text:
Due to last name, I am never first author
I am a PhD student in computer science and have enjoyed my time very much so far. I just finished my 4th year and I plan to graduate in a year. During my degree, I worked on a few papers that became well cited. Throughout my PhD, I consistently worked with another student, let's call him Mike A. My name is Lilly M. and my advisor is Timothy Z. (all names are made up). On all of my papers, Mike A. and I are listed as “these authors contributed equally”. However, my advisor is adamant that he publishes in alphabetical order (this is becoming less common, as far as I can tell), so all papers are Mike, Me, our advisor. I have noticed that this has more and more of an effect, as fellow researchers tend to know Mike or my advisor but rarely know me, even though I contributed half of the work.
I have spoken to my advisor about this and he assures me that (a) he does not think it is a big deal and (b) he does not want to change it because he consistently publishes in alphabetical order. Most papers in his group are with him and a student, and in these cases it always means the student is first, and then him.
Is this something I should be concerned about? Do you have suggestions on how to approach this with him?
Note: The reason I ask is that in the last few weeks, Mike was asked by three separate institutions to come and give a talk about one of our papers. I was never asked. In this case, Mike told me and we worked it out. However, it suggests that there is a different perception of my work than I would like. I plan to graduate soon and apply for new positions. Are there things I should do this year that you would suggest?

Do the papers contain a description of the contributions of the authors, or a statement like "all authors contributed equally and are listed alphabetically"?

@NateEldredge Yes, “these authors contributed equally.”

I have noticed that this has more and more of an effect, as fellow researchers tend to know Mike or my advisor... Is this really because of alphabetical ordering? You mention, Mike was asked by three separate institutions to come and give a talk about one of our papers, do you know (or can you ask Mike) why he was invited?

This is something I've wondered about, when hearing about fields with alphabetical listing - surely there must be a career advantage in people seeing "A et al" everywhere, and coming to know A's name...

Some of us look at the list of authors and expect the last one to have done the most work... aka the work is done by those with the fewest titles...

this is becoming less common, as far as I can tell — Really??

To me this sounds dodgy.  As far as I'm aware, in CS, authors are listed in the order of contribution.

CS is big. In some areas of theoretical CS, alphabetical ordering is still the norm, while practical CS generally seems to prefer contribution-based (and sometimes, seniority-based) ordering. There can be fun discussions when you have a mixed group of authors collaborating on work that is theoretical and practical.

In mathematics, authors are almost always listed alphabetically (very unusual to not be), and papers generally have small enough lists of authors that everyone is referred to, not as 'A et al'. There are two papers from my group (before my time) with higher-than-average authors, and we fairly consistently refer to them as 'BCMMS' and 'CJMSW', where these are the authors' surname initials. Not as 'B et al' or 'C et al'.

In some fields, alphabetical listing is strongly preferred. Doing it differently would be seen as odd. Because of my actual family name I'm often "first". But I also frequently publish with more prominent people and no one ever thinks that I dominate the research in any way.
But the work in such fields tends to be highly collaborative (as I suspect it is in yours) where it is difficult to say who contributed "more".
But if a paper results from your doctoral research, it should say something about that in a note, perhaps the ack section. People will assume that you (and perhaps your advisor) did the driving.
I find the fighting over authorship position on some posts here to be very saddening. I understand that in some fields (lab science, say) that there are lots of things going on in a give lab with one person primarily responsible for some part of the research and should therefore get more "credit" for the papers even though others in the lab contributed something. But the fights make it seem like, to them, research is a zero-sum game.
Be happy that you work in a field that values collaboration and joint success. But if Mike doesn't ack you and suggest you as a co-speaker (or as the actual speaker) then there is a problem (his) that you can address with him. Be nice, of course, but be firm. "We built this together." Get your advisor on board. "Help me out here Z, I can use the exposure and experience." He knows that, of course. Don't let him forget.


text:
How does Google Scholar rank coauthor list?
I don't think the rank of the co-author list is random. It must follow some order that's definitely not the time order. I used to think that this rank depends on the number of papers you and the co-authors wrote, the number of citation of those co-authored papers have, etc. But I don't think this is true now since I found some hard evidence that this thought failed. So my question is how Google Scholar ranks the co-author list?

I wanna say the ranking is based on the number of citations the co-authors have with, but I’m not 100% sure.

@TheGuy That criterion doesn't fit the output on my profile. I have a certain author A (one paper in common, cited 9 times) rated higher than author B (one paper in common, cited 12 times).

@FedericoPoloni thanks for the input! I just took a wild guess based on my profile!

The coauthors are ranked by relevance, and the exact definition of relevance probably changes over time. Papers and citations are obviously important factors. Google may also consider other factors such as the age (or age distribution) of the citations or the overall ranking of the coauthor among all researchers. The ranking of A in the coauthor list of B might also be influenced by the ranking of B in the coauthor list of A.
In my profile, a coauthor with 2 shared papers (20+3 citations) is ranked higher than a coauthor with 3 shared papers (9+3+0 citations). This person is ranked higher than another coauthor with 1 shared paper (35 citations), who is in turn ranked higher than another person with 2 shared papers (5+3 citations). You could produce a ranking like this with a weighted sum of the number of papers and the number of citations, but that's probably not the whole story.
It's good to remember that Google is a search/advertising company. Ranking pieces of information by relevance is their core business. They won't disclose the exact details of the rankings, as those details are important trade secrets. Google also keeps changing the details, as advertisers and websites would otherwise learn to game the system, making the rankings less useful.

I wish Google can provide some more details about how they did this. We used to have this hypothesis that the higher the students are on the co-author list of their advisors, the more likely they will get a position at a higher ranked organization.

But no author will pay them, will they?

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Professor's weird behavior
I have just started a thesis-based masters degree.
My supervisor has asked me to help with another student's project. So I am working with another student of my supervisor. We work together and send him a report weekly. We send reports on time.
One time our report had a mistake, the professor got mad at me (at that time I sent the report to him). He told me unpleasant things and I got really disappointed at that moment and it happened two times. It was weird because firstly he was very good with me and this behaviour was very unlikely. Secondly, he was not mad at my colleague (another student) we were working together.
Both of us wrote and sent that report and both of us made that mistake. Why he was not mad at him? did he tell any bad thing about me to the supervisor?
What should I tell to my professor? I feel very bad. He made me feel that I am useless.
I heard that my colleague has a bad reputation of gossiping about others to the supervisor.
I should add that my colleague, thinks that he is the boss in the lab and he sometimes bullies me and tries to correct me in everything even when we are filling a form which is not related to the project.
How can I handle this situation?

Greetings I cleaned up the English a bit... but I'm not entirely sure I understand the question here.

@virmaior, thanks. I also edited, you changed part of it to another thing. please, read it again you will understand the question this time.

What kind of mistake did you make?  Like, are we talking about something as trivial as a typo, or a bit more of a substantial mistake like a miscalculation, or something extreme like apparent academic dishonesty?  Also, you may want to include the country that this happened in - cultural stuff can vary pretty significantly.

Does he respect your work more than that of your co-student? Some profs believe in "tough love", and will chastise the better student more on a similarly weak result. Not that I support this, but this may be behind this. If the other student pulls you down (which may be the case), you may want to suggest detaching yourself from the other, as "it affects your performance". The prof has now unwittingly given you the material for this.

@Nat, North America. It was a misunderstanding, but it was not me only.

It sounds like an unpleasant environment to me. But still, this is one incident, right? So it might make sense to wait a little longer and see if this was a one-off or fits into a pattern.
If this turns out to be a pattern, you shouldn't stay in this lab beyond your Masters degree. If you really need a publication from your Masters degree (something that's not at all required in my field, for example), you should actually consider going to a different lab. If you feel like your supervisors anger, or your colleague's backstabbing, is too much, go to another lab as well.
While you are in this lab, there is surprisingly little to 'handle' about the situation. Just do your work, as separate from your colleague as possible, ignore your supervisor's anger but do try to get as specific feedback from them as possible, finish your Masters on time, get your recommendation letter and leave.
This answer sounds incredibly jaded and that's because it is quite self-centered: this is just a way for you to get through your Masters as painless as possible.

To add on that. Since OP is the one who send the report, it could be that the supervisor mistakenly assumed that OP wrote it and made the error, even though the responsibility is actually shared. In this case, the incident should not repeat itself.

