know how it is in CS, but preprints are not always of the peer-reviewed version. So maybe I'm being rather conservative, but it's not a practice I'd actively encourage. Perhaps also I'm unusually lucky as an astronomer that the published article is always only 2 clicks away from the arXiv page...

Most (CS) papers that you find on the websites of the publishers have the bibliographical information in the PDF, typically on the first page of the paper. This typically includes the year. These papers are however also typically behind paywalls, meaning that you won't get access to these unless you (a) buy a copy of the article, or (b) have access through your institutional subscription.
Many research paper PDFs that you find freely on the internet are self-archived versions of the papers. These are PDFs provided by the authors on their personal or institutional web pages and not prepared by the publisher. While these do not constitute the official versions of the papers, authors normally do not modify the content of the PDF so that the official and unofficial versions of the papers get out of sync. Now it happens to be that most paper style files provided to the authors for writing their papers with for a specific venue do not feature a field for the bibliographical information. Rather, the information is later added by the publisher. Thus, the information is missing on the PDF made by the authors themselves.
It should also be noted that only few people see this as a problem. The bibliographical information is contained on the authors' webpages from which you often download the papers. Also, you mainly need the bibliographical information for citing the paper, and for that, you can pretty much always download the whole bibliographical information entry for a paper from the publisher's website. Just type the paper title into your favorite search machine and click onto the respective result. For computer science, most papers are in DBLP anyway, which also gives you a complete bibliography entry at the expense of a mouse click.

+1 for bib data from the publisher even if you get the paper direct from the researcher.  You can also quickly compare the abstract in case your search engine took you to a similarly-named paper from the same authors (e.g. you forgot to put quotes round the title).

I agree that it is extremely frustrating to not have a date on a technical paper. It is often impossible to tell the currency and hence whether any conclusions represent the latest thinking.  The only reason I can think of is that most technical papers are published by technical associations, who then generate revenue by selling access to papers. By not including a date, researchers are unable to identify currency and are thereby forced to purchase more papers than they need, hence generating more revenue for the publishing house or society.

unable to identify currency and are thereby forced to purchase more papers than they need --- I'm confused. Don't most published papers include a received date, a date that (in my experience) is nearly always provided to those (such as myself) who do not have access to papers behind a paywall? "randomly chosen" example 1 (gives received, accepted, published dates at bottom of the web page) and "randomly chosen" example 2 (also gives received, accepted, published dates)

@DaveLRenfro You’re right. However, the paper itself, e.g. the PDF, does not indicate the date it was published. It is part of the metadata that you see in a citation.

authors: เฮียเจ๊ก เรสซิ่ง

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


text:
First person plural or singular pronouns for thesis presentation
I am going to do an oral presentation for my thesis.
Normally, when presenting a paper, as the paper is a collaboration work, I always use the pronoun "we".
The thesis is written based on the papers. However, when presenting (for example, when talking about the contributions of the thesis), I feel using "we" a bit odd.
Should I use "we" or "I"?
Many thanks.

Do not use the Royal one! :-p

This is also worth checking out.

Use "we" when referring to something you did as a team, and use "I" when referring to something that you did by yourself. That is what these words are for.
Using "we" and "I" consistently in this way helps to make clear what your contributions were, and this is often exactly what the jury wants to find out during your presentation.  If you choose to not go with the above option you should make it clear in some other way what you did and what others did.
Of course, if there is a clear preference in the culture where you are presenting it is best to follow that preference, but you would probably not be asking the question if that were the case.

+1 for calling out that it's very important in this context to differentiate your own personal contribution from collaborative (or others') work. I would be very careful to us "I", "we" and "they" very precisely.

That's also what I thought actually.

There is no rule you have to pick one exclusively. I would not bat an eye at someone using "we" for the collaborative sections and "I" at their sections.
Especially for a thesis presentation, everyone knows you and who your group is.

Indeed, something like "Here we were interested in XYZ, so I made samples and analyzed them with..." is perfectly acceptable. "We" for big picture stuff, "I" for stuff you personally did.

I agree with the options the other answers present, and that in the end it is up to you to decide what to do, keeping your audience in mind. However, the other answers do not say much about which of those options to choose, so I'd like to cover that in more detail.
Those words you're using, what do they mean?
First, let's take a step back and look at what the words mean. "we" refers to a group of more than person including the author/speaker* (unless you want to be patronizing or indicate that you're important than your audience, but I recommend against such arrogance). "I" refers to exactly one person, the author/speaker.
With these definitions of the meaning of "we", we(!) can rephrase your question as follows:

During an oral presentation for my thesis, should I attribute the contributions to myself only, or also to my coauthors?

Your options
And that is a good question! I see 3 workable options1 here:

Attribute all contributions to the group consisting of you and your coauthors, and use "we" exclusively when talking about contributions. Note that this is about contributions only, never say something like "we thank our wife for her support during the writing of this thesis"2. Additionally, when "the group of you and your coauthors" is only a single person (i.e. you3), you should use "I", of course. This is (usually) the case with your thesis, for example.

