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How should course content be shared between instructors?
I am a PhD student at a fairly large university, and I have twice taught a 200 level course for my department. The course is a new course that I developed. All of the lecture and lab content for this course was developed from scratch. As I will be graduating shortly (fingers crossed), a faculty member is scheduled to take over this course. My question is, "should I pass my course content on to said faculty?" I am primarily concerned about passing my slides on verbatim. Some issues I am concerned about are my indebtedness to the department (I developed some content while a TA and some while an adjunct.), ownership of the slides (What rights do I have to my content?), and distribution of content (How can I prevent the material from being further distributed?). I am interested in the issue of sharing content in general and not just in this one instance. Any guidance is much appreciated!
edit - as a colleauge of mine pointed out, I think there is a power imbalance issue as well. The faculty at my university are generally disinclined to share material with graduate students. Most grad students have to develop their own content. On the other hand, grad students are being asked to pass on material to faculty.

What is a "200 level" course?

Why wouldn't you want to have your material accessible by as many people as possible? I would put all material online, open access.

@gerrit, it is a second year undergraduate course. 1XX is first year; 4XX is fourth year. Roughly speaking.

@Zenon, perhaps I should. My concern is that I will lose control and that the material will no longer be attributed to me.

Copying material without attributing it to you is plagiarism, which (as I'm sure you're aware) is taken pretty seriously by academics. Publishing work online is exactly the same as publishing it in a book or journal, the only difference being that anyone can access it (which is definitely a good thing). My undergraduate tutor gave us a couple of explanatory articles by a professor at another university, and they were referenced just like the other items on the reading list.

In my opinion: Yes, you should certainly pass over all course material.
My colleague took over a course from another colleague who had left. My colleague know much less about the subject than the one who had left, so putting together a good course was a challenge for him. In theory, he had passed over all course material, but in practice, it was not very well organised, and my colleague ended up having to build it mostly from scratch.
As you have probably experienced, the first time you give a course is by far the most work, because you have to create everything from scratch. It helps enormously to have access to earlier course material. You lose very little by giving away course material. It's probably not publishable anyway — and if it is, passing it on to the next doesn't disqualify you from publishing it as a review or textbook, because passing it on is not a publication.
The only situation I can imagine where it would be problematic is if the person who you pass it on to claims it as their own and incorporates it in a review paper or textbook. But if you have any trust for the person, they won't do that, and it's much better to simply make all the course material available. Probably for the entire world.

What if I provided watermarked PDF copies of the slides? This would drastically reduce the instructor's workload, but would also prevent the content from being directly reused. Is that just petulant?

@Sam I would really advise to avoid watermarks… it's not technically efficient method, and most importantly it adds insult to injury (in addition to giving material of a degraded quality, you make it clear that you don't trust your follower). You were employed to produce this course, you did so, good for you. They will reüse it, probably improve it over time, good for them. Most probably they will do it right, and acknowledge your contribution. If they don't, shame on them, and you can act. But don't assume bad faith!

Or, to link the issue to a related situation: when you publish figures in papers, do you watermark them because of fear of them being misused?

@F'x Thank you. I will avoid the watermarks. I had thought about the comparison between published papers. I think it is a little different because there are systems in place to ensure attribution of paper publications. If the course content is further distributed or reused (perhaps not by this instructor, but by a graduating student who may TA the course) there is no attribution.

I would recommend posting a time-stamped snapshot of the course materials on your own web page, to resolve any later contention over priority.  Then let it go.

@F'x: Figures in papers are different.  Officially, at least for most journals in my field, those figures are owned by the publisher; explicit permission from the publisher is required even for the author to reuse them.

In some cases, ownership may be defined in your contract. In the US, intellectual property law usually assigns ownership of works created during the course of expected duties of employment to the employer. The employee may or may not retain ownership, depending on the contract that was signed.
Your institution may also have ownership over all course materials, since you created them while you were an employee doing expected duties (teaching). Thus, they can do whatever they want with them, including assigning, licensing, or selling their ownership. Your ownership, however, would remain intact, if you had ownership. Your ownership cannot be reassigned or sold without your permission or under court order. You may have already give permission waiving ownership by signing your contract.

Thank you, I am not sure what my contract states. I will look into that...

Many US universities have an explicit policy giving their employees copyright to "traditional academic works" but requiring a permanent royalty-free license to the university.  Otherwise, nobody would write textbooks.  Whether lecture slides qualify as "traditional academic works" probably depends on which lawyers you ask.

Complementing the other answers, that are more specific to the text in your question (being a TA and giving up the material), I'll add how I "roll" as a faculty member with my teaching assistants after 10+ years.
I have amassed a lot of material for several of the first-year courses I was "stuck with" in the beginning. It's true that some academic tradition is to ask TAs to develop their own material without any sharing from faculty. Some faculty I have spoken with feel it's how a TA builds character; others say it's a way to see if a TA has potential as a researcher; others say it's simply tradition.
In my case, my courses are too important to have TAs test out their worth and possibly crash and burn due to lack of support (it happened once that the students revolted, and this problem fell back into my lap, being the faculty member in charge of the course). So I learned my lesson to hand over everything, with the caveat that the TA know the material in the books and not think of the material as being a "pass" at teaching the course. I always encourage TAs to re-do their presentation slides, only because presenting is a personal style, and it's risky to present someone else's material with confidence.
After I started sharing, one TA added some exercises that were well done, but he didn't want to give them back, saying it was his property and he was underpaid, etc. Fair enough, since I didn't state any expectations when I gave out my material.
So, now I will give my material out to any new TAs who sign an informal contract (email response) saying that by accepting the material, they agree to improve on it (add exercises, examples, exam questions, multiple-choice questions, analyses, etc.) and render it back to the community (me). This has worked well with many TAs, and frankly the cooperation factor is very high.
Another practical aspect: I ask TAs to cite sources of material they borrow (just as they do in their research reports). The course material is already full of citations, so it's natural. In the distant past, some undergrad students raised a stink (rightly!) about TAs who copy/paste figures/text from web sources without citing them in Powerpoint. In one case, a TA was fired because he wouldn't change this behavior.
As for how to share, today I'm using Google Drive (our school has the academic license). In the past I used Dropbox and both ways are very practical.


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How much is simplicity of ideas/approaches in a paper appreciated by journals and reviewers?
I'm about to publish a paper (in a STEM-related field) that is based on a simple (but effective) idea that can be described in a few sentences, so it sounds almost trivial upon reading the description. Yet no one else published it although it leads to significant improvements of the state-of-the-art. So, it is not trivial by definition.
I for myself (and most people I know) like those paper best that are based on simple but effective ideas in contrast to less effective ideas presented with much impressive-sounding content where the lack of originality is "obfuscated" by "coating" the exposition in mathematically advanced concepts.
So my question is: Do peer-reviewers and journal editors typically value simplicity even if it leads to shorter, maybe even "trivially sounding" exposition (I mean, many good ideas in science sound trivial in retrospect)? Or should I try to "coat" ideas in elaborate context and mathematically advanced concepts to impress reviewers?

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Reviewers are not a uniform group of people. Those who can apply your new idea in their own work certainly appreciate explaining it in a way that is as simple and as direct as possible. They are more likely to give you a negative review if you present your idea in a way that is unnecessarily difficult to understand. So here, there is no conflict between the aims of getting your paper accepted and providing the most value to the reader.
Who you may be concerned about are the reviewers who are from adjacent domains, who may rely on their gut feeling to tell if the paper should be accepted or not, without making it explicit to the editor. They are more likely to recommend rejection when it looks like there is no deep insight in your contribution, and they may use the complexity of it as proxy for the amount of insight. Whether such reviewers are actually common depends on the field. For instance, in computer science with conferences and strict review deadlines, they are probably more common than in journals that take their time to find the optimal reviewers.
So what to do in such a case? Making the contribution hard to understand is a disservice to the posterior world, and you certainly don't want to become known for it. Luckily, there are a couple of alternative strategies:

Adding an adjacent result to give the paper more technical depth. So you found a method to solve A. Perhaps you can also show how to solve a related problem A' with it after some modifications? If the latter is technically challenging, and solving A is arguably very useful, then you may make all reviewers happy, and the core contribution is still there. And who knows, perhaps somebody actually needs a solution to A', and then finds your paper.
Formalize the key insight behind your new approach, and add this as theoretical analysis. If you keep the paper in a way that the paper is still readable without the theoretical analysis, it's still a helpful paper even for those who want to skip the theory.
Build a nice running example that shows why exactly your new approach circumvents problems of previous approaches and discuss in detail where exactly the previous approaches fail on it and what makes your new approach succeed on it. This highlights the insight that went into your rather simple approach.

The last one surely has its advantages over the others. But it may be unrealistic in your particular case.