Writing your Masters on a supervision, is a higher level thing than your previous studies, it is like as if you would be a professional member of the faculty. Of course you aren't, but with the eyes of the people working there is it some similar. This is why you are in deep water now, and this is why you are surprised by the suddenly hardened expectations.
First, you can't be sure, if your partner is gossiping. Even if he does, what could he say to the prof? The contact between the prof and your partner should be surely very fragile. He likely doesn't have anything what the prof would really need, but both of you need something very strongly, to which the prof is the gateway: your Masters degree. No, his position isn't better even a little bit, than yours, even if he is gossiping.
Second, doing masters' supervision is a higher thing in the eyes of the prof as leading the ordinary lectures, but not too much. You are not important. You are part of his daily work, and surely not a super-important component of his wannabe Nobel medal.
Furthermore, you are doing Masters in the first time in your life, while this prof is working with students since years, or decades. He is surely a much stronger player as you could imagine.
On these reason, I think it is improbable that the partner is gossiping. He has simply nothing what the higher levels would need.
However, the critics of the Prof have probably a factual part: what he said, what his problem is with your work. You also suspect an unsaid part. You have no way to know, what is it, even if it exists.
The rational thing to do: fulfill everything what the prof said. Fix the problems of the said part. Doing that, you might likely induce him to revalue his thinkings about the unsaid one, too. In any organization, if you are working well for it, it should provide a protection for you. If you do your task well, there won't be important any more, what your partner did (or not).
P.s. It might be a personal matter of taste, but I was always surprised, what could be useful in doing papers in pairs or in groups, even in the rare cases if it is allowed. It will be your note, your degree, so it should be your work. Maybe if there is something, what no one can do alone, it is okay, but there should be very clear distinction, what are you doing and what the others.

@GürayHatipoğlu, what you mentioned is happening for me right now. this project is that student's master thesis and I think they are taking advantage of  me and disregarding me. the professor also want to disregard me.  who will be the first name in the paper?

@GürayHatipoğlu, could you pls explain this part more? " being cautious about not making any communication/misunderstanding rooted problems is a good idea. "

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text:
What all should be included in a motivation letter for PhD in Geology?
What all should be added in a motivation letter for a PhD in Geology?
Should I write about:

My M.Sc project?
My schooling?
My hobbies?
How I got interested in that particular topic?

What can I do if I don't have enough experience in that particular project?


text:
Can I publish a paper which 1) proposes an idea and 2) proves that the idea doesn't work?
I wonder if is it okay for a researcher to suggest a new technique in a field of research and prove that this new suggested technique is a bad suggestion and gives no or negative gain and publish his work as a research on bad idea? (I'm in computer science but my question is a general question about every other field.)
Of course if there is some believe and doubt in the field about the idea, the researcher can prove it is correct or not in a research and it would be totally a productive result. However, if the idea is totally new and he just wants to prove incorrectness for future researchers, is this type of research acceptable in academia?
If not, why?
What is wrong with proving some never-existing idea is not a good idea?
I read this and I want to know what the current academical approach about such a research result is and the reasons for it.

This seems to be very dependent on whether the idea seems like it might work to people who are experts in the subject already.

Perhaps not exactly equivalent, but there is a paper on why Bubble Sort is always the worst option among the common elementary sorts.

Dmitry is spot on, but let me add that step 2 is much harder than one may think. Doesn't it work because it doesn't, or because you didn't do it right?

define "new" - because one could argue that a new technique is one that was used in another paper for the first time, and you're planning to write a paper to explain why the other's methods weren't sufficient.  In which case I think this could absolutely be a paper

The problem you run into is significance. It may be progress, but how much? An infinitesimal increment that doesn't particularly help anyone will be hard to publish. And negative results have an immediate strike against them in this regard.

Some pointers: https://ask-open-science.org/1304/ https://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2015/02/25/positively-negative-new-plos-one-collection-focusing-negative-null-inconclusive-results/ http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/digitalresearch/2018/05/14/negative-results-open-data-curious-world-research-publication/ https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/on-medicine/2012/10/10/no-result-is-worthless-the-value-of-negative-results-in-science/ https://blog.f1000.com/tag/negative-results/ https://nataliematosin.com/2015/02/10/published-opinion-positives-in-negative-results-when-finding-nothing-means-something/

why not make 2 papers: one exposing the idea, the second disproving it?

Publishing takes a long time and a huge amount of effort. Wouldn't you rather spend that time and effort on an idea that does work? (And if you need such an idea, I am certain your colleagues and collaborators---and heck, likely tons of people on this site---would love a helping hand...)

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30995/what-to-do-when-you-spend-several-months-working-on-an-idea-that-fails-in-a-mast/31082#31082

What is wrong with proving some never existing idea is not a good idea?

Ideas are easy to produce, but unfortunately only a tiny fraction of them are really useful. If you pick an idea at random, it's likely to be not a good idea, and in most cases it would be relatively easy to check it and see it. So, your referees and your editor may wonder why is it so important to publish this random negative result, particularly in competition with other ideas, which actually lead to improvements and positive results.

why-science-needs-to-publish-negative-results

Some negative results are indeed worth publishing. For example, when you consider not a random idea, but a mainstream direction, which is believed to be superior all the time, and demonstrate that for a particular class of problems, or in particular setting, it does not work. So, your negative result essentially is an important warning that some popular and blindly trusted method is not yet well understood and should not be used as a silver bullet. Publishing such result can help preventing serious mistakes and hopefully start important discussion, eventually leading to improvement (or ban) of existing methodology.
Even in this case, you will need to do a good job convincing your referees and editor that this negative result is worth publishing, particularly if they are stand behind the idea you prove to be not good. Academia is very much influenced by the modern culture of success. It's much easier to become successful in academia when you talk about your success (however marginal and simple), rather when you produce negative results (however important and difficult).

One famous such example in computer science is the 1972 paper by Klee and Minty proving that the simplex algorithm is not worst case poly time.

“you will need to do a good job convincing your referees and editor that this negative result is worth publishing”  One can see this as a special case of: you will need to do a good job convincing your readers that this negative result is worth reading.

@PLL Your readers is a vague and recursive definition leading to logical fallacies: if they are not convinced, they are not your readers, so all your readers are convinced, etc. Reviewers and editor is well-defined set.

Another famous example is Minsky and Papert describing limitations of the Perceptron.

In high school, we were taught a similar concept of the science fair Dead Plant Experiment. "I watered this plant with bleach, this one with motor oil, and this other one with brake fluid. They all died." Yes, your plants died, but so what?

I once wanted to apply some technique to a problem in bioinformatics. Some colleagues told me "That won't work", but I couldn't find any publication about this. So I tried it and it didn't work. We ran many experiments using different scenarios and got it published. And I'm happy about it, because now the next PhD student can find my publication and have evidence that this popular method does not work for this problem. It was the main publication of my thesis and not regarded negatively at all.

One case I can imagine for that, looks something like that:

Based on existing research [1,2,3,4,5] we hypothesize seemingly obvious idea that process X should follow path Y. But when we look at this super-obscure papers [6,7] it seems that X only follows Y under very limited circumstances. Hence, generalization that X follows Y is false. Here are more details.

In scientific paper you have to create something new, based on something old. For example, new theory that refutes old theory, or new theory that is based on recent experimental results. In this case you base your theory on existing theories/data, and logic. Then refute it using some other, less known data.
In nutrition circles, for example, there is a wide-held belief that eating too much protein will stress and damage kidneys. That seems about right, since if you put too much pressure on some system (kidneys) it will suffer, correct? Well, the data on that comes mainly from kidney-failure patients, and when you look at data on healthy subjects, there is no harm at all.

There is a nice example of this in a field that is closer to the OP's, namely Software Engineering: The Waterfall Software Engineering Process. Here, the author described a process that cannot possibly work, then explains why it cannot possibly work, and lastly proposes modifications to the process to make it work. The important aspect is, that the author didn't pull Waterfall out of thin air, rather he designed it explicitly based on widely-believed falsehoods that managers without a Software Engineering background have about how Software Engineering works.

In other words: Waterfall is a process that organizations that are not experienced in Software Engineering conceivably might come up with themselves and believe it to a good idea. In fact, the paper was too successful in this: managers who didn't understand Software Engineering actually did read only the first third of the paper, and implement Waterfall in their organizations, thinking it looked like a good idea.

@JörgWMittag I believe it was "1976 Bell & Thayer - Software Requirements are they really a problem?" that popularised the incorrect reading of Royce's original paper

Another example is Grothendiek's "Hodge's General Conjecture is False for Trivial Reasons" (pdf).

Other answers don't seem to mention that individual journal policies are important too, and you need to pick the right journal that will publish this kind of research. Obviously you're not going to get into the top journal of your field with a negative result, however, 'PLOS ONE’s broad scope provides a platform to publish primary research, including interdisciplinary and replication studies as well as negative results' (source: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/journal-information).
Publishing can take a long time. The main practical question is that given the low impact of publishing negative results, is it worth your time going through all the hoops of getting it published.

