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Extended version of a paper, what title should it have?
After presenting a paper at a conference, I have been invited to publish an extended version in a journal. The only requirement I have been told is that it must have at least 30% new material and an explicit justification of how it differs from the original version presented at the conference.
My question is: what title should I use? If I use the same title as the original version, I run the risk of confusing the audience with two papers with the same title. If I use the original title plus the expression 'Extended Version' I run the risk of devaluing the original publication. Could I use a substantially different title?

I think the paper is trying to trick you into filling a special number they are preparing. You can say thanks for their generous offer, but I suggest you to do much less additional work  (let's say 10%?) and submit it to another relevant journal. The review will still need some work (let's say bringing 20% of new material), but at least it will be review of your work, not additional 30% of work suggested by a journal (on which ground, by the way? are they paying for it?)

Next time, make your conference version an extended abstract.

@EarlGrey, I suspect that this is in Computer Science, where conference papers are reviewed and are proper publications; so you simply can't publish the same material in a journal "as is". The 30% new material condition is something I've heard before, it seems to be an arbitrary but common threshold for a paper to be considered "not (self-)plagiarism".

The 30% new material condition is definitely normal in Computer Science. It's still worth mentioning that there might be tricksters in this context - disreputable journals that try to get contributions from inexperienced researchers by inviting them for such an extended version. Ideally, such an invitation should come from the organizers of the original conference - then it's always legit.

In CS we often reuse the same title. People are used to it and know that the "same" paper may have a conference version (with size constraints), a journal version, an arxiv version, etc. Some reputable journals don't even have the 30% requirement: conferences don't leave enough time for in-depth reviews, and even if something was presented/published in a conference, it still makes sense to send it to a journal for a proper review.

@YuvalFilmus: Extended abstracts vs. conference papers are different publishing models, and different academic communities tend to favor one or the other.

@RLH I publish in conferences. When it's up to me, I publish an extended abstract as the conference version.

@YuvalFilmus: That works in your communities. “Extended abstracts” aren’t even a thing in the engineering, physics, and biology communities I publish in.

There must be previous examples for this in your field. Look at these examples for inspiration.
One pattern would be to use a "colon title" in which the part after the colon clarifies the content of the extended version. For example, let's assume your original paper was called "X" and presented the theory for "X", and that the 30% extension added an empirical evaluation. The title for the extended version could then be "X: theory and empirical evaluation".

The title should be different but may not be substantially different. Just adding 'Extended version' is not enough.
You will add 30% new material. Give a new title based on new material.
If you really want to keep the old title, then mix the old title with some mention of new material like 'using', 'adding'.

Using a substantially different title would confuse people almost as much as using exactly the same title, because it would suggest that the two papers are greatly different. It would also probably result in a bad title, because you thought of the best one the first time round.
Could you add a few words to the original title to account for the new material? If not, I think adding "extended version" is OK.
Or, if the conference paper is not going to be published anywhere, you could use exactly the same title.
Whatever you do, state in the abstract or first sentence that it is an extended version of the other paper.


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Are all PhD stipends the same amount?
Controlling for a specific department/university/fellowship do more desirable students get better stipends? For example, is everyone who's offered an RA position at University of Washington (or whatever) in Computer Science paid the exact same, or are more desired students paid better?
Also, are negotiations acceptable in CS in USA?

Yes they are generally paid the same within a particular department. There may be variation based on year of entry to program, outside or internal fellowship, and service as TA vs RA. I also know of an economics department that did allow for some competitive bidding for some RA slots, but this was for students in year 3+.
There generally are not negotiations for stipend directly, but fellowships could be given to more desirable students. These fellowships may have a stipend component that is higher than the typical stipend, so in effect awarding fellowships can have the same effect as giving “more stipend” to more desirable students.
In terms of negotiation, the channel to get “more stipend” is through the fellowship and admissions process, which doesn’t seem to fit what you are thinking around negotiation. (But asking if there are fellowships available that could increase your stipend would be appropriate. Or I know of a couple instances where pointing out that one received a fellowship from school A led to school B finding a fellowship for a student - though that was rare.) There may be negotiation for summer pay.

In my experience in the life science, Dawn's answer is mostly correct. I have heard about different grants paying students more through RA positions in the life sciences depending upon the funding source, although this is rare. I would also add that some program give extra "scholarships" or "fellowships" to better students. For example, Texas Tech (where I went for grad school) has scholarships for grad students and I was able to receive merit-based scholarships on top of my departmental stipend or external fellowship during different parts of my graduate eduation.
Texas Tech also previously had an ARCS Foundation scholarship and these awards were on top of existing support from Texas Tech. I mention this because Seattle (where the University of Washington is located) also has a chapter of the ARCS Foundation and you might be able to apply there for additional funding. I do not know how the Seattle  ARCS Foundation works or if you meet their other requirements.
Lastly, I have heard that some Universities that give "bonus" scholarships to people who obtain supplemental fellowships as well as some advisors who give "bonuses" for students who publish (e.g., $500 per paper). I do not have links for any of these, only second-hand accounts. Both of these seemed to be rare and from well funded universities and professors.
To include other examples from the comments:

From Dawn: I can confirm- in my PhD institution, we received a “bonus” in our research account if we got an external fellowship. It could be used for travel or materials or books or experimental subject payments, etc. but not taken home as salary.
From Brian Krause: Another "bonus" method in my grad program was that students paid by fellowship or traineeship were not subject to paying the "segregated fees", which were about $1000/year and were not ordinarily covered by tuition remission.

Edit: I also missed your original question: Also, are negotiations acceptable in CS in USA?. I do not know about CS. For life science, I have seen people match other offers, but very rarely. You might gently ask if a program could match another program's offer, but I defer to people who have gone to grad school for CS.

I can confirm- in my PhD institution, we received a “bonus” in our research account if we got an external fellowship. It could be used for travel or materials or books or experimental subject payments, etc. but not taken home as salary.

Another "bonus" method in my grad program was that students paid by fellowship or traineeship were not subject to paying the "segregated fees", which were about $1000/year and were not ordinarily covered by tuition remission.

Dawn and Bryan: thank you for your examples. I included them as well.

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Readvertised Faculty Jobs in USA
So this seems quite common, for example this job was first advertised late in 2022, for start in summer 2023, and is now readvertised with the "review of applications will begin on 15th February 2023" phrase still there.
My guess, most likely this is now readvertised so the university can proceed with applying for an H1 for the preferred applicant. So someone applying for this position may be:

wasting their time, especially if they don't have a green card;
have a chance if they are outstanding (unsure how true that is) compared to the preferred candidate;
with small likelihood the preferred candidate declined and this is a genuine re-advertisement.

Are any other scenarios likely? Or is it in fact common that positions cannot be filled and they genuinely look for a new candidate?

Why would a second advertisement be needed to apply for a H1b? Shouldn’t the first one be sufficient?

Your assumption that they have a preferred candidate is hasty. I know that at a top program for a specific STEM position, pretty much the same ad has run for somewhere between 3 and 5 years. Part of the faculty is known to be a bit combative, and they never manage to agree on someone they consider good enough (to the chagrain of others who push for hires).

If you don't apply you certainly have no chance to be hired. Convincing yourself that you have no chance is not a winning strategy.

It may not apply here. But one theoretical possibility is there is a second position. Maybe not the expected answer but still...

Posting with a professional organization is expensive. AFAIK a formal H1 readvertisement can be more local (if the original search used a national advertisement). So I would consider a failed search far more likely than that is is a fake ad to satisfy visa rules.

Generally a position is re-posted when it is not filled.
Reasons to not fill a job after a previous search would include not wanting to make an offer to any of the applicants in the first round, or making an offer to someone who didn't accept or accepted and later changed their plans, such that the job is still open.
Also possible that it's a separate position, and the previous one was filled, even if it's perfectly copied from a previous one. Most of the text is boilerplate and the specific requirements are quite vague and speak to strategic goals rather than a specific opening.
Ultimately, there's not really much value in speculating. Your H1B explanation doesn't make much sense to me, reposting a job is not part of the H1B process.

From the perspective of the search committee, it's called a failed search, and the ad is re-posted. It seems that you are trying to figure out if this is a true search, ie really open to outside candidates, and not just a pro-forma search where the committee is just going through the motions before hiring a candidate they had in mind from the beginning.
The good news is that, in my experience, pro-forma searches for faculty positions are very uncommon. This is not to say that pro-forma searches don't happen in academia. In fact, they happen a lot, usually as a result of a university policy requiring that all searches be publicly posted and at least 3 candidates interviewed, etc. But this is more common for say, technician positions in which a lab already has a part-time tech and the PI wants to make him/her full-time. It's a waste of time for everyone involved, especially the candidates who take the time to write applications, be interviewed, etc.
But again, this is rare for faculty positions. There's just too much at stake. It is even illegal in some public universities to give preferences to one candidate based on anything but what is on the application.
I know it's surprising for job seekers to hear this, especially with news of 400-500 candidates applying to a single position, but many searches fail because there are no good candidates, and the committee wants to give it another year. Sometimes the job is offered to a candidate, the candidate holds off the decision for months, then declines, and the committee realizes that they need to restart the process from scratch. I worked at a university with the idiotic rule that if the first candidate did not accept the offer, the committee must re-do the search, even if the candidate in the second spot was 99% of candidate 1. Because those #1 candidates usually had offers from other places, that meant searches that lasted years.

