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Is it an FERPA violation to hold a contest with a scoreboard, if the result will be used as part of the grade?
I am thinking of holding some Codeforces-style programming contest (e.g. https://codeforces.com/contest/1811) with a scoreboard (visible only to students) as part of the curriculum.
However, I wonder if there might be an argument that the scoreboard constitutes educational record (since the score relates to a part of the grade) and thus one student's performance cannot be visible to other students.
Is a score board more like peer grading (which is fine) or is it more like exam results (which is not fine)?

I suspect your local administration has the final say, so I'd start there.

I don't know anything about Codeforces or this scoreboard you reference, but my superficial first thought is to wonder whether basing a grade on this makes any sense at all.

You did not mention what country you are in. I'm going to guess that this may be different in different cultures. Different places may have quite different ideas about students knowing how other students are performing. So, as @JonCuster suggested, probably discuss with your admin.

What is your goal when assigning a grade to a student?  Is it to sort that student, relative to other students in the class?  or to indicate how well that student understands some body of material?  or...?

Your title mentions FERPA. Are you in the US?

I think you can avoid issues by anonymizing the "scoreboard" so that true names and such are avoided. Give each participant/team a "name" known only to themselves. Now people can compare themselves to unknown others without revealing who those others are.
But the law is funny. I'd run this idea past administration before implementing it, but I'd guess it would pass muster.
I'd also guess that posting a list of grades without names is fine, just as publishing a grade distribution. The student knows their own grade, and the overall, but not the specifics for any other student.


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efficient management of PDF/files with zotero
I'm trying to introduce zotero in my research-flow. However, I don't find a way to efficiently manage the PDF files attached to entries of zotero. I use zotero with zotfile extension. The problems that I find:

if the location of PDF is based on collections, if a move a reference to one collection or subcollection at another one, the PDF is not moved and remains in the old location.
if I remove a reference, the PDF and the rest of attachments are not deleted.

So, at the end you have a mesh of folders with PDFs that you do not know if you can delete or not.
How do you work with attachments in zotero? Do you think that for example mendeley provides of better management of files/attachments?

You should ask this question on the Zotero support forum, which is quite active.

The golden solution is to store the PDFs in folder according to the authors' names using zotfile. Go to Zotfile Preferences and check the box Use subfolder defined by. The parameter for author based sorting is /%a

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How to prepare for an online interview for a professorship position?
Some time ago, I applied for a tenure track professorship in Germany, and was invited to an interview. Due to the current circumstances, the interview will now take place online (via Zoom).
Having participated in a few "offline" interviews, what I have been told about the structure and contents of the interview (30 min scientific talk + discussion, followed by a 60 min discussion with the selection committee) seems to be relatively standard. The interview will take place on a technical platform (Zoom) that I am reasonably familiar with due to my online teaching activities.
I am wondering what to expect from, and how to best prepare for an online interview, in particular compared to standard "offline" interviews.

Are there any pitfalls specific to the nature of virtual meetings?
How should I best prepare for potential technical issues? I plan on having two laptops ready, but for example WiFi issues are very rare, but not impossible.

Don't use wifi but an Ethernet cable.

I would, but the office I will be using doesn't provide LAN access, and one of the laptops I will be using doesn't have a suitable port to plug in an ethernet cable

I interviewed candidates in the US for a similar position, the number one non-academic tip is to pay attention to how you appear on Zoom, and go for a professional setup. I was surprised how many candidates were speaking in a relatively dark room with a visible bed (even an unmade bed) behind them.

Look at the camera, not the screen
Find a relatively solid, professional, not distracting background
Light yourself from the front
Make sure the camera is raised to something approaching the level of your head

If possible, do a practice interview on Zoom first to prepare.

For background, what is your opinion on using Zoom's option to set the background, maybe to a fixed colour?

You could do a Zoom background, but I would test it, some people systems have more trouble with this than you’d think. Test choices with people you trust so they are professional and not visually distracting.

Bed is bad because it is visually busy and distracting. Focus should be solely on you and your words. If you live in a small apartment, be creative. I recently had to do an important meeting and made a desk of boxes so I could use my wooden closet door as a background. Better than seeing a distracting living space.

@user2258552 Showing a bed is unprofessional because it emphasises that you're in your bedroom, not in an office, i.e. it's where you sleep, which is like the opposite of work. Some generic office supplies in the background would be more professional, but still not great and potentially distracting. The best is just a blank wall. But, if you have no other option, showing a bed probably won't be the end of the world.

Also, you should be in the center of the image (not to the left or right) and you should show your head and shoulders and there should be a bit of space above your head, pretty much like this

I am not saying you need to have anything nice to look at behind you. I am saying that instead of you facing the wall and the camera seeing all your stuff in your bedroom, you reverse the setup. You face the room and the camera captures the wall behind you. This is a zero dollar solution.

provide a contact phone number in case of serious network problems (and get a phone number for your contact at the institution)
depending on your field, you might want to be prepared with some way to "write on the board" (low tech, paper and pen, hold the paper up to the camera when you're done; high tech, use your phone as a webcam/document camera, or have a tablet available). (The paper & pen can also provide a last-ditch backup for sending "I CAN'T HEAR YOU" messages if e-mail/chat/etc/etc aren't working ...)

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CV contents for application for professorship positions in Germany
I am in the process of applying for a Junior Professorship (W1) in mathematics in Germany, and according the the job listing, the required application documents include a CV and a list of publications (among other things).
What should I include in the CV? Personal details, such as date/place of birth, martial status? How about invited and contributed talks at workshops and conferences? And research interests, or language / computer skills?
How long should the CV generally be?

Read the full advert. Typically, the university page might have more details than your source of the position. In most cases they list exactly what they want.

In Germany you usually have data/place of birth and martial status on your CV and it is also common to have the number of children there. Also a portrait photo is not uncommon, though not necessary.
You should state your academic career, i.e. where you got your degrees, who has been your supervisor and when you graduated (give BSc, MSc and PhD).
Academic and other employments (where did you do postdocs, internships and such)
A list of grants.
Other scientific activities such as service for the community, public outreach, acting as a referee for journals.
(Invited) talks you gave (may be a selection)
Lectures you gave, possibly your graduate students

That's what I had on my CV when I applied for Junior professorships. Was about five pages without list of publications (which can be included in the CV, by the way).

Is there a motivation to include data/place of birth and martial status on CVs in Germany?

I am not sure… people also count the "academic age", i.e the lifespan after obtaining the PhD (for which the actual date of birth is not needed). Actually, you could omit all these, but since everybody is used to seeing them on applications, people may start thinking when they do find these dates in your application.

I'm shocked at the suggestion that an academic CV might exclude a complete list of publications.

If it is not included it has to be submitted separately. So don't be shocked no more.

@JeffE Also in Italy you are usually required to submit the list of publications separately from the CV, because publications are evaluated in a specific section of the selection, and the committees want to find them easily.

Thanks for your very helpful answer, 5 pages is quite a bit longer than I would have expected. I have seen some people also include things like language and computer skills, how about those?

If you are not a native speaker, then definitely give your language skills. You may also add language skills also as a native speaker and also computer skills would not look strange but I guess that the commission will not really care.

@user2768 Tradition. But it is getting way less common. Neither my (academia) nor my dads (industry) current CV include any of this information. (We are both Germans in Germany). I have a pretty standard academic CV, nothing specifically German on there.

@skymningen, I wonder if anti-discrimination law has led to such information becoming less common.

@user2768 I have seen companies ask for the information to not be provided to prevent them from any blame. But as far as I know it's more that people are not willing to include it. For tax reasons, if you get employed your employer will anyway get to know all of this.

@user2768 Age (and, to a lesser extent, citizenship) becomes relevant if the position is that of a civil servant (which professor position usually -- but not always -- are). In principle, that shouldn't be the committee's business, but the date of birth is usually on the diplomas you have to submit anyway. Marital status is of interest to the committee in gauging the likelihood of your actually coming but really none of their business; it's getting more usual to be omitted.

@user2768: "Is there a motivation to include data/place of birth and martial status on CVs in Germany?" - as often in this kind of processes, the readers aren't deeply interested in the information itself (IMHO, knowing e.g. about the place of birth is at best useful as an "ice-breaker" in the interview), but just in the question "Is the candidate familiar with professional conventions for what belongs into such a document?"

Just to add to the great answer by @Dirk, it is also helpful to include a couple of references, who the viewer can contact to verify you. It is also common practice to include Zeugnisses (work certificates) in the application package, but not in the CV itself.

"Zeugnisses (work certificates)" what do these contain?

It is a certificate given by your employer when you leave, which states the period you worked, what your responsibilities were, and how satisfied the employer was with your performance. Be warned though, employers in German-speaking countries are generally not allowed to write 'bad' Zeugnisses, so there is a lot of reading between the lines involved in these documents.