Attribute all results to yourself and use "I" exclusively when talking about contributions. If you do so, I recommend you at least briefly aknowledge the support of your coauthors at the start of your presentation. They would almost certainly feel ignored otherwise. (and they may still feel so if you only acknowledge them at the start! But that is a risk inherent to this option)

Decide in advance which contributions belong to you only, which contributions belong to all of you, and use both "I" and "we" accordingly.

As you can see, these options are distinguished in how you choose to assign the attribution of your work in cases where ownership is not obvious for the audience. This means that the difference between the options can be minor in practice, in particular when the ownership of most of your work is very clear.
I think there are pros and cons to all of these options. Which one to choose would mostly depend on what your audience expects of your presentation and what your goals are.
Pros and cons
The main advantage of options 1 and 2 is that you do not have to decide (or negotiate!) which contributions are really "yours"3. This makes it easier to prepare for your presentation, and harder to make mistakes. Whether you can afford option 1 or 2 would depend on the context. If, for example, your defense is mainly ceremonial (yes, this is possible. Academia varies more than you think), then it may not be nessecary to assert your personal contribution during your defense and option 1 would be fine. At the least, your co-authors or friends their should not have to feel they are being ignored this way. I personally would not be comfortable with option 2, but there may be communities or cultures where this is acceptable or even the norm.
If you cannot afford or do not like options 1 or 2, then you should go for 3. This is a bit more complicated, as now you will have to decide what your personal contribution is and need to be careful to use the right words during your talk. (while you will probably have to do this sooner or later, a serious defense is likely one of the more confrontational settings to make this assertion) You may need to be careful when your idea of ownership conflicts with the feelings of coauthors present during your defense. Most decent people will not make a big deal about this, but well, not everyone is a decent person. If you suspect that someone might make a big deal about it, it might be a good idea to talk to them about it before your defense.

1. A fourth option would be to avoid both "we" and "I", but the author does not consider this a workable option, as one would have to refer to themselves in the third person when talking about their own (joint) contributions. This would be even more awkward for a speaker than it is for an author. Or at least, this author would imagine so.
2. Paraphrased from How to write mathematics by Paul Halmos, Chapter 13 "The editorial we is not all bad"
3. I mean singular "you" here. This would have been clearer if the English words for 2nd person singular and plural were not homonyms in most forms. (yes, "y'all" exists, but that does not help to indicate the singular, and its possessive form does not appear to be the lesser evil)

"Y'all" IS the singular.  The plural is "all y'all"!  (Also: thee, thou, thy, thine.)

@JeffE I'm not an expert, but that seems to be a matter of debate. Which in itself implies the term does not decrease ambiguity as much as I'd hoped it would. Thanks for the other suggestions, good to know the English language used to have the words I wanted. I might actually use that when I prefer using stereotypical archaic words over making complaints about the English language.

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


text:
Considering leaving after three months
I am a PhD student sponsored by a company and considering leaving after three months.
This is an opportunity offered by my supervisor because he has a good relationship with the company and the company started a meaningful project. Right after I graduated my master degree, my supervisor suggested the company to offer my a three month pre-PhD summer job that I could start the project earlier while waiting the start date of my PhD.
To be honest, I found myself under pressure during the three months summer job because I was assigned heavy workload and something I’m not familiar with. This is a tiny size company (less than 10 people), I would say it is very not organised too. The development team has only one full time employee but he’s also working like a part time on this project. Even the project manager is a part time employee. Thus, everything relied on me. I did consider not starting the PhD and just let go the “golden” opportunity.
I thought that I would be protected by the uni once I officially started my PhD. But I am afraid this is not correct. After I started, things even got worse, the company lost 2 managers in a very short period. As I am a full time PhD student working on the research part of the company’s project, I don’t think I’m supposed to be assigned operational work. I was happy to accept this kind of workload as I think the company is paying real money for sponsoring my PhD. They requested 40% of my work time, which means 2 work days to focus on the company work. They kept adding workload, sudden meetings and very tight deadlines, I was under great pressure and that ruined my schedule.
I have been keeping weekly reports and have reported issues to my academic supervisors. I am very surprised that I have raised the same issue three times within the first three months of my PhD. We have a big meeting every after I “complain”. The CEO (my industrial supervisor) of the company agreed he would change the situation, and promised that I have the right to say no to the non research related work. From my experience, he forgets what’s been agreed after two weeks and just keeps asking for 40% of my work time.
I had the third meeting regarding the same issue with them this afternoon. From my point of view, what the CEO said today was pretty much the same as the last 2 times. What I remember the most from the chat today is the CEO mentioned even the tight deadline could be changed when needed, we have to keep both internal and external communication running. However, this is a little bit different comparing to his actions. Last month, he didn’t even consider pushing back the deadline but requested me to finish the limited demo in 2 days, which put me under great pressure and ruined my schedule, I had no time to prepare the conference presentation. He told my supervisor things are flexible and not seeing me as a developer. But what I’m feeling is he treats me like a full time product developer, leave me no time for research, and nothing can be changed after he decided.
For my academic supervisor, he is 50% helpful in this case to be fair. He guides me how to exploit the company’s project to finish my PhD. He also listens to me carefully when I need help. However, it seems that he doesn’t want to touch the internal issues of the company, I feel like he has no such power to change the situation I’m facing.
Let me know what you guys think.
Cheers

This isn't a general advice site. It is for specific questions. Your situation is too personal for good answers, I think. And, BTW, not everyone here is a "guy".