That is an idiotic rule, but at least you get more free dinners during the search!

The theory that (a) there's a preferred candidate, (b) the preferred candidate needs an H1B visa, and (c) the re-advertising allows the H1B visa to be obtained, seems overwhelming unlikely. None of those points (a-c) seem likely, and point (c) doesn't seem logical at all. I've heard more negative stories of the need for academic candidates to get an H1B than positive.
In addition to other answers, an actual practical reason why this might occur is -- The higher institution has permitted hires, then retracted it, then re-allowed it, then put a freeze on it, then re-permitted it, etc.
For example, this has happened in my department. I think we've been trying to fill a particular CS position for about 5 years at this point. Frustratingly, the overall hiring process cycle (with many steps mandated by the higher university) takes longer than the institution's economic cycle. So we've been through multiple waves of budget cuts, financial retractions, expansions, COVID, etc., and it seems that we can't get the task done before the next hiring freeze is put in place.

In the context of that particular field—computer science and engineering—it is likely that simply no qualified applicants were found, or the ones that were found got better offers elsewhere. This is very common in computing right now—it is a very in-demand field and finding high quality candidates who could succeed in getting tenure at Clemson, an R1 university, is just difficult. There are simply not that many high-caliber candidates.
Note that the position is in a department of computer engineering, but the qualifications (emphasis on AI/ML) clearly are looking for computer science.
The Taulbee Survey is put out by the Computing Research Association, and is the gold-standard industry publication about computing in academia. Among many other things, they report on reasons for unsuccessful faculty searches. If you look at Table F2 and F2a on pages 33–34 of the current survey, you will find number of successful searches and reasons why searches failed.
First, for US Public universities, tenure-track searches failed 25% of the time. Of those searches that failed, 67% failed because someone couldn't be gotten. Either because no qualified applicants were found (14%), or applicants accepted a better offer somewhere else (53%).
To your specific question—are any of these positions being listed with no real intention to fill them, the survey lists as only 5%—"Technically vacant, not filled for admin reasons."
I might also speculate—and I caution that this is wild speculation—that Clemson in particular might have trouble hiring in CS due to their research trajectory. Clemson moved from R2 to R1 status in 2015, which means that they will probably have a difficult hiring climate in their department. They are probably seeking to hire top-quality R1 research candidates, but they probably don't have as many mature CS researchers, CS research opportunities, and CS research support as other, more mature R1 programs. This would make it very difficult for them to compete for those top candidates. Essentially, they're in the process of moving from being a big fish in the R2 pond, to being a small fish in the R1 pond. As someone in a CS department at a university in a similar place, I can say that it has been incredibly difficult to hire, and our ability hire has not kept pace with the growth in our teaching programs, to say nothing of our university's research ambitions.

It could genuinely just be on offer still, there's a professorship at my university that needed 3 rounds of advertising to fill, because the chosen candidates cancelled after they had accepted the offer.

We had foundation funding for a position in a relatively in-demand subfield of computing, and we listed a position three years consecutively because the first two years we got zero applicants. People grossly overestimate the ability to find high quality applicants.

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Learn to write scientific papers in medicine
I'd like to learn how to write scientific papers in medicine. I saw searching on google that there are many books regarding scientific writing but reading reviews it seems they are more oriented to editors that to writers. Is there a sort of reference which focus on grammar aspects or conventions about writing style that is suitable for a beginner? I'm a non english native speaker

As with any skill, reading is a good start, but you won't get anywhere without lots of practice. Good luck!

For medical article writing the must have is the AMA Manual of Style which covers all the nuts and bolts on the logistics, from how to format to how to deal with conflict between authors.
If your work involves more laboratory experiments, then Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Papers will be helpful. It focuses more on the reporting of methods and results, describing charts and tables, etc.
Also, do know that pretty much every single type of research designs has an associated "reporting guideline." The most famous one are CONSORT for randomized controlled trials and STROBE for observational studies. You can find the collection on this website. These guidelines do not just lend more rigor to your work, but also serve as an excellent scaffolding for your articles.
You'll also need to keep in touch with current publications. Most publishers and database like PubMed allow users to build customized notifications so that when a potentially interesting article comes out you'll be notified.
There are other books on the actual writing and those suggested by user3624251 are quite good. The more general writing books that I'd recommend are Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Williams and Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded by Schimel. Both are heavy on structure and rhetoric, I learned a lot on how to structure a sentence to achieve the desirable effect from these two titles.
Motivation wise, Johnson's Write to the Top! is quite inspiring. Zinsser's On Writing Well is nearly therapeutic.
There is also another department on proper study design and application of statistics but I'm not going to further clutter this answer.
My general advice is: learn the art yourself and own it, try to avoid advice on writing that is overly dogmatic (e.g. You can only use passive voice, absolutely no "I" or "We".) Make time to write, no matter how short, make it a daily habit. And track your progress; things not tracked are harder to improve.

You are looking for something like this one? English for Writing Research Papers. There is a series of books by Adrian Walwork on English usage in science, or a book by Hilary Glasman-Deal. Anothers are A Scientific Approach to Scientific Writing or Introduction to Scientific Publishing. Just don't read them all.

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is it okay for a paper to be in conference proceedings but not on IEEE Xplore?
A conference says on its call for papers website that: "papers will be part of the Conference Proceedings (if the authors wish to do so), but they will not be uploaded to IEEE Xplore." -- What does this mean exactly? If I agree for it to be in the proceedings then will I be able to find it using the ISBN of the conference? Will it have a DOI (I highly doubt, but still wanted to know)?
Thank you in advance. I appreciate your time and consideration.

I'm voting to close this question, because it's impossible for us to say in which form the organizers of said conference will (or will not) publish their proceedings.

Is it a conference with maybe IEEE Technical sponsorship but not an IEEE endorsed and sponsored conference?

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Is there a programmatic way to check that a journal submission follows a style guideline?
Does anyone know of a programmatic way to check if an article submission matches a style guideline?
Submitters are likely to be humanists, so LaTeX is not an option. Assume the journal has a Word template they have provided - is there some way to write macros in Word that will validate a document against a template? Or, does OJS (Open Journal Systems - https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/) provide this functionality?
EDIT: Motivation - my main interest is in automating as much of the journal submission workflow as possible to streamline a possible new project, thanks! I figured having an automatic screen for "did they follow the style guideline?" could save human time :)

It seems like this has some potential to annoy people. Software bugs seem inevitable, and submitters might get automated messages with weird error messages they don't understand (possibly when they did everything correctly). If you do this, please make sure that any automated e-mails have contact information for an actual human (who will respond to messages promptly).

Also, you might be interested in this: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/36677/ Those arguing that authors shouldn't bother with style guidelines at all largely come from math and CS. I take it the custom is different in the area of your journal?

First anon - yes, great idea to have a human-reachable email on any automatic formatting emails, thanks!
Second anon - thanks :) In CS there's a healthy arXiv / eprint / HAL preprint culture, not so (to my knowledge) in the humanities (though social sciences have SSRN, might be some humanities stuff in there).
In the absence of a preprint culture, the cost to the submitter of formatting the submission is simply the risk of having to re-format for subsequent submissions to other journals. So there's some leniency generally in submission formatting, but final formatting tends to be tight.

I am curious. What are you actually attempting to do, and on whose behalf? Do you work for a publisher? Are you trying to start a journal? Are you trying to write a tool for your colleagues?

@bobo: "In CS there's a healthy arXiv / eprint / HAL preprint culture" - that is very subfield-dependent. In my HCI-related CS field, publishing preprints is virtually unheard of, and I had never heard about arXiv until reading about it here on Academia SE (and I think I'm reading "eprint" and "HAL" for the first time now). Interestingly, strict styles to be applied at submission are the norm there, which seems to match with your explanation.

I'd think the primary reason why such an automated check is not a thing is that most styleguides are way too vague and incomplete when it comes to any corner cases.

Voting to close as off-topic. Possibly on-topic on other sites, like the startup site.

In a sense, what the OP is describing isn't all that different from the front-end of a compiler in computer engineering: given an input file, check if it's properly formatted to allow decomposition into well-defined structures. Given the amount of work needed to define a programming language, then, and the inherent messiness of real, human language, I suspect the only answer to this question is "no, there is no (practical) way to programmatically check that a journal submission follows a style guideline." At least, not with any high degree of accuracy.

@CapeCode: I fail to see how it's off-topic here, or if it is how it would be on-topic on another site. Perhaps on StackOverflow if the OP was trying to build this tool, but otherwise this strikes me as falling under requirements and expectations of academicians.

Instead of automating the checks, minimize them by reducing the guidelines!
The critical pre-submission guidelines are only those where papers that don't follow them would have to be severely edited in a way that will change the referee's opinion about the paper. This is, e.g. a draft that is twice the permitted length, or one where the section organization used is not permitted. Many newer journals are pretty good about things like this (eLife, for instance: https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/a43f95ca/elife-references-yes-we-take-any-format-no-we-re-not-rekeying)
If I took guidelines 100% seriously, I would be spending a great deal of time not just on margins and formatting (mostly fast once I have a template), but on things like:

Does this journal use Fig., fig., or Figure?
Should subfigure captions be a) or A) or a or A or a or A
Should journal names be abbreviated?
Are the acknowledgments I wrote allowed?
Are footnotes permitted, or is everything an endnote?
Do figure captions have titles?
Is it appropriate to use a comma in an axis label (1000 vs 1,000)?
Is it Eq. 1, Eqn. 1, Eq. (1), ...