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arXiv preprint "on hold"
I recently submitted a preprint to arXiv, and it has now been "on hold" for 3 weeks. There is nothing obvious wrong or questionable with the paper in my view, and I have around 20 of other arXiv preprints.
I have not experienced any delays like this before (once or twice there has been a delay of 1-2 days). After 10 days, I used the arXiv form to contact the moderators who told me that the moderators have been informed that my submission still needs a decision (and that they can't give me any exact reason for why the paper is on hold), but nothing has happened in the 10 days since.
Are these extreme delays common, and what should I do? Can I just delete the submission and submit it again (the rules on the "on hold" help page only state that one should not submit the same paper again while it is on hold, but don't mention the case of deleting the old submission).

I would guess that deleting the submission then resubmitting it would be the opposite of helpful: it would either look like trying to sneak around moderation, or else you'll get pushed to the back of the moderation queue.

I have the same issue now (exactly 3 weeks since submitting). Did you have it published finally? if yes then how much did it take until the moderators finally took a decision?

@KratosMath yes, it was published after something like 4-5 weeks in the end. The only visible effect was that the main and second category were switched by the admins.

https://ramblingacademic.com/2015/12/17/beware-delays-in-arxiv-posts/ suggests that categorization errors (in the view of the editors) trigger moderation and can trigger long delays.

Such delays are now common. The reasons were not explained publicly and we can only speculate. Maybe has something to do with people putting preprints on arXiv and then trying to use them to get credibility for their argument in a public debate (e.g. related to epidemics but not limited to this topic).
You should not delete the submission. Just wait patiently and it will eventually be checked by a moderator and then announced and appear online.

Thanks, I was just shocked by the 3 weeks which never happened to me before.

I disagree with "Just wait patiently." If this is becoming common, the community should push back. If arXiv moderators are overwhelmed, they should put out a call for help. The solution is not a bunch of random delays that can harm people's careers. I am facing my third such delay now in six months after 25+ successful submissions over the past ten years. I'm just about ready to swear off arXiv for good. This situation is untenable.

@DavidWhite Considering that neither authors nor readers pay arXiv for their services, I suggest that you re-route your frustration towards for-profit academic publishers, which (1) charge readers and/or authors, (2) rely on unpaid work of reviewers and editors, and (3) routinely fail to ensure timely peer review and publication process.

@DmitrySavostyanov Nor does arXiv pay authors for providing content. When I upload, it's a service to the community, to protect readers from having to pay for my work. The issue is that the unelected arXiv moderators are gumming up the process my putting tons of papers "on hold," a change arXiv users were never asked about. JeffE describes how he became a moderator: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/154823/66685. Certainly sounds like an "in crowd." Hence, I expect the slowdown is being felt more by researchers in developing countries and smaller universities. The rich get richer. It's bad.

@DmitrySavostyanov Simple economic principles suggest that when you make it harder to upload papers to arXiv (now needing to go through lengthy appeals processes), more authors will decide it's not worth our time. I can upload papers on my own webpage. So arXiv will only be for folks at R1 universities who don't dare to do research outside the subspecialty in which they became famous. The moderators are de-facto taking away the academic freedom of authors to branch out in new research directions. If they can't handle the volume of submissions, the easy solution is to add more moderators.

@DavidWhite When I upload, it's a service to the community, to protect readers from having to pay for my work  --- It may be your service to community. However, arXiv provides service to you and your readers, by keeping the library of preprints alive for a long time (while a self-hosted "personal academic website" usually lasts only a few years). ArXiv offers its service for you for free. I don't think it gives you any ground to dictate how many staff they hire, etc. They don't really owe you anything. If you don't like them, don't use them.

@DmitrySavostyanov routinely fail to ensure timely peer review and publication process As an (unpaid) editorial board member for a journal whose job is essentially to arrange peer reviewers, delays are often caused by reviewers being late or flaking after accepting to review. If a reviewer gets 2 weeks and drops out, the review time doubles. So your points (2) and (3) are conflated. No comment on exorbitant submission fees, but the problems lie in the dissonance between "authors paying for a service" and "that service is done by volunteers with no obligation and who benefit from anonymity."

@Josh I think we are in full agreement. The journals could've share part of their very considerable profit margin with editors and reviewers (people who actually do the work) to incentify them to complete their tasks in time. Instead, they keep profits to themselvs, rely on unpaid work while delivering poor customer experience, and enjoy their very special position as private companies enjoying a stream of taxpayers money.

@DmitrySavostyanov: I'm glad that not everyone takes the attitude "If you don't like them, don't use them" because with that attitude, no one would ever improve anything. Look, the point is simple. Right now, arXiv is facing major delays that it didn't in previous years. To fix this they can add more moderators. I posit that it is valuable to point this out, so we can iterate towards a better world.

@DavidWhite I see your point as follows --- they (arXiv) need to hire more moderators (and pay them), so that we (you) can enjoy better user experience. Considering that arXiv does not use ads and does not charge authors, it seems that you expect them to pay your way to a better world. I understand your point of view, but do not share it.

@DmitrySavostyanov I never said they need to hire moderators and pay them. There is a huge pool of people who would be happy to be moderators for free, just like journal editors. All the current moderators need to do is ask more folks to do this important work. The payment we receive is from our universities. Moderating for arxiv counts as "service" which is part of the job description of most professors (in the USA at least)

@DavidWhite Relying on unpaid work and expecting this work to be of high quality is generally unsustainable. It may work in the USA (for now) due to historical reasons and relatively high salaries in USA academia. However, you can't expect all the world to follow suit. If you want to be more inclusive and welcoming to people from other countries (which is what I call a better world), you need to respect that their working arrangements (and compensations) are not the same as in the USA.

You're turning this into an entirely different conversation, by trying to inject your opinions about compensation, which are unrelated to anything I've written. I identified a problem (arxiv is slower) and a solution (add more volunteer moderators). I don't appreciate you polluting my message with unrelated noise. Please leave me alone.

@DavidWhite I am not sure if you noticed, but you are commenting on my post here.

Oops, you are right. I will buzz off then.


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Where to include a "description of scientific expertise" in an application?
I am in the process of applying for a junior research group leader position. The required documents include a "description of your scientific expertise" along with usual things like a publication list and a CV. Note that research and teaching statements are not listed.
To me, it is unclear how this description of scientific expertise should be included in the application. Should I simply include this in the cover letter, or should I somehow include this as a separate document like I would a list of publications?

You could, of course, just ask them for advice on this. But since they list is as a separate requirement they are likely expecting a separate document. This lets you expand it a bit more than you might in the cover letter and go into some detail as appropriate. You can give background on the projects you have led or participated it, including, perhaps, outcomes.
You can also briefly discuss outcomes and impacts of the projects. Lots of possibilities if you have a blank slate.
And this may be just a research statement by another name.


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How to properly withdraw an application for a faculty position?
I applied for an assisstant professor position in Germany, and was invited to an interview. However, I have since come to the conclusion that I would most likely would not accept the position even if I should get an offer. In a nutshell, this is due to various factors that have come to light and make the position much less attractive than it did seem originally, including

The primary location of the position is not very attractive and would require frequent travel for teaching to a different location
There is no compensation for costs of travelling and accommodation for the interview. This is very usual compared to all previous invitations for interviews I received. While in itself it may be a relatively negligible amount of money if I should get an offer (and take the position), I perceive the chance of the latter fairly low
In contrast to the job announcement, the area of research expected by the candidate is in a rather specific subfield where I have no previous experience, and would have a hard time to write a research concept
It is relatively likely that I will receive an offer by a different institution within the next weeks which I would prefer over that position.

Some weeks after my application, I received in informal email expressing the intent to invite me for an interview. At that time, I accepted the invitation, but was not aware of the factors summarized above.
I have now received the official invitation, and am almost certain that attending the interview would be a waste of time and money for me and the committee.
Is there a good/polite way to withdraw my application, or should I just "bite the bullet" and go anyway (at least this would be some additional job interview experience)? What are possible negative consequences for future applications (e.g. regarding the impression that a withdrawal will make to the committee members)?

The most helpful thing that you can do is to send them an email withdrawing your application as soon as possible.  They will move on to other candidates.

Yes, simple and direct. You don't really need to explain.

Agreed. It's relatively normal for this to happen. No one will be offended.

But people will be offended if you only withdraw a couple of days before you're supposed to show up.

If you got another, more desirable, offer just a few days before your interview with our institution, I won't be offended by your canceling.  It saves me a lot of time and trouble.


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How to use results/ideas from a paper I reviewed?
I recently reviewed a paper (general applied mathematics context). During the review, I realized that the fairly general ideas introduced in the paper can potentially be applied to a specific problem in a similar context. The authors did not mention this application in their paper, so I suggested to add a short comment about it in my review.
I later started thinking about the application in more detail and tried out some things, which actually seem to work quite well for this application. Now, the paper is still in the review process and might take some time until it gets published. What is the proper way how to proceed here in order to use the ideas and results which I in my exclusive position as a reviewer saw? How can I refer to the paper that is still under review? How can I best discuss the ideas with my co-workers (and potential co-authors) without disclosing that I reviewed the paper?
The paper under review is not available online on any preprint servers such as arXiv etc

I think you should wait until it will be published.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23354/a-manuscript-i-refereed-gave-me-an-idea-for-a-paper-not-sure-how-to-proceed  The context is slightly different, but the advice is much the same.