Research that contains negative results about an experimental technique that seemingly fails to produce any useful result, or measure what it was trying to measure, can sometimes lead to a scientific revolution.
So yes, if the research addresses interesting questions and is carried out in a competent way, of course it can be published.

This is hardly a fair example. Michelson-Morley was not testing an idea that M and M "had just thought up one day."  They (and other experimenters) were testing one of the hottest contemporary topics in physics, in order to distinguish between several competing theories. (And their first experimental attempt was partially inconclusive in meeting that objective!)

@alephzero I could be wrong about this, but my recollection is that scientists of the period were certain that the ether, and the velocity of the solar system relative to the ether, were meaningful concepts, so there wasn’t any “competing theory” that predicted Michelson and Morley’s result (in fact I don’t think there were any competing theories at all). In the paradigm of classical mechanics, the only competing explanation for their results would be that their experimental technique was flawed and that their results were therefore useless. Fortunately they published anyway.

@alephzero you do have a valid point that my analogy is not perfect, but I do think it is a “fair example” and demonstrates that negative results in science are sometimes more influential and important than positive ones.

But there is a huge difference between disproving a widely-held belief (e.g., Michelson-Morley) and disproving an entirely new idea that nobody knew about until somebody wrote a paper both proposing it and showing that it doesn't work, which is what the question is about.

@David I don’t deny that there is a difference, but I think that there’s also a similarity. The point is that negative results can have value. Even coming up with a brand new hypothesis and then disproving it can be interesting and worthwhile, and hence publishable. Also, Michelson-Morley didn’t “disprove a widely held belief”. Rather, their result simply didn’t make sense within the paradigm of the physics of the time. They didn’t claim to have disproved anything, but simply reported their findings. Anyway, my answer may not be the most relevant, but I think there’s a useful lesson there.

@DanRomik OK but the important thing is that Michelson and Morley were working on something that everybody already cared about.

David is completely right. M&M didn't come up with an idea that didn't work ("we propose aether theory and we show experimentally that it's inviable"), they proposed a separate idea ("you can use interferometry to measure the aether wind") which did work.

Dmitry has covered it well, so here is an example of showing a mainstream direction does not work from the field of computer science, and specifically time series data mining. The paper Clustering of time-series subsequences is meaningless: implications for previous and future work (2004) by Eamonn Keogh and Jessica Lin at UC Riverside showed that online and offline clustering of time-series subsequences via a sliding window was completely meaningless and led to incorrect conclusions.
This is a good paper to reference since it motivates the problem with a review of the literature and that many of the papers' conclusions would be invalidated by this negative result, performs a number of experiments to demonstrate the negative result, provides a remedy to the negative result, and concludes.

If the idea is interesting enough, and the reason why it doesn't work is also nontrivial and interesting, then I would say this is definitely publishable,  with bonus points if you can use the combination of idea-plus-no-go-theorem to shed some new light on aspects of the problem which have not been unearthed before.
Basically, I would propose as the key criteria to frame this decision:

How likely is it that someone else will come up with that idea in the near- or mid-term future? How likely is it that a literature search will save them a significant chunk of time?
To what extent do the techniques you use to prove your no-go theorem add new tools or insights into the theory?

If you think that the answer to either of those questions is positive, and you feel confident that you can convince both editors of reviewers of that answer, then I would say that you should go ahead and try it. (Of course, this involves a huge judgement call, and reasonable people can disagree about both of those answers. If you're in doubt, consult with colleagues before going ahead.)

In fact, one of my papers (this one) arguably falls into that category: there was this existing observation from experiments ("there is an asymmetry in the harmonic emission doublets") and we came up with what we thought would be an excellent way to explain it ("if you analyze from a rotating frame, there are ionization-potential shifts which simplify the ionization dynamics"), but it turned out that in the full analysis the simplification brought in by this idea is exactly cancelled out by some non-intuitive effects.
Of course, that's not the whole story, and there are a bunch of conceptual insights into the configuration and the overall theory that fall out of the analysis, as well as some concrete experimental predictions, so you can't cleanly say that the idea-plus-disproof by itself is what made the paper publishable. But then, I would argue that if the work is nontrivial enough, then it will rarely be the case that you can cleanly separate the idea-plus-disproof from the conceptual insights added by the paper, and it is the latter that can really make it publishable.

You invented a new hammer and discovered that it is not good for driving in the intended nail. Are their some nails that it is good for? If so, you could write a paper about that -- and bring in the failure to work with the other problem as a limitation of the new tool. On the other hand, if the new tool is literally good for nothing, why bother?

well, because if it is an obvious hammer that saves other people the hassle of finding out that it doesn't work. The more so as not being in the literature, that hammer will stay novel (i.e. may lure sientists because there seem to be possibilities of publishing results obtained by that hammer - before they realize it doesn't work).

@cbeleites Good point, but if it is an obvious hammer then it is probably a hammer which comes from applying some hammer-making heuristic, in which case the limitation of that heuristic could be the focus of the paper.

You have to realize that the publishers motivations are not purely academic. I’ve tried to publish null results before (on a topic of high interest) with negative outcome. There are two problems you face.
First, if you publish on a completely new idea (that you prove ill founded), there just isn’t a wide audience. If you seek to prove Relativity wrong, you’ll get attention. But, if this is totally new, the readership won’t care much.
Second, in today’s journals, you need to tell a nice story. The reaction to my own attempts were basically ‘we believe you, but come back when you can end on a positive note’
So proving x != z when no one is studying x or z isn’t interesting, but even if it were, it’s more compelling to outline that x != z, but x ~ y ~ z.

Think of publishing papers as a way of saying "Hey, here is something I've proven, rather than do this yourself you can read my results and see if they help you out in what you're thinking of doing." to help everyone progress.
Now, the question is, is your 'never-existing idea' something other people might try? If not then you aren't telling them anything useful and it isn't worth publishing. Otherwise it is worth it.

I would like to add to previous answers, that if your idea, if realised, is useful, then if you stress what exactly stops your idea from working and what issues (potentially olvable) need to be solved for it to work, then it is a valid and useful paper.
Example: Orbital elevator. Possible? Not currently. Interesting? Yes. Scientific value? Depends on how deep the research is done.

There are Journals of Negative Results, e.g.
http://www.negative-results.org/
https://link.springer.com/journal/12952
http://www.jnr-eeb.org/index.php/jnr
https://openaccesspub.org/journal/ijnr
Thus, generally, publishing "negative" results is possible. Choose a journal appropriate for your field of work and check its "Guidelines for Authors".


text:
What is the format for “Modulhandbuch” (course description) of previous degrees when applying for MS in German universities?
My bachelor’s degree is in Electronics and Communication Engineering.  I will be applying as non-EU applicant  for an M.Sc. in electrical engineering and information technology (“Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik”) at German Universities.
For application, I need to upload the “Modulhandbuch” of my previous bachelor’s degree to prove my degree equivalence with German B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and University of Stuttgart are asking for this Modulhandbuch.

Example 1 from Admission Requirement (Zugangsvoraussetzungen) at KIT:

Admission to the degree program requires successful completion of a degree program resembling the bachelor's degree program in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at KIT in content and volume. The following must be part of the program:
advanced mathematics
fundamentals of eletrical engineering (e.g. "linear eletrical networks", "electromagnetic fields", "electromagnetic waves", "electronic circuit")
systems engineering (e.g. "system dynamics and control systems engineering", "signals and system")
digital and information technology

Example 2 from University of Stuttgart LINK, under “Nicht-EU-Bürgerinnen” (non-EU citizens):

Zusätzlich für Bewerbungen in Masterstudiengänge:

Je nach Fach gibt es möglicherweise Ergänzungsanträge, die Sie der Bewerbung unbedingt beilegen sollten. Sie finden diese auf der Seite Auswahlkriterien und Zulassungsordnungen Master-Studiengänge
Beschreibung der Studieninhalte Ihres abgeschlossenen Bachelor-Studiengangs

English version:

Additional documentation for applicants to Master's study programs:

Depending on the subject, there may be supplementary amendments that you should attach to the application. You can find this on the page: Selection criteria and admission statutes for Master's study programs
Description of the contents of your completed Bachelor's study program

Problem
This Modulhandbuch is known as course curriculum or course description in my home country. In my case, the course-curriculum booklet that I collected from my previous university is hundred pages long with several elective subjects of multiple specializations.
Question

Should I upload the entire scanned booklet?
Should I include only the specific pages that are covered (main subjects + elective subjects that I've taken) as per my transcript or mark sheets?
In case of KIT, should I include only the specific pages as asked by the admission committee?
Any further suggestions and advice are welcome.