Eventually these have to be settled by work from the authors and the editors - but I've found that even different copy editors at the same journal can have different interpretations!
I view rejecting a submission for issues like this as being a waste of everyone's time. With an automated system, it might be less of a waste of time - but I think it also encourages journals to be nitpicky at a stage when it is not important.


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Is an idea still 'novel' when already published in a blog post?
Can I publish an idea as a paper if somebody else has published this idea in an online forum or a blog?
I believe it's useful to publish good ideas academically because posts on forums and blogs are usually of low quality and have a niche audience. I'm sure some journals will allow publication, even though I'll cite the blog posts. But suppose I want to submit to some high-tier journal like Nature. Will the blog post detract from the novelty of my work then?

You generally don't publish ideas in Nature, you publish results. An idea is generally the starting point for your publication, very far from the end of the whole process. And your results can certainly be novel even if the idea is known. Of course you must cite the blog post properly in this case. A collaboration with the blog author would probably be the best way to handle this case, if they are interested.

Whether it is novel enough to be published is up to the editor of a journal.
But you are in danger of plagiarizing unless you are very careful about citing the  original idea. The idea isn't yours, but theirs. The "novelty" isn't yours, but theirs. The fact that you noticed that it was something new isn't the same as creating something new.
But even if you avoid plagiarism, you might be accused of scooping the originators if they have plans for more formal publication. I suspect that if they have a paper in preparation and complain to an editor you will be in for some problems.
The best way, I think, is to contact the original author(s) and ask them about publishing, offering to help and working out some details about authorship.

And then you'll be accused of sucking up to them.

@OskarLimka I have literally never heard about that happening. At worst the OP will be ignored.

@Spark not by the idea's originator, by your detractors, if any.

Let me start with answering whether you can publish an idea that appears in a blog, without getting into whether you should do it, or whether it is ethically acceptable.
The status of ideas published in non archival venues such as ArXiv is vague; this is even more so for ideas put in blogs/discussion forums (such as SE).
Different venues take very different approaches to non-archival publications. Some venues do not count them as prior work for the purpose of determining precedence and novelty, others do. In other words, the writer of the blog post may not have any real recourse if you take the idea and publish it. You could always claim that you came up with the idea independently and no one could fault you for it. As anecdotal evidence, the current consensus in some CS communities is that ArXiv publications do not count when assessing novelty (and blogs/forums are ignored).
To an extent, such publications are protected by two things:

Their impact: some non-archival papers have thousands of citations. It would be ridiculous to try and publish the same ideas because everyone in the community knows where they appear. Some authors don't even bother trying to publish these works and rely on their popularity to "protect" them from being scooped.
The prestige/community standing of the authors. If some big-shot professor puts up an idea on their blog/on ArXiv, it is less likely that their ideas will be plagiarized since their standing in the community ensures that no one will try to rip them off.

I personally think that these two protections aren't great - especially (2): this is because they offer big-name researchers (and their students/group members) an unfair advantage in terms of getting their results out first.
Now getting back to whether you should do something like this. The answer is a clear-cut no. First of all, you probably won't publish first: if someone puts a good idea on a blog, chances are they had already started working on it themselves and are just previewing parts to the public. In any case, taking an idea from a blog without referencing the original is plagiarism: it's unethical, permanently damages your permutation, and is just not nice.
Nothing is stopping you, however, from either reaching out to the authors, or elaborating upon this idea yourself and publishing the additional results (again, with reference to the original). This is definitely allowed.


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Professor didn't acknowledge a late hand-in by email. Is it appropriate to follow up?
I missed a class where I was supposed to hand in an assignment.
I arrived at my school at the end of the class, and the teacher had already left, so I sent them immediately by email.
It has been a week, and I understand that they are probably busy.
I imagine that a professor's inbox can receive so many messages that they don't have time to read all of them either.
This is an important grade in an important course for me, and I would like to make sure that they have actually seen my message, and that they are willing to grade it (instead of failing the assignment).
Is it appropriate to follow up on my first message, asking politely if they could confirm that they have seen the email?
Will that just anger them?
I don't think I will have an occasion to see them in person to ask.

In the e-mail you sent to the professor, did you explain the reason you were late? What was it?

I stupidly didn't set up my alarm correctly that day. I didn't feel that this was an acceptable explanation, so I didn't put the reason in the email.

Did the other students already get the grades for their assigments?

Any update OP? Did you get that in? I need a closure.

@Penguin_Knight I didn't send another message, but the assignment was graded and appeared on the grade tracking system. :)

It depends on the procedures at a particular institution, but using email as a delivery vehicle for assessed work is so unreliable and untrustworthy that at many places it is prohibited. You should consult your local rules.
Email is unreliable because, for the sender there is no guarantee that anything arrived. It could have been blocked by various spam filters on the way because of content, type of attachment, or originating domain. Did you use the institutions own email account to email from, or an outside one?
Email is also unreliable because the time in transit can be variable. It is also insecure as the message could be tampered with in transit as third parties are used for delivery.
You may not be aware of the recipients mailbox situations. It could be overflowing with messages. You do not know the message delivery rate; how many are received per day. You have no knowledge of what the situation looks like from the other side.
For the recipient is is untrustworthy as they have no assurance of authentication, that the sender is who they say they are.
These, and many other reasons, are why many places use a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) for the submission of graded assignments.
For you, however, without contacting the person directly you have no way of finding out if the work was received, and when it was received, and whether your email would be acceptable.
However, if email is an accepted or required form of submission, you could not expect an acknowledgement either. It would be quite time-consuming to individually reply to each message that was an assignment submission.

@Heutl  You might be amazed at how many times I've replied to en email question by saying, "The answer to that question is in the course syllabus."  You cannot assume that a student has even read the course syllabus, much less the student handbook or catalog.

I will take a slightly different stance than these. I would state it is absolutely reasonable to ask if a professor has received your late assignment via email.  This type of return receipt is a bureaucratic courtesy, particularly when the contents are valuable (as you describe). If I had copious free time or a personal assistant, I would send return receipts to all emails of this sort.
However, most professors have bad experiences with students demanding to know that  a particular assignment has been received and that it is accepted.  That is not appropriate.
Some good body text might be:

I hope that my assignment (on XYZ) has been received in good order.  I submitted it late on DD/MM. I recognize the due date had passed by (1 minute/1 hour/1 year), but I was (attacked by piranahs/had a reasonable crisis/had embarrassing technical issues).  I am unfamiliar with your late policy in those cases and hope that you recognize I submitted this in good faith and hope for your leniency.  I generally performed (well/poorly) in your class, so I hope you can recognize I am (typically on time/trying to improve).

Some bad body text might be:

I absolutely sent you XYZ after the due date. It's not my fault it's late b/c (blaming on others). Why isn't it graded yet? I need a good grade on this.

Good luck for everyone at the end of this semester, by the way.

Totally independent of this happening in Academia, giving an explanation, even if or especially if it is a stupid one like “I forgot my alarm clock” and mentioning how sorry you are and explaining that you just missed him would make it so much more likely that your mistake would be forgiven.
The professor has every right to just throw your late homework away. You should have given him at least _ some_ reason not to do so.


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Quit PhD and reapply for another PhD?
I am currently a year-three postgraduate student and aimming for a PhD (in my country 4 year for a PhD, and it's allowed to quit and gain master degree).
Although with fine results in the first three semesters (with publications), I got sick and had to live in hospital for almost one year. My health condiction is still not very good and needs more time for treatment. At least for now I find it's dim for my coming PhD thesis defense (not enough time & publications).
Because too much time was wasted in my early PhD studying, I plan to quit PhD (replaced by a master degree) and reapply for another PhD (like in US with similar research direction).
Is this moral? Will this quit bring some bad effect for my new application? And will this hurt my relationship with my current supervisor (I have'nt talk with him of my thoughts)?

Being hospitalized for a year (or otherwise being unable to make progress for forgivable reasons) is typically reason enough to delay a defense. Is there a reason you cannot do this?

Indeed. If for some reason you did not officially suspend your studies during your hospitalisation, you can sometimes suspend them retrospectively. We did that for one of my phd students just recently. They now have an extra year to catch up abd complete their phd.

No time is wasted if it used for learning! In any case, I know a handful of people who delayed their defense for a variety of reasons, up to two or three  years! So its likely that the best thing you can do is just finish this PhD, even if its late. You already have publications, so you must be doing something rigth, I think you are on a good track to get it done. If being 1 year on a hospital is your only reason to quit, I suggest you do not.