The paper doesn't exist for you outside of the realm of review duties. You need to treat it as if you do not know about it. Until publication.

@NajibIdrissi This is surely no problem if the paper is on arXiv, which, unfortunately is not the case here

Is there a way you could have found out about the existence of the paper, apart from having reviewed it? For example, have the authors given a talk about it at a conference (or are they scheduled to give a talk at some future conference)? If so, you could write to them saying that you're interested in the topic of their talk, and asking whether they have a preprint that they could send you. If they send you a preprint, then you could legitimately use it for your own work (and cite it, and thank them in your paper for providing the preprint).

@AndreasBlass good point, I will check that, but it is very unlikely that this was the case at any conferences I actually attended

In any case, nothing stops you from writing up a paper and wait until the other is out. Maybe giving them the hint about your idea was ill conceived, as you may find a surrise in the published version.

You can't ethically do anything based on ideas from this paper until it is made public (by the authors as a preprint, or by the publisher).  In particular, before that point you can't refer to the paper, you can't use the ideas without referring to it, you can't publish or otherwise disseminate results based on it, and you can't discuss it with other people, including your collaborators.  It can be really frustrating to know something important and be unable to tell anyone else for the time being, but there's no way around it ethically.
The reason is that submitting a paper for publication is not considered to release it for other use or dissemination until it is actually published.  The people involved in processing and evaluating it (most notably the editors and reviewers) have an ethical obligation to keep all information about the submission strictly confidential and not to use it to gain any personal advantage.  Once it is published of course it can be treated the same as any other paper, and in the meantime the authors can choose to make information publicly available via preprints or talks (in which case others can follow up on this information as appropriate), but nobody else is authorized to release any information before publication beyond what the authors have chosen to share, or to use it for any purpose other than reviewing the paper.  Otherwise it has the same ethical status as using material you stole off the authors' desks.
There's no reason why the research community has to work this way in principle, but it's the system that has evolved over time.  (Note that as recently as the 1930's, famous physicists were not all in agreement as to how peer review should work.)  It's possible that in the future we will move to systems such as submitting for publication only after releasing a preprint.  That seems to be the trend in some fields, but we haven't yet made a full transition if we ever will, and the community's ethical principles still offer protection to authors who choose not to distribute their paper before publication.
Nobody signs a non-disclosure agreement when reviewing a paper, but the ethical principles are well established.  Deliberately violating them would be a serious form of misconduct, which could easily be career-ending if it was more than a minor or technical violation.
Pete L. Clark asks in the comments whether referees are allowed to prepare follow-up papers, as long as they don't distribute them before the original paper becomes public.  I.e., does the "you can't ethically do anything based on ideas from this paper" really mean you can't do anything, or just that you can't disseminate anything yet?  (Let's assume it's a single-authored paper that is not discussed with anyone else in advance.)  My interpretation is that nobody can stop you from thinking a little, and you may not even be able to stop yourself, but actively working on and writing a paper of your own would be abusing your position as referee.  There probably isn't a consensus as to exactly where the line is for what's strictly forbidden, but either side of the line could still look terrible.  If you want to publish work you began thinking about as a referee, I'd strongly recommend against doing it so quickly that's it clear you had to have known about the original paper in advance.

To clarify, by "do anything", do you mean really mean that or do you mean "do anything public"?  For instance, suppose the OP gets to work writing a substantial paper using these ideas.  One day google scholar alerts him to the online publication of the paper whose ideas he's using, and two days later his followup preprint appears on the arxiv.  Is that okay?

I was just about to ask what @PeteL.Clark wrote

@PeteL.Clark This is a very questionable operation from the point of ethics. Plus, it's risky. What if the result never sees the light of day (could always happen)? Tread carefully.

@Captain: Yes, it's questionable, which is why I asked a question.  I'm not sure what you mean by "Tread carefully."  How much more carefully can one tread than by inquiring about the ethics of a hypothetical activity?

@PeteL.Clark A difficult call.  Hypothetically, one should wait a "reasonable amount of time" before making your own work public.  But who knows how much is reasonable!  I've been known to respond in as little as 30 minutes to papers just sent to me, but typically one would expect days or even weeks before hearing meaningful feedback from a colleague.  I would say "wait the same amount of time after it's made public that it took you to get your work done", thus making your advantage more or less moot.

@PeteL.Clark Frankly, I think the only clean answer is to pretend the submitted paper does not exist (unless, of course, it's on arXiv). Anything that takes advantage of your privileged position as a reviewer, I would consider quite questionable; it could be considered a type of "insider trading".

@PaulPlummer: The idea is that when you review a submission to a journal, you are agreeing to keep it confidential and use the paper only for that purpose.  This is a societal convention, rather than a necessary truth, but it's the way journals have evolved to work.  I've added some more detail in the answer.

One thing you absolutely could do before publication, and given your interest, you probably should, is investigate the possibility of contacting the authors, and ask if they'd be interested in collaborating on enlarging upon their work in the direction of your comment.
If they say yes, then you have their go-ahead to build on their work, get to start work straight away (though you can't publish before them, of course), get the advantage of their experience in the area, and so on - it's all upsides.
If they say no, then you're no worse off: you still have to wait until it's published.

Although I personally feel this is reasonable, I'm not sure it's universally agreed upon that the referee can ethically compromise their own confidentiality in this way.  The OP might want to contact the editor to get their opinion on this.

Very good call. I suppose this could matter somewhat less if the authors are well-known for their work in this area already, such that contacting them about that area might not be an anonymity violation, but even then is still something to consider doing anyway, just for safety and openness.


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Postdoc v industry future
I am currently a postdoc and well aware of the 'postdoc trap' scenario, as well as biases in favour of going to industry etc. However, the situation I currently find myself in is rather peculiar so if possible I'd like some people to weigh in with their two cents.
I obtained my PhD in a different country than the one where I'm originally from, and I have been doing a postdoc in that country ever since (not overly long). Due to personal circumstances, I have now decided to go back to my home country for some time. Unfortunately, there are no companies that specialize in the field of research I performed - and love - in my home country. Fortunately, however, a postdoc position opened up at a university that exactly uses my background, and expands upon it with techniques that I currently don't have under my belt but which are relevant in the industry in my home country.
Thus, I am seriously considering what to do next. I love doing and managing research, and both academia and industry grant you that opportunity. However, I worry I may not be hired in the capacity of R&D researcher in a company because the skills I obtained during my academic research career hold no direct merit for these them. Alternatively, the postdoc would allow me to do exactly that, but then I may be stuck in academia with very low chances (but not impossible in my home country) of actually progressing further down that route - leading to me having to go to industry regardless albeit with some extra skills that are in fact applicable in R&D.
The industry options I've looked into are finding a position through a consulting agency (they generally offer MSAT, QA/QC roles - none of which I am too thrilled about) and trying to find a job as a project manager or technical support/field application scientist.
Two final curveballs: 1) I don't necessarily plan to stay in my home country for the rest of my life; 2) the postdoc position would pay better than any of the jobs in industry.
I would be enormously grateful if people could share some of their insights as I may be overlooking some very obvious possibilities.
Thanks!

I don't think anyone here can give you decent advice. In the end, it's a personal decision you're asked to make, and you'll have to make it for yourself...

FWIW, my read is that this post doc  lets you gain the skills that will be useful both in universities and also in industry, and it pays better. So it seems like a great option. The downside seems to be mostly that if you stay in your home country now, it may be very difficult to find a position abroad later. Only you can weigh these.


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Presenting non-significant results at a conference?
Recently got accepted for a poster presentation based on a pre-registered abstract. However, all the results are non-significant (after running the analysis) and I can't help but feel slightly disappointed. Has anyone faced a similar issue and presented non-significant results at the conference? :( How often does one see non-significant results at a conference? It sucks to think that this disappointment will be blown up to poster size for all to see.

Well, that just means that your null-hypothesis cannot be rejected with the exceptional set your chose. If your exceptional low probability set was a decent one, it merely means that it may be true after all and the alternative has not enough ground for validation. That is a perfectly valid outcome of a statistical study and you should be always ready for it. Whether it is worth reporting depends solely on whether the question was worth investigating in the first place. If it was, yes, the negative result should be made public and has equal value with a positive one.

Publication bias is a huge problem in academic publishing right now.
In summary, if a field uses null-hypothesis significance testing with some arbitrary threshold (say, p<0.05) for significance, and only significant results are published because the field is only interested in significant results (impacting publishing decisions both by authors choosing what to submit and venues choosing what to publish), many (and possibly most) published significant results are actually showing effects that are not real or exaggerated sizes of the actual effects.
A high-quality study is high-quality whether or not the result is significant. You should design studies where either a significant or non-significant result is interesting (one key aspect of this is designing studies to be large enough that non-significant results are interesting).
Think about what is interesting about your non-significant result, and know that it is honorable and methodologically far better to present such results rather than hide them in a cabinet.