Thanks. This is a very heplful answer, exactly to the point of my question. Especially this advice: "Formalize the key insight behind your new approach, and add this as theoretical analysis. If you keep the paper in a way that the paper is still readable without the theoretical analysis, it's still a helpful paper even for those who want to skip the theory"

"likely to recommend rejection when it looks like there is no deep insight in your contribution, and they may use the complexity of it as proxy for the amount of insight." Yes, exactly my point. So I think many authors tend to publish more-than-neccessarily complex exposition of their ideas just to be on the safe side and avoid the risk of "sounding too trivial". This is why I really like the "previous work" sections where authors describe the substance of ideas of OTHER other authors often in very simple and understandable terms.

@zx-81 I am not sure if really many authors present their results in a too-complicated way. But in some case, the temptation is definitely there. I once got three reviews for a paper that all said "Wow, these are strong results, funny that nobody did it before, but your proofs are too simple -- reject". The paper ended as a tech report because I didn't find a solution that I didn't hate. Still, I believe that the problem is best dealt with by side-stepping, for instance by one of the approaches in the answer. I've seen many papers in CS that look like approach A from my answer was used.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" (often attributed to A. Einstein).
What you suggest is obfuscating, as you say. I doubt that reviewers would reward you for that. They won't be impressed.
Of course, what you have discovered may be known and not published as it is deemed too simple to publish. Your statement that it leads to significant advancement over state of the art suggests that isn't the case, but if you can demonstrate that advancement, especially with a simple idea, that will be enough to "impress" reviewers.
You may also need the math to back up the idea, but don't use the math to make it harder to grasp. The principle is also stated as KISS (Keep it simple, stupid).

You are, of course, right in an ideal world. But in the real world, there is immense & ever increasing pressure to publish something while the supply of actual scientific substance and new ideas has always been rare and limited (if not even declinig in some mature fileds)  So the tendency to "oversell" is quite understandable. But if, at the end of the day, simplicity is still recognized and appreciated (even if the exposition is short and may "sound "less impressive) then everyting is ok.

The fast inverse square root is pretty simple, but would have been handy for a lot of people if t had been published earlier.

Results count. If your main contribution are the results are better than the state of the art, that's what you focus upon. The fact that your method is simple is merely a side aspect.
If - say -  simplification of an existing complex method is the main point, then emphasize this. But the latter may or may not be appealing to the esthetic sense of the reviewers, while better results can not be argued with, as long as you have well-researched evidence that you are indeed better than the methods on the market (do your literature research!).
In short: to get it published, highlight especially the results. When you present the work in a seminar or talk, you can then also highlight the esthetic quality or simplicity of the approach.

You should care less about journals and reviewers. More important are other researchers and people out there applying the ideas of your paper. They will love what you describe. You might have an impact on the world. Go for it!

This is exactly right - write your paper for the intended reader, not the reviewer.  The purpose of writing a paper is to communicate an idea to an audience, if the reviewer is competent their main job is to help you optimise your paper for that audience - recommending whether or not it should be published is a relatively minor part of reviewing (or at least it ought to be).

If it’s not an original idea, it must be written in a way that avoids copyright infringement. If your idea is original, please write it as simply as possible. Every journal article and academic paper that references your research hereafter will state your ideas in an increasingly complex way.
Edit: For my Undergrad thesis, I wrote a literature review of a very specific topic. I read many, many abstracts and journal articles that all tried to say the same thing in different ways to avoid plagiarism. And after reading it all, I had to find new ways to state the basic underlying ideas myself. That led to my comment. If OP is the first to write about a topic, then it should be stated as clearly and simply as possible because the language will become more convoluted the more it’s written about.

If it's not your idea it must be cited, not "written in a way that avoids copyright infringement". The OP isn't trying to cheat a plagiarism detector.

@Marianne013 oh yes, of course. I’m sorry, I thought that was obvious. Even if it’s cited, you can’t take a large portion of another paper verbatim. Rewording for purposes such as abstracts can get really messy the more a topic is written about!

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Interested in pursuing a Ph.D. to do research in making warp drive a reality
I would appreciate some feedback on my specific situation. I have always been passionate about space exploration and would very much love to start doing research on not just the physics that would make warp drive a reality, but also the engineering required to make theory into usable technology. However, I do not have a background in research. My background is primarily in sales engineering. Although I do have an engineering mindset (I have done fabrication design, I have hands-on experience in fabricating machinery, and I have experience analyzing the performance of electric motors), I am not specialized in a specific engineering field.
Additional details about my current situation:

My age is 38 years old.
I live in the US
I currently have about $70,000 of debt. I am able to make the monthly payments while saving money however.
I currently work in a full-time job remotely.

My question is this: what do I need to do realistically, so I can start contributing to research in warp drive tech? What financial obligations will I need to worry about during my journey? And how can I evaluate whether the needed sacrifices are worth it? I understand that passion can only get me so far in this potential journey. Also, ideally, I would like to focus on just research and not become a professor. I don't have the patience to be in a teaching position. I once played with the idea of starting a business and if successful, I can use the net income to fund my research.
I understand that some of my ideas or thoughts may seem unrealistic but I would appreciate some feedback on this.

You might begin by investing in a bit of professional career counseling. It might help you avoid some unpleasant surprises down the road.

sales engineering Is that really a type of engineering (like mechanical, electrical, etc.) or is that a fancy way of saying "marketing"?

The present state of "warp drive theory" is that today's physics says it's impossible. We don't think Einstein was wrong about the speed of light as a limiting velocity.
That said, there is lots of room for improvement in existing sub warp speed space flight technology. That calls for solid engineering and the physics of materials. You might study that combination of engineering and physics. Or use your current skills  to find a new job in a company doing the work you are passionate about and contribute that way. Hang out with the engineers.

Time Commitments
I'm not sure, but you seem to be thinking of this as something you can do as a side-gig, while you're working your full time engineering job.  If that's what you're thinking, stop thinking that and start thinking something else.
A PhD alone is usually more than a full time commitment that will push many other things out of your life.  In some cases it can be done part time, along with a part time job-- mine ended up that way-- but it is not a road I recommend.  Especially at your age, which is only a little younger than I started mine.
Even that part time arrangement is grueling and ends up being more than a full time job, or a full time candidacy, and is much much less efficient.  About the only thing it has going for it (in the US) is the preservation of health care benefits and a wage that, even at half time, is probably better than RA or TA pay.
And to be very clear about this, you would need to be transparent about this arrangement on both ends.
Practicality
You need to know more about how academia works, and you need to know more about the (im)practicality of your particular career path.  I don't hang out in the physics stacks (and yes, this is physics, not engineering) but I'd strongly encourage you to rephrase this as a question about the practicality of warp drive research, and post it there.  (But see the note below-- it may be difficult or impossible to rephrase in a way that gets good information on career paths.)
Because my impression is that it's currently a toy problem of theoretical physics.  'Theoretical' in this case, meaning, 'cannot now be physically realized, possibly not ever.'
I don't have the sense that there are any viable career paths, here.  I know of no companies hiring people to do this, because it's too blue sky, and is likely to remain so for the length of even a long PhD candidacy.  Tenured professors can do this sort of research under the right conditions, but you've ruled that out.  There may be some positions (in the US) in agencies like NASA or the National Labs facilities that do this, but those are the longest of long shot positions.
The most likely result here is that you'd move heaven and earth to find a PhD institution and advisor willing to indulge this, spend five or more years of your life re-training (much longer if you do this part time) only to find there is no career path going where you want it to go.
A Lower Risk, But Still Very High Cost Approach
Consider a master's degree in physics.
Unlike a PhD, a master's degree can be done even with a full time job.  It's a burden, but not a heroic burden.
It's also a good way to get your feet wet in academia without sacrificing your career.  Also, let's be blunt-- even as an engineer, you probably don't have the  math required for this sort of PhD, especially 15 years after graduation.  Engineers and physicists simply learn different types of math.  So this is also a way to buff up your math skills.
But even this lower risk approach is something you should do after understanding just how theoretical the theoretical physics of warp drives are.  I really cannot stress that enough.

Career questions are generally off-topic on Physics.SE. There's a number of questions already asked about the physics of warp drives such as Doesn't Warp theory violate causality?, How does "warp drive" not violate Special Relativity causality constraints? that I would encourage OP to familiarize themselves with.

@Anyon thank you for the note about what is on and off topic on Physics.SE.
I will update.