There are no ethical concerns here. It is fine to quit and reapply. Given a medical history it is unlikely that you will suffer academic consequences. So, relax on that score.
However there are two things you should also consider.
First, you have an advisor who has views about your likely success. Work with them now so that you have an accurate picture of your probable success in your current program. You seem to think the future is dim there, but it may be overly pessimistic. They may be able to work with you on a good completion.
Second, if your health issues are continuing, you will need to convince a new program that you can be a success there in spite of them. If they come back to affect your performance you could wind up in the same place, but a worse situation, in a few years.
If the medical condition is actually caused or affected by stress, then you should, in addition, find ways to deal with that issue.

Is this moral? Will this quit bring some bad effect for my new application? And will this hurt my relationship with my current supervisor (I have'nt talk with him of my thoughts)?

It is moral. It won't bring any bad effects to your new application*. It should not hurt your relations with your supervisor.
*You should explain expilicitly that you had to be hospitilized for a year to explain the gap in your academic past. PhD applications usually have a specific textbox that you can mention these kinds of issues. At the very least you can mention this in your statement of purpose.

It is immoral. By moral, I used a philosophical definition from Stanford/Plato. My moral values differ from yours because of diverse background and upbringing. I don't know where you are from or how dropping out is perceived in your institution or society. So, take my justification with a grain of salt.
I consider exhausting resources (time and money) without substantial contribution in the field or addition to one's learning is negligence to the academic community. That said, by the time you complete the application and matriculate in the new program, you would have finished preparing to defend your dissertation. Nobody can predict for certain of anyone's failure/success in a PhD defense. Alas, having a good relationship with an advisor who can vouch on your behalf may help, at least at institutions that I know.
No, it probably will not have a "bad effect for [the] new application." Quitting a PhD program will not necessarily predict that you won't complete the next program.
The impact of your quitting the current program on your relationship with the current supervisor will depend on how current supervisor and your relationship was and has been. It's subjective. You won't get an answer unless you speak to them, honestly.

Can you elaborate on why you think it is immoral? The rest of your answer does not seem to deal with morality at all.


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Can research publications or paper acquire University credit? Or a degree?
I've seen and been with people with a master's degree that haven't gone to any Universities. They acquired a degree by submitting a papers correspondingly to their field of interest. How is this possible? Where is it possible to publish those papers? How can one publish those.

Who confers the degree if they didn't go to any universities?

Perhaps you are thinking of a "PhD by publication", which is a different thing. See, for example, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2018/08/20/a-phd-by-publication-is-a-great-way-to-build-your-academic-profile-but-be-mindful-of-its-challenges/

I think that what you describe, especially acquiring a degree without university association, would be very rare, if it is even possible. Degrees are normally awarded by universities and there are usually many requirements. In particular here are normally attendance and course requirements, especially below the doctoral level.
If someone is in a degree program then a course might earn credit from on or more publications. There are also dissertations/theses that are primarily based on publications. But even those are normally done under direction of an advisor at a university.
I don't know the practices everywhere in the world, of course, but I would question whether the information you have is actually true. Is it possible someone has misled you?

To partially answer the other questions in the post - if you can write a high-quality research paper most journals will accept it, even if you don't have a university affiliation. But, it would be extremely rare for someone to have the skills to do this without training. The answer here properly deals with whether it would earn you a degree.

I suppose it’s possible to physically not attend a university and still complete a degree, by correspondence, distance education or such similar means, or take courses for a graduate degree remotely and submit a thesis also remotely.
Either way, this is a distinction between being physically on site vs off-side, rather than just submitting a thesis without having been enrolled in a program.  Most graduate programs have a coursework components, so if find it difficult to believe one can just submit a paper and get a degree (at least a reputable degree... whatever that means: I’m sure one can find corrupt institutions who will just sell you a degree with very minimal requirements.)


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Can the lack of credit based coursework be compensated by published works for faculty applications?
Due to lack of foresight, I did not take any graduate level advanced mathematics or numerical analysis course. Nor do I have good grades on the subjects during my undergraduate studies.
However, I have 3 publications in Q1 interdisciplinary journals (not mathematical or numerical analysis journals) which required the application of the mathematical and numerical analysis concepts. Though, I mostly used commercial software in my research, I self studied, relearned all the required fundamentals from different sources (books, online courses, documentations).
Can the lack of credit based graduate coursework be a huge bottleneck in my future faculty applications? Can it be compensated by published works?
Is there something I can do in the next 1-1.5 years (before I start applying to places), that can put me in a better position?

I've never seen a faculty application ever ask for grades or transcripts

You don't say whether you actually earned a doctorate.

@Buffy yes, I did earn my PhD recently, and am pursuing a postdoc.

Then your grades and coursework is pretty much irrelevant. For some teaching jobs people might want to know about your qualifications to teach, say, undergraduates.

Can the lack of credit based graduate coursework be a huge bottleneck in my future faculty applications? Can it be compensated by published works?

I am not sure about positions at a SLAC or for a more teaching-oriented position, but for your run-off-the-mill tenure-track at a research university nobody will care in the first place what courses you took, or which grades you got. And if the department indeed thinks that specific knowledge is crucial to your position (e.g., because of teaching needs), I would expect that you can at least make a convincing case during the interviews that your published research demonstrates your mastery in this field.
So I would not say that anything related to graduate coursework can ever be a "huge bottleneck" for the kinds of positions that I am familiar with, and even if a specific position requires knowledge that is not visible from your transcript your published research should be a rather convincing argument.
Also, just to echo mmeent's comment:

"I've never seen a faculty application ever ask for grades or transcripts."

Me neither, and I have applied to north of 50 positions on 3 continents.

In my experience 20% of positions request transcripts.

At certain American institutions, and especially community colleges, you will need a certain number of credit-hours of graduate course work in a certain field to get a job.  Probably no exceptions are permitted.
Other institutions will not care at all.


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Saying thanks in the personal statement?
Should I include a small thank at the beginning of my personal statement? The thank can long for one line to three lines depends on the specifics it included. In the short version, it can be like this:

I want to thank my mom, my friend XYZ and the SE community for supporting me all the time.

In the long version, it can be:

I want to thank my mom for understanding my passion, my friend XYZ for his alacrity to make my works flows better in English, and the SE community as well as other person who I have never met has spent time advising and criticizing every time I come up a new idea.

I should make clear that the school I intend to apply requires me to write a personal statement, separate to the SOP.

The personal statement should give concrete evidence of your promise as a member of the academic community, giving the committee an image of you as a person.

As a person, not a researcher.

No, a statement of thanks in the form you have described has no place in a statement of purpose.
The statement of purpose should be a concise, focused document. Everything in there should be there for a specific purpose: to convince the readers that you would be a strong addition to their department. Anything that doesn't serve that purpose distracts from that purpose and doesn't belong in there.

The personal statement should give concrete evidence of your promise as a member of the academic community, giving the committee an image of you as a person.

None of the things you have written in your thanks "give concrete evidence of your promise as a member of the academic community" so they do not belong there.
Besides for being ineffective as part of your application for graduate admissions, it's also somewhat ineffective as an expression of gratitude. Private thanks expressed to the person you are thanking are nice; public thanks (like in a thesis, or a Nobel prize acceptance speech) are also nice. What's the point of thanking someone in a private document, that they're not the intended audience of? If you want to thank your mom, send her a letter, or call her on the phone and thank her.

I have update my question. In short, the personal statement is not the SOP in this school. Do you still think so?

@Ooker I certainly do.

+1 for What's the point of thanking someone in a private document, that they're not the intended audience of?

@ff524 I see. The "giving the committee..." part is only an addition bit for the previous part. It's not a parallel structure. I'll accept for this. For the last paragraph, isn't mom not the intended audience for a thesis?

@Ooker a thesis is a public document. I specifically gave it as an example in my answer.


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Professor cc to other professors when I ask about the PhD student vacancy. Should I answer as a group or to individuals?
I wrote an email to Prof. X to ask about a PhD student vacancy and talk about a topic in one of his papers. He refused to accept me because of his retirement and replied with a warming email. In that, he cc-ed two others that he thought might be interested in me, Prof. Y and Prof. Z. Prof. Y refused because his area is somewhat distinct to mine; Prof. Z hasn't answered yet. I haven't responded to anyone yet. I also want to ask Prof. X's opinion about Prof. T's work, who is actually the one that I want to follow.
How should I respond to this? My feeling is that if Prof. X cc-ed others, this means that he wants to create a group discussion. As a group, everyone should have the right to hear each other voices. Should I reply to the group with a generic "thank you" email?
But if I do that, then I have to send another private emails to Prof. X and Prof. Z. I just worry that this will make me looks sneaky because I don't have the courage to discuss this in public.
What should I do?

The key factor here is that the professor X is retiring.  He is not attempting to initiate a group discussion, he is trying to pass you off to the other CC professors and give you an introduction to them.
The correct way to respond is to send a nice single-addressee thank you note to original professor X only, perhaps also asking your query about Professor T, then send a single-addressee email to each individual Professor listed in the CC.
The key here is that you won't be working with the group, you'll only be working with one of them.

But professor Y also replied in the group. Should I still reply in single-addressee?

@Ooker...yes.  single addressee.  UNLESS Professor Y expressed a query or suggestion TO THE GROUP.   Here's the rubric:  "I'm out" is a GROUP response.  "I'm interested" is a SINGLE response.

I understand why "I'm out" should be a group response, but why "I'm interested" is a single response?