Evidence contrary to the hypothesis is just as valuable as any other.

@Buffy The biggest problem is with underpowered studies where no individual study provides useful evidence in any direction, yet where a sufficient number of such studies are performed such that those that spuriously provide evidence of a particular hypothesis get published as evidence of interesting large effects.

"You should design studies where either a significant or non-significant result is interesting" - I can not stress it enough how important this step is for a research career. Almost an open secret of the academic world: for some reason, everyone seems to teach how to design a correct study, but almost never a good one.

If your method was promising but turned out not to work, explain both the promise and the failure in your poster.
Related: What to do when you spend several months working on an idea that fails in a masters thesis?


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Got accepted to top-choice PhD program. Drop other interviews?
After applying to 10+ schools, I heard back from my top-choice program, interviewed with them, and was just informed that I was accepted. Given this program has always been (and still very much is) my top choice, I am considering withdrawing from my other interviews.
My question is - Is this common, and how do faculties view prospective students applying and expressing mad interest in working with them in the application but dropping out of the interview process? I'm mostly just worried about potentially having a bad reputation or that I might have awkward interactions with them in the future, perhaps at conferences or if I choose to apply to work with them as a post-doc.
I've asked friends in different fields for their opinion, and they recommend still attending all my other interviews. But these individuals are in the medical field (e.g., med school, dental school), so I'm not sure how relevant their advice is.
Am I just overthinking all of this? Potential faculty advisors probably won't even remember my name, right?
P.S. If it makes any difference, this is in a social sciences discipline in the US. And the particular research field I'm entering is actually quite small.

One caveat is the line "was just informed". Do you currently have a physical copy of a contract in your hand, signed by someone from that university?
Until you do, you don't have it.
So until you do, it's always a good idea to keep other options open. If it's going to cost significant money to get to an interview then maybe think twice, of course. But you can cancel interviews any time up to the actual day and no-one will care. (From their PoV a cancelled interview is unexpected free time to do actual work. :)

Upvoted, it is so important to have a proper letter of acceptance in hand.

You can cancel up to the day before and no-one would care all that much, but try to avoid cancelling on the same day if possible, and it's also just a decent thing to do to let people know as soon as you're sure you wouldn't accept any offer from them any more. While an interviewer tends not to prepare all that much compared to an interviewee, they likely still prepare a bit, and it is nice to be able to plan around things in advance.

If airplane tickets are involved, or hotel stays, please cancel within reasonable times for that purpose.

If you know that you don't want to go to a specific school because you have a better offer already, then withdraw from the interview: You're wasting your time with it, and more importantly you're wasting the time of everyone as well. People have better things to do that do interviews for which one side already knows that it won't go anywhere.
As for how people perceive withdrawing from an interview: Everyone understands that students apply to multiple schools. If you withdraw, everyone will say "Good for you for finding a better place and thanks for letting us know!"

Good for you for finding a better place Do people get annoyed that there is a "better place"?

@Allure There's always a better place. It's a part of life. And for that matter, "better" of course has many facets. There are better universities than my current institution, but few located in better places than Colorado if you enjoy being outdoors. That is worth something too.

I feel it's a bit rude to interview for positions you do not have any interest in taking. I know some people have a different view of this, though, particularly in industry, but I feel like it wastes the time of the people who interview you and possibly their money, if they are paying travel expenses for interviewees.
I think there are a few different ways to proceed:
First, while you may have had this program in mind as your top choice, you actually don't know what the other programs are like. Interviews are two-way: it's not just them finding out about you, but also you finding out about them. Also, the PhD experience is largely about who your mentor is, not just the program you're going to. If you think you could potentially come across information in a subsequent interview that would change your mind, I think it's okay to still interview, even if you think it's most likely you'll still go with your original first choice.
If, however, you're absolutely set on your decision and won't change, then I think you should cancel.
A middle option might be to tell the programs that you've made a decision to attend another program and ask how they'd like you to proceed. Maybe it's possible to still have conversations with faculty members you're interested in working with and those conversations will benefit you in the future when you seek future jobs, collaborators, etc. I think this is more likely to work out if the interviews are virtual, but either way there's nothing wrong with it if both sides are aware of the situation.

A middle option might be to tell the programs that you've made a decision to attend another program and ask how they'd like you to proceed. - This sounds strange to me.  I can't imagine why the program would go ahead and interview you or set up meetings in this case.

@Kimball When I was a graduate student we were responsible for leading prospective students around campus and I remember a couple who had openly stated they had already made a decision. I think it comes down to those meetings are already set up, and these are interesting students with shared interests with faculty members - people like to talk about the stuff they like to study. I agree, if things still need to be set up it's probably easiest for everyone to skip it.

@Kimball Most likely they won’t, but by informing them, you make it their decision whether they still want to have a talk with you, and you avoid any negative impressions (which may come in handy later on).

+1 for "Also, the PhD experience is largely about who your mentor is, not just the program you're going to."

If you have no intention of considering the other schools, then don't go.  You seem pretty set on the top choice being the top choice.  Potential downsides:

It takes a lot of time, effort, and money to run an interview.  Show people around, introduce them to the dept., hold the actual interview, pay tickets / hotels / food.  Having been an interviewer, if someone had no intention of joining, and had already accepted a different offer, I'd prefer they politely canceled.  People recruiting understand that often applicants are considering multiple choices.
It may come across during the interviews, and then burn a future bridge.  Seeming interested in applying, and then lackluster at the prospect of joining can be detected.  You mention the field is quite small, that means its easier to remember someone.

If you are open to the possibility of considering the other schools, then go to the rest of the interviews that are offered.  Possible benefits:

You may like the research options better.  At least in my field, schools had different alternatives available, and some research work is more personally interesting or may be a better fit for your future goals.  Possibly greater likelihood to result in well-received publications or commercialization potential down the road.
You may like the advisors or fellow students better.  Faculty are human and can be quite different in personality.  Would rather work with a #2 or #3 choice who was motivated to help me and my research succeed, than a #1 choice who didn't really care whether I sank on arrival.
You may like the institution or environment better.  Even in a PhD, there's a lot to academia external to just the work.  The town may be a better place to live.  The school may have a better cultural or social life.  There may be other externalities of living there that are difficult to grasp without visiting.  Maybe just, "these people are more 'fun' to work with."
The funding situation may be better, or the requirements surrounding funding may be better.  Not All "Fully Funded" are "Full-Rides"  A top choice may not offer the best long-term financial situation when you consider living in the area, or other requirements that go with the funding (such as teach onerous hours of classes).  Possibly health care or insurance differences.
You don't mention family (so this may not be an issue), yet the family living situation may be a better fit (add this mostly as a general answers for people who may have family in the equation).
Helps against falling prey to starry eyed views about the top-choice.  At least if you go to the others, you'll have some idea of what other schools, advisors, and towns are like.  Per the above, you may actually like them.

If you are absolutely sure that you are admitted, signed paperwork in hand, to the program you exclusively lust after, then go ahead and cancel.
If the ink isn't dry on the document in your hand, or you don't have a document, then you must treat it as just a wish, not a given.  Proceed as if you were rejected rather than accepted.  Take the interviews, and seriously consider how you would feel/work/grow/publish in each institution.
And, if you have the iron-clad document in your hand, take a moment to consider that you may have over-fixated on your top choice.  Go through your list of interviews and look for each institution's advantage.  Perhaps they have a lab in a related area, or you know the work of the PI, or you know and respect some individuals there who inspire you in some way.
If, with an open, curious mind you are certain that an institution is just not a great fit for you, then politely cancel the interview, and tell them that you have found your dream spot.  They will be happy to have their time back.
But, if your open, empowered mind causes you to see glimmers of possibility, then talk with your contact there.  Tell them that you have a great opportunity elsewhere, and ask specifically about the interesting aspects that they offer.  You aren't misleading them, and you are using the power you get from having a great alternative to help guide the discussion to areas of relevant discovery.  You may uncover an even better situation.
I recommend continuing with the interesting interviews, especially if you are a person who can leap to a comfortable conclusion to avoid the angst of deeply examining alternatives.  You have a wonderful opportunity to engage in low-risk exploration.  In the best case, you uncover enticing possibilities you would have missed.  In the worst case, you have had deeper, relevant conversations with people you will soon encounter professionally.

Research your top choice.
A top choice on paper can turn out to be a difficult choice in practice. I have a friend who changed from zoology 1st at Oxford to botany PhD at Cambridge, and it turned out that the superviser was not fun, he wanted someone to do some gruelling research for him, which was actually quite repetitive, solitary, field research. The result is that he became depressed from the type of life they had to lead for the PhD and felt exploited for menial research, while he worked to complete it with flying colors. So, I'd say be very familiar with the supervisor and the day-to-day type of research you will be doing. They guy would have benefitted from choosing nearly any other PhD.
What does it involve on a hands-on basis? Why is it a top choice?
By comparison, his friend opted for a less premium PhD which involved flying microlites over savanna and tagging lions, which was a lot more fun and sociable.