Thanks and sorry at the same time. Sorry for the word I chose. I understand this is not a general advice site but my uni office is still in stealth mode before the new semester starts, I just wanna share what I am feeling... thanks very much

It seems like they assign you (too much) work, you accept it and do it satisfactorily, and then you complain to your advisor and a meeting is scheduled. Is this accurate? Have you tried regulating your own workflow by refusing new tasks or not meeting deadlines?

It is possible that you would get better answers on the "workplace" stack exchange rather than here, only because this seems more of an issue of a company attempting to exploit a student, rather than a typical academia issue. (It is on topic here though, in my rather insignificant opinion.) It doesn't sound like a great situation to me though - it sounds like the company is in financial trouble and can't hire enough people for the work they need to do.

What is the problem? That the company is asking you to do too much operational work? If so, please clarify

Thanks for all you comments. Let me clarify, the company is treating me like a full time product develop but not a full time PhD student. They kept assigning operational workload (100% not research related) to me outside the agreed 40% of the my time. Clearly, they need a quick product for commercial purposes but not the research result. However, the CEO said in front of my academic supervisor that he understood my responsibility is to do research and apply innovative ideas into their product.

I don't mean I am not willing to work on what they assigned, all I mean is they are being unreasonable sometimes. They always asked me to join sudden meetings with no notice. For example, we agreed Thursday and Friday for working on the company's work, but they would force me to join other meetings between Monday and Wednesday. Workload was also crazy, as I have become the only person who knows everything of the product, I received internal and external enquiries everyday and could not reply later than a day. So they leave me no time to do the real research... Cheers

I'm still not clear what you mean by "force you" to join these meetings and reply to messages within a day. Are you certain they are intentionally trying to overschedule you? Or could this just be a matter of "creep" (i.e., they ask you and you say yes so they don't see a problem)?

They definitely overscheduled me, this is the reason I raised my hand a few times. in the very beginning, I was willing to do what they ask within the 40%, and tried saying no to the workload outside this 40%. Unfortunately, I still had to finish what they want me to do outside the 40%. After the first and second meeting, the CEO was cheeky, he asked the manager to assign work to me which could consume more than 40% of my time, and he was pretending all the workload was designed by the manager, not him. He is a new manager, when I say no to extra workload, he had to confirm with the CEO.

Have you considered asking to be changed from a PhD student to a full time product developer, with a very large pay increase?

I ask the exact same question to the CEO yesterday, he's not interested in it. its because he has to pay pension, insurance and etc. for switching me to a full time product developer.

I can't figure out what the formal relationship between you and this company is. Do you still have some contract with them, as well as with the University?
It seems to me that asking your advisor about the situation regarding say IPR or liability insurance may give you a lever you can use to get out of doing the company's work. E.g. "... requested me to finish the limited demo ..." so if that was done as part of a full-time PhD then is it you or the University that owns the code, and not the company at all?

thanks for you reply, the summer job contract expired and I only signed an agreement with the uni before I started the PhD. For now, the company funds the uni, and then the uni transfers part of it as stipend to my account every month. From what I know is the company will own the research result and all the code when I graduate. Before I graduate the PhD, the company is kind of borrowing the code and resources from the uni. The reality is if I quit the company's project, they won't fund the uni anymore and my PhD ends. Cheers

Which country you are in? That will give us some idea of what the various agreements typically involve.

"Before I graduate the PhD, the company is kind of borrowing the code and resources from the uni." but only if your agreement with the uni explicitly transfers the IP from you to the the uni... does it? (Frankly, to me this all looks like a nasty mess that you are caught in the middle of.) What does the uni. contract say about the stipend? I would expect a generic one to require that you do actually study full-time to receive it, yet the uni are trying to exploit you as an unpaid consultant for 50% of the time. Or is the 40% written into there?

I am in the UK at the moment. I only signed the uni phd agreement before started, and that is a very simple agreement telling me that what the stipend amount is and how long the funding last. I am not sure what the agreement between the company and the uni is. What I only know is the company own the IP once I successfully graduate. I didn't sign any document related the work time ratio. The CEO wants 40% of my time, and he doesn't consider anything less than 40%, this makes me like doing a part-time PhD. One of my supervisors suggested 20% but he disagreed. In fact, he uses like 60% of my time

I don't know how things are with Covid, but I would have expected you to have signed an agreement with the uni during matriculation where you formally became their (full-/part-time)student, got a swipe card, etc. That agreement references a thick document probably on their intranet that contains the legalistic terms and conditions; there should also be a Postgraduate Student Handbook. UK PhDs are 3 years (if full-time) with an increasing number of formal hoops to jump through especially in the first year: if you're not getting enough time to meet those requirements things will go really sour.