@Ooker:  consider these scenarios:  Professor M responds to GROUP, "I like this applicant, but I'm currently overloaded.  Anyone else?"...scenario 2: Professor Q responds to GROUP, "not my area of expertise. Thanks for considering me."...scenario 3: Professor A responds to GROUP, "this guy looks like a good fit for our XYZ program focus."   In scenario 3, you would continue the discussion in GROUP.  For scenario 2, you would thank that professor individually.  For scenario 1, you would stick to that professor like a bad smell.  scenario 1 you would take to private.

Isn't Prof A (scenario 3) saying "I'm interested", and should get my response as a group?

Semantically, if he wanted to create a group discussion, he would have put professor Y and Z in the To field, and would have addressed them and you in the first few lines of the email e.g. "Dear Y, Z and dwoz,..."
If he wanted to let Y, Z know about his correspondence with you, i.e. keep them informed, he would, as he did, put them in the CC field, (For the interested reader later CC=Carbon Copy). He is just ensuring they have knowledge of what went down.
If he wanted to ensure they had knowledge, but you did not know they knew, he would have put them in the BCC field (Blind Carbon Copy).
However, people do not always use the fields "correctly".

I don't think the distinction between To and CC is relevant, as the rules of what goes where is not universally agreed upon, and even then, most people don't even care.

Indeed, I agree. See my list line, and the scare quotes around "correctly". Indeed it is not universally agreed upon so correctly is not clearly defined (thus the scare quotes). Also note the second half of the first sentence, after the "and he would have address them and you..."


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Flexibility (or lack of) at the Open University
I'm thinking of doing a maths degree at the Open University. This course
"BSc (Honours) Mathematics"
The problem is, I'm expected to do the most basic of courses, starting with "Discovering Mathematics"
http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/details/mu123?orig=Q31
Considering I have

BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering
MSc in Microwaves and Optoelectronics
PhD in Medical Physics

this seems a bit of a waste of my time and money. Unfortunately I got my Ph.D in 1999, so whilst the OU permit "credit transfer", they will not count the Ph.D, or any earlier degrees.
I did their online test to see if I was ready for the next course "Essential Mathematics 1", and got every single answer correct. You have to select what your highest qualification was, and there was HNC/HND, but no choice of any sort of degree. Doing "Discovering Mathematics", which is said to be "Introduces and helps integrate key ideas from statistics, algebra, geometry and trigonometry into your everyday thinking to build your confidence in learning and using mathematics." really is a waste of my time and money.
I have telephoned, and asked about this credit transfer, and I was told there's no flexibility - the fact my last degree was more than 16 years ago, means it does not count.
I run an engineering company, doing fairly advanced maths. In fact, the reason I want to do the degree is that my maths is not good enough for some of the things I wish to do. But it is certainly much better than needed for a really basic course called "Discovering Mathematics"
Has anyone had any success in negotiating credit transfer after more than 16 years?
Results of doing their test to see if I'm ready for Essential mathematics 1 (MST124)

Is there any way that you can enrol in a specific lecture course rather than a whole degree? That way you could choose something relevant to what you need for your company.

I looked at their website.  They are absurdly rigid.  I have two suggestions (but I don't live in the UK, so I can't promise they make sense in that context): 1) take a single class at what you yourself consider to be your correct level -- something you're truly interested in.  Distance learning would be okay.  Then present the transcript from that course next semester at the Open University. 2) Write to the department chair with a convincing, short letter and a CV and unofficial transcript attached.

@ Natalie Hogg. Yes, your suggestion is something I'm considering, but it will be a bit annoying to spend time studying the harder material, and not get the degree, on the basis that I refused to waste my time on the real basic mater.

@ aparente001  Hi, The problem with doing what you suggest, in doing another course first, is that it will cost me money to do that. Then the OU still will not consider the course. It is a good job employers don't consider  a degree more than 16 years ago to be irrelevant !!!

@ Natalie Hogg. If I'm not going to get a degree out of it, then the MIT OpenCourseware may be a better choice. I'd rather have a lecturer, which of course one gets if one pays, but to pay several thousands pounds to do a course on something I most obviously know, would be a total waste of time. I did wonder if the fact I'm a chartered engineer (CEng)would count for anything. I forget exactly when I became chartered, but probably less than 16 years ago. If nothing else, it might give the OU the excuse to "bend the rules" a bit. You would think they have some flexibility.

@Dr.DavidKirkby why don't you visit a regular university?

@Rüdiger  I have "visited" a regular university many times. I have 3 degrees from regular universities, and worked at University College London for several years. I'm 53 years old now, and run a business http://www.kirkbymicrowave.co.uk/ I can't just give up doing that. In any case, as stated earlier, my main aim is to do the maths that will allow me to do things in my business that I can't currently do, as my maths is not good enough. I don't want the degree to impress anyone, or to get a job elsewhere

I don't have the commenting functionality available, so will have to put this as an answer.
To be honest, given your background, I think the whole degree will be a waste of your time. I took essential math 1 and 2 two years ago, both are very easy and highly superficial. They claim to teach advanced material but in reality only go through very few and very basic examples in each, so in the end you don't really learn anything. I got like 100% in essential math 1 and 95% in essential math 2 and learned nearly nothing. You'd be better served by buying a good calculus book and studying it.
And more directly to your question - it is possible to negotiate with them directly. I was allowed to take essential math 1&2 simultaneously because I needed that background for sth else and couldn't wait a year. You just need to email their support team and explain your circumstances.

I'd hope that the 2nd and 3rd years would be more challenging, and extend my knowledge. Unfortunately, one of my worries about that is that the courses that will be available, are not known now. It must depend on the interests of the particular lecturers that are at the OU at that particular time. The OU says: "The modules quoted in this description are currently available for study. However, as we review the curriculum on a regular basis, the exact selection may change over time."

There is an option to take an open degree, which means you are free to take whatever courses you  like.

Yes, you have a point there. The Open Degree is something I had  never come across until I looked at the OU, so I was only aware of such a degree in the last few weeks.  I must admit, I can't see employers being too impressed by such a degree, as it seems a bit of a "soft option". But for my situation, it might be appropriate. That said, the Open Degree  does not get around the fact it will work out just as expensive. I'd like the OU to to consider my previous degrees "credit transfer", which can reduce the cost.

I had a similar logic at the time. And having experienced it, I don't think it's worth it: OU doesn't have the reputation to impress employers (in the industry or academia) and considering its foundational courses are bad, it's unlikely that there will be a steep increase in the quality in later years (after all, they need to cater to their audience, and that audience is poorly trained.) PhD in Physics is already very impressive as an academic achievement for most employers and implies strong math. A degree from OU is more likely to raise eyebrows and undermine the value of your PhD.

A student can complete the OU maths degree full time in 3-4 years, starting at the "Discovering mathematics (MU123)", According to one website, the lowest ranked university for maths is London Metropolitan University (the OU is not listed). Even the London Metropolitan University wants A-level maths, or a closely related A-level. I find it totally implausible that 3 years spent stating at virtually zero maths at the OU, could allow one to reach the same standard as spending 3 years starting with even a modest A-level. I am giving up the idea - it would be a waste of my time/money.

OlgaK, as for the PhD, I would have thought the OU were in a somewhat better position to get a PhD student to the same level as another uni, than the OU are with an undergraduate degree. At least the entry requirements for a Ph.D at the OU are not so dramatically different from a normal uni, whereas at BSc level, they are very different. If you read http://www.mathematics.open.ac.uk/study/phd/guide-applicants you will learn even the OU don't feel their undergraduate maths degree is sufficient preparation to start a Ph.D in maths at the OU !!! Is that not an admission of the OU's poor BSc?

+1 for what you wrote in your comment --- [...] PhD in Physics is already very impressive as an academic achievement for most employers and implies strong math. A degree from OU is more likely to raise eyebrows and undermine the value of your PhD I would recommend the OP identify which specific topics in mathematics he/she wishes to learn and look for appropriate books (Schaum's Outline Series or one of the many standard 2-semester undergraduate/beginning-graduate level "Advanced Engineering Mathematics" texts) or ask on Mathematics Stack Exchange.

Have you considered enroling for an MSc in Mathematics? http://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/qualifications/f04  That seems like it might be more your speed.  Anything that you're missing from the BSc portfolio you could presumably catch up on via self-directed study, but the MSc would reveal points where you need more work, and would simultaneously provide structure.

You really do not need another degree. Anyone who is going to be impressed by degrees, will be impressed by a Chartered Engineer with a PhD.
You do have good reasons for studying more mathematics, but, considering the rest of your situation, you need to do it efficiently. That means taking exactly the courses you need. Generally, that will conflict with getting another degree - any responsible degree-granting body is going to require you to cover a specific range of topics.
Looking specifically at the Open University, near the bottom of, for example, Undergraduate courses in 'Mathematics' there is a tab "Modules". The purposes include "study individually for interest or professional development." which sounds like you. They include quizzes for deciding if you are prepared for a given course.
You should consider costs and benefits of various distance learning options, including but not limited to the OU, and plan your own studies. As far as structure is concerned, anyone who is running an engineering company should be able to construct and manage a project plan for one student's studies.