When I switched my BA, I had to provide the new university with the "Studienordnung" (the whole thing, a 60+ page document) of my previous studies, so they could assess which courses from the first uni that I already completed could count towards my switched BA topic. This was when switching from a German uni to another German one, not even from one outside of Germany or the EU.
So I suggest you send in the whole document. After all, in form of a PDF it will not be a huge file size. Combined with the transcript of which courses you actually took, they can figure out themselves which of the info in the document is relevant. If you just send in an excerpt, chances are that they will later ask you for the whole document anyway, to ensure you didn't omit crucial information (not necessarily out of malice, but because you don't really know whats relevant for them).

As a German professor working in this area and being occasionally tasked to look through such files, I second this. Send all potentially relevant document(s), we can quickly find the relevant parts.


text:
How to cite an answer in StackExchange?
I will use this proof in manuscript. It is clearly plagiarism if I just write down the proof and do not cite the original content.
However, how do I cite an answer in StackExchange? It is neither a blog post, nor a text in a personal website. It is an answer to a question. Should I go with traditional style such as

[1] Gjergji Zaimi (stackexchange username) “Answer to Question
  'Unique ways to keep N balls into K Boxes?' ”
  https://math.stackexchange.com/a/58756/130361. Aug 2011. Last accessed:
  2017-02-12

or is there any formal method to do this?

Are you using a specific citation style?

I am using IEEE Technical Report (ieeetr in LaTeX) style.

As a side comment, you should not cite this particular stackexchange answer unless you have a really good reason to cite it specifically.  This is a standard topic in combinatorics ("compositions of n into k parts"), and it can be found in lots of textbooks.  For example, it's in Section 1.2 of Stanley's Enumerative Combinatorics volume 1, as well as plenty of other books (where you can also find the proof given in the stackexchange answer, if you care about that specific proof).  I can't think of any plausible circumstances in which this stackexchange answer would be the best source to cite.

(But of course this doesn't answer the question of how to cite a stackexchange answer.  Your proposal looks fine to me, but I'll leave others to give formal answers since they may have stronger opinions about citation styles.)

@AnonymousMathematician I particularly picked this proof since it does not go deep into technicality, but only provides a to-the-point proof.

The same proof is given in the Handbook of Combinatorics (Volume II, Chapter 21, page 1026, which is the same as page 4 of the preprint http://www-math.mit.edu/~rstan/pubs/pubfiles/79.pdf).

@padawan Even if the proof is good in your context, the source is not. In many subject areas internet souces are not considered good because of many factors (questionable site reputation, user generated, subject to edits/removal, not peer-reviewed, ...)

Cited references are expected to be "reliable" and come in many ways: journal papers, conference papers, theses and books. Still, time changes! Some people started to cite blog, tweets, etc. In your situation, the problem is that the SO answer is not original but was more of a helper. You could cite the SO answer in the acknowledgments of the article, either with a URL in the text or with a citation to a "Misc" or "Electronic" item in bibtex, thus having a proper author and year for the citation.

So, in general (not the specific answer given in question), I should use published material for a manuscript. Could one of you please write your comment as an answer so I can accept?

A blogposting by me was cited in this paper see the footnote on page 12. So, you can cite unconventional non-peer reviewed sources, but only if they contain relevant original content that cannot be found in  peer reviewed sources that were published earlier. Note that in such cases you should actually cite the unconventional source, as you need to give credit to the original authors.

This question has been addressed in the network's meta: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/49760/245125

There is a link at the bottom that provides a citation in bibtex or amsrefs format;

Clicking on this particular link the bibtex citation generated is;

@MISC {58756,
      TITLE = {Unique ways to keep N balls into K Boxes?},
      AUTHOR = {Gjergji Zaimi (https://math.stackexchange.com/users/14274/gjergji-zaimi)},
      HOWPUBLISHED = {Mathematics Stack Exchange},
      NOTE = {URL:https://math.stackexchange.com/q/58756 (version: 2011-08-21)},
      EPRINT = {https://math.stackexchange.com/q/58756},
      URL = {https://math.stackexchange.com/q/58756}
  }

You could put that in your .bib file. From that point, it really depends how the rest of your citations are being formated. You might get something like;

That seems like a pretty standardised way to do it.

How do I do this for other sites like stack overflow?

@ProQ Well you could fill in equivalent details in the same form as auto generated for the sites that do support it?

That doesn't appear to be the case for all, or even most, Stack Exchange sites. For instance here you only have Share, Edit, Follow, Flag. Same with Philosophy. They should add the feature to all sites though, in my opinion.

Here is another, more specific example:
Over on Mathematica.SE a rewrite of a minimization algorithm to save computational time helped the OP of this question to complete some data analysis and publish a paper. The reimplementation was cited in the paper as Ref. 35.

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


text:
What level of detail should be included in a CV when listing the courses assisted?
I am a teaching/research assistant.
In my academic CV, I have a section called "Courses Assisted". I am not sure which way to go. I have two three different schemes on my mind:
First one, write all the semesters and list the courses assisted in that semester.
2015 - 16 Fall

AB 101 "An Introductory Course"
CD 223 "An Advanced Course"

2014 - 15 Summer

CD 232 "A Hard Course"

2014 - 15 Spring

AB 101 "An Introductory Course"
CD 232 "A Hard Course"

2014 - 15 Fall

AB 102 "Second Part of That Introductory Course"
CD 223 "An Advanced Course"

and so on.
The second one, write the course names and then list all the semesters that I have assisted that course:
AB 101 "An Introductory Course"

2015-16 Fall
2014-15 Spring

AB 102 "Second Part of That Introductory Course"

2014-15 Fall

CD 223 "An Advanced Course"

2015-16 Fall
2014-15 Fall

CD 232 "A Hard Course"

2014-15 Summer
2014-15 Fall

and so on.
The third choice, I put a table like below:

Clearly, the last one contains much more information and takes much less space. But it is a little bit harder to read.
Even though the first and the second choices seem to take almost equal amount of space, the second one takes less when there are a lot of semesters and not so much courses.
The third one is not so ordinary and it takes a little bit more effort to read. But it contains almost all the information.
I am addressing the ones who are in hiring committee: Do you care about that much detail or do you only want to know which courses the applicant assisted? Is it worth to put that detail of level to reduce readability?
Or am I overthinking?

@TomDworzanski Thanks! I've spent some time picking them :)


text:
How many times is OK to register for a PhD program?
I started a PhD program few years ago. My first PhD supervisor decided he wanted to quit university and stopped supervising PhDs (he was 70 years old). I lost about a year trying to convince this supervisor to continue, and another year trying to find another supervisor when he quit (he pretty much left all his PhD students in the air).
I transferred to another university, but nobody counts the missing years and I should finish in few months. The condition put by my new supervisor in order to be allowed to present my thesis was to come up with at least 2 new contributions in addition to my previous contributions (I have published some papers with some contributions, but many of them were group research and this supervisor said that only 2 or 3 of them really count as mine).
Now the problem is that during the last year I have worked a lot both at the university and at the PhD, but only during last weeks I started to have some ideas about what these new potential contributions could be. Considering the lack of time, there is a high chance that I won't finish on time (due to the regulations from this country you have to finish in 5 years, nobody takes into account the fact that you lost several years with other problems like replacing your PhD supervisor).
I'm not a lazy person, but first time I really had no luck, and with the second supervisor it took me a lot of time to play in the league he wanted ... Basically all articles discussed with him about Machine Learning were from MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, etc. Essentially I had to spend about a year and a half to get my knowledge to the level where I can design new algorithms or create new things that would get accepted to top journals reviewed by people from these institutions.
Of course, I can register again for the PhD, take the exams again, and present my contributions in a new thesis. The problem is when I will add all these years it will result a large interval for Europe: 7-8 years, instead of 4-5 years. My question is this: how will a potential future employer from both Academia or Private Company look at this time interval? Is it ok to try 2-3 times to finish your PhD? Will the fact that it took to long finish the PhD affect my career?

The fundamental issue here is that your first advisor left academia altogether—by retiring before his students were done. This is an awful thing to do to the people one is supervising—leaving them completely in the lurch in such a manner is unacceptable behavior. The advisor should not have taken on new students if he was planning on retiring.
As a result of this, it is obvious that some allowances for this will need to be made. The way to signal this is through your CV: list both advisors, including the dates for which you worked with them. If your first advisor is well-known enough, then this will automatically clue in others about what happened.
Overall, though, so long as the time required isn't too unreasonable for your discipline, an extended stay in graduate school isn't problematic. However, if you have mitigating circumstances such as these, it makes such problems a lot easier to overlook.

From only one side of the story, it's hard for me to describe the advisor's actions as completely unacceptable.  The advisor may not have planned on retiring when he took the students on, but a lot can change in 3-5 years.  There could be health, personal, or financial issues that we don't know about.  I agree the situation is unfortunate but at this point I'm not prepared to blame the advisor.