Many people have a romantic idea of what it’s like to do a PhD: unfettered freedom to do research at their leisure. In real life a PhD sucks. It’s necessary to get certain jobs, but the process sucks—it’s a grueling slog that can take over your life and wreck your mental and physical health if you’re not careful. It’s not to be done lightly or without a clear goal and understanding of what it will entail.
When I was working on my failed PhD the rule of thumb I heard was that you should be working at least 60 hours a week to succeed. Weekends? Working. Nights? Working. Friends, hobbies, etc.? What are they? If you’re considering doing a PhD part time I would expect to spend 80 hrs a week on work plus PhD bare minimum if you intend not to be doing the PhD for a decade or more, more likely 100 hrs a week or more.
Especially at your age (and this isn’t ageist; I’m around your age) I’d think long and hard if you have that kind of energy and drive and make sure you’re not just following a romantic notion. That’s not to discourage you but as I said, a PhD is not to be tackled lightly. A part time PhD even less so. And as others have said there may well be better options for you to achieve your goal.
Finally consider that research builds off previous research, so if a warp drive (if even possible) is still a LONG way off you may never get to work on it—you may spend your life making teeny tiny steps in that direction that may be hard to even recognize as contributions toward your goal or worse you may not even get funding to work on your goal. Are you ok with this? If not then research may not be for you. Again not trying to discourage you, but it’s important to have a realistic understanding of what research is before choosing it as a career because it’s not the glamorous ideal portrayed in tv and movies.

A person has zillions of thoughts in a day that he wants to materialize but could not due to one reason or the other In your case, I am sorry, but I think you are a bit late in the game as 38 is normally an average age of finishing a PhD (who have already done undergrad and masters in relevant fields that I assume you don't have). But exceptions do exist! Normally, students start learning how to do research from the college days.
You need a rock solid plan to even think about transitioning from sales to becoming a space junky. I think with your current portfolio, it is very hard, if not impossible, to get a PhD directly as there are certain eligibility criteria to fulfil to enter a grad school and I don't you tick mark even some of them.
Warp drives is not a child play and you need to be good at so many different domains of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). And if think you are a STEM guy and you are serious about warp drives, you can start pursuing it personally. And when your personal research is in some worth-demonstration phase you can contact some NASA guys as you need a lot of well established infrastructure to even perform testing.
Here are some of the directions that you think you could follow:

Enhance your education: You can still acquire the required knowledge with or without getting a degree. I think the former is gonna take much more time.
Practical Experience and Network: I follow a guy on YouTube, who became a rocket engineer without pursuing a college degree. The internet is doubtedly the biggest university that could teach you almost everything. Join some local tech groups, talk to professionals and share your idea. They must guide in a better way how and where to start.
Financial Management: Your dream needs hell lot of buck$ and you need to find some good grants and investments for procurement, prototyping, testing and experiments (just to name a few).

So, be realistic, practical and pragmatic in your approach and see what you can achieve with your current situation.
Good Luck!

Awesome, thank you! Sounds like I need to do some more learning on topics I an genuinely curious about and see where that takes me.

I don’t think 38 is an average for finishing a PhD in any field.  Most people with postdocs will have a full time position (in industry or otherwise) by the time they get to 38.  The funding structure now favors short PhD and very few PhD students  will be funded much beyond 5 years, which would place them in the late 20s or early 30s by the time they finish.

@ZeroTheHero Not sure about PhDs specifically, but according to NSF's 2022 statistics the median age to a US research doctorate in the field of education is 38.9 years. (I don't know what percentage of these doctorates would be EdD degrees.)

38 is a lot closer to the age at your first (or second) faculty reappointment than at a PhD graduation.

@Anyon. PhD isn't in the typical career path of educators, so to high age is probably a manifestation of that.

The problem isn't the age-- I started mine at about 40.  The problem is wanting to make an absolutely radical change of career directions without knowing nearly enough about the new direction.  Warp drives are not engineering research, they are physics of the most theoretical type, namely, the type that appear to require materials  that have never been proved to exist.

@Anyon in Physics APS reports here the average age for the class of 2019 was 30.5 and median 29.5yrs.

@ZeroTheHero Sure, but I'm not sure what point you're making now. That's consistent with the NSF statistics I linked and not surprising.

@Anyon You are right, but it feels fair to say that in this statistics education is a clear outlier, probably for the reason Scott mentions. The median age over all  is a little over 31, and for Physics (as per OP's question) it's 29.

@xLeitix It 100% is an outlier. I think my mistake here is that I did not make it explicit that I intended to address only "I don't think 38 is an average for finishing a PhD in any field" and thus my comment may be read as support for the incorrect claim in the answer rather than as bringing up an outlier as a curiosity.

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Is it okay to give a gift to my research mentor who happens to be the dean?
I'm about to graduate and would like to give my research mentor a book as a gift. It is common in my institute (which is in the US) to give professors gifts as students graduate. However, the problem is my research mentor last year became the dean of the college, and I'm not sure if there is a different set of rules for the administrators than for the faculty. So is it okay for me to give a gift to the dean? Would it make a difference if I do it before or after my graduation?

I don't think the fact that your research mentor is the dean changes the issue. The only minor thing might be that the dean may be even more concerned that they follow official university policy.
Thus, all the general questions about buying a gift for your supervisor would apply:

Is it appropriate to buy a "thank you" gift for a PhD supervisor?
Is it standard for graduate students to get gifts for their advisors?

The core issue from my perspective is that you want to avoid a conflict of interest for the advisor. Thus, I would wait to give a gift at least until after you have passed your thesis.
In addition, it is important that the gift is not too expensive. Many universities  have policies about gifts over a certain value having to be declared or are even forbidden. Furthermore, if the gift is expensive, it has greater potential to be seen as creating a conflict of interest. Related to this principle is the idea that the gift should be a small token of appreciation and, in no way, should it represent a form of payment.
Also, as you suggest, custom and policy can vary between universities. So that should be a good guide to what is reasonable.

Yes, it's fine. It doesn't matter when you do it.

Can you please expand with your reasoning?

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Proper way of referencing ranges of chapters
When I need to cite a range of pages in a source, I (well, LaTeX) write:

See Smith (2010:30–34)

Similarly, when I need to reference a range of sections, I write:

See Smith (2010:§§3.1–3.4)

For a reference of a single chapter:

See Smith (2010:ch. 3)

But today, for the first time ever, I need to reference a range of chapters. What is the proper way of doing this? My first instinct was to go with

See Smith (2010:chs. 3–6)

But then I realized that I had never seen chs. as an abbreviation of chapters, so I tried

See Smith (2010:ch. 3-6)

Which is weird because it looks like I’m talking about just one chapter. And then

See chapters 3 through 6 of Smith (2010)

Just looks unwieldy. So the questions are:

Is there a convention for this particular type of citation?
If not, what looks best to you, personally?

First of all, for ranges an en dash (-- in LaTeX) is preferred over a hyphen.

Yes, I know. Properly, what I write is see \citet[31--34]{smith10}, but I couldn't figure out how to render an en dash in the SE text field.

According to Wiktionary and a number of other sites, "chs." seems to be the appropriate pluralization of the "ch." abbreviation for chapters.  Note, however, that either is likely to be quite intelligible to a reader, and if the typesetters disagree with your choice, they'll surely fix it to their preferred style.  In short: just use "chs." and don't worry about it.

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What happens to a research group when a principal investigator (P.I.) dies? Is it common to have existing contingency plans?
Principal investigators (P.I.s) are not immune to things like traffic accidents, fatal diseases, or acts of terrorism.
Is it common to have contingency plans as to what will happen with funding, experiments, PhD supervision, and everything else that a P.I. is supposed to be responsible for? And if so, what do these plans look like?
[Full disclosure: I'm asking this because I personally have had a close encounter with death in the middle of a project I'm a co-P.I. of.]

I'd assume that this will depend on the funding body. And I'd further assume that this happens rarely enough that each case will likely be a separate decision, which will likely mostly depend on how far along the project is, whether there is a co-PI or a competent senior researcher that could take responsibility etc.

No. The nice thing about most academic departments is that the bus factor is fairly high such that if an individual PI is incapacitated, there is generally enough slack in the system to compensate.
Most funding bodies allow for contingencies. They understand that things happen and that the funding often affects people other than the PI. In the case of the death of a PI, the funder would likely allow for a change in PI to take place. If there is not a single PI who has the required administrative and scientific experiences, co-PIs can be appointed (e.g., someone who has managed grants before and a post-doc who understands the research).
Experiments being run by PhD students, post docs, and RAs, would likely continue unchanged. Experiments being run directly by the PI would probably cease immediately unless there were ethical concerns (think a drug trial). In these cases there is probably someone else involved or a contingency plan in place.
Supervision of PhD students would likely be covered by someone else on the thesis committee.
Teaching and committee responsibilities would simply be reassigned. Immediate teaching duties will often be given to a post doc or graduate student.

At the institute where I did my PhD (in the Netherlands), a contingency plan was made at the outset. A PI doing similar work signed a form saying he was ready to take over supervising me if my own PI was unable to for any reason. I don't know how common it is for educational institutions to have such a policy.

I hope this practice will be adopted elsewhere.

I have seen this happen--we had a professor at my undergraduate institution die of cancer. This is a little different, I suppose, because it was not sudden and so arrangements could be made. In this instance, his PhD student(s?) were allowed to continue their project in a group that did similar work. Mind you, this was a student near graduation. I suspect a newer grad student would probably not have been far enough along in their project to see it through to the end, and may have ended up making a bigger shift.