I am a bit late answering, but I am also a current Q31 student so perhaps my specific knowledge of the course can help here.
I will prefix this answer by saying that in 2014 or so, the Open University decided to "modernize" its courses and one effect of this was to mandate 120 credits at level 1, not letting you move to level N+1 until you've done level N, as well as dropping things like Topology and Mathematical Logic as possible separate modules. They're moving to a scheme of mostly unavoidable 60-credit modules that cover everything to a reasonable degree, with far less flexibility. I don't like the changes, I believe the OU are dumbing down the maths degree and more broadly I am not alone in disliking the current direction of the OU.
Ok, contextual rant out of the way. I started on the previous degree programme B31, which only mandated 60 credits of level 1 study. I filled in 30 of these credits from the worthless "using statistics" module and have an exemption to use level 3 30 credit modules as level 1 modules. I suggest you ask for the same thing.
What this means is that you will be paying more for your degree and further, that you will be doing harder work for credits that only count in the sense of completion but have no weight for your overall grade. On the other hand, that for you might be (and for me definitely was) a worthwhile tradeoff instead of doing something mind-numbing.
I can't promise they'll let you do this and they certainly won't like it because "distance learning is difficult" (it is) but if you feel you are up to it I would insist as much as you can. You won't be able to replace the whole of level 1 either, but you might be able to get out of doing the full 120 credits. I suspect they will likely want you to do Discovering Mathematics, which I suggest you blow out of the park and then ask to move onto the level 2 modules, with your intent to substitute some of the level three modules for level 1 ones at a later date.
To give you an idea of topics covered, at level 2 you will do M208, which covers:

Linear algebra
Sequence, series and Real analysis
Basic group theory
Calculus
Some foundational material needed for the above i.e. limits

MST210 covers:

First and second order ODEs.
Vector algebra and statics.
Basic motion physics.
Matrices, eigenvalues and eigenvectors again).
Linear differential equations.
Physics like oscillation, damping, modelling, multivariate functions, rotating bodies, angular momentum.
Vector calculus
Fourier series

You then have choice of level three modules in the mathematics curriculum, which is where the fun actually starts since much of what I've listed above is basically first year and maybe second year mathematics for many full time undergrad students. The modules at level 3 are generally quite in depth and quite good and the material is well written, if a bit repetitive at times (useful though for distance learning).
So I guess it depends how much this material matches the level you want to read mathematics at. You should also realize that even if the course isn't that hard, the mechanical work of completing the exercises, assignments, exams and studying the material is quite time consuming. I am sure you can do it, but you should plan on this taking you 6 years to complete at 60 credits per year. If you are organised and only care about passing, you might manage more than this with a full time job, but it will not be easy.
Since you really seem to be looking for the content rather than the actual qualification (since you already have several degrees!), if you want to get up to speed with the sort of material on MST210 it might be better to buy a copy of Jordan & Smith's Mathematical Techniques first, which is "the" reference textbook for, well, mathematical techniques, for maths, physics and engineering degree students as the book says. It'll give you the basic grounding for the applied side of mathematics up to about second year mathematics undergraduate in the UK for most courses  if you read the whole thing (you'll miss out on the more theoretical courses, which will likely be real and complex analysis, group theory, ring and field theory, number theory and you'll also miss out on statistics).
On the other hand, if you already have this grounding, you won't get beyond it until 240 credits into OU study and I'd second other answerer's comments about finding a suitable masters programme as a probable starting point.
The Mathematics Institute at Oxford also helpfully publish all their course summaries and most importantly of all reading list recommendations which are pretty good. If there are specific areas you need to know about at a more advanced level than Jordan & Smith, this is a good place to start looking for book recommendations.

Answering a bit late here but there are other options  with the OU including postgraduate certificate/diploma and indeed the masters in mathematics course.


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Do authors normally check their own papers for plagiarism?
I was recently asked to review a paper (for a very reputable journal). In the cover letter, it says

"This paper has been checked with turnitin to ensure there is no similarity to other papers."

I haven't seen this before (although I have limited reviewing experience). Is this normal? Or does this indicate something strange about the author?
I've never checked any of my own papers for plagiarism. Should I?
EDIT: Also, why would you mention this in the cover letter?

It is a sort of reflection in response to the modern plagiarism related hysterics. No, it is not usual. Yet.

It is very common for editors to check for plagiarism before sending them out for review.

It happens sometimes that in a paper where several authors contributed chunks of text one of the authors behaved dishonestly with the others not aware of it. Perhaps the corresponding author is trying to make sure this didn't happen.

I've never put such an assertion in one of my own cover letters, and would find it very strange to do so.

It's assumed that I should be behaving honestly and avoiding both plagiarism and self-plagiarism.  Saying: "really, I'm not plagiarizing!" just makes me wonder why the person felt they needed to say anything.
If I'm not behaving honestly, why wouldn't I lie about the results of plagiarism-checking too?

If I saw this as a reviewer, I would think it reflected an odd but almost certainly irrelevant thing about the authors, and then proceed to ignore it.

This is also what I was thinking. Perhaps the author has been accused of plagiarism in the past.

And if I was an editor, my first inclination would be "Yeah, I'll be the judge of that, not you..."

(+1). It reminds me of Pilger's law: "If it's been officially denied, then it's probably true".

"The lady doth protest too much..."

There are two separate questions here.

Do authors normally check their own papers for plagiarism? Don't know, but I would assume that it is not that uncommon, especially if they want to preserve their reputation when working with new people who do they not know well.
Do authors put these things into the cover letters? Absolutely not, this sounds pretty insane and one wonders what was the motivation behind it. Perhaps this was the work of a fresh PhD student, who was required to use Turnitin by his supervisor, just to make sure that he did not plagiarize anything. But I would assume that supervisor would order him to remove such sentence from the cover letter ASAP.

For 2, one possibility is that the author is worried that if the editor/referee does a plagiarism check, the fact that it's already been submitted to a plagiarism checker might cause a false positive, especially if edits have been made in between. (I don't know whether such a fear is founded.)

One obvious answer is "I know I didn't plagiarize, so why would I check?"
But the obvious answer is not always right. You may well know that you didn't plagiarize deliberately, but there have been cases of people plagiarizing accidentally. A few of these have been in fairly popular books and have gotten publicity. Surely there are many others that did not get in the news.
Our memories are fallible. They are much more fallible than many of us might think. It's not that hard to read something, remember it, but, over time, "assign" it to our own thoughts and forget where we read it.


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About Plagiarism checking for two academic paper which have been published on conference and journal
A friend and I have published one journal paper and one conference paper on the same topic. As I have seen we have made a some mistake in not adding the desired changes to the journal version of that paper based on the below rule (journal version needs at least 30% change):

So, it is okay to develop a previously published conference paper into
a full-length manuscript and publish it in a journal later on. This is
an acceptable practice, provided you clearly disclose the conference
paper and include at least 30% new material in the journal paper

I have seen two papers of someone of our previous university, one conference and one journal paper with very similar titles (paper 1, paper 2). If possible I want to find a website that automatically checks the plagiarism percentage of academic papers, ideally without the need for the actual PDF versions of the papers (which are often paywalled).

What do you mean by "plagiarism percentage"?

Your question makes little sense. Any percentage value that some plagiarism checkers give is irrelevant and only used as a guideline for which papers to have a close look at. If you now know that your submitted journal paper does not meet the requirements, you should retract the submission while apologizing. In this way, you can fix your mistake by updating your paper and then submitting it elsewhere sooner (no need to wait for a rejection), without risking that the journal calls you out for your rule violation.

Thanks, @Daniel_Hatton, I don't get what is the meaning  of OP's Question? I googled it but don't get what is the means of original poster's question means right now?!

@SoheilPaper the term OP is referring to you, so "OP's question" is your question

I doubt that any plagiarism checker will help you here. First, the 30% rule is not a standard measure, and it is difficult to judge in any case. While it may be a standard for some journal, it isn't 30% of the "words" that is important, but that the new work adds new "ideas" and/or "results" that an editor or reviewer would judge to be about 1/3 of the original.
Plagiarism checkers are very poor tools and are better for checking pure "copying" than for judging advances in scholarship.
Moreover, the journal version will probably have a longer "time in process" than the conference version, permitting you to make changes if the reviewers have issues.
But, ask yourself, what is "new" in the journal version - ideas and results mostly.

Note that it is possible to plagiarize using none of the original results, simply by paraphrasing the old work without citation. It is the lack of citation that makes in plagiarism, though over-copying can be a different, but still important, offense, perhaps copyright violation.


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Is it possible to transition back into academic research after leaving the bench for a non-research position?
My Background:
I'm a PhD Microbiologist currently in the third year of a post-doc working in a US government research lab. While I do work for the government, I'm classified as a contractor and, as such, my pay and benefits are substantially less than government FTE colleagues (although they're much better than most academic post-docs get). With a half-way decent publication track-record (~2.5 papers per year) and some competitive funding on my CV, I'm fairly confident that I could at least try applying for a research faculty/PI position after another 2-3 years of post-doc research (not saying I'll get one, but I'd feel confident starting to apply).
My dilemma:
I was recently approached about several direct hire positions open at the federal agency where I work. I've met with a couple of the hiring supervisors, and they all sounded very stoked on my qualifications and have strongly encouraged me to apply to their respective openings. The problem is (if it is a problem), all of the openings are for regulatory scientists, with no research component to the jobs.
It's honestly an amazing opportunity that I would love to pursue, not just for monetary reasons, but for the work experience and the doors that that would open up for me. But I keep circling back to the doors that I might be closing if I did take it. Basically, I'm worried that any amount of time spent away from the bench will make it much more difficult to transition back into research if I should decide regulatory work isn't right for me.
So, academic community: am I worrying about nothing? Or is walking away from research a one-way street?
(For the sake of argument, let's "pretend" that I have absolutely no interest in private industry research jobs).