If, as the OP indicates, this is a European university, there would likely have been retirement regulations to be followed.

@Nate fair point - but either way, the point is what happened is an undue hardship for the OP.

@aeismail That is correct: it is a European university, and yes, regulations for retirement appeared in that year (essentially people older than 65 years can't accept new PhD students). However he had the option to finish with his current students, but denied.

What country are you in? I'm also from Europe (France) and with a letter of motivation, special circumstances, and proof that you will be funded, it's possible to do more years, although I'm not sure what the limit is (may depend on the institution).
I'm in Japan right now, and here it's possible to present your thesis at a later time, even though officially you may be on leave from the University (this allows you to skip paying tuition for many more years, which can be helpful, as tuition is several times more expensive than in Europe).
It may depend not only on the country but also on the specific University you are enrolled at. I don't recommend asking the administration yourself, as they may or may not be very receptive to your specific case. I suggest your advisor inquires for you, and if that's not possible, you can try asking for an appointment with the head of your department or doctoral school.
[edit] To answer the OP's final question, I think you can list both advisors on your resume, with the word "retired" next to the first one. I know quite a few people with successful careers in academia who took 5+ years to complete their PhD, and being 30+ years old upon graduation is not unheard of, even in the hard sciences. The race starts after you complete your degree.
PS/ saying that your first advisor unexpectedly retired in the middle of your degree would be enough to get the message through, even during an interview. You could even try throwing in some positive comments, something like, sure it took you longer but how it was actually an opportunity to gain high-level working knowledge of algorithms. :)

Romania. The length is typically 3-5 years.

Thanks! Unfortunately I don't know about the system in Romania, but I edited my answer with some suggestions for later job interviews. Good luck with your thesis :)

I am from Europe. Here 5-7 years for finishing a PhD is quite normal if you are working under a full-time work contract with your professor. I don't think it's a problem.

At least twice is absolutely for sure normal, but probably also more is normal, even if there are no any obvious reasons. And in your case the reasons are.


text:
What are the best ways to organize one's research workflow when using multiple Operating Systems?
I have a good memory, but some of the fields I'm working in (NLP, Semantic Web, Information Visualization, Machine Learning) are quickly expanding.
While I do have a good method of keeping track of good research (I only follow the best researchers and research groups on Twitter, Scholar, conferences, journals, etc), sometimes perhaps it's better to save all the interesting papers, add notes to them and put them in context and relationships with other papers (if a paper frequently cites another paper and is a sequel to that paper, perhaps it's better to read those 2 papers together, for example).
Essentially the things I want to do are these:

keep records of the workshops, classes or tutorials I attended, but also
video recordings of presentations I have never seen in real life
annotate PDFs, extract metadata from them and generate bibtex
bibliographies
keep tutorials in pdf + video format synced (where possible)
keep everything in context - organized in folders, tagged,
cross-referenced if possible (if an article is cited in a paper and I
already have it in my library, I want to be able to access it fast)
I want to be able to search about various keywords/tags regardless of the location where the actual files are stored and OS.

I noticed most of these things are doable in the Apple ecosystem (iTunes, iBooks, etc), but not really on Windows and Linux. Does anyone has any idea about how to do this in Linux and Windows? I happen to absolutely need to use both operating systems (still have some work with SQL Server, Excel, etc), but most of my development work is in Linux (coding in Java, Python, JavaScript and others, but also writing papers in LaTeX).
I would preferably only sync a huge zotero (or similar) folder using Dropbox, and papers/tutorials should be in sub-folders named after their research field, but also tagged so that I can find them regardless of the folder.
EDIT:
I have paid Dropbox, but apparently finding free WebDAV is an issue (therefore that would mean an additional 5-10 euros per month). As far as code goes I use GitHub and GitLab.
After seeing your answers, it occured to me that I'm thinking about it too much. Perhaps the best idea is this: the whole workflow should be a webapp - this way it will perform almost similarly on all operating systems, as even if there are differences between browsers, they are not so big as the differences between OSes.

You mention Zotero, which does all that, including managing PDFs, subfolders (logical directories, inside Zotero), tags, etc. You don't need to use Dropbox w/ Zotero, a webdav works better and you can get for free one w/ 10GB of space (I'll put the potential spam in the next comment so that it can be flagged and removed if you think it should, without removing this comment).

I think this question is a better fit for the Software Recommendations site.

@aeismail I agree it's a good question for Software Recommendations, but it's also a very common concern for academics as most of us have at least two computers.

@Trylks - thanks for the invite. I can't use it though as I don't know Russian. If they don't have an English version, I won't use it. I agree with you that Zotero does almost everything I want - except it keeps each file in its own folder which is painful! I want files grouped in folders based on the main subject, not each file in its own folder. Syncing with WebDav sometimes makes your files impossible to navigate outside the plugin you use (for example they can have cryptic names like 0143254afgf1543).

The fact that you use multiple operating systems is really a red herring. All of your competing work flows (Excel, Java programming, etc) can be done both in virtual machines and via remote desktop. Virtualizing a Mac is probably the hardest, but within a Mac you can create a virtual Windows Machine for Excel and a virtual Linux machine for Programming. If you have reliable network access, you can just remote desktop to the different machines.

I totally agree with you that the workflow I want it's perfect on Mac, however a my configuration on a Mac costs more than double, and I really don't see why i would throw 3500 euros through the window. I am against anything pricey by choice (Macs, iPhones, iPads). Ideally the workflow should be a webapp.

Here's what I do, to manage everything between a Mac laptop and a Linux desktop. I usually write code and do heavy lifting on the Linux machine, but when at home or reading / writing documents I use OS X.

All files of a manageable size are synchronized with BitTorrent Sync. You could also use Dropbox, but that costs money for >2 GB. BTSync is free, unlimited, cross-platform, and peer-to-peer.
If I'm writing code or TeX using TextMate on my Mac, but executing it on Linux, I just run rmate on a document on my Linux machine and the file pops up in TextMate on my Mac. It's wizardry, I tell you. It beats waiting 5-10 seconds for cloud synchronization to catch up.
I use Papers3 for my paper library, which synchronizes with my iPad. All the PDFs are kept in my small, free Dropbox account - the file organization is a bit obtuse so Papers3 is in practice Mac/iOS only. Papers3 does have a Windows app, but not Linux. Mendeley will sync with its Linux and Windows apps, so that might be your best multi-platform option for document storage and annotation.
I have not used Evernote recently, but it runs using Wine in Linux. That's another option for syncing notes and documents.

I'm not aware of a tool for Linux which comes anywhere close to Spotlight for Mac. If there is a program that will synchronize file tags and such across operating systems, I'd like to know about it! Otherwise, for advanced "metadata" and such you're usually restricted to the ecosystem of a particular application.

For code, including LaTeX I use Bitbucket (and I have invitations for that too, but maybe that's going too far...).

@Moriarty I use LaTeX, and Kile does miracles in Linux. I also use GitHub and GitLab. As far as anything Apple goes, I will never buy their products because they costs twice they should cost, and they sync everything (I don't want my pictures from the phone to be accesible on the Mac, for example - except if I choose to do that). I know about Papers and I love it, but there's no Linux version! I have a Dropbox, but even so syncing with Zotero on my own terms is a disaster (I want multiple folders, not each file in its own folder, ...).

@paxRoman Ah, I mistook your comment about Apple in the original question to mean that you had a Mac but also used Windows/Linux. By the way, you're mistaken - you can choose what things on a Mac you want to sync, and you have to explicitly switch syncing on. But here is not the place for that argument. Just be aware that most companies which provide you with a free service are making money from you somehow. I assume that any personal data I store with a free service is public domain.

@Moriarty Ok. Good to know. They're still expensive products. Yes, I am aware about this "no free lunch" policy. I would like a browser solution to be honest, and I wouldn't mind if I had to pay for it if it provides all the things I want. Otherwise Zotero + Dropbox synced via good WebDAV (though I haven't found such thing yet) might be the only thing on Linux :(


text:
PhD research, research doubts?
I am a computer science PhD candidate. I have been reading and learning a lot of my interested research area - and now it's time to formally defend my research proposal.
There is a computer architecture that has already been discussed (online articles) over blogs and videos and some companies are using it already. it's relatively new architecture though (2 or 3 years old). But I haven't found out any academic research done on that architecture for deploying/implementing it with use cases. But it has been referenced (online article, blogs etc) in academic research journals and articles.
I was thinking to write my PhD research on that new architecture with proper use cases and references. But at the moment I am having doubts about whether I should proceed or not? Or what approach should I apply in order to proceed?
Your suggestions/opinions will be highly appreciated either positive or negative.