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Should I publish in a journal that appears on Beall’s list?
I have written an article in the field of Information Systems and I would like to publish it in a journal. I downloaded the Scimago journal rank, and decided to publish in a journal called Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology. This journal appears to be in the quartile Q3 of Scimago, but one thing that caught my attention is that they publish three volumes per month. Each accepted submission must pay a cost of 300 USD.
When I was searching for the reputation of this journal, I found that it is listed in the famous or infamous Beall’s list. My questions are:

Why does this journal appear on Scimago if it is a predatory one?
Would it be a good idea to publish in it?

I removed your side question (“I read that Beall considers that eventually this journal will disappear and that the published articles could be again be republished in another less valued journals, is that possible or even legal?”) as I think that it is better asked as a separate question.

Also note that you if you think that a journal seems to be wrongfully listed on Beall’s list, you can ask Beall to reevaluate this journal or what caused him to list this journal.

Regardless of the fact that the journal is either bad, below mediocre or scam and you need to pay for getting your paper published (which is already a red flag) why do you want to publish there? Has the CS world run out of legit (not necessarily top) journals without a publication fee?

@Alexandros correct me if I am wrong, but once I read that for publishing, for example, in the Elsevier Journal of Computers and Software the price is about USD 1500 when your article is accepted

@Layla. I only saw a fee in the Elsevier Journal of Computers and Software if you want your article to be open access to the public (which most people do not). This is the usual case. You do not pay for your article if your paper is available through subscription or you pay and everyone has access to it.

I think the answer to "should I pay money to publish in a subpar journal" is a definite "no".

Beall's list is grounds for high suspicion, not a ban.  In the case of this particular journal, it looks like not a very good journal, but not an obvious scam.  Google Scholar finds a number of articles with moderate citations, and on first inspection they don't look like metric gaming, so it looks like it wouldn't be a black mark on one's record.
Bottom line: probably legit, but if you've done good work isn't there somewhere better than you can publish it?

Excellent answer. For what it's worth, the last point is one you should always be considering, not just with respect to predatory journals. The philosophy I saw in Academia is to submit as high as you reasonably can initially and scale back as necessary.

That is good advice in this case, but «aiming high and scaling back» is not always a good strategy, because it delays publication when you have to scale back one or even multiple times. A realistic assessment (maybe with the help from colleagues who read your paper) is the best way to go.

I see several red flags, which don't prove the journal is bad but make me very suspicious.  At the very least, the journal is run in an eccentric way.

At the bottom of the editorial board page, it says "You can join the elite panel of JATIT as member technical editorial board if you hold a PhD in computing and have at-least 10 publications in International Journals/Conferences. Please drop your CV at  managing_editor at jatit.org. Members lists and requests are reviewed at the end of every year in regional advisory panel meeting."  Of course this doesn't guarantee everyone who applies will be accepted, but it strongly suggests that they feel a PhD and ten papers is a reasonable criterion for being an editor.  No mainstream journal takes such an approach, and it raises the question of why they would do this.  One possibility is that the publisher wants to publish as many papers as they can (to increase profits) and is willing to accept just about any editor who might help with that.
The papers show that copyright is held by JATIT & LLS, which is worrisome given the publication fee.  It's common for open access journals to charge a fee but make the paper available under an open license (typically a Creative Commons license) for free distribution and use by anyone.  Instead, JATIT owns the papers and can put whatever restrictions they like on them (including changing their policies in the future, for example to put the papers behind a paywall).  They don't seem to be abusing this power, but they could if they wanted to.  I see no good reason for this approach.  It suggests that the publisher either doesn't know how gold open access journals generally work or is deliberately taking a different approach, and both possibilities are worrisome.
When I flip through the published papers, they look very diverse in topics and approaches.  Is the editorial board capable of handling such diverse papers?  I don't know, but I doubt it: it's really difficult to handle a submission that falls outside your area of expertise.  The easiest way is to apply low standards, which I'd bet is what happens here.

Some journals clearly look fraudulent when examined carefully, and there's no evidence that anyone is actually trying to run a real journal.  That's not the impression I get from JATIT.  If I had to guess based on admittedly insufficient information, I'd guess that the editors are trying to run a real journal while the publisher is trying to make money (which is not bad in itself but creates a bias towards publishing lousy papers).
As for whether it's a good idea to publish there, one big issue is how it would look.  When I see a paper listed in an unknown journal on someone's CV, the first thing I wonder about is what the worse papers published there are like.  (Do they regularly publish junk, or does publishing there demonstrate that your paper meets a respectable professional standard?)  When you flip through JATIT, do you see papers that look worse that you think yours is?  If so, I'd be wary about publishing there.

I think "average paper" is a much better metric than "worst paper", since even good journals sometimes publish terrible papers.

@jakebeal "What the worst papers look like" to me suggests something more like "What the bottom quartile is like" rather than "What the worst one or two papers are like." Anonymous, could you clarify?

Yeah, I mean how bad the papers they typically publish get, rather than the absolute worst-case scenario.  I've edited to clarify.  I am particularly interested in the below-average papers to try to get a feeling for whether the journal will publish anything (in which case a paper there might be good but is not in any way certified as being good).

“Overly diverse topics” is a huge red flags. In fact, “theoretical and applied IT” already is. Who’d ever browse this journal? I can’t find a paper I could review, but my guess is that these papers are simply of very limited interest, so I’m surprised if they’re genuinely cited as the top answer says.

Legit journals charge open access fees to make your article available in order to get more citations. My University has $3000 dlls a year grant for open access publications, it is cheaper to our university to pay fees than having to subscribe to paid journals. JATIT is legit, I have published few articles there, it is also listed in the Australian ERA Journal list. It is indexed by Scopus that is the minimum standard for credible journals. JATIT is a low ranked journal but credible enough. To those people that ask why should we pay money for a low ranked journal, the issue is time, many journals take two years to get something published while JATIT can get your publication published in 3 to 6 months. Many of us are on a time clock for tenure and cannot afford to wait 3 years for a publication so we rather pay. Also, we need citations and low ranked closed access journal generates hardly any citation.
In few words, JATIT is OK but I wouldn't bank only on this journal to get tenure. It is fine to have few articles from this low-ranked journal but you need better to be considered a credible researcher.
Our University does not use Beall's list, the main criteria for evaluation is indexed by SCOPUS at least but preferably by ISI Thompson rueters. The Beall list is very biased, JATIT is in Pakistan so anything that comes from India, Pakistan, China, etc., that charges money goes to this list right away disregarding indexes, impact factors, etc.

Why does an open access journal generate more citations?

I randomly sampled one article from the latest issue and read it. It was this article, and it seems to be largely plagiarized from this paper,  this other one, this paper, and this thesis. Perhaps the short editorial process is lacking something?

I checked the papers that you mentioned and although the ideas are similar, they are two different papers with different references and images. JATIT actually sends you a similarity report taken from Scopus indexed journals, if your paper has a large similarity index is automatically rejected. It is OK if you don't like JATIT, you don't have to publish there.

I am just saying that it passes the check list of SCOPUS indexed and ERA listed that is good enough for me, it is not the type of journal to impress peers but it counts towards. Open access journals normally generate more citations because you are allowed to publish them in University open access libraries and places like researchgates, so it gives more visibility to your research. Closed access journals do not allow you to make available articles over the internet due to copyright issues, you can pay to have your articles with open access but this normally costs several thousands of dollars.

"Closed access journals do not allow you to make available articles over the internet due to copyright issues, you can pay to have your articles with open access but this normally costs several thousands of dollars." That's certainly not true in general: in many academic fields (e.g. mathematics) essentially all reputable journals allow posting to preprint servers like the arxiv and/or the author's homepage....

...In fields for which this is not the case, the serious researchers must have access to the expensive, important journals in their field.  By definition a poor journal is one that other researchers in the field are not very interested in, so if you're saying that by publishing in a poor-but-open-access-journal you expect more citations, it sounds not entirely kosher to me: a group of people who are citing each other to be cited.  Anyway, to get tenure at a reputable academic institution your work needs to actually be valued, not just cited...in my experience.

@PeteL.Clark Evidence suggests (although not unambiguously) that open-access publications do have a significant citation advantage.  See this annotated bibliography or this recent PhD thesis or this summary.


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Including publications on CV if none are peer-reviewed
I'm updating my CV and need advice regarding publications.  I am formerly a Professor of Human Services and Counselor Education.  I am not currently in academia, but am a licensed counselor in private practice... just updating the CV to be prepared for possible future opportunities.
I have written articles for publication in magazines, newspapers, and online resources (blogs, etc.) for 13 years or more.  I've also been quoted as an "expert" in numerous articles that other folks have written... some are national publications for our profession.
I do not have any peer reviewed journal articles at all.