Current PhD student here in the hard sciences.  You are definitely overthinking it.  No one will bat an eye if you turn down an interview. Schools and professors understand that there are many opportunities for students and won't take it personally if you choose to go with someone else. Saying "no" does not indicate a lack of genuine interest in the program.
That being said, while I don't know if I would go to all 10 interviews, I personally think it's quite valuable to interview multiple places (at least 3 if possible). Knowing what kind of options are out there and what each institute and program is like can provide some important perspective about whatever choice you end up making.
I was actually in a very similar position when I was interviewing. I got an offer from my dream school early in the process when I still had a few interviews left. Both my mentors strongly encouraged me to go on the remaining interviews and I am very glad I did.
I still ended up accepting the offer from my dream school, but those other interviews helped me realize why that program really was the best fit for me in the end.  It's also has helped me on the days I've been frustrated with my current program, as a reminder that a lot of the perks and privileges I currently enjoy are not present at many other institutes. Also, to my surprise, those extra interviews are continuing to prove valuable as I look for postdoctoral positions. They exposed me to some important aspects that are lacking in my current program that I now want to make sure are present in my postdoc.
If you do end up going on some of the extra interviews, I have a small piece of advice.  At the end of each interview, get out a notebook and write down your general observations, thoughts, and feelings from the experience (essentially stream of consciousness).  Even a handful of interviews can blur together after a while, so writing things down can help keep things distinct.


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Some errors I found in the manuscript after it was accepted
I have a slight issue with the manuscript that I submitted and got accepted after the review process. After reading through the proofed document, I realized that the number of studies I have counted for some of the themes we found across studies are incorrect, for example, n=8 should have been n=9. I have gone back and corrected the numbers and it doesn't really affect my results as it is just one number off for most of the errors. There is a table in the manuscript as well that has the n number of studies outlined for each theme, and the results are listed within the text as well, so you can see that there are discrepancies with the table vs the text. I know why the error has occurred but I am not sure if this affects the journals decision to reject the paper?  This is after the peer-review process as well.

Tell the production staff the changes you want to make. If they are paying attention, they should realize that you are making substantial changes well beyond correcting typos or English issues. That means they could/should ask the editorial staff for assistance, and the editorial staff might in turn refer to the editorial board.
It's unlikely your paper is rejected as a result (since the changes don't affect your conclusions), but there is likely to be a substantial delay in the production process.


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Language of application and CV for Junior Professorship in Germany
I am in the process of applying for a Junior professorship in Germany (see also this earlier question here. If the job listing is in German, and does not explicitely state a language requirement, should the application be in German, or can it be in English? Further, does the same apply to the required "CV"?

Related : https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/62389/junior-professorship-w1-in-germany-without-full-german-proficiency?rq=1

Putting your materials in the language of the ad is a pretty good rule of thumb.

Unless stated otherwise, you should apply in German.
Most undergrad courses are taught in German, and usually it is expected that your German is good enough to teach in German, and also good enough to write an application in German. You may check the departments website if they have any courses in English, and if you even find that they offer a degree where everything is taught in English you may consider asking the contact person (see the job ad).


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Does building an app or software system count as computer science research?
I understand that this topic is a bit vague, but if someone could give me a pointer in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.
I'm currently an American undergraduate taking part in an internship at a Japanese engineering university in a professor's research lab for the summer. I have no prior experience with computer science research, and my understanding of it is pretty fuzzy, but I assumed it would involve a decent amount of theory and less software engineering practice.
However, many of the graduate students in my lab are working on projects that I would only think of as software engineering. For example, one is developing a system to effectively generalize how various sensors could interact with a common server. Another developed an iOS app and a server backend that basically gathers data from the app into the server for analysis (and the analysis isn't anything particularly special or innovative from what I understand).
The professor's main research project is developing a web app that uses a special algorithm to analyze discussions on a forum. The algorithm part is what I would think of as research, but from the papers I've read regarding it, they seem to focus on the app as a whole and less on the algorithm.
Do all of these things count as computer science research? Would they perhaps fall more under computer engineering research with less emphasis on computer science theory? And (at least in America, where I plan to attend graduate school) is this a common kind of research for graduate students and/or professors? It just seems strange to me that what I view as basically building a useful app counts as academic research. It seems more like engineering to me and less like research.

What counts as research is a matter of opinion, and ultimately, up to the community of researchers who do research in that area.  It will depend on the novelty of the work, what we learn from it, and what has previously been done.  Generally, just building software usually isn't considered research if no new generalizable knowledge is created; but it can be considered research if it is aimed at developing new knowledge (e.g., evaluating a new technique for solving some problem we previously didn't know how to solve).
You are right: just building a useful app isn't normally considered research.  However, this can be tricky to tell from the outside, because developing a new technique to solve some problem can be research, and if you have a new idea that you think might solve some problem, often the way you to evaluate that idea is to implement it and see whether it does indeed lead to the claimed improvements -- which from the outside can look like you're "just" building a useful app.
So, telling research apart from engineering can sometimes be a bit tricky, especially for someone new to research.  Also, understand that this is somewhat subjective.  One person's research can be another person's "mere engineering"; the community doesn't always agree on what ought to be publishable.  Ultimately, this comes down to a judgement call, one that has to be informed by deep knowledge of the area and also by a sense of "taste" that is developed through experience.  We're unlikely to be able to answer whether a specific project of yours counts as research, because we lack that deep domain knowledge of the area, and because the description in the question is too shallow to tell.  If you're new to research, you might also have a hard time judging this.
If you're new to research, this is why you work with an advisor who is experienced in research.  Identifying useful problems to work on that are research-oriented and likely to lead to publishable results is one of the primary roles of your advisor/mentor.
Of course, if you don't know whether you can trust your advisor, and you don't know how to make those judgements yourself (because you are new to research and not an expert in that area), then you have a more basic problem.
Therefore, let me suggest a useful proxy.  Is the professor's work getting published in reputable peer-reviewed forums?  If it is, then at least that research community considers it research, which is good enough.  If it isn't, then you have reason to be wary.  Thus, with this idea, you can look at the publication record from that group over the past 3 years or so and see what their track record is.
You might also find it interesting to read a few of their past papers.  Often, published research papers try to identify what their novel research contribution is (either explicitly in the introduction, or implicitly when they discuss related work and compare to it).

If your app has a new design architecture which differs, in some certain aspects and upto some degree, such that it adds something new and brings some benefit, then it can be considered research.
For example, if you use RESTful architecture to make a software, then its engineering. But if you make the RESTful architecture, (like in the thesis here), then it would be research.
On the other hand, if you use existing methods and techniques to adapt to some given problem at hand to efficiently solve it, then it is Software Engineering, or Computer Engineering.
Another example. If you use deep neural network library to train a huge image repository to recognize the faces and learn the facial expressions, then can be classified as engineering. But if you come up with a new neural network algorithm or some modification which adds to the literature, then it would be research.
Often, there can be a very thin line between research and engineering, though it would be clear with the context. This is because, sometimes, with new software product ideas, one needs to innovate and get new things working. Often software organizations do publish a some significant papers which introduce new approaches and algorithms adding to the research community.
Programming a single independent application is definitely not a research, but is application development. Although, from your question it seems that the app will be used as a component of a larger picture.

Building an app should not be considered research in the field of computer science.
The only way it should be considered research if you are creating new algorithms for that particular application or doing comparative studies for various algorithms for various test cases and draw some conclusions from this. But in this case building the app is just a helping activity for your research and in no way the building itself should be considered research.
There are probably universities where they formally consider it as research just to fill some papers and hire some people, but this is, in my opinion unethical.

This answer is too absolute. Many top conferences (SIGMOD, VLDB) have demo tracks where researchers present mainly interesting apps. There is nothing unethical about that.

Of course building useful software tools is a major part of CS research. Unfortunately current situation is that software systems are not citable and they are not counted toward impact in research work. However, there are some efforts to make software an impactful and citable peace of work, see this. If you look at the current research published in scientific communities, you will observe this common trend that researchers tends to put a link for their open-source software (in github or other repositories) or data that has been generated in their research work. Publishing open-source software helps in replicating the research results towards making useful theories as well.

"Unfortunately current situation is that software systems are not citable and they are not counted toward impact in research work." Not true. Easy example is the machine learning library LIBSVM, which has over 27k citations since 2011, and which has contributed significantly to the reputation of its authors.

this is the publication that is being cited not the software itself! if you do not publish a paper describing your peace of software, there is no means in place to cite the work.


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Getting a Masters at a school without courses I want?
I was accepted into a Masters program (MS in Computer Science) at a nice university that has research groups working on the things I want to research (natural language processing).
However, looking through their course catalog, it seems they don't actually have any courses directly focusing on NLP. I like almost everything else about their program except for the lack of courses, though they do have courses in machine learning and related concepts.
Is it a bad idea to go to a school that doesn't have courses related to my exact focus?