Discuss with your advisor

@BasileStarynkevitch Thanks for your advice - I will ultimately discuss with my supervisor when I know if I am asking the right question (don't want to leave negative impression for my PhD supervisor), but I wanted to get opinion if anyone else out there has encountered this issue.

just realise you can't be the perfect student - stuff can and will, go wrong, so follow Basile's advice as your supervisor has information we, perforce, don't have...

Don't stress too much for your proposal. In all likelihood your PhD will evolve as you progress. As you said you've been reading a lot. Don't be surprised if there is little material to reference. After all, that is the point of doing Ph.D. research: you will be adding to an area of knowledge which at present is little understood.
My Prof once told me that in year 1 the student should be guided, in year 2 the student finds their feet and in year 3 the student leads their supervisors
And yes, speak with your supervisor. This will answer your doubts and display you are really commited to being rigourous.

Do ask your supervisor, but I understand not wanting to ask your supervisor about an idea that's out of the blue. It can also be hard to know what a research proposal or dissertation "should" be until you are writing one.
Two things to check:

Is this in the realm of concepts that your supervisor has conducted research on or written about or taught about?
Is this the kind of question that has been an acceptable thesis topic at your school or with your supervisor in regard to past technologies? You can ask around about previous students' thesis topics and what graduates wrote on. To get more systematic, you can ask librarians at your institution about accessing past dissertations in your program. (DO NOT read prior theses, but DO look at the titles and read the abstracts on the more relevant ones.)

You're safer with your topic if you find overlap with your supervisor's work and previous students' work. If not, try skimming some theses that sounded interesting and think about the kinds of questions they ask and their scope. You (probably) want to make sure your questions engage with deep questions that ultimately are not specific to the technology. Potentially, this might mean user experience principles or architecture efficiency.


text:
Rejecting an admit to Computer Science Graduate School and re-applying
The situation is that if I get accepted from this school, say A, I would like to go but there are certain circumstances such that if they unfold, then I would like to go to school next year. So should I even apply to A? If I reject an acceptance from A and then reapply the next year, does it put me in the bad books of the Graduate committee of that school for rejecting and reapplying?

You should ask the school what their policy is on deferring an offer of admission.

Do apply. If you don't get admitted, nothing needs to happen. If you do get accepted, accept the position if you're in a position to do so. If you can't accept the position, then talk to the graduate adviser and see if they're willing to defer you going there by a year. Most departments will be willing to do this -- they've already found you fitting for the job, so whether you come this year or next is not all that important to them. Deferrals for good reason are not uncommon.
The point is that if you don't apply, you won't get admitted this year (if circumstances would allow you to take the position), and you don't have a guarantee that you'll be admitted next year either.


text:
How to list an honorary position on a CV?
UK universities offer honorary positions, see e.g. How to get honorary academic position in UK universities? and links therein.
How does one list these positions on a CV?
For instance, suppose I am a research fellow at University A but I also am a honorary research fellow at University B.
My CV obviously lists under academic positions:

Research fellow, University A, start date – present

Where does the honorary position from University B go? How should it get listed?

To help us answer, why do you want to list this and what do you want to show? It is an honor or award? to show you work with faculty at that university?

Wolfgang's answer is reasonable to place the position in your affiliation section.
You might also consider listing the position under your honors/awards, or, its own section.
Personally, I have several "courtesy" adjunct appointments because I serve on graduate committees.
I might list this position under that section.
Just only list the position once (regardless of section), and be truthful that the position is honorary.

It's a formal position, so it goes into the same part where you list your affiliations. Just make sure that it is clear to the reader of your CV that the position is honorary -- you do not want to be accused of false advertising.

Here's how I list them in my CV:
Affiliations

 Primary affiliation:
    Principal Research Scientist, [Research Institute A]

 Honorary positions:
    Adjunct Associate Professor, [University Y]
    Adjunct Associate Professor, [University Z]
    Visiting Scientist, [Research Institute B]

Note to US readers: In my country, an adjunct appointment is an honourary position, usually to enhance research collaborations, not a teaching position.

As an FYI about the US, two types of adjuncts exist. The type you're talking about and the (usually) poorly treated teaching position.


text:
Germany PhD application: "Work Certificate"
I am a master’s student (physics) in the US, and I am applying to this PhD position in Germany. This is what the application website says:

Please apply online and provide a cover letter next to a CV in English, as well as your work certificates in one single pdf-file.

I just want to make sure what “work certificate” means. Is that just transcript/enrollment certificate from my master’s and bachelor’s university?

could it mean "work" as in paid employment? Why not ask them?

@Roland: Yes, but that will be after the job offer, not for the application.

The weird translation makes a bit more sense when you think of the Ph.D. as what it is - paid employment as a junior researcher. So, certificates of previous relevant work.

German here.
I guess that's just a questionable translation of the standard German phrase Arbeitszeugnis (pl.: "-se"), Arbeit=work and Zeugnis=certificate, diploma.
In business, Arbeitszeugnisse would mean a collection of diplomae, plus (relevant) testimonials from your former employers, or qualification certificates.
In your case, it'll probably a small collection, maybe just the diploma. That's absolutely fine at this point of your career. But if you already happen to have some experience as a lab/teaching assistant, or have worked in a related industry branch during non-term, providing some evidence might be a bonus.

Nitpicking: certificates such as diplomas, PhD certificate etc. are not Arbeitszeugnisse (they are Prüfungszeugnisse, literally translated "exam certificates").

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX Yes, but aren't those often included in the Arbeitszeugnis? As in, the latter being abused as an umbrella term for both?

@Mast: never heard of that - if, to me the umbrella term is "Zeugnisse" or even "alle Zeugnisse". We may get more insight at de.sx, though.

As @jvb said, "work certificate" is the somewhat unlucky attempt to translate the German Arbeitszeugnis.
The closest to Arbeitszeugnisse you probably have are letters of recommendation.
So, I'd hand in the letters of recommendation and explain in the cover letter that in the US instead of Arbeitszeugnisse, letters of recommendation are used.
If you get the type of recommendation that is not handed to you but rather sent directly to the university where you apply, put that into the cover letter including of whom they are to expect such letters (maybe email with them how to deal with this situation – it may be that they nevertheless want you to provide that letters of recommendation and you can then show this request to your recommending professor).
I'd expect an academic employer looking into hiring a fresh Master from the US to know that you won't have any Arbeitszeugnisse.
A German applicant with fresh master’s applying for a PhD position will often not have any meaningful Arbeitszeugnisse either: most of them haven’t worked relevant jobs (and even if you have the right to get one, a student typically won’t ask for an Arbeitszeugnis at the pub where they had a student’s waiter job, unless that’s relevant for their field of study) – at this stage, the academic certificates and possibly your master thesis are more important.

Arbeitszeugnisse become more important once you have professional experience: when your PhD is 10 years old, the Arbeitszeugnis will tell a prospective employer whether you settled down or are still strongly looking into.
There are differences between US letters of recommendation and the German Arbeitszeugnis, you can read more on The Workplace

In Germany every employee has the right to get an Arbeitszeugnis whenever they leave an employer (you can also apply for intermediate ones).
The Arbeitszeugnis has to be true but also positive and there are tons of law suits about them. This has lead to standard phrases with somewhat hidden meaning.
The Arbeitszeugnis certifies at the very least that you worked for that employer from $startdate till $enddate, and what your job was.
You can use it as proof of professional experience.
Usually it also certifies particularly important work techniques that you used, and gives a “grading” at how good you were at your job and in a variety of job-related social skills.
I gather that US letters of recommendation are sent to the prospective institution without the candidate ever seeing them. The German Arbeitszeugnis (or also letters of recommendation as English language replacement for Arbeitszeugnis) is always handed to the [former] employee, and the employee is expected to check whether they think it is correct and possibly ask for changes.
(I recently got one and the procedure was: PI: “Here’s the draft, please have a look whether you’d like to have any changes.” → some changes → PI: I’ve sent it to $big_boss for signature.” → some weeks later received snail-mail on fancy paper with big signatures.)

I'm not sure, if I would classify "work certificate" as an unlucky attempt of translation. If the purpose of the text were attracting students specifically from the US, they should have asked for letters of recommendation. Applicants from elsewhere, let's say Macedonia, Cameroun or China, might have no trouble with understanding "work certificate" - or consider both "work certificate" and "letter of recommendation" bizarre. The university wants documents that resemble a German "Arbeitszeugnis".