I am in the UK at the moment... UK national or is there a visa issue lurking? how long the funding last So, how long does it last? If it's 3 years then that implies you're supposed to be studying full-time, and losing 20% is already on the high side in my opinion.

yes, i am a full-time phd student and the funding only last 3 years.

Sorry, missed this earlier: "The CEO (my industrial supervisor)..." is this one of those new-fangled Engineering Doctorates or whatever they're called? (Sorry, I've no experience around those.)

The CEO is my industrial supervisor because his company sponsor my PhD and he has the right to supervise my academic work, making sure my academic result fits his real world project. I don't directly call him "boss" because he's not directly paying me and we have never had an agreement with his company.

This is a little hard to follow, but I would break it into two pieces:

Working more than 40%

You need to turn the tables. Right now, the company is "playing by its own rules," and you are stuck impotently chasing after them with the useless contract. You seem to think this is deliberate on the company's part, while I suspect that it might be unintentional -- but either way, it will be fixed when you become the one who "plays by your own rules." For example, perhaps you are willing to work one hour per day M/T/W and all day Thursday and Friday. Anything that cannot get done during that time simply does not get done. You don't check e-mail outside of that time window, and you are unconcerned about missing deadlines.
This will have two possible outcomes.

One is that they try to complain, but your advisor supports you, and after all, you are working 40% as agreed. So, this complaint goes nowhere, and they eventually do a better job of managing your tasking (or they just learn to accept that work assigned to you will move slowly). They might even respect you more.
The other is that they complain very angrily, your advisor does not (or cannot) successfully support you, and you are eventually forced to return to your current workflow. In this case, you will probably end up leaving both the company and the PhD (which seems to be what you are considering now in any case).

Doing operational work rather than R&D

So far you are only 3 months in, so getting familiarity with the company's operational work may not be a bad thing. Especially if you want to stay in industry, this sort of knowledge may be quite valuable to you. So I am less concerned about this, especially since you are working 60% time at the university.
Sure, this is still a problem and it will need to be addressed -- but I would focus on the 40% issue for now and then after that converges, you can start to slowly shift your responsibilities.

Thanks for your reply. I did try to "play by my own rules" after the second meeting. They are good at assigning "urgent" work to me or asking "quick" questions outside the 40%. It's because they thought it's really "urgent" and "quick", so even I had to right to say NO, they did not accept it. I do hope my supervisors could fully support me, but who knows. I am just a bit disappointed where I have to raise the same issue 3 times. I am not sure if I should give them the one last chance. I lost appetite and suffered from insomnia because of the great pressure.

There is no "outside the 40%" in what I suggested. There is also no "raising the issue". There is only your 16-19 hrs per week, and your schedule -- if they want to give you an urgent task, fine, you can move it to the front of the queue, but it comes out of your allocated time budget.

Thanks for your suggestion again, and I will give it a try. Many thanks.

Your meetings haven't served their purpose, follow-up with an email clarifying some specifics, e.g.,

Dear CEO,
Thank you for listening to my concerns during our meetings X XXX XXXX, Y YYY YYYY, and Z ZZZ ZZZZ. I appreciate the company's needs for ABC and, as discussed, I can commit 17% of my time to this. I suggest that my contributions be conducted on Fridays, between the hours of X and Y. My university employment makes further commitment infeasible.

One day a week (20%) may be too high, 17% too low, adapt accordingly. My personal preference would be to commit Friday, your preference may vary.
You could offer the CEO a solution:

Nonetheless, I foresee a scaling opportunity: I am willing to supervise one or more interns/researchers/developers to help us achieve ABC.

Other details can of course be added.
Conclude with something along the lines of:

I trust we are in agreement, please do not hesitate to offer clarification if we are not.
Yours sincerely,
researchxyz

Such a conclusion forces the CEO to stick to their word, or break a written agreement.

Thanks for your reply, I did send a follow-up email and my academic supervisor thinks the problem has been solved after the meeting. The CEO doesn't accept less than 40% of my time I am afraid. And I have already suggested him to employ a proper developer to reduce the pressure on my shoulder like 2 months ago, it seems like COVID is his good excuse for not hiring a new employee. Cheers

@researchxyz You can revise to forty percent, I'd suggest conducting such work on Thursday and Friday. Doing so earlier will allow for discussion during your research time. (The weekend follows Friday, you needn't work.)
You need to be disciplined: Don't work for the company outside of your commitments. You're essentially working part-time on your PhD, you'll surely need additional time to complete on time. Having written documented evidence will be useful. I've forgotten one aspect, let me edit to add now.