I did want to add that split fellowships do exist in the agency, just far fewer of them. They're designed as temporary positions to give researchers some regulatory experience before transitioning into a full-time regulatory roll. But most people who have them don't seem interested in transitioning anywhere, and they basically only become available when someone leaves, and getting one has more to do with luck and patience than qualification.

All changes of job or career, big or small, have this kind of risk. It probably depends on how long you stay in the regulatory job. Probably if you do it for one year, then you will know whether you like it, and you won't have been away from academic work for too long.

It's honestly an amazing opportunity that I would love to pursue

In that case you should probably do it. Of course, you might find that you dislike the job but cannot bear to give up the high salary ("substantially" more than something that is "much better than most academic post-docs get", as you say). But you should be able to get a reasonable idea of whether you would like the job now, by talking to these people that have approached you.


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Is membership in learned societies important in academic career?
Countries have different strategies and procedure, but academic career is somehow similar: research publications, teaching, funds, awards. I mean academics do the same thing in all countries to be promoted in their academic career.
However, I see a big difference in membership of learned societies in the US and UK.
UK: Academics care about their status in several societies, Member, Fellow (particularly the latter), and always use the designatory letters after their name: MXX or FXX.
US: Academics only join one or two societies in which they want to be active. Fellow is rare, and no one can directly apply for that, still people do not mention it boldly.
Is really the status of membership in leaned societies important? For example, in academic promotion, research proposals, awards, etc?
Is it useful to join several societies (connected to your field, but you do not have time to be active in all of them) to reach high grade membership? Is it somewhat like an award to be listed in CV?

possible duplicate of How useful are professional society memberships?

Are "learned societies" different from "professional societies"? (speaking as an ignorant American).  For example, is the IEEE a 'learned society"?

As an American, the only places my professional/learned society memberships appear are on my CV and on papers published in conferences and journals of that society (IEEE requires this if you are a member). I never run into anyone that puts it on their business card. Occasionally, you'll run into someone that's been bestowed the highest level of membership, and they'll display that somewhere. National Academy membership (NAS, NAE, NAM) is more like the Royal Society, and that you should display basically everywhere.

I don't even bother putting the fact that I'm a member of the American Mathematical Society on my cv.  Given that anyone who pays them can become a member, how is it meaningful?  If I became a fellow of the AMS (a professional honor), then I would put it on my cv, but I can't imagine mentioning it elsewhere.  It would seem a little pretentious.  Your research should speak for itself.  Similarly for things like membership in the national academies, though I suspect I'll never have to worry about such things.

Even in the U.S., it will depend very much on the field you're talking about - it differs widely even for fields that might be considered adjacent to each other.
For example, I'm an Epidemiologist. While professional memberships might rate a line or two on a CV (I use them as another way for people keyword searching for people 'like them' since I straddle a couple fields), and there definitely benefits to being a member and certain recognitions from societies might help in the "building a reputation" component of many tenure/promotion cases, there's not necessarily much listing of those unless it's a very big deal (AAAS Fellow, National Academy, etc.). My major professional society doesn't even have fellows, just the occasional award or committee position.
However, in academic medicine, where many of my collaborators are, this is very different. For example, it's very common for them to list "FXXX" or "FYYYY" as part of their "full" title, fellowship is a much bigger deal, and there is a clear application process.


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Can postdocs get a funded position by direct contact?
Every month, I receive several emails from India or similar countries for a postdoc position in my group.
I am an assistant professor in a small university. I wonder how many applications/emails receive famous professors at top universities?
When a PI has funding for a postdoc position, he post the position, and will receive tens (if not hundreds) of applications.
Receiving these emails made me wonder, maybe this method is working that many people are regularly using it.
Does a PI offer a postdoc position by such emails? Normally these candidates are not very strong, as they have already applied for posted positions.

It must be working for somebody, even at such a low rate of return: I receive a couple every week, and I'm not even a professor.  Either that, or they're phishing attempts, which is possible too.

It might help to distinguish between the many kinds of direct contact. For example, it seems that the "schmoozing at a conference" method works a lot better than the "anonymous mass email" one.

I think that what has happened is that there are stories floating around, rumors with some kernel of truth, that this approach works. Sometimes I get emails from folks who are highly qualified in their area, but have no relation to our work. I think the model of what has "worked" is probably misunderstood.
I think the only thing that has ever really worked is for the "applicant" to send out mass emails to everyone they can find that's even remotely related until they hit on a few people who do have a position open and who direct them as to how to apply through proper channels. Occasionally these folks do actually have good qualifications and do get a position. The story of this process gets mangled, and people begin to think that mass emailing really works rather than realizing that it's targeted applications through the appropriate channels that worked but were found by luck.
I mostly don't respond to these kinds of emails unless the candidate is actually highly qualified, related, and I just don't have anything for them. I got one from someone in the UK this week who is working in my field, looking for a PhD position, and already has 3 (!!) master's degrees. Unfortunately, we run an HPC center and don't have faculty positions or advising rights, so I wrote the guy back and let him know that. Rarely do these emails deserve such a response since the candidates are applying randomly to every name they can find, i.e. wet lab biologists applying to an HPC center.

In some fields, this is the standard method of obtaining a postdoc. My own field (particle physics) is not one of them, but I have friends in computational neuroscience (this is in the US) who say this is how it works for them: when they are ready to look for a postdoc position, they identify professors or researchers who they would like to work with and send them an email asking if they have positions available. Now, what my friends are talking about is specific, targeted emailing, not mass emailing, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if some people get the idea that the more emails they send out, the better their chances. After all, this is nearly the same thinking as saying the more applications you send out, the better your chances, which is frequently-repeated advice.
Even in fields where this is not standard, it can happen. I actually almost got a position myself this way, despite it being very much not the norm in my field.

Yes, postdocs can get funded by direct contact with a professor. I'm a computational epidemiologist in the U.S., and of the two postdoc offers I got, both of them were based on personal contact (with people one of my mentors knew, rather than simply blind contact).
There are definitely also just listed positions, but I have definitely seen qualified direct contacts result in at least some interest.

In the US, in NIH funded fields top post docs are generally funded by NIH-NRSA fellowships. Potential post docs approach a supervisor with a project that is mutually interesting and will provide the post doc with a new skill. If the potential post doc is on top of things, the NRSA application decision can be known before the start of the post doc. In other cases the PI might need to fund the position for 6-12 months, followed by a 36 month fellowship. In other words, when approached by someone who wants to get an NRSA, and is qualified, you take them. This means that getting a post doc through "direct contact" is quite common. Depending on the field you may never have met or only have an introduction via you supervisor.
That said, the Indian spam emails, although I have never seen post doc ones, do not fit this model and are generally unsuccessful since the NRSA is limited to US citizens.


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Are all master degrees fully funded for North American universities?
For whatever reason I had the misconception that graduate study is fully self funded except for some opportunities for scholarship or, in extraordinary circumstances, a full ride scholarship. So you can imagine how surprised I was to find out that certain amount of money is automatically given on an annual basis for graduate studies.
Is this true through out North American universities? This sounds like a wonderful opportunity wonder why not more people go on graduate school.

I was to find out that certain amount of money is automatically given on an annual basis for graduate studies., Do you also happen to find out many of the graduate studies are PhD programs?

Most master's degrees are not fully funded (or even funded at all) in the United States. Funding varies by of study field. Some fields, such as business, will rarely offer funding, while others are more likely to.
Perhaps you have been looking at PhD programs in math and science - these do tend to offer funding. But that is the exception, rather than the general rule.  At the master's level, funding is more rare even in these fields.


text:
Created a figure for a colleague's thesis, want to use that myself as well
A colleague of mine who also writes a master thesis in lattice QCD (theoretical/computational physics) asked me to make him a few simple figures with TikZ. They show a fundamental concept and are not particularly hard. The plaquette (see page 3) is just a square with arrows on the lines and then some labels on the edges. The clover term (see page 4) is just four plaquettes. The concepts are fundamental, I could create a plaquette drawing in my sleep, for the clover I need a quick glance at a sketch to get everything right.
It took me like 20 minutes to make the sketches. He has send me images taken from other papers and books to give me the idea. Those figures are used everywhere in books and introductory papers. There they do not seem to refer to anything else but just give the figures. He will submit his thesis with the images next week.
My own master thesis will be due next fall, and I can certainly also use those figures in my thesis. I doubt that somebody will pull up his thesis and my thesis, find the exact same looking images (except the font of the text), look at the dates of publication, and call me out for plagiarizing. However, I'd to handle this situation properly because this situation might arise again with a less trivial figure.
What would I into the caption in my thesis?