Do you have an advisor yet, or a potential advisor that you've touched base with who is working in your target area?

You might want to ask directly of professors you've talked with, or graduate school administrators. Many programs have special topics at the graduate level that are not in regular course catalogs can vary according to what each professor decides to teach. You can also ask a coordinator to put you in touch with a graduate student who is currently working in NLP or with a professor working in your desired area, and one of them should certainly know about the class situation.

Helpful comments so far!  You should definitely write to some people working in your target area to find out how other students have addressed this problem.  If there are groups working in it, there must be some way of getting the foundation.

@BrianDHall: It's not so much that special topics courses aren't in the course catalog, as that the catalog description has an information content approaching zero.  Which is a good approximation of the guarantees given concerning the special topics available in any semester for which registration hasn't started yet (and even those offered for registration may be subject to cancellation in the first couple weeks of classes).

I don't think it's necessarily a problem.  At the graduate level, you're expected to learn things in many other ways besides formal courses: self-study, informal seminars, independent or supervised research, individual discussions with faculty or other students, thesis work, etc.  Likewise, you'll have evidence of your learning in other forms besides course grades: published papers, your thesis (if it's a thesis-based program), recommendation letters from supervisors, etc.
So this isn't necessarily a red flag.  However, it is worth bringing it up with prospective advisors or others in the program: "I want to work in NLP.  What opportunities exist for building skills and doing research in this area?"
One note is that besides being accepted to the program, if you want to work in a particular research group, the faculty leader(s) of that group will have to agree.  And there could be obstacles unrelated to your abilities - too many students in the group already, not enough funding, etc.  So if you are really tied to working in this particular area, then before deciding to attend the program, you should talk to the group(s) that work in your area of interest, and find out if it is feasible for you to work with them.

Ask if they have some kind of "joker" courses (i.e., "Special topics in XYZ", can be taken several times for credit, contents to be arranged), and see if you can persuade somebody to teach it (might take gathering enough interested students, or just ask the professor nicely). Be warned, this will probably turn out more of getting some hints dropped in weekly meetings, studying on your own, get graded for some longueish term project, than "regular classes".


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I am an English Grad presenting at a NASA conference; what's the best way to prepare?
While answers might be too heavily opinion based, I'm just looking for a little reassurance as to what to expect. I've done undergrad conferences for English before and that's no sweat, but I sent off an abstract under guidance from my boss (who is a geographer but mostly a mental health advocate) to the Ames NASA Research Centre Lunar Grad Conference and it got accepted.
Now, my idea was more of a thought experiment than a study, so I don't really have data or much in the way of hard facts to go along with what I'm saying, and I'm nervous as hell that I'll scoffed at by the other scientists there. The organizers did say that it's supposed to be a low pressure environment, but still, I'm wondering what to expect in general at a conference and if an Arts major presenting at a Science conference is totally unheard of or not.

"The organizers did say that it's supposed to be a low pressure environment,"  The conference or the moon?

Different fields have different standards of what to expect in a presentation, from how it is organized, to how the 'powerpoint' is used (or not used). Even what constitutes notions of powerpoint agony for the audience will have some minor/major differences. (Science audience will want you to be simple, please). Presentations in an english department and a physics department will be a different in style and standard organization.
I would strongly suggest going to someone in one of the science or engineering departments in your university (perhaps someone who is charge of senior project courses who regularly has to work with training the undergraduates in how to give 15 minute presentation in the normal style of the field) and ask them for advice and copies of the usual documents they pass out to their students on how to give a scientific technical presentation. (Maybe have that faculty member in the audience for your practice talks)
And, assuming that the school year will start before you need to give your presentation, go to a few of the colloquium  (or student presentations) in that department just to get a sense of the style expected.
My experience (I am in physics/applied physics/materials) in attending seminars occasionally in the humanities either for fun or because I was serving as the university representative on a PhD defense, is that it is mostly stylistic expectations that are different. Good scholarship is good scholarship, and once I figured out my shortcomings in what different cues I needed to watch for in the humanties presentations, I could follow their work and be impressed or not.


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How to write recipients address in electronic cover letter for PhD program
I am going to send my cover letter for a PhD program, but I don't know who should I address exactly (I have written Dear Professors). Now the problem is for postal address what should I write. I don't know who exactly will receive the application.
Thank you

"I don't know who exactly will receive the application." Well, neither do we. Why not email the admin office of the department you're applying to to find out the address and addressees?

Yes there is a website. There is written  "SEDE " which, I think, in English means "head office" , and there is an address under it. There is as well director name in another part of the website. Is it better to write her address instead of Admission Board?

Well actually there isn't only one department. All different majors apply through the same application page. OK, thanks I will ask the "SEDE" director to know what should I do.

This may vary by culture, but the common procedure for this case (letter that looks like a traditional letter, but is only sent electronically), the common procedure in Germany is to write something into the place where the recipient's address would normally go - but not necessarily an address: Something generic such as

University of ...
  Admission Board

should do.

Thank you so much. It is an Italian university and I think for Italy it could be the same.


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When are reference letters requested during applications for a professorship (W1/W2/W3) in Germany?
When applying for a professorship (W1/W2/W3) in Germany one always has to list three and sometimes more previous employers/supervisors who are willing to write a reference letter. At which stage of the application process are these people ususally contacted and asked to write this reference letter? Before the applicants are invited, after the invitations are sent or after the visits/talks of the applicants?

I've never heard of the custom of requiring the candidate to provide a list of references for a faculty position in Germany; the hiring process is very different from the US and UK. The procedure is usually as follows (there's bound to be a more complete answer on this site, so I'm summarizing):

The hiring committee meets and decides on a text for the announcement as well as on criteria by which applicants are excluded (wrong subfield, no service teaching experience, that sort of thing).
After the deadline, the hiring committee meets again and selects (usually) four to eight candidates for a formal interview.
After the interviews are completed, the hiring committee meets again and decides which of the candidates to keep in consideration. It is for these candidates (usually three or four) that reference letters are requested -- but in a specific fashion: Two or three eminent experts in the subfield are selected by the committee (often beforehand, i.e., in step 1) who are then asked to review and rank all candidates. Needless to say, previous employers or supervisors are not the best candidates for this (but sometimes can't be avoided).
Based on the reference letters and their own opinions from the interviews, the committee decides on a ranked list of candidates to be offered the position. Then the administration takes over...

Note: I'm going by my own field -- mathematics -- here, details and especially the numbers may differ in other fields. But from what I've seen of the process in other fields, the general procedure is the same. If individual reference letters are indeed required in addition to the comparative ones, I'd assume they are requested as late as possible -- and only if necessary -- to avoid needless work for the writer. (There is significantly less of a "reference letter industry" in German academia.)

Thanks for your detailed answer! There seem to be some differences between diciplines. At least in my field - biology - (many if not most) of the job advertisements explicitly ask for a list of reference as far as I see. I assume the processing of those will be similar as described by you - as late as possible.

When I applied for a W1 position in Germany, I was asked to provide a list of references who were asked to respond. There was also little time taken between my interview and the decision, so I know the "eminent scientists" guideline wasn't followed. I have seen that procedure used, though in a math W1 search at the same university, so things can be very different between faculties let alone Hochschule!


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What are common questions in an interview for a faculty position (W2/W3) in Germany and who is part of the panel?
Which questions are commonly asked in an interview for a faculty position (W2/W3 professor) in Germany (German "Berufungsverfahren") and who is usually in the panel (dean, student respresentative)?

(my experience is in Computer Science, but I assume the following to hold true at least for the sciences in general)

Which questions are commonly asked in an interview for a faculty position (W2/W3 professor) in Germany (German "Berufungsverfahren")

Your milage my vary, but classics are the following:

Questions that target how your research will fit into the current research strategy. Who can you collaborate with? What strengths of the program will you foster, which holes will you fill? Your goal here is to convince the committee that you are both, related to existing professors enough that you won't be the odd (wo)man out, and different enough not to be redundant.
Questions that target your teaching, most importantly which courses you could take over, which new courses you would introduce, and how these would enrich the current specializations and programmes. It's possible that they already have a concrete (set of) courses that they need you to teach, and then they may outright ask you if you would do that, and if so how.
Questions that target your funding acquisition plans. Which grants would you apply for initially? How much funding do you expect to be able to acquire? Are there any funds that you would bring with you? What group size would you expect to be able to maintain?
Questions regarding your package. You won't need to say a concrete salary figure at this point, but the committee will likely ask how many research staff you will ask for, and whether you have any particularly expensive other needs (e.g., a compute cluster, other equipment). Note that W3 professorships in Germany tend to be large, asking for at least 3+ staff as package to start negotiations with should be seen as normal.
Questions regarding your intentions w.r.t. this position. Would you be moving fulltime? Can you see yourself living in this place for the foreseeable future? Why is this position even attractive to you? The main point here is to figure out whether you just want to negotiate with your home (or some other) institution, which is incredibly common in Germany ("Rufabwehrverfahren").