+1 I think it's important to do the 40%  in two full days. If you allow company related interruptions any work day you will be unable to limit the total to that percentage, and the context switches will be expensive. Of course two full days rather than "on call" won't suit the company, but hold to it  if you possibly can.

@EthanBolker The OP should do whatever they originally negotiated / contractually agreed to. That's a little unclear from the question: The OP remarks, after starting, they requested 40% of my work time and notes [the CEO] forgets what’s been agreed...and just keeps asking for 40% of my work time. Ultimately, the OP should do the hours contractually agreed to.


text:
How can I create a google scholar profile without publicaitons?
I'm currently doing my master's in physics. I have written a few articles which are yet to be communicated. But I'm graduating within 3 months due to which I will lose my institute email ID. And since the creation of a profile on google scholar mandates an institution ID as well as articles, Im at a loss. I have done a minor project due to which I have a minor thesis document at hand and I have seen scholar profiles where the first publication kept on it is not published in any journal but instead was a thesis report. Is there anyway I could use my minor thesis to open a google scholar profile? It would be nice if I could know where to upload my thesis so that it would be searchable on google scholar.
Thanks in advance!

The google scholar help page says that you can change your institutional id. So set it up now and change it later. I think google scholar searches arXiv; if so posting your thesis there will work.


text:
What should I do if I find two suspiciously similar conference publications by different authors?
In my research, I've found two articles that are completely identical, except the abstract and authors names. They are published on different conferences, with one year between.
What should (must) I do in this case?

The programme committees for the conferences would be the appropriate authorities to contact (it is their responsibility to deal with plagiarism within their conference). This is of course complicated by the fact the conferences are in the past; the current programme committee may have little or nothing to do with the earlier committee, the steering committee may be more appropriate in this case.
If neither are responsive, contacting the publication venue may be required. If the proceedings are published by a journal or reputable publisher, they should be able to resolve the issue (they have copyright laws to deal with!).

Wouldn't the conference proceedings list the programme committee members of that particular edition of the conference?

@WillieWong, it definitely should (or at least the information would be available somehow), the problem being that the programme committee is typically tied to that instance of the conference and thus is dissolved (along with its powers) at the conclusion of the conference, so the committee as a body may not as such exist. Of course the individual academics still do (hopefully!), but while I hope they'd be interested in stopping plagiarism, they may not have the appropriate powers or influence any more.

Ah, I see what you meant now.

If the author sets on the two papers are disjoint, then it looks like a case of real plagiarism. If you are not an author on any of these papers, I'd suggest notifying the authors of the earlier publication of the other paper, and leave further steps to them. Alternatively, if the conference of the earlier publication has been sponsored by a reputable organization, you could try to inform this organization.
If the author sets are not disjoint, we have what is typically called "self-plagiarism". I don't like this term, because this is by far not as severe as real plagiarism. Still, in case the earlier publication has a copyright mark by some publishing company or scientific organization, you may consider informing them.
Note that you are not really obliged to take any action. Just if you want to cite the work, you should make sure to cite the original, not the plagiated work. This would normally be the earlier publication.

I'd argue that if a citation to one of the papers is appropriate, then it's important to report the plagiarism, because otherwise it's hard to be sure which is the original.  (Maybe it was copied from a preprint or rejected conference submission, and the plagiarizers managed to get their paper published first.)  You're right that it will generally be the first one, but might as well have the publisher start an investigation to make sure.


text:
In the United States, is associate professor a subset of professor, or a distinct category?
In the USA, if someone writes that they are "professor" with no other specification, does this mean full professor, or can it also mean associate professor?  In other words, is associated professor a subset of professor, or is it a fully distinct category?

I guess they mean full prof otherwise it will be misleading information

"Professor" is both a job and a title, hence the ambiguity.  Other titles given to people with that job include "Assistant Professor" and "Associate Professor."

It should be pointed out that, at least in the US, "associate professors" are a partially overlapping set with the class of "tenured professor," as many associate professors have tenure, but have not yet been promoted to a full professorship. So, there really is "associate without tenure" and "associate with tenure."
However, in the US, as user7691 points out, the correct form of address for any professor, regardless of type, is "Professor X." I would even include adjunct and emeritus professors in this group. If you're looking at a faculty listing and see just "Professor" after a name (or in a separate field), however, it's likely that the individual in question holds a full professorship.

Your answer suggests that "full professor" is a synonym for "tenured professor".  It is not.  At least in the US, the set of associate professors and the set of full professors are disjoint.  Moreover, there are associate professors and full professors who do not have tenure.

Clearly the Venn diagram in my head didn't make it into the written answer. However, my original answer clearly indicated that there were associates without tenure. (Full professors without tenure is a phenomenon I hadn't heard of—at least not at any of the schools I'm familiar with. However, I suspect their cardinality is much smaller than the set of associates with tenure.)