Should I list the articles for newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc. that I have written on my CV?  Assuming APA style if so. Under what heading shall I list them so it is not confused with academic publications?
How do I list articles in which I have been quoted by another author?  Under what heading shall I list them? I've not had any luck with my research on this one.

While North Americans use the words "CV" and "resume" differently, non-North Americans generally use "CV" for both (though they may distinguish  between a "full CV" and a "brief CV").  Please clarify.

I strongly suspect answers to this question will depend not only upon academic subfield but also the kind of "future opportunity" you are talking about.  A department offering a doctoral degree in your subject may have a different view than a department focused on training future practitioners at the undergraduate level.

HI Alexander,  in the mental health field, resumes seem to suffice.  I am currently working on a full CV... just wanting to do this the right way without offending academics.....

I have experience as a professor, adjunct and program director in the college systems, but the majority of my experience has been in the counseling field (private and community agency).  So, I'm compiling everything I have accomplished into one document... a full CV....

Typically, in an academic CV, you don't list articles from other authors which cite you or quote you.

@MassimoOrtolano I think the question is, how to list cited non-peer reviewed papers of OP.

@YetAnotherGeek Point 2 of the question is about listing articles from other authors.

@MassimoOrtolano As far as I understood it was papers of OP that were cited by other authors that were to be included, and not the papers of other others that cite OP.

@YetAnotherGeek The OP says "How do I list articles in which [...]": to me this means that she wants to list the articles in which quotes from her articles appear. It's not very clear, though, and a clarification from the OP would be useful.

I suggest "Magazines" or "Publications (not peer reviewed)".
If my research is covered in the news, then I list the article under a section "Media" using APA format. I do not recommend mentioning academic citations.

Some opinions are field specific and not representative of all academics.  There are many types of disciplines and conventions within them, even with a CV.  This means there is both a precedent for what you are asking, and also the inevitable disagreement from someone in another area on the value.
You can list non peer reviewed papers in a category as you choose.  Some examples:

Authored Publications
Publications (non-reviewed)
Magazine Publications

Likewise, you can refer to articles that cite/mention you as

Media
Cited
Publications on Work

For reference, academics in design fields will use this style and do exactly as you are asking.  Here is just one example.


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What is the reason behind the tradition of omitting the titles of references in bibliographies/citation lists?
Many standard ways of formatting references do not include the name or title of the work in question in the citation.  A formal citation often consists of the author names, journal name, publication year, volume/page number or other details, but not the title of the work.
This seems ironic given that the title is usually the single most important little string of text one can have, to use to find a given paper.  Especially since nowadays, the most common way of finding a paper is to Google it (historically, one would need to physically go to a library, and in that case it perhaps is true that knowing the journal name + volume and page numbers is more useful than knowing the title)
Personally, my approach is this: when submitting a paper to a journal and other formal writing, I follow the established conventions, but when writing anything informal, I always include titles in the references, for the convenience of the reader.  Do you think this makes sense?
Are there any reasons for the traditional convention of omitting titles, other than to save ink and paper?

What? What style does this?

@AzorAhai-him- Many physics journals do that. And it's just to save ink and paper, from the olden days.

@AzorAhai-him- Space-stingy journals in biology and medicine, too.

Related: Why do citations in physics journals leave out the article title? For what it's worth, I still google references without including the title most of the time, i.e. just using abbreviated journal name + volume + page, though it breaks down for some more obscure journals. (And in PDF form, references are usually hyperlinked, which beats using search engines anyway.)

I can vouch that it happened 100 years ago in certain mathematics journals in the U.K.  Seems unhelpful to me, yes!

Also answered in https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/181451/why-are-numeric-citations-used?noredirect=1&lq=1

The reason, strictly speaking, is that it is not necessary. A citation needs to provide the reader of an article a way to find the referenced source, and providing journal, volume, issue, and page is enough. Anything beyond this only requires paper and ink and is, strictly speaking, not necessary.
That it is inconvenient in modern electronic times is of course a different matter and one could imagine that journals that currently use this style might consider changing the style they use. Personally, I also often find it quite useful to read the title because it helps me understand whether or not I should take a look at that paper. Since space and black pixels no longer cost anything these days, there wouldn't even be a cost to such a style change.


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Can you use an open access CC-BY ND scientific article for text annotation?
We plan to use clinical trial articles in one of the text annotation projects. This article mentions the license below.
This is an open-access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial, and no modifications or adaptations are made.
I am not sure if we can use this article for text annotation and distribute the annotated text.

Annotated versions are examples of derivative works. Distribution of annotated copies would thus not be automatically allowed under that license. You could contact the copyright holder and seek permission to distribute such derivative works.


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Would a high Stack Exchange rep make a difference in a job interview?
I am a PhD student in mathematics going into graph theory. I hope to either do a post-doc or (hopefully!) get a tenure-track position at a research-oriented university after graduation. I don't have a super high Math SE reputation, but it has been steadily increasing from answering questions. (I have only asked a few, but I answer a lot.)
While I don't think it would be a good idea to put my Math SE reputation on a CV (or am I wrong?) I could potentially see myself mentioning SE at an interview. While I know answering questions on Math SE isn't anything like publishing original research, I think it shows a dedication to mathematics and teaching.
What I want to know (hopefully from people who do interviews, but all answers are welcome) is if something like that would ever make a difference. (Especially if it would be frowned upon similar to having trivial papers on your CV.)
Note: answering questions on Math SE is something I do in my leisure time or times when I cannot work on my course work/research such as while I am on my daily bus ride to campus, so I don't need to see answers that say "spending the time studying/researching would be a better use of your time".
My main concern is in an interview setting. Only if you have reason to believe that it would be good to put on a CV am I interested in that as I already had a feeling that it would not be well suited for a CV.

Possible duplicate  http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7552/stack-overflow-reputation-in-cv

Wow, how did I not see that in my SE search?

@StrongBad after reviewing that page, I do not feel it adequately addresses my issue considering that the answers are all for adding it to a CV(which my first inclination is no, similar to most of their answers) while I am more interested in if it would be better suited for mentioning in an interview.

@user37208 I meant the "hopefully!" to suggest that I am aware that it is a long-shot. I am of the belief that you should always hope for the best-case scenario(however unlikely) while simultaneously preparing for more probable scenarios(a post-doc position)

@StrongBad this might be even closer: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1658/19607

Would some of SE318's best answers be useful as examples of writing about mathematics?

I think participation on MathOverflow is likely to count for much more, at least at a research-oriented school, on the grounds that it is dedicated to research-level math. I think that the biggest benefit is that your questions and answers might be read by, and make a positive impression on, people who might later have the power to hire you. As such I recommend using your real name.

FWIW, when I interviewed for a tenure-track job in CS at a big, well-ranked, public US university two years ago, my high reputation on CSTheory.SE was mentioned in the introduction to my job talk. I was eventually offered the job as well. I doubt it made any difference, though, it sounded more like a fun little thing my host added in. I have never put my reputation on my CV, but I think there was a link to my profile from my website at some point.

It's possibly more natural to mention it in your cover letter. Something along the lines of "I am an active member of . My list of answers, provided at  may be informative to you".

There are some people who have very large rep scores on Stack Overflow, but their names are jokes within the industry.

If you're going into graph theory, it might help to mention specifically the graph theory tag on math.SE

I have seen Math.SE and MathOverflow activities mentioned by both grad students and faculty in connection with various applications and promotion-related materials. I don't see this as anything to scoff at; personally I find it intriguing and consider looking up someone's SE profile(s) a great way to get some insight into their mathematical personality (note that there can be a potential downside if said personality turns out to be uninteresting or unimpressive). With that said, I think this is only worth mentioning on your CV if it represents a major activity, say if you have been active for at least 1-2 years and have dozens of answers including a good number of highly voted ones. I wouldn't specify the reputation points as that seems like a silly thing to (admit to :-) ) be concerned about. And there can be a better place to mention it, e.g., in a research/teaching/personal statement.
As for mentioning this in an interview, like many other things this can be a good idea if done tactfully (in a no-big-deal, casual sort of way that shows a sense of proportion), or a horrible idea if done untactfully (saying it and expecting fireworks or a round of applause).
Finally, I wanted to mention that I noticed from questions such as this one that there is a common belief in the Grand Principle that for academic (and specifically math) jobs one should hide any information about oneself that attests to one being interested in anything other than doing math research all day, every day, and that any decision about what to put on one's CV or what to mention in an interview/personal statement should be considered in the light of this Grand Principle. I can't say if this is true or false as a general rule, but it's categorically false for me: personally I'm delighted if a job candidate tells me they are interested in archery, or chess, or surfing, or playing piano, or whiling away their time answering elementary questions on Mathematics StackExchange. Think about it this way: given that I already know the level of research they do (which presumably must be pretty good if I'm interviewing them), any evidence that they have other unusual skills or abilities outside of math research can only raise them in my estimation. Besides, when you hire someone you get a complete package, mathematician/academic+human being, and personally I rather like being surrounded by interesting human beings and not just paper-writing robots. But maybe I'm weird and it's just me who thinks this way, so handle this advice with proper caution.