“insprired by Author [1]”
“taken from Author [1], typeset in TikZ”
Nothing at all, the other authors did not do that and the figure is not that hard to do anyway

Should I somehow refer to the colleague's thesis although it only has prompted me to create those figures now instead of in six months? I am not sure whether he will say anything about me making those figures, should I ask him to do that such that I can safely use those figures myself?

With all due respect to your TikZ prowess (which indeed is more impressive than my own non-existent TikZ skills), these figures are... not exactly the Mona Lisa. Anyway, they are your work and you should feel free to use them and not say anything at all about the circumstances of their creation. If we had to give credit for every microscopic idea that inspired a turn of phrase or visual idea in the papers we write, they would all be three times as long and virtually unreadable. The situation you are describing is simply too trivial and unimportant to warrant mentioning in my opinion.
As for the future, if in the future you contribute a more substantial intellectual product to a project that then publishes it without an acknowledgement to you, then later want to use the same product in your own publication, then because of the concerns you mention here it may be sensible to accompany the figure or whatever it is with a footnote along the lines of "This figure is the author's original work, and was used with permission in [insert reference to earlier work that used your figure]."

@NajibIdrissi well, I admit that my writing is... not exactly Shakespeare.


text:
What tone to use in the personal statement?
The guide in Berkeley states:

The personal statement should give concrete evidence of your promise as a member of the academic community, giving the committee an image of you as a person.

So what tone should I use here? If as a person is as yourself, then is it better to use informal voice, like writing in a blog? Or should I keep the formal voice as most statements require you to be professional?

In my opinion (and three years working in the admission committee), it's less about the tone but the arguments and evidences you cite in the statement.
For tone, keep it overall professional and formal, do not use slang and do not write to them as if they're your high school friends. Write as if you're writing to a teacher you respect.
For your arguments and evidences, I'd suggest focusing on:

A certain story and experience that gave you the epiphany, inspiration, or determination to pursue this study/career. Stay true to the experience and avoid using too many tacky expressions/cliches.
Combination of training and past experience that have made you a unique and valuable member of the institute and field of study.
Career aspiration with specific goals in mind. For instance, how would the degrees or positions enable you to achieve new goals. While the goals and aims can be of personal level, it's important that you can also integrate your own goals into a larger system (like the field of study, or the larger entities your field serves) as well.

The decision of whether to include some personality traits of one self is really situation-dependent. But if you want to let the committee know that you're a "good communicator," remember to provide concrete examples as well.
Hope this helps and good luck!

... the answers there kinda encourage to use informal tone. What do
  you think?

To me, being "informal" can mean, among many things, use of slang, figures of speech, and conversation-like writing style. Some of these do add color to the personal statement but I'm reluctant to endorse the statement that one should go informally without clearly listing what kind of informal speeches are to be used. Even within figures of speech, some are more acceptable than others in a personal statement. "Deer in headlight" may be fine; "a kick in the balls" is probably not.
I'd suggest, as I have said, don't get bogged down by the tone. Be your polite and eager self, and make a case on the three points to persuade the committee members. Treat them like someone you respect and it should be fine.

hmm, I found a cross-dupe in Writer, Are essays supposed to be formal?, and the answers there kinda encourage to use informal tone. What do you think?

@Ooker, I put my response to your comment. Hope your writing process is going well!

I guess that the guide encourages applicants to not hide behind a neutral tone. You should "be yourself" and write in the way you normally talk to people in the workplace.
You may consider reading your personal statement (or asking someone to read it), and then try to assess the tone and imagine how you could describe a person who wrote it. Can you say something about the author which is not already explicitly mentioned in the text? If you can not see a specific tone and can not guess anything beyond what is already written, then the personal statement is probably too neutral.

For a personal statement, I would recommend speaking in the first-person and using a tone that is sufficiently informal to make it sound like you are talking to someone, rather than talking in the third-person about the skills of an applicant.  Don't go overboard with the informality ---don't swear or use slang--- but make sure that the reader feels they are hearing your normal voice (which just so happens to be brilliant and articulate).  The substance of your statement will be more important than the style, though the latter is part of showing that you can communicate clearly and in language that is suitable for presentations and academic work.


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Textbook that is a combination of other textbooks?
A, B, C are three good textbooks from the market. An author/professor translates them, taking chapter 1 from A, 2 from B, 3 from C and combining them into another textbook. The content of the new textbook is literally taken from other sources, with simple editing (cut irrelevant part that they don't teach in their class even it's in the taken chapter).
My questions are:

What is the name of this kind of textbook?
If the author of the new book is the one who makes translation and edition, then is it ethical/legal? What is the name of this action?
If the reason given is "lacking of good resources" in the country, and A, B, C are cited as references, then is this action really bad? Is there any alternative way to do?

Copyright violation. 2. No. As an alternative, consider open-source books such as at https://openstaxcollege.org/books .

err, I have slightly edited the question, and I think your answer to 1 may be obsolete (depends on which question it answers to)

There are too many different questions here. I would suggest that you 1) ask Questions 1 and 2b (“What is the name of this action?”) as one question. I would not consider them off-topic here, but I’d consider them better suited for [english.se]. 2) Ask question 2a separately here or on [law.se]. However, there isn’t really much too answer in my opinion as this is a clear copyright infringement (without the original author’s consent of course) and violation of intellectual property. 3) Ask question 3b (Is there any alternative way) separately here.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is broad a composite of several disjoint questions about the English language and copyright law in one or more unstated jurisdictions.

A publication that compiles parts of several other publications is sometimes called an anthology, at least when it is approved by the copyright holders of the publications that were used. If this is done without the copyright holders' approval, it could be called an illegal (or unsanctioned, or pirated) anthology.
No, it is not legal or ethical unless the "compiler" has obtained the permission of the copyright holders for the works that he/she has translated and compiled.
I can't evaluate how bad it is exactly from your description, but it is illegal, and as such, at least somewhat bad. Some alternatives are to use open-access teaching materials (as Daniel Collins suggested), to use a local library, to purchase cheap used editions of textbooks A, B, and C, and to contact the copyright holders and ask for their approval for this project on a charitable basis and for limited distribution to the professor's students.
Perhaps the first step I would suggest to this professor is to stop making rationalizations for why it is okay to violate copyright law. After this step, I suspect that several perfectly reasonable alternatives will naturally suggest themselves.


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How to know which citation style is applied?
How to know which citation style is applied, if googling its characteristics does not reveal the name?
In specific, do you know what is the name of this citation style?

Merlis, Timothy M., and Tapio Schneider, “Atmospheric dynamics of Earth-like tidally locked aquaplanets,” Jounal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems 2 (December 2010); DOI:10.3894/JAMES.2010.2.13.

Authors: roman
Title: roman in quotation marks, with ending comma inside the marks
Journal: italics, with issue date in roman

The style is taken from the book What If? from Randal Munroe. I'm translating it so would like to know its style to know how to put the translation of the reference properly.

This is quite a common format.  You need to dig much deeper if you're trying to tie it to a specific journal (or family of journals).  Ending the title with a comma is likely to narrow it down quite a bit, the comma after the authors' names less so.  The mopnth and year in brackets followed by a semicolon should be a good clue when you get close.

Why does it matter? If you're writing for a specific journal, they'll tell you what citation style to use.

As @david-richerby mentioned, why does it matter? In addition: Where did you find the citation, and to what are you going to apply it?

@MrGumble The style is taken from the book What If? from Randal Munroe. I'm translating it so would like to know its style to know how to put the translation of the reference properly.

Why not just verbatim copy the bibliography then? I would not expect it to change due to translation. Secondly, the citation styles only work if you have saved all references in a database such as Mendeley, Zotero, or EndNote. And these should all allow you to give a custom citation style, one that you could base on a similar style found in the links the other have mentioned.

@MrGumble is that a rule that the bibliography should not be translated? Why? As for the second point, I agree that having the references saved in a database is much more convenient, but why shouldn't it work without one? I will use the style used in the original book anyway.

@Ooker, Which parts of the bibliography would you translate? If you translate the title, you are referencing a different work. You can translate nouns such as "Editor", "Chapter", or "Date Accessed", etc., and that should not change the style of the bibliography.

I don't know an easier way than including the reference in http://www.citethisforme.com and then changing the reference style to see, if I can find a style equal to the one I'm looking for. Unfortunately, the amount of reference styles is very large.

I just I just stumbled over this python programm that classifies citations. It even works for command linies. So far, only 18 citation styles are implemented but that's a good start.

http://editor.citationstyles.org/searchByExample/ has a decently-sized database that lets you search for a citation style by typing and formatting an example, which can be handy (if a bit of a pain sometimes).
Edit: For your example, it suggests Bioarcheology International is the most similar, followed by Springer Humanities (author-date).
Edit again: No, I did it wrong, it's more like Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition (full note), although that's still not perfect.

Ugh, I cannot find any example that has title in quotation marks. The style you linked doesn't have that feature too.

@Ooker, you're right, I think I entered it slightly wrong. I'm now getting Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition (full note), which looks a fair bit more like your example, but still isn't perfect. I'll edit my answer.

This is a great tool. Seems to be tricky but might get better over time. Thanks for this link!

You definitely need the in-text-citation to make it work. @Ooker Could you provide the in-text-citation style?

@FuzzyLeapfrog unfortunately, the style comes from a pop science book, so there's no in text citation