As already mentioned, work certificate is a blunt translation of Arbeitszeugnis (reference letter). It is a standard thing to require for regular employments in Germany. The quoted sentence looks as if some bureaucrat bluntly translated the boilerplate of a regular German job ad into English and lacked the experience to adapt it to an international audience.
What is important for you is that German applications usually come with the pertinent certificates, references, etc. for every major item on your CV.
This will usually be your bachelor’s and master’s transcripts and diplomas (if already available).
This may imply letters of recommendation, if not mentioned otherwise in the job ad; however before you waste time on this, I would just ask them.
If you spent any extended time of your life doing something other than studying and you already have a certificate for this, you might as well include it, but I wouldn’t worry about organising anything before you got an offer (see below).
For example, my applications never included my poster award or the certificate for the year I spent in compulsory military/social service.
If you adhere to the above, I consider it very unlikely that your application will be dismissed for failing to include some certificate.
Your application will probably go straight to the professor or somebody else who can reasonably handle international applicants.
They will not dismiss your application for such a reason, but tell you if they want anything else.
Of course, there are exceptions, but in that case you probably do not want the position anyway.
In general, the main place for certificates is later in the hiring process, when you got offered the position and the administration will prepare your actual contract.
They will then usually tell you specifically what certificates they need, amongst others to calculate your salary.

Good answer! I would suggest to omit the "bureaucrat" in the third sentence - could have been the PI, the head of lab or anybody else who did this. I am as unhappy as you are with a lot of bureaucracy, but assuming that "a bureaucrat" (which I read as "somebody working in general administration") did this, is not justified and doing so does not add anything valuable to the answer.

@Dirk: Sure, it could have been anybody, but it likely was administration. Hence: “looks as if” and not “was”.

In Germany you should get an Arbeitszeugnis or letter of recommendation at the end of every employment you had. These are what they ask for here.
The Arbeitszeugnis would include some basic employment details proving you actually worked where you said did and can even include a short job description. It would also include an evaluation written in a coded language that your future potential employers can decode (not a joke!). This part is most like a letter of recommendation.
In case you have never been employment, you wouldn't have one of these.

The sentence about the language used in an Arbeitszeugnis is a bit misleading – it sounds almost as if it was a secret that is shared only among the initiates of the cult of employers. The truth is much more prosaic: the text form of the Arbeitszeugnis has been the topics of numerous court decisions, which are all accessible to the public. In effect, these decisions have caused the Arbeitszeugnis to be a highly regulated genre with many formulaic expressions with clearly defined meanings. It is true though that if you don't know these definitions, you may misread the intended meaning.

I don't normally read court decisions, but hey, I am sure they are accessible somewhere :)


text:
What are the process and practices of requesting for pre-submission peer review from field experts?
I am an undergraduate student in the field of computer science, researching on my own. I have completed writing a paper for my recent research project and all set to submit it to a relevant conference. Since I worked on the paper and project by myself, I am a bit unsure about some parts of the paper, technical as well as presentational.
In my faculty, no one works on this topic so I am left a bit alone on the entire process, including reviewing the paper before sending it to peer review. Is there a practice in academia where I can send some other professor, not affiliated with my work asking help with the paper and some feedbacks on it, sort of a pre-submission peer review?
Is it a good practice? And what would be a good way to do so, if it is done?

Just be careful with opportunistic authorship predators. There are so many nowadays...

hi @Scientist can you explain a situation of opportunistic authorship ? In my situation I am also seeking for experts who may want to co-author with a role of reviewer. I am also looking for venues to cover publication costs, so if a researcher might want to cover that in exchance of revising the work miniminally, e.g. dos and don'ts (I would do the work) , it will be ok for me. Tips are welcome. What is the worst opportunitistic scenario that could happen?

If you are an undergraduate and this is most likely one of your first papers, then yes, it is a good idea to have someone check it.
Even if none of the professors or colleagues you work with are familiar with your specific topic, they might still be able to give you advice regarding style and dos and don'ts in your field.
I would suggest to ask around, ask your advisor, ask others from your lab. That should have a higher chance to succeed than contacting a random professor who doesn't know you; they tend to focus their energy more on their own students.

Thank you for your response. It's my third paper, with 2 of them already getting published. This paper is a bit domain critical, so I'm in dire need of help from someone, not in terms of writing it, but at least giving some pointers on what's correct and maybe what's not.

Unrelated to the question, congratulations on already having two papers published before even finishing your undergrad; that is not common at all! :)

Yes, getting feedback from experts is a good idea.  But there is no standard process for soliciting that feedback.  Most people you ask for feedback will not provide it.  Even journal editors have a hard time finding formal peer reviewers.


text:
Would an MDS (Master of Dental Surgery) from India be adequate for a research position in Australia?
I’ve earned an MDS (Master of Dental Surgery) in public-health dentistry in India. My thesis and other research projects focused on developing a module for dental students on tobacco cessation counselling.
Now I am in Australia, currently with an Australian spouse visa.

What qualifications are required to work as a research assistant in Australia?
Is it possible for me to work in research field as a research assistant or as a public-health professional without clearing the Australian Dental Council exam?

So it sounds like you're basically asking if someone with an academic background from India would be competitive for a research assistantship in Australia, right?  Are you specifically interested in doing research in academia or the private sector?  What degree(s) have you obtained?  Editing this information into the question could help improve it.

You got exactly what iam trying to ask... I have done MDS in Public health dentistry from India... I have no degrees from Australia...

It is probably also in your interests to investigate the current situation of 457 visas in Australia.

You could also consider applying for a PhD program at an Australian university. If you have a permanent residency, you should be able to apply as a domestic student, though you’d need to check the policies of the particular university you’re applying for to be sure.

Generally, research assistant is not a regulatory job in Australia (I work with many!). I've seen RA coming from all different background. As long as your boss is happy, there's nothing stopping you working as an RA. However, I have never seen an RA without a university degree, it's hard to convince anyone for your research potential if you don't even have a degree.
Of course, you won't be able to work as a dentist in Australia as dentist is regulatory job.

My  Indian degree would not be sufficient for me to work as a research assistant?

Iam aware that I won't be able to work as a dentist...

What all are the non regulatory jobs as a public health professional in Australia?

@H.Joes Your original question statement didn't mention a degree, so this answer was likely written up under the assumption that you didn't have one.  As this answer points out, there tend to be few regulatory constraints on research assistantships; most of the regulatory constraints tend to be on jobs that involve directly working on patients.

OK... So for a non clinical research... May be iam eligible...

@H.Joes We don't know, depends on your qualification.

You are better off clearing the Australian Dental Council exam anyways.

Welcome to Academia.SE. Would you mind expanding on your answer? OP specifically asked for options that avoided having to pass this exam. It's totally fine if you think the premise of the question is flawed and they should plan to pass the exam, but explaining your reasoning would help OP and future readers to make better decisions.


text:
Been offered a post doctorate position in Germany but now pay has changed
I was wondering if anyone could help me with my current predicament. I have been offered a postdoc position in Germany at TV-L 13.
I completed my PhD in Australia last year but have not done a master’s (in my country a special year is added after a bachelor’s). After receiving my offer, I’ve been told by HR that, because I don’t have a master’s, I will have to start at TV-L 12.
They want me to start at E TV 12 and then once my paperwork gets approved, try and move to the higher TV-L 13 scale but that seems precarious.
I’ve sent my degrees to the German Central Office for Foreign Education (“Zentralstelle für ausländisches Bildungswesen”, ZAB) but when I’ve checked the Anabin database it doesn’t seem to recognise my BA (Hons) as similar to a master’s.
Is this standard? Would that mean I would be stuck at this pay for two years? How are the levels (Stufen) negotiated?
The position is for three years. Any general advice would be great as I’m not used to the German pay system and am about to move countries.

@HarvestMoon9 : At what kind of institution is your position located? Is it a governmental agency or similar? The reason why I am asking: a colleague of mine did a master's degree at a "Fachhochschule" and later a regular PhD (both in Germany). Since she does not have a proper master's degree from a German University, she cannot work on a TL-V 13 position or higher at a Federal Agency or similar instituions (such as the German Weather Service, DWD). However, she has already been employed at research institutes in Germany at TL-V 13 and 14.

It’s a government university. I’m hoping it won’t be an issue and ZAB approve my documents. There are agreements in place between Australia and Germany to permit BA Hons from Aus enrolling in German PhDs. So surely following that logic they will approve my experience and I get paid the correct rate

"After receiving my offer" — Did you have a signed contract?

No I had not, however, I have signed an initial agreement which means we will start negotiating. Not sure if it’s exact name.

Advice to those reading question (not OP):  This is why if possible you should pick up a master's along the way, as you never know what will happen.  Indeed, I got an AA (associates in arts) before my Bachelors, too.  So I had AA, BEE, MS, PhD (4 degrees in total).  This was US.  Also, in some countries only a Plan A Masters (ie with Thesis) counts, so Plan B or coursework only doesn't.