It's also possible that you get some "content" questions regarding your research, but I think it's rather rare. Most importantly, note that the interview is not an exam - typically nobody will assume that you don't know how to do your research, but they will want to know whether you and your research are the best fit for their needs. This includes doing a fair bit of background preparation to figure out what their needs actually are. In a way, during a "Berufungsverfahren" you are pitching your detailed area of research as much as your person.

Who is usually in the panel (dean, student respresentative)

This varies, but both the dean and a student representative are at least likely members. Note that "being present" is not the same as "having impact on the decision". In my experience, the number of people who actually make the decision is usually 2 or 3.


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Is it appropriate to try to contact the referee of a paper after it has been accepted and published?
I have a paper that was refereed, accepted, and published. The referee's report was overwhelming positive and enthusiastic about my paper and results.
Now that the paper is fully published, is it appropriate for me to ask the journal to get me in touch with the referee of the paper?
If relevant, this is in the field of astronomy/astrophysics and the journal is The Astrophysical Journal.

may be relevant: why do you want to get in contact with that referee?

Was the review double blind or do you know the identity of the referee?

@FerventHippo Double blind would mean that the referee doesn't know that XYZT was the author.  I would be surprised if any journal divulged the identity of a referee (not to mention it would make contacting the referee much easier).

It was a single blind review, which is the norm in my field as people usually post a preprint on arXiv as they submit the paper to a journal - so even if the journal attempts a double blind review, the referee would see the paper pop up on their arXiv feed the next day.

The handling editor is the right person to ask. Tell them why you'd like to contact the reviewer. If it for possible future collaboration, it might be possible. One way for the editor to handle it is to pass your request to the reviewer, letting them decide whether to contact you.
If you just want to thank them, then the editor could pass that on and maintain the anonymity.
Contact with the reviewer would probably make it impossible for them to review any future paper of yours, I suspect.

The last para is most important for the OP

Regarding, "Contact with the reviewer would probably make it impossible for them to review any future paper of yours, I suspect." I am not sure how this works in practice because my sub-field is very small, and almost certainly people who know of each other end up refereeing each other's papers.

Contact with the reviewer would probably make it impossible for them to review any future paper of yours, I suspect. I'm not so sure about this. Collaboration with the reviewer would disqualify them as a reviewer (at least for several years), but contact seems much less likely.

@Allure, perhaps I should have said "arranged contact".

I am sorry but at least in my field the last statement is plain wrong. Reviewers very often will  know and have discussed with the authors. Only close and recent collaboration, being part of the same institution, or very close academic relationship in the past (e.g. supervisor - PhD student relation) would disqualify for manuscript review.

Now that the paper is fully published, is it appropriate for me to ask the journal to get me in touch with the referee of the paper?

Is it possible to ask the journal to get you in touch with a/the referee(s), yes you can.
Is it appropriate, that is subjective. Responses will differ. An overriding factor will be ... why are you or why do you want to get in touch ...

to thank; possible, however the handling editor might just be 'pass on person' and keep confidentiality
to engage further, it is possible, the handling editor will likewise facilitate
for further collaboration, also possible, the handling editor will likewise facilitate.

Once there's engagement beyond just thanking, conflict (would normally) kick in.


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As a PhD student in computer architecture/eda field, how can I improve my coding ability to work on a large code base and stop procrastinating
I'm currently a 2nd year PhD student in computer architecture field. I've taken some CS classes, but I'm not very confident with my coding skills, especially when dealing with open-ended large projects. I'm wondering if there's a good way to improve my skills.
I think one problem I ran into is that when I got trapped by a problem that cannot be handled, I tend to dig in a bit but quickly get distracted and intimidated. This is especially the case since I'm continuing to work on someone else's work and I'm the only one on that project. This then becomes a bad cycling: I work on my project, get frustrated and procrastinate. The procrastination will in turn cause pressure for me to be even more intimidated to work on the project. I would really appreciate it if you could give me some advice.

I don't think the place for your question is academia.se, but since I have a few suggestions for you I'm writing an answer.
If you want to excel your coding skills, instead of picking a random project to work on I recommend you to take a look at a course and solve the proposed exercises; I say this because, when someone doesn't have enough understanding of the field, choosing a "good" project to work on is tricky. When someone with actual experience in the area proposes an exercise/coding problem to a novice, they try it to be something that the student can actually do and, most importantly, something that will lead him/her to learn new techniques/tools/ways of thinking that can be useful for future endeavors.
If you feel very rusty, you can start with simple exercises (just google for a decent tutorial and dig in!), but if you feel up for something more challenging, you can always take a look at the Project Euler :)
Whatever you chose, if you really want to improve your skills, you need to be consistent. Take a time of your week and make sure to make an actual effort to solve whatever problem you pick. During my journey I have learned that having fixed times for fixed tasks helps to reduce procrastination. You can use the pomodoro technique to help you keep track of your time and work productively.
Since you mention to be a PhD student I don't know how much free time you have, but as the topic of your PhD seems to be related to coding I hope you will not have too much trouble to find the time to polish your coding skills.
Best regards!

My answer is going to be from a software engineering perspective, which as a researcher may or may not be what you are looking for. However, I feel like this question is largely a SoftEng question (which probably shouldn't be in this forum but oh well).

How can I improve my coding ability

This really depends on the particular area of programs you are looking to develop. The general advice I can give (without knowing more) is basically to complete small sized projects in your area. For example, if you are doing research in AI, then just make a lot of (relatively simple) AIs that touches on different areas.
Beyond that, you can move to more generic engineering by completing projects that isn't strictly in your purview. This will give you a more holistic understanding of software engineering in general and will likely expose you to a lot of patterns that may or may not become useful. I encourage you to do projects that benefit you personally in some way. For example, write a script that automate an aspect of your life.

Ability to work on large codebases

This is arguably much harder than just being able to write code. I have 3 general tips that I can give:

Goes without saying, but respect the contributor's code of conduct. Familiarise yourself with the tools that they use and the development process. Most public codebases would have a detailed guide on how to contribute.

Do not try to understand the entire codebase. As a professional, it took me months (if not years) to actually grasp a large codebase in its entirety. Try to understand how the code works from a very high level (the front-end website is in folder A, the back-end code is in folder B, the AI stuff is in folder C, as an example). Then, try to delve deeper into the subsection that you will likely be contributing to. Start by making very minor changes (like adding more logging information) to familiarise yourself with how the code actually gets executed, and work your way up.

Try to follow established patterns in the existing codebase. Nothing is more annoying than seeing inconsistent coding styles in a single codebase. Even if your method might be "better", try to follow existing patterns and raise it with the core maintaining team. Here patterns simply mean different ways to do stuff. If you want to add, say, a page to a website, try to see how other pages are coded up and copy their style.

by a problem that cannot be handled, I tend to dig in a bit but quickly get distracted and intimidate

This is a very common problem in software engineering. The way that I tend to approach these problems is basically divide and conquer. Take the problem, and try to break it down into the most granular possible level, which should in turn convert a huge task into very actionable, bite-sized tasks. Then, simply tackle each task one-by-one. Also, start with a simplistic model and gradually add complexity to it. If you are trying to develop a feature, try to make the bare minimum first, and then gradually add on embellishments.


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Google vs Google Scholar
I understand that Google Scholar searches only journals, academic publishers, etc. Does that mean that Google will always include the results of Google Scholar?
If Google searches the entire web, which also include the results of Google Scholar, then why not just use Google and then manually sift through the results to find the most appropriates for a use case, in case that using Google Scholar misses something that Google doesn't?

Because I'd need a bigger shovel to move all those hits...

'If Google searches the entire web...' It doesn't. That's the actual answer.

Does that mean that Google will always include the results of Google Scholar?

Expectedly, yes. However, what you get isn't the same experience. If there're academic results from your Google search, you'll mostly see

'Scholarly articles for "... search strings ..."'

followed by the 'clickable bar'

'Search on Google Scholar'.

Invariably, Google expects you to do your academic search in Google Scholar.

If Google searches the entire web, which also include the results of Google Scholar, then why not just use Google and then manually sift through the results to find the most appropriates for a use case

This will depend on your search strategy and the type of review you're doing.
If your review/survey include grey literature, this is a plausible approach. Be ready to sift out lotta baggages and contend with reproducibility.
Are you interested in gold or dust?
PS: you mentioned and perhaps we should ask 'what is your use case'

Since we do not know why you have to use Google, perhaps we might want to recommend (re) visiting your review strategy and take it from there.
Okoli, C., & Schabram, K. (2015). A guide to conducting a systematic literature review of information systems research.
Okoli, C. (2015). A guide to conducting a standalone systematic literature review. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 37.
Watson, R. T. (2015). Beyond being systematic in literature reviews in IS. Journal of Information Technology, 30, 185-187.
Halevi, G., Moed, H., & Bar-Ilan, J. (2017). Suitability of Google Scholar as a source of scientific information and as a source of data for scientific evaluation—Review of the literature. Journal of informetrics, 11(3), 823-834.
You might even need to do studies that 'scrap' data from Google or Google Scholar. It depends on your research aim. See for instance
Watts, L. K., Wagner, J., Velasquez, B., & Behrens, P. I. (2017). Cyberbullying in higher education: A literature review. Computers in Human Behavior, 69, 268-274.