I thought about making this a comment as it only refers to Australia, and your question is about the United States, but it got a bit long.
The Australian Context:

Professor is typically the top of the academic ranking hierarchy in the order: associate lecturer, lecturer, senior lecturer, associate professor, professor. Thus, professor means that someone is of the academic rank "Professor".
Common general titles that cover all ranks include "lecturer",  "academic", "researcher".
In terms of titles, the basic rules are as follows (e.g., for Smith):

If of professor rank, "Prof Smith"
If of associate professor rank, "A/Prof Smith"
If of associate lecturer, lecturer, or senior lecturer rank and the person has a doctoral qualification, "Dr Smith"
If of associate lecturer, lecturer, or senior lecturer rank, and the peson does not have a doctoral qualification, "Mr Smith" or "Ms Smith"

Heh. My alma mater (Oxford) is finally catching up with the world. "The grade of associate professor comes into effect from 1 January 2014". Prior to that you were a full professor or you were not a professor. Easy for everyone, except those comparing job titles with other universities/countries ;-)

Short answer: if somebody from the US writes about themselves as a Professor, then it means a tenured full professor.
Longer answer: If you see the title "Professor" in the official university publication (e.g., department website), or in somebody's bio, self-description, or email signature, then it means a tenured full professor (the third, and the top, step in the US academic hierarchy... Instructors and lecturers can hardly be considered academics as they are treated as staff for hire and dismissal).
If you see "Professor" in somebody else's email, especially students' emails, or in the university newsletter, or in some other source that was originated from a person that is not so familiar with the academic ranks, and the hoops one needs to jump through to get there, then it may mean a broader use of the term to indicate an instructor in a university. Essentially, all the adjectives (e.g., an Adjunct Assistant Professor... essentially nobody) are getting thrown out, with only the affiliation with academia remaining in this use of "professor" word. Such a liberty may qualify as an insult to a British/ANZ Professor where the meaning is way more specific. American academics are used to the confusions, though, and let the vague understanding of the title slip when used by un-initiated.
I was getting emails addressed "Professor" when I was in grad school... I would roll my eyes -- can't the source figure out a difference between a Ph.D. student and a regular faculty? They come on very different pages on the department website...

This is incorrect.  Someone in the US calling themselves "Professor Charles Xavier", even in official email or on an official university website, is not necessarily a full professor.  Even the sentence "I am a professor of Mutant Studies" doesn't necessarily mean that the author is a full professor.  "Charles Xavier, Professor of Mutant Studies" does imply that Dr. Xavier is a full professor, but it does not imply that Dr. Xavier has tenure.

Incorrect!  I am an Assistant Professor at a top-tier US university.  I am often referred to as "Professor." I go to conferences and university events where my name tag has me listed as "Professor."  It's shorthand.  User7691 has the correct answer.


text:
Reference management tool with ability to add custom fields
I am currently trying to manage around 100 references from ISI Web of Knowledge. To manage them in a useful way, I need to manage a table, one row for each reference, with 4-5 user defined structured columns (like: which climate variable they correlated with which demographic variable etc.).
So for this purpose I need to add custom fields to each reference; then display the table of selected references, and be able to sort and filter using these fields. Is there any reference manager that supports this? Unfortunately Zotero doesn't and is not going to.
PS: Of course I don't like the idea of having separate excel table besides. I would then miss the comfortable link between the table rows and the PDF and personal notes and other things which I manage through the reference manager (currently Zotero).

Jabref does. But this is probably a better fit at softwarerecs.se

I don't know the answer, but you should probably look into reference managers that are based on bibtex. Since it is possible to make custom fields in a bibtex bibliography, it is possible that a reference manager based on bibtex has added this as a feature.

After reading Strongbad's comment, I'd like to upvote the part "Jabref does" and downvote the part "this is probably a better fit at softwarerecs.se".

I'm not sure if this would be enough for you, but in Mendeley you can add multiple tags to every reference and then you can filter them using those tags (just type it in a search bar).
You can also add a note to every reference, and use those to filter your references.
In both cases, it should be something unique, so you don't get unwanted search results.

Bibdesk allows for arbitrary and custom fields, and makes a bibtex file to boot. This is, of course, only available for Mac OS X. There is also Papers.app, though I don't, subjectively, like the direction they've taken the UI in Papers 3.


text:
How many free copies of a textbook is a publisher typically willing to provide?
Normally I teach a single section with 10-15 students, and a single copy is sufficient.  This class will have 3 sections of about 20 students each.  FWIW, I am in the United States.
I am considering changing textbooks for an introductory class.  A problem is that none of the TAs and tutors already have this textbook, and our department funds are limited.
How many free desk copies is a publisher usually willing to provide?

Perhaps you could get electronic access, which I think has to exist, to accommodate certain special needs.

It is really publisher-dependent and book-dependent. Some books are for free! Some cost 2-3 bucks per piece. Some go well beyond $100.