This is a rather common error made by bureaucrats who have no idea of foreign academic careers. If your academic progress is beyond a master’s equivalent (and your job requires it), you get a TV-L 13 payment. A PhD certainly fulfils this, and thus only this degree is relevant.
(Mind that for your level (Stufe), other things may be relevant too.)
Australian doctorates are amongst those which should be recognised most easily:
There is a specific agreement on this and Australian doctorates are amongst the few that automatically allow you to call yourself “Dr.” in Germany (pertinent law for NRW, the largest German state).
Details depend on who communicated this to you, but most often this is solved by reminding the HR department that you have a PhD and this is TV-L 13 position.
In the worst case, you have to activate the professor who hired you to tell the bureaucrats to do their job properly.
Remember that your professor usually is on your side in this matter:
They do not benefit from you getting paid less (they can’t use that money elsewhere), they have no close ties with administration, and they are not very keen on losing you over this.
Mind that the difference between TV-L 12 and TV-L 13 is only about 5 % at the same level (Stufe), and if you have a higher level on TV-L 12, you may even get more (see this table of the salaries).
The best way to proceed really depends on the details: What previous experience counts at which group and which level? And would clarifying all of this delay everything make you lose one month of salary?
For example, if they count more than ten years of experience since your bachelor’s for TV-L 12, you end up at 5582 €, whereas entry-level TV-L 13 is only 4074 €.

How are the Stufes negotiated?

This is a bit more tricky as it depends on the details of your work experience and how it is counted. The crucial thing here is work experience in positions that have similar requirements (master’s equivalent) and duties (probably mostly research) as the new position. Here, any research position after your PhD almost certainly counts; everything else is more complicated.

Thank you for this breakdown it’s been quite stressful! I’ve been so shocked that my 11 years of university, including a Grad Cert in Higher Ed, a PhD, a BA (Hons Class 1) from a top Australian university could get me… E TV 12. They want me to start at E TV 12 and then once my paperwork gets approved, try and move to the higher 13 scale but that seems precarious. What do you all think?

@HarvestMoon9 I would strongly suggest to have this sorted out before moving and starting your job. Currently you still have lots of leverage, which dissipates as soon as you are actually there. And yes, you have very good grounds to negotiate for TVL-13, since this is what is intended for postdocs. That you do not have a master's degree really should not matter given that you have a higher degree than a master.

@HarvestMoon9 And, frankly, that they "need time to sort out the paperwork" for a case as as straightforward as "a PhD from Australia is still a PhD" sounds like a "them" problem. This has to be literal everyday business for a university HR department, and I would not accept an even temporary lower salary because they can't figure this out in advance.

@HarvestMoon9: Also see my edit. Mind that if the problem is that they do not recognise your PhD yet for some reason, this is a different issue altogether (and it makes me wonder why they would hire you at all, since you should then fail to fulfil the formal requirements for the position).

Thank you I’m talking to my professor tonight and hoping to clear some things up. I appreciate your advice

Apparently the issue is with not recognising my Masters. I’ve submitted all my degrees to get approved by ZABs

To be clear, the normal starting salary for a post-doc fresh out of their PhD is TV-L 13 Stufe 3. Being offered anything below that by HR is unacceptable.

@TimRias It's not as easy as that. Depending on the state, times spent on a scholarship during a PhD cannot be counted, and then you can be less than TVL E-13 Stufe 3 as a Postdoc. Also, depending on the state, it may be that the "Betriebsrat" has a say regarding the "Stufe", and then HR cannot overwrite that.

@DCTLib I agree that it happens, but all are case of the bureaucracy unjustly interpretation the reality of how thinks outside of Germany do not map onto the German system in a neat way. To anyone in academia it is clear that anyone who has completed a PhD (at a serious institution) has at least three years of relevant TVL-13 level experience. The fact that this stuff keeps happening is indicative of a strand of nationalism based bigotry that needs to be stamped out with a vengeance.

@TimRias It's not a German problem, it exists elsewhere as well. I have an old school German "Diplom" and much fun was had by me trying to convince my UK university that I would be eligible for a PhD place with that and didn't have to do a bonus masters.

@TimRias I would agree if the problem wouldn't also occur purely within the country's border. Domestic PhD scholarships do exist, and lead to later having exactly this problem when switching to a position within, let's say, a funded research project. By the way, I'm not saying that this is reasonable, but that scholarships cannot be counted is sometimes baked into the rules. The only difference is that nowadays scholarships became rarer within Germany since Max Planck institutes are using them less and the tax laws around scholarships became more complicated.

"and if you have a higher level on TV-L 12, you may even get more" But also keep in mind that you advance a Stufe automatically after some time (after 1 year in Stufe 1, then after 2 years in Stufe 2, etc.), so depending on how long you'll work there it might be less overall.

You have a PhD. That's obviously "more" than a Masters and should count. The problem here (as Wrzlprmft also points out) is a cultural issue. The German administrators are familiar with the German system where one does a Bachelors, then a Masters, and then a PhD. So everyone with a PhD also has a (separate) Masters certificate. They're also sticklers for paperwork, so if the paperwork says a Masters is needed, you need the certificate that you've completed a Masters.
The complication arises as you've done your PhD at an institution which doesn't bother with the intermediate Masters designation(*), and goes directly from Bachelors to PhD. The bureaucrats are confused because the regulations say you need a Masters certificate, and they can't find anything in what you submitted that looks like a Masters certificate.
You're unlikely to convince them that they regulations can be ignored in this case, but what you likely can convince them of is that your PhD certificate also counts as a Masters certificate.
Because in reality, your PhD likely is the equivalent of both the Masters and the PhD. In the German system, a Masters is an ~2 year degree where the student takes a combination of classes and research, and writes and defends a thesis at the end. Then the PhD is a ~3-4 year degree where they just do research and write and defend a thesis at the end. (All this is roughly speaking -- different institutions and individuals have variations.)
I'm guessing(*) your PhD program was a ~5-6 year degree, with a combination of classes and research in the first ~2 years, and then research in the last ~3-4 years, followed by writing and defending a thesis at the end. There was likely also an event (possibly colloquially known as "prelims" or "quals") at about the 2 year mark where you had to write up a document and then defend it. -- Or in other words, it was a single program which combines the features of both the German Masters and the German PhD programs. Additionally (though institutionally dependent), it's also likely that - had you decided that the PhD program wasn't your cup of tea - at about the 2 year mark you would have been able to write up a thesis, defend it, and then leave the program with an official Masters degree (which is further recognition that the first two years of your program is a Masters equivalent).
So what's likely helpful is to convince the bureaucrats that your Australian PhD certificate counts as both a PhD and a Masters. I'm not sure what documentation you'd need to do this, but that's the angle I'd recommend to take when asking about it: "I'm terribly sorry about the confusing and backward way Australia runs its graduate education program. It says PhD, but it's really equivalent to a combined Masters/PhD program. What documentation do we need to prove that?" -- It may seem like a minor phrasing change, but going from "I don't need a Masters, I have a PhD!" to "My PhD certificate should also meet the requirements for a foreign Masters equivalent." is an important one for regulation-following sticklers. The first one asks them to bend the rules and special case you, but the second accepts the regulations and tries to satisfy them.
(*) I'm assuming. I'm not overly familiar with the academic system in Australia, and am basing it on the system in the United States.

I'm also not super familiar with Australia's academic system, except for through this site, but I think you have it a bit backwards; it's not that a PhD in Australia counts like a Masters+PhD, like a US PhD does, but that a "Bachelors (Hons)" does; the Hons part is a 1-2 year add-on to the bachelors degree, rather than just indicating a good performance in the bachelors component like "honors" typically means in the US. As such, it's a lot like a UK masters, and can be integrated with the bachelors.

The Australian system is closer to the British system. A bachelors is 3 years. Honours is an additional 1-1.5 years which is generally 40-100% research, culminating in a thesis, which is typically one academic paper in length but a bit more verbose and not as polished. A PhD is then 3.5-4 years. An honours is similar to a masters or the first 1-2 years of a PhD program in the US. It's not 100% analogous but this can give you an Idea. I'm a TT academic in Aus and did my PhD in the US

Yes that’s right, I did a 3 year BA, a 1 year Honours which included a 20k thesis, then did a 3.5 year PhD. I also did an additional Grad Cert of Higher Ed. I’ve sent my documents to ZAB for approval and hope they say my experience is equivalent. Thank you for your help everyone.

In Au am Masters is actually not as respected as an honors (masters are for those not allowed to do an honours).

I was exactly in a similar situation a year ago, but I manged to pull it to tvl-13. I convinced them that my msc-phd is combined together,like the US system. Negotiate strong don't fall on that trap.