I'm happy to learn these things about a person, but the CV is not the place for it, in my opinion.   If you have a conversation with someone about archery or surfing, you learn something about them as a person.  If they just list it on their CV, not so much.

@BenWebster agreed.

Thinking about it, how about the title "top answerer in [relevant tags to the job] in MO"?

As a committee member/voting faculty member (at R1 place) on relevant things, etc., I'd say that mention of "high reputation" would seem childish, but as "outreach", activity on such sites is a plus. It is "outreach", which is good, if not super-glam. In the future, it may be more than "outreach" (which is not exactly the right descriptor, anyway), but for the moment, this is a reasonably modest description... and does resonate with current "allowable" categories of "good things" on CVs and such. So, no, don't tell what "hats" you got around Xmas, nor "medals" or whatever they are, but perhaps mention _outreach_activity_. (Five or ten years from now, I imagine the descriptors and the ground-rules will be different...)

Thanks for your input. I agree that the phrase "high reputation" would sound childish and probably braggy. I would personally probably just mention that I am active on stack exchange with a reputation of X and if asked further about SE's rep system, I would elaborate on what a normal range is for reputations.

Would such activity count as "broader impacts"?

@SE318: Why should you want to mention reputation at all? It's nearly meaningless to anyone who knows how SE sites work, given that some people with rather high reputation earned it by answering elementary school mathematics questions that continually flood the website.

@AruRay For NSF proposals? Yes, definitely!

@user21820 I don't want to suggest that active membership on MathSE guarantees that you are a good mathematician. A high rating though(even if solely due to trivial questions) may suggest a propensity towards helping others understand mathematics, which at a strictly logical level seems like a wholly good thing(but this matter is complicated because a small good thing can weaken a whole as in the case of a trivial publication)

@SE318: I understand that's where you're coming from, but I'm also not going to believe that high Math SE reputation is even a good indicator of propensity to helping others understand mathematics. There are some very active users as of today who are apparently not interested in doing that as can be seen from their self-advertizing profiles. A far better way would be to go and help students in your community in the real world, such as the under-privileged.

I think "I am active on the Stack Exchange" might garner you a brownie point or two, but I think "I am active on the Stack Exchange with a reputation of X" runs the risk of turning your revelation into something negative. (Being active might show an interest in mathematics and teaching, as you say, but your X rep points is more of an indicator to your dedication to the Stack Exchange.)

I looked at your network profile, and knowing your MSE rep would not make a difference for a job interview at a research school.  (I'm not belittling--my MSE rep is about the same as yours! (currently in the 800s))  For a liberal arts/teaching school, knowing you are active on MSE may help a little.  So sure you can mention it as supporting evidence of enjoying to answer students math questions, and you could even mention in a teaching statement if it supports your claims. However, I would definitely not mention rep anywhere.
I vaguelly recall a similar question on MO or MSE (there have been many on other SE sites), where someone said just to mention it on your CV if you're a moderator, however I can't find such a post, so I may be imagining things.  (I personally wouldn't find it offputting to see something like "MathStackExchange, active contributor" on a CV if your profile used your real name and you are pretty active.  Note: I don't consider myself as active on MSE.)

Thanks for your advice. I am not too far through my program right now, so I still have two years or so to up my rating. Hopefully it will be more respectable by the time I am in interviews:)

I feel that you know more about this me.  Can you estimate the minimum MSE rep that would make a difference at a research school.  I feel if I wanted score X, I could get it by sock puppetry, so I would be surprised there is any score that would make a difference.

@emory Knowing rep itself on MSE won't really make much of a difference for a research school, particularly since MSE is not about research level questions.  (Sorry if my first sentence is misleading.)  What would make more of a difference is if you're sufficiently active that your name becomes familiar to people at the department who look at MSE.  That said, probably 10-20k or up would convince me you are pretty active.  Brilliant MO posts are more likely to make an impression, but I wouldn't go out of my way to look at them unless the application already has enough to get me hooked.

There's also the issue that people who don't use MSE may have no idea how to interpret an MSE rep, so really it's more about being seen as active and bright by people who are already on the site and may be in a position to help you get a job.

You may be referring to this answer with "someone said just to mention it on your CV if you're a moderator"

I have never seen a stackexchange rep on a CV, and would find it off-putting. But, I would highly recommend mentioning your involvement in SE on your professional website (you have one, right?)

What about in an interview setting? This is what I am most concerned with.

Whoops I definitely misread your question. In an interview setting it can't hurt to mention it if it comes up naturally but I wouldn't force it.

Okay, thank you. I appreciate the advice. I would hope there would be some kind of open ended question along the lines of "what other ways outside of your publications and presentations are you involved in the mathematics community?"

Earlier in the career, more technical activities are probably more important (as you have to prove you know your stuff and other people believe that, too), and you can move to less technical outreach activities later. So SE could be mentioned as a minor side point. If you organise a conference, however, that's a different story.

It's worth noting that math postdoc positions rarely involve interviews - you send off all your material on mathjobs and you either get offered the position or you never hear from them. For fancy-pants tenure-track positions (which I do not have), my impression is that it is entirely possible that you send off all your materials and you hear back with news of a campus interview or never hear back again. I don't think campus interviews involve the traditional interview situation where a bunch of people sit with you and ask you a sequence of questions.

Would a high stack exchange rep make a difference in a job interview?

It could.
From an MBA's perspective (my graduate degree), to be successful in a crowded marketplace, a field of strong competition, you need to differentiate yourself.
To get the job you are aiming for, naturally, you'll need to demonstrate that you have the qualifications that are required for the job, which is necesssary, and perhaps sufficient.
However, a strong reputation on a stack exchange site also demonstrates that additionally:

You're a strong communicator.
You have earned the trust of a community (in addition to the institution awarding your degree).

By inspecting the content that you have provided, a potential employer may additionally find evidence that you are an expert in the subject matter of the site. In fact, they may infer it without inspection, but I would consider it part of necessary due diligence if I were considering a user's account in this context.
So you would also want to make sure your content reflects well on you (so consider curating your most prominent work).
If you can demonstrate all of these things, they could easily make the difference between an offer and being the second choice. So I think you've found a wise hobby to take up.

Nice answer! +1 for adding the useful and very interesting perspective of an MBA.

Oddly enough, I have been told that I got an interview over another candidate (and was hired) not because of my SO account but for my answers on Puzzling (showed critical thinking and problem solving skills that the company liked) - so you never know. Though I should add that I link to my SO account not on my CV but in my email signature.

I have been consistently in the top 1% at CrossValidated aka Stats.SE for the past two or three years, and frankly of other top users, there are only two or three people with real names whom I could locate in "proper" academia in stats departments. When one of these stats profs posted a job ad on a mailing list (unrelated to SE system), I asked him whether the CV reputation could matter (not that I was interested in the job, but just curious). His response was along that in his opinion, it should, but in reality, most of the interview panel would not have heard about it.
Small print: (1) if a person does not want to put their real name in the profile, I take it they probably don't want to have their professional identity (name on papers, etc.) mix up with their SE outreach -- my username is a part of real name, and together with a non-English origin and a picture, there is little difficulty in figuring out who I am in RL; (2) there are also probabilists and sociologists and representatives of other disciplines among the top Stats.SE users with real names, as far as a I can tell. (Parenthetically, for a statistical world with about 17K members in the American Statistical Association alone, presence of "proper" statisticians at Stats.SE can be characterized as dismal. As a junior elected officer of the Association, I keep grinding my teeth about it... but I can't realistically change the rules of the academic game to make sure tenure is only awarded if you have reputation of 1K+/year on your discipline's SE site.)
My bet is that the best use of your reputation is to try to find somebody at the school you are looking at through MO/MSE, and introduce yourself via email, saying something to the effect of "I connected the dots between your department faculty list and MSE user list, and found you there on the MSE. I am applying for a job at your department. As you are obviously aware of what MSE is, you might be interested in looking at my profile and activity on the site to better see how I think as a mathematician". If nobody at that department knows what MSE is, then mentioning it is counterproductive, as the big busy people reviewing your application would just think you waste your precious time instead of doing research.
Applications to industry would be an entire matter whatsoever. Your ability to explain things well, as evidenced by your SE rep, is a great asset for industry where most of the work is done in teams, and you may be the most technical person on the team who has to explain why branch-and-bound is the only freaking way to solve this particular problem to other team members and to the clients.

"for a statistical world with about 17K members [...], presence of "proper" statisticians at Stats.SE can be characterized as dismal": This ratio is probably even lower for other disciplines, but you can't really force people in participating to a specific community in their spare time, and many people in academia don't engage with any online activity at all. For instance, I don't actively participate in any SE community related to my field.