Former Pearson rep here. This is how it works:
Pearson (and likely others) clamped down hard on reps over-sampling desk copies a couple years ago so any faculty paying attention will have noticed a dramatic shift from 2010-now. Specifically, when I was a rep I had a "budget" for physical books that was merely theoretical, and set at about 4,000 copies for my territory. The year after I left it got cut in half to 2000. If reps go over, they pay out of commissions for the overage. So Pearson finally (wisely) incentivized reps not to send these out willy nilly.
If you're getting lots of service from a publisher rep, it's not always because the class in question is large. It might be because you're married to the woman who makes the big decision for the intro Chem course across campus, or because you do teach that large intro bio course every 18 months.  The opposite holds-- getting poor service != your class must be small. If you have a bookstore that never orders in high quantities, you're not actually a customer of that rep as much as you think you are. The used market will take the whole cake. So in the case spelled out in a comment above (no copies till the store orders), the rep is likely trying to put the hurt on the bookstore by getting faculty set against them. It's a risky strategy imo because the rep's relationship with the bookstore is so crucial. But I'd have done it at one school where the relationship with the bookstore was beyond salvageable the day I first came in. But all in all, your best bet for getting a desk copy is really quite simple. for those having Trouble:

Half the time when I didn't send a desk copy it was on accident. I have a post grad degree and have done a little in the world of academia. Was on my grad program's "big" fellowship and also taught some courses etc. I was insanely busy. I was busier as a Pearson rep. Just ask again and again. The software is crap and it's a nightmare for reps to handle this logistically, but the sales teams don't want it automated as they want to intercept the BIG requests as a local rep so they have knowledge of where the large adoptions in their territory are happening. I dropped the ball all the time for small clients (who truly do not matter from a sales goal perspective, but toward whom I didn't have any intention of being a poor rep--they just come in below the line). An email a week later would really seal the deal, or a text message or phone call for sure. There is a 100% chance a rep doesn't get all the things done every day they need to get done. In my territory anything under 50 books never really got done but I had three huge-course schools (and two small schools I never Even visited). My calculation tells me to spend 88% of my time at 2 campuses, 12% at a third, and 0% at four and five. Which also means I have a Bad relationship with the bookstores at 4 and 5.  If you teach at four and five, you have to have a class with like 400 kids in it for me to really wake up biting my nails over forgetting to follow up with you (agh the pain I recall from biting my nails all the time during these years at Pearson! But not from schools four and five)
If they want you to take a digital copy and you want physical, same policy applies. Just keep asking.
If you get blacklisted for suspicion of selling copies on to the used industry it will be tough to get copies. There is a way to see this in the reps system but it's going to still be at their discretion to send or not (you have a flag on you called "bookgrabber" at Pearson if you're suspected of this). But this is pretty rare.
If you can't get what you need, you could have your chair request by phone. That would work for me with a small course.
Last resort, email the editor. Don't talk shit on the rep; the editor will surely know what's up--they won't tell you but they will know immediately whether it's a case of "agh that terrible new rep in Oklahoma is killing my adoptions!" Or "yeah that's totally reasonable that the rep skipped this one" but all editors are basically nice people, young, but smart, more academic in their pursuasion, and they care more about small courses because the individuals they need to Court are the influentials in any field, which means that while no rep gives a shit about Vassar or Swarthmore or your R-1 upper division physics course, the editor is genuinely incentivized to care. They also maintain solid relationships with reps and will manage the politics of you going behind the reps back pretty well. Edit to add: to find editors, check the copyright page of your old edition. Or used linked in. Or find the authors email online and ask who they worked with. Authors are quite accessible and friendly (most make zilch and really do believe their book can help you and your students -- many, even top names, include their email in an intro and literally invite students and faculty to send questions to them.) current editor is always incentivized to get X $ in business in the fiscal year and also to cultivate long term relationships with future contributors, authors, reviewers. Tell them you like to review in their field and you'll get your desk copies -- even if they just mail them personally off their desks.

Maybe this is helpful.

You have to understand that in the undergraduate textbook market, the publishers are competing intensely for textbook adoptions and will do what it takes to make the sale. (This is not so much the case for e.g. the monographs that might be used in graduate courses). The marginal cost of production of an additional book is very low, people who get desk copies were quite unlikely to purchase for their own use, and so it costs the publisher very little to give out desk copies ad libitum.
At my large R1 school we have different TAs for our intro classes every quarter; sometimes ten or more of them. We have no problem getting desk copies for each TA.

Of course the promotional cost of getting people to adopt textbooks (including freely giving away desk copies) is partly responsible for why the cost of books I was able to buy for about $50 twenty years ago is now  $250 (or three times what inflation would have done to the price).

@aeismail Those prices are not in any way tightly coupled to the costs undertaken by the publishing companies; note that they have successfully made it illegal to import the "international editions" of textbooks, which are usually the exact same textbook but at a fraction of the price.

@KyleStrand: Do you have a link on the illegality note? I thought it was legal.