Yes and no. Searching for journal articles through Google sounds reasonable, but it might not shake out the way you'd expect. The Google algorithm is opaque and has gotten worse over the years. Just look at the first page of any search, half of it is sponsored sites right off the bat. On top of that, Google doesn't actually display every single search result (Google Scholar notably only returns the first ~1000 hits, Google has some similar arbitrary limitation). So it's not like you could manually click through every single one of the

About 5,340,000,000 results (0.65 seconds)

anyway. Google will also not necessarily return the same results every time the same search term is entered. The list of issues goes on and on.
That is all to say, out of the several hundred or thousand results you capture on Google (and can actually access) a small portion would be academic sources you are interested in. Thus, if you are searching that sort of literature, you need to limit your search. And this is ignoring the issue of sifting through the worthless hits if you did have access to the full results.
You might ask if you can use clever search terms to restrict a regular Google search to the same domains as a Google Scholar search. Unfortunately, Google just does not support complex search terms and it often does not respect its own rules anyway. So you could try, but I suspect it would be unreliable at best.

Google [...] often does not respect its own rules anyway --- I often find this occurring when I'm doing google searches to uncover little known information, the kind of google searches I describe in the middle of this answer. Specifically, sometimes when I get only 2 or 3 hits for something, if I ADD an additional search term, then I'll get a greater number hits, contradicting the basic logic rule that P & Q implies P. And not just a greater number of hits, but the original hits are often among the larger collection of hits.

As in @JonCuster's comment, a simple "Google search" will include tons of garbage.
On the other hand, "Google Scholar" will only include things that fit into a certain commercial concept. So you'd miss a lot of things... depending on your field, of course.
"The problem" is that the most assertive search gadgets are significantly commercialized, so have at best a conflict of interest, but, at worst, an agenda to ignore/omit things/people that aren't sending them money.

I don't get the "commercial" part here. Care to elaborate? I would assume normal Google would be more commercial

@justhalf, well, yes, normal Google is quite commercial in its own way, but Google Scholar is entangled with for-profit publishers and behind-paywall stuff... so that, apart from the money aspects, it does not index most published-on-the-internet stuff by (for example) mathematicians at respected universities. So it has limited use for me in that regard.

Paul; how are those papers by mathematicians at respected universities being published so that Scholar doesn’t see them?

@BrianBorchers, on their web pages, for example.

Manually sifting through results is work.  If you already know that you want articles from academic journals, then there is no reason to create additional work for yourself discarding search hits that aren't journals.
On top of that, Google Scholar has search options that take advantage of the structured information in the articles.  You can search for particular authors, limit the search to words in the article title, filter to certain publication years (not necessarily the same as the date on the web page, especially for older articles), and so on.  You can also search for articles that cite a particular article, which is difficult, if not impossible, to do with regular Google.
In other words, Google Scholar is a specialized tool tailored to the needs of academic researchers.  If you happen to be in that target audience, then Google Scholar is going to make it a lot easier and more convenient to find the kinds of results you are looking for.

If Google searches the entire web, which also include the results of Google Scholar, then why not just use Google and then manually sift through the results to find the most appropriates for a use case, in case that using Google Scholar misses something that Google doesn't?
I don't think "miss" is would be the right word, but I've noticed a lag.
For an n=1, I've noticed that Google Scholar takes a few days (up to a week) to index my new articles whereas the articles appear within a day or so on Google and often quicker on ResearchGate and ORCDID.
I suspect some journals directly feed updates to ResearchGate and ORCDID.

Among other things, Google scholar has search tools that allow you to refine searches by fields available in bibliographic data bases.  This is better than what regular google offers.  Let's say I was looking for an article published between 2000-2005.  Try to do that in google.

Ok. Done.

@ily isn't that for page creation date?  That's substantially different from publication date, especially for older papers.

Yep, the method proposed by @lly completely fails for older work (e.g., try searching for "quantum mechanics" between 1920 and 1930).  Worse, the date filter in google search filters on last update, so it can fail for more recent work too if the paper's landing page for the paper gets updated from time to time (say, by changing the links to related work).


text:
Incorrect affiliation on publication
As the title says, I (and a coauthor) recently had our manuscript accepted at an IOP Science journal. The manuscript was published just a while back and we have noticed that our affiliations have been messed up. I belong to institute X (say) and my coauthor currently belongs to institute Y. However, the website and the publication assign both institutes X and Y to both of us. In the case of my coauthor, this is at least somewhat correct since when we started this work, he was affiliated to institute X (but shifted within a couple of months). In my case, however, this is completely wrong - I have only ever been at X and never at Y or any other place.
Is there a way to rectify this - or, rather, can this be rectified at all?
I am a Master's student and I will soon begin applying to graduate school - I am a bit worried about this being taken as academic dishonesty. In case, this doesn't get rectified, should I simply mention it on my C.V. next to the publication that the affiliation is assigned incorrectly?

Notify the publisher immediately and see what they say. They are the only people who can rectify the problem, after all. If they say yes, you're home free; if not, ask them if there's any alternative (they might be open to publishing a corrigendum).
As for your CV, there's no need to mention it, since it's not a major issue and especially since it might be fixed soon. If someone notices and asks you, then you can tell them that there was an error in the production process.

Well, I contacted them - hopefully, it can get rectified considering I got the publication mail just an hour ago.

@ShKol hang on to your email electronically (don't delete it), print out an additional copy and sign and date it and get someone to cosign it. You will likely never ever need it, and unless you give it to a lawyer to hang on (or get it notarized) it may not have legal standing. But in the remote possibility someone does bring it up in say a separate matter in order to "establish a pattern" (be it of dishonesty or carelessness) you can show that as soon as you noticed the problem you took steps to address it. Of course if the journal does take some kind of corrective action then all that's moot

I doubt that an honest, and very explainable error will have repercussions. You can ask the journal to correct the affiliation in their online version / information. A print version will not be changed.
A CV is compressed information. The wrong affiliation seems to be extraneous data. You probably have to create some form of narrative in your application, where you can mention the paper and "by the way, the institutional affiliation is messed up".
Errors should not happen, but they do. If belonging to Y is so prestigious, then the editor should have checked.

Well, since it got published just a couple of hours back, maybe there isn't a print version yet. I have contacted the journal in the meantime. To be frank, I had not considered the prestige part of it - but you're right, Y is indeed more prestigious than X internationally.


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Recommendation from professor in a different field for grad school
Somewhat related to this question, but different.
I am going to apply for grad school in the US soon and will need three recommendation letters. I have had two good research experiences (one on my Master's thesis and another on a summer program) related to my field, theoretical particle physics - this is also what I want to do a PhD in.
The problem is the third letter. As an undergraduate, I didn't get the chance to work on any particle physics projects as I lacked the background in quantum field theory that one typically needs. Instead, I worked with a professor on nonlinear physics - my work was substantial enough for a first-author peer-reviewed publication. I presented a second work (with the same professor) at an international conference (and was the first author on the proceedings too). He also taught me two courses on statistical mechanics and I did very well on both.
Now, I would love to ask this professor for my third letter (and I know for a fact that he'd be delighted to write me a strong letter) - however, his field of research (nonlinear physics and condensed matter theory) is completely different to what I am applying in and he's a very senior professor - so, in most cases, the people I am applying to will not be familiar with him (or so I have been told by my other supervisors).
On the other hand, I have been reading (for example, here) that letters of recommendation from people who simply taught you a course don't count for much even if you do extremely well in that course. I had been thinking about asking the instructors from my graduate level quantum field theory courses for letters (I had done very well on both) but it seems like a waste at this point.
My question is: does a letter of recommendation from a faculty from a completely different field (who has supervised a great project you were on) matter more than a recommendation from a professor who taught you an advanced course that you did really well on? While all the professors know me well, the former professor knows me a huge lot better than the latter ones considering that I worked with him for more than a year.
(Note: I do not study in the US. I come from a South Asian country.)

When I read "completely different field", I assumed you meant a computer scientist for a physics program or equivalent. In this case, having someone in a different area of physics isn't a problem since they are familiar with what it takes to succeed in physics grad school. Since that letter writer can speak effectively about your potential for success in the most informed way, you should have no qualms about asking them.

Thanks - thats what I'll do then.

Actually, in the US, even a recommendation from math, CS, or even English might be fine. But, as you say, another area of physics isn't "different" for this purpose.

Personally, I find that letters from writers in other disciplines frequently (though not always) have a very different idea of what traits stand out as important for my field, often to the applicants detriment.