This isn't something that you'd normally put on a CV and if you did, I don't think it would help your chances and might hurt them with some search committee members.
Having reviewed hundreds of CV's for math faculty searches in recent years, I can tell you that I've never seen one that mentioned the applicant's stack exchange reputation.

What about if I mentioned it in a job interview? That is my main concern, as I already had a good idea that it wouldn't be well suited for a CV as my post suggests. Thanks!

There's a good chance that many of your interviewers will never have heard of stack exchange and wouldn't place any value on it.  On the other hand, someone who does care about this is likely to have checked your reputation before the interview.

You might consider linking to your stack exchange profile from your personal web page too.

I don't see it as helpful.  In evaluating candidates for research oriented positions, the key factors are going to be: strength and number of publications, outlook for the research area, and letters of recommendation.  People want to see that you have a lot of potential to produce high quality research.  I don't see how participation in the stack exchange contributes to that.

While I'm not an academic, I've always maintained a "Participating in the Community" or "Giving Back to the Community" section of my resume. That's where I list things like long-term participation in relevant fora, any special roles I may have held (e.g. moderator, editor, front-page writer), and any special recognition I may have received (e.g. "only X% of participants earn "Mentor" level recognition"). I also include my contributions to open-source and open-documentation projects, as well as any work I've done with local user groups and conferences (e.g. content selection committee, speaker/presenter).
Whether I include that section when sending my resume to a potential employer depends largely upon that employer's public presence; if they sponsor conferences or host discussion boards/fora, or if they actively encourage their employees to participate in such things, I want them to see (up front) my experiernce in that area. If they don't have a strong public presence, I save that information for the interview (but make sure to mention it there).

I can't speak for other departments, but at every academic institution I've been part of, the faculty who sit on search committees--especially if they are senior faculty--are very, very busy.  In addition to their careers, which include research, teaching, grant-writing, travel, and managing postdocs and graduate students, they often have families.  A faculty search and reviewing the hundreds of CV's that come in, then interviewing, taking the candidates to lunch, etc. is a huge time suck.  I am guessing that most such faculty do not participate much in sites like SE.  In fact in my experience, mostly these committees consist of older professors who are not necessarily that Internet-savvy and probably have never heard of SE.
So I don't necessarily think SE would be helpful to mention at an R1, and in fact (like blogging) it could be a risk.  I have seen R1 professors' entire careers implode due to blogs, plus there's a school of thought that says that if you are blogging then you aren't spending time on research.  The search committee cares, bottom line, how much positive attention and grant money you can bring to the department.  To judge this they look at how many highly visible publications you have, and also at who is recommending you.
At a liberal arts college, it may be very helpful--but again the faculty are very busy at these schools--comparably to the R1's, though their primary energy is going into teaching and course prep with high course loads, grading, service--and on the treadmills of their own jobs, so don't expect them to have heard of SE.

I think about 1/4 of our top page users hve been on hiring committees at R1s.

It may depend strongly on field.  I was very close to math, and never met any senior math faculty who were active on SE or similar.  Even use of social media was limited or nonexistent.  There was a lot of inertia, and no time.

Right now 5 of our top 20 users are Math Professors and another couple are TCS professors.

I'm sure that the profs who are active are valuable contributors.  I can only speak to the culture of the institutions at which I studied or taught.  It's too bad more of the faculty weren't more active online, because they could have gained a lot.


text:
Is it unethical to not give feedback on final exams or assignments?
In this question a person working as a TA was asking if and how he should try to persuade a lecturer to change her practice, in which she gave grades for final assignments but not detailed feedback. Many of the comments there expressed sentiments such as this being an "injustice", "reprehensible", "unethical behavior", "moral duty", "refusing to do her job", and "worth firing for".
Now, I must admit that I was somewhat surprised by these reactions. My experience throughout my academic career is that this is usually infeasible for a number of reasons, e.g.:

The institution may collect and impound all final exams after a day or two.
Final exams may be given on an institutional computerized platform, for which no per-item feedback is available to either students or instructors.
Students don't usually have time to come back to campus after finals are given.
I don't think I ever received final exams back throughout my undergraduate days.
I didn't get comprehensive exams back or feedback from the end of my Master's.

I think there's even an argument to be made vis-a-vis the formative vs. summative assessment distinction that final grades and feedback should not be overlapped, and that doing so is actually not helpful to students. (E.g.: "Summative assessments happen too far down the learning path to provide information at the classroom level and to make instructional adjustments and interventions during the learning process." Link.) In that sense, one could conceivably give copious feedback early in the semester with no grade, and then a course grade only from a final assignment at the end, after one is done with all feedback cycles.
Personally, I try to find ways to give final feedback to students if they are in critical need of it (usually by email), but I actually have to wrestle against my institution's procedures to make that happen. (I'm at a large urban community college in the U.S.) But my intuition was that it's at least a judgement call, and most common to not expect to see feedback from a final.
So: Is there consensus that not giving feedback on final exams/assignments is obviously unethical? (Side question: Are there any statistics on how common it is one way or the other?)

@BenCrowell: Thanks for the comment/clarification. But honestly, I didn't read that latter information from the prior question. The TA didn't say anything about feedback specifically earlier in the course one way or the other.

Daniel, did you check what your institution's policy is?  I don't know the answer in general.  I do know that for K-12, the school must at least let the student and/or parent view the exam in a school office.  (Except that for state tests, there may be only a subset of questions and answers that are viewable.)

@aparente001: I do know what my school's policy is, but that doesn't bear on this question.

Do you mind sharing what the policy is, in brief?

I think there's a distinction between automatically providing feed, and having access to feedback.
Like many people, I give little to no feedback on final exams for basically the reasons you describe: students don't have a chance to see it until the next semester, and very few of them bother to.
On the other hand, when a student does come see the exam, I'll spend a few minutes answering questions and explaining the grade. I think this is necessary, because students should have the option of asking for  mistakes or inconsistencies to be corrected, and they have no way of doing so unless they know why they were marked the way they were.
Many of the accusations of unethical behavior in the discussion on the question you linked to seem to be driven by concerns about the latter issue: the suspicion that students wouldn't have access to any feedback if they requested it, and that this was an intentional attempt to prevent students from appealing their grade.

No, as a general rule I don't think it's obviously unethical to not offer feedback on final assignments, but it may be unethical, depending on the situation. In the question you linked to it sounded like the lecturer's decision not to offer feedback was motivated by non-education-related considerations having to do with her own selfish interests of minimizing the amount of work she does, preventing the students from scrutinizing the quality of her grading and filing appeals, and preventing her students from sharing potentially useful information with fellow students who will be taking the class in future years. It is this motivation, and the fact of the lecturer putting her own selfish interests ahead of those of her students, seemingly in contravention of institutional norms (as evidenced by the grading policy described by the question's OP, which wouldn't make any sense in an institution where no feedback is offered on final assignments), that makes the behavior unethical - not the mere fact devoid of all context of not offering feedback.

"Minimizing the amount of work" can definitely be an education-related consideration, if it means spending that time on something which is ultimately more productive.

@NateEldredge perhaps, but that can be an excuse for essentially any manner of lazy or selfish behavior. "Why didn't you do [insert thing X that any professor does to help their students]?" "I had to spend the time on [insert thing Y that all the other professors manage to do even despite doing X] which is ultimately more productive."

Author's note: I'm having a difficult time separating this question from the other one (for which I have only read the question and not answers so as not to be biased), so this answer may undoubtedly need changing or be moved around to the other question.

Mean, maybe. Unethical, no. The practicality of getting exams back after the course has ended usually involves students going to the office to pick up their tests when I took the class.
As to whether the feedback helps a student at the end of a semester, I'd say not at all, if the grade is final.
The emphasis on no feedback at the end of a written assignment implies that the professor is unjust in not providing feedback. That is not necessarily the case. Could the student have received feedback during the course, while writing the assignment?
One of the biggest resources during the semester is typically access to feedback from the professor to ensure the student is meeting the professor's expectations.
When you write a paper for an assignment, you can typically know what you'll receive as a grade. If you don't cite your sources at all, you're probably going to get a nice F. If you write with your conclusions before your intro, you're probably going to lose points. But all of these can easily be countered by talking to the professor and getting feedback during the course.
Story time, from my waning days of grad school, in an elective course that had a final paper due.
I submitted my 95-page final paper and received a grade back within two hours. I guarantee he did not read anywhere close to the half the paper in those two hours. That doesn't mean he just said "Good job, you wrote a lot."
Throughout the semester, I had submitted drafts and questions to my professor, and he provided feedback to me in the form of addressing anything I was lacking, i.e. more examples, better use of sources, and so on.
In effect, the professor didn't even need to read all 95 pages of my paper in those two hours because he definitely spent time reading my paper when ever since it consisted of only a one-page introduction. By the time I had submitted my paper, both me and my professor knew that I had written an A paper, and so the only feedback that I was provided was "Can I use this paper as an example for next year?"