@Mehrdad Actually, it looks like the Supreme Court has ruled that it's not illegal, but the stickers I've seen on International Editions tend to strongly imply, at least, that sale in the US is illegal.

@KyleStrand: Well that's entirely their goal, to make you think that this is illegal. But it isn't.

@Mehrdad Right. And in my case they succeeded, but I continued to buy international editions anyway because that's such scummy business practice.

(Too clarify, I only just now found that link, because it was listed as a related question in the sidebar. Until five minutes ago I genuinely did think it was illegal to buy international editions.)

@KyleStrand: Yeah. They love to say that "selling this book in [whatever] markets is prohibited", but if you spend a few minutes thinking about it, you realize it's B.S.: prohibited by.. whom? The publisher? If it was illegal then why didn't they just say it's illegal? That would be a much more powerful statement if it was true, and they would have strong incentive for it (and none against). It's not like they forget to mention legality when they say "this book is protected by copyright law" or whatever. Given that they didn't, one can conclude that it's legal, and that they're misleading you.

@Mehrdad Fair enough! I guess I didn't consider textbook publishers and their scare-tactic warnings worth those few minutes of thought.

I personally consider textbook publishers to be somewhere between an unethical business and organized crime.
They rip off your students, so don't feel bad about getting as many copies as you can squeeze out of them, and then some more to give to your students.
Most books are printed overseas anyway, at a cost of ~$5 each.
You can imagine how much they make on a single book.
Elsevier has roughly 7 billion EUR revenue and a profit margin close to 40%
If there is any alternative, I try to go for books that are cheaply available to the students, and for books that don't randomly change the enumeration of homework assignments to make older editions useless.
I think it is time for us to push back in the interest of our students. Our department decided not to go with books that needs to be 'registered' online to be usable. That was a good first step.
I wish university libraries would provide textbooks. They have a much larger buying power, and would end the textbook scam very quickly.

I must say that I absolutely agree with you. As a current college student, I find the textbook market to be flat-out a racket, along with "university" bookstores.

What is a book that needs to be registered online?

This worked pretty well at my German university. You could easily do the course using just the lecture notes, homework consisted of standalone pdfs with no reference to books. You'd only need a book if you wanted another explanation or if you wanted to go beyond the scope of the course in some topic. The library had 100+ exemplars of typical undergraduate books available.

I got a lot of my textbooks from India where they were 20$ vs, 200€ on the German Amazon...

Are those Elsevier numbers overall, or just for book sales?  They also make a lot of money on journals (as has been discussed many places...)

@Taladris Some books come with a registration code.  You go online, enter the code and sign up for an account, and then you have access to additional online materials.  The registration code can only be used once, so a book with such a code can't be resold.  Which means students always have to buy brand-new books.

@Ryan: thank you for the answer. I had never found that the online material were dispensable. So I wasn't considering a book without the online material to be "unusable". Is it common for professors to require a textbook with its additional material (which, as the name implies, is a kind of bonus)?

@Taladris In fact it's even worse than that.  When a publisher has such a book, they usually require professors to have their students access the online materials at some point in time, and that access has to affect the grades of the students(ie. answer Question 1.12 of the online materials, read the "XYZ" page and answer the prompt at the bottom, etc).  Otherwise word-of-mouth would get around that the online materials aren't really required.

How can they require this? In exchange to free textbooks for the teachers?

I have never pushed to see how many desk copies of a book I could get, but I've gotten three with no problem whatsoever.  I suspect that you could get more, although it might be best to space out the requests over the course of a few months.

In the mid-2000's ago I was responsible for requesting the desk copies for a course similar in size and scope as the one you were teaching, and was able to secure two copies for the new TA's (that is, for myself and one other grad student). Given how the publishing market has "evolved" in the last few years, I'm not sure if it would still be possible to push for multiple desk copies.
However, if you're planning on acquiring a number of copies, you may want to ask the publisher if they're willing to provide a discount on a direct "bulk" sale. Given that many publishers offer substantial discounts in the case of trade fairs and scientific meetings, they may be willing to work with you in such cases.

I'm the OP and want to give an update/answer, several months later.
The publisher (Pearson) rep was happy to give 3 electronic copies of the book to my TAs and expressed a willingness to provide them for additional TAs.  On the other hand, I have yet to get my desk copy, since they only give those out if our college bookstore orders 25 or more new copies of the book, and our bookstore hasn't placed orders yet.  (This is the first class of more than 25 students that I've taught in 15 years of teaching.)

I am extremely surprised by this. I wonder if you got snared in some kind of distinction between desk copies and evaluation copies. I am teaching a new undergraduate class in the fall to <100 students; I have a stack of evaluation copies of the relevant textbooks on my desk, from publishers including Pearson. I also received limited duration electronic copies of two relevant monographs (though these both turned out to be too technical for my students).

@Corvus Agreed.  I've never had trouble getting evaluation copies, although I mostly just ask for e-copies nowadays.