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Is impracticality of Short Classes Tested Or It Is Just A Common Belief?
While knowing that students lose their focus on lecture after twenty minutes, due to the inefficiency of moving between classes every twenty minutes, universities timetable lectures for an hour up to even three hours. Nevertheless, e-learning has made it more practical.
This has been completely explained in the following two publications:
Kinchin, I. M. (2016). Visualizing powerful knowledge to develop the expert student: A knowledge structures perspective on teaching and learning at university. Springer:

Many curriculum structures within universities have long historical origins and are bound up with issues such as internal politics and research funding as much as they are to do with any underpinning pedagogical claims. However, that is not to say that they cannot evolve and outgrow some of the more dated and restrictive practices that have helped to shape them. For example, that universities still tend to timetable lectures for about an hour even though we ‘know’ that students will typically only concentrate for about twenty minutes of that hour is a practical outcome of the logistical impracticality of moving in and out of classes every twenty minutes.

O'Flaherty, J., & Phillips, C. (2015). The use of flipped classrooms in higher education: A scoping review. The Internet and Higher Education, 25, 85-95.
I was wondering if there is any experimental evidence that having breaks every 20 minutes in classes is not practical, or it is just a common belief and no one has ever tried it?
UPDATE:
This thread answers many concerns mentioned in the comments.

I think the present form of the question is 'too broad' to expect a personally opinionated answer. Could you point to any specific problem that you (have) faced during your lecturing?

I have hardly ever had a lecture there where was no break at all in an hour or even more. While the time table stated 90min, there were multiple small breaks, e.g. when the professor wiped the boards, prepared something for a demonstration, etc. So regarding your question: Having breaks of 2-3min is completely practical and also rather common from what I know.

Could you point to a source that makes the claim about students losing focus after 20 minutes? Because that sounds like an awfully short attention span.

Thank you for your comments. In order to make it clear, I have added a direct quote from Kinchin, 2016 to my original question.

I will point out the quotation marks around 'know' in your quote. The direct implication of those marks is that, in fact, we do not know this well at all. Further, it likely is very dependent on the individual student.

@DirkLiebhold, I think you are very fortunate. Most of the undergraduate and graduate classes I have taken at US universities continue without any break for an hour and a half. Also, it is noteworthy to mention that taking a break in the literature means providing a space for students to free their mind from the content being thought and return to the context after the break. One of the techniques that is commonly suggested for this purpose is discussed at http://caps.ucsd.edu/Downloads/tx_forms/koch/pomodoro_handouts/ThePomodoroTechnique_v1-3.pdf

@TobiasKildetoft: "most healthy teenagers and adults are unable to sustain attention on one thing for more than about 20 minutes at a time" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_span). I agree that the 20 minute figure is something I've seen reported time and time again (and I've structured all my lectures around that understanding).

@DanielR.Collins The citation for that claim on wikipedia seems somewhat doubtful. The figure also goes against most of my experience with university students (and even more so faculty), but then again, those will probably be a sample with a better than average attention span.

@TobiasKildetoft: Wikipedia always has footnotes that one can follow up on if they wish. This particular claim (footnote 1) is sourced to Cornish, David; Dukette, Dianne (2009). The Essential 20: Twenty Components of an Excellent Health Care Team. Pittsburgh, PA: RoseDog Books.

@JeffE It is a book and I just italicized the title.

@DanielRCollins: That would mean anything lasting longer than some 20 minutes (writing an essay, watching a movie, being attentive to traffic whole driving, ...) cannot be done by most people, or at least not without an interruption. Highly doubtful. At the very least, varying levels of required attention over time seems to prolong the time during which one can keep doing "one thing".

@DanielR.Collins Right, it is a book which seems to be aimed at how to structure health care teams. Hardly the best source for a claim like this.

The closest thing I know of to taking a break every 20 minutes that is based on any research is the Pomodoro technique developed by Francesco Cirillo. The purpose of using this technique was to break any task into intervals of normally 25 minutes. A timer is set and after the 25 minutes, you would take a short 3-5 minute break. The idea was that the mind can only focus for so long before it needs at least a brief rest.
Taking a short 3-4 minute break every 25 minutes during a lecture seems reasonable. However, it requires the teacher to be aware of principles found in cognitive science or to use common sense as they see their students struggle to stay focused and awake.

Thank you for your response. Would you please provide us with some references to the "principles found in cognitive science" that you mentioned? Note that I've already cited the following Pomodoro paper in my comments above. But it does not really provide us with the theories that we are looking for:
http://caps.ucsd.edu/Downloads/tx_forms/koch/pomodoro_handouts/ThePomodoroTechnique_v1-3.pdf


text:
When to get a doctors note if I might have to miss an exam?
I've got a midterm tomorrow and have been increasingly ill for the past few days. I need to decide whether or not I'm going to write the midterm, and if I don't I'd need some sort of proof that I was in fact sick. My question is, how sick should one be to not write a midterm? It is possible I could push through it.
Any advice on when to get a medical note to be excused? The way I see it 99% of the time it is technically possible to at least be present for the exam; even if one has the flu or strep throat they can still write it (though poorly). The institution only asks for a medical certificate, but even unintentionally one could fake being sick for example if I go to the doctor and tell them I'm here to get a note, they would probably give me one even if I'm hardly ill.
When should someone make the call to stop doing the work and get the note? A couple of my recent assignments weren't done to as high a standard as I would've liked because the illness is making it hard to concentrate and work, but I thought I would get better in a few days.
The other thing is I'm having trouble finding a doctor or nurse. I don't have a GP where I'm going to school and the campus medical is fully booked. I've phoned around to some drop in clinics and they have wait times of over an hour and charge at least $10 for a note.
UPDATE: I managed to get a note from a drop in clinic and scanned and e-mailed it to my professor. The course policy is that missed exams cannot be taken at a latter time and a mark for them will be calculated based on everything else in the class excluding the final exam.

I think this is going to depend mainly on your school's policy. As a TA, I have been told that my university's policy is that I am not allowed to ask for a doctor's note - I simply have to take my students word for it. *In my instance, TA means I actually teach the class when it meets. I am the "instructor of record".

@Ramrod really? Wow. When I was a TA I could ask for a doctors note or a death certificate if they claimed illness or death for missed assessments.

@awsoci I had to reread your comment a few times before I realized why you would be asking a student to prove their death.

@awsoci: I've seen a similar policy.  It came about during an epidemic of influenza, for which the recommended treatment was to stay home, rest, and avoid infecting others.  The student health center got fed up with crowds of flu-infected students coming to the clinic just to get a doctor's note, thereby infecting others in the waiting room and wasting the time of medical staff who needed to see more urgent cases.  So the health center unilaterally announced that they would no longer issue excuse notes. Of course, at that point, faculty had to stop requiring notes.

@cpast haha my bad, I meant death in the family, which I get about 15-20 the day of an assessment task is due

If you are sick enough to miss an exam, you should go to a doctor.  On the other hand, if you don't believe you are ill enough to need medical care, you should take the exam.

@BobBrown that's a valid opinion, however I'd like to point out that viral infections, such as the cold and flu, doctors can do nothing about.

@BobBrown I disagree. You may be capable of taking the exam, but illness can impact your performance and your ability to study for it. My university provided guidance for this situation, and a candidate who is affected by illness, even if they take the exam, could have their degree classification adjusted to compensate. So in fact you might want to get a doctor's note and also take the exam.

@Ramrod the doctor I went to works on campus and he said that they are trying to shift away from requiring notes. I guess this isn't a bad thing, but what would prevent a student from forgetting to or purposefully not submitting an assignment (because they did a bad job) and saying they didn't hand it in because they were sick?

From a medical perspective, many people go to a doctor just for a note. This ties up a doctor who has to essentially provide an exam to certify the individual is actually sick. In general, this practice has led to doctors charging for notes.

Check your course syllabus.  Often, policies for exam makeups are documented there.  It also might say here whether you need a doctor's note or not.
Contact your professor right away (by email or phone) to inform them that you are ill and may miss the exam.  As a professor, the further in advance I know about situations like this, the easier it is for me to make arrangements.  You could also ask at this time about whether you need a doctor's note (or confirm what you read in the syllabus), and/or explain the difficulties you would face in obtaining one.  The professor may be willing to make an exception.
Obviously, go to the doctor if you are in need of treatment.  Also go if the professor insists on having a note; this is probably not ideal if you don't otherwise need to see a doctor, but you really don't have much choice.
our i
Only you can make the decision as to whether you are "too sick" to take the midterm.  My feeling is that any of the following would be sufficient reasons to stay home:

you think you would significantly risk your health by attending
you have a contagious illness
your illness might disturb other students (coughing, running to restroom, etc)
you think your illness would significantly reduce your ability to do well on the exam (e.g. you are in pain, excessively fatigued, have distracting symptoms, etc)

It's nice to see that you don't want to be one of those students who takes advantaged of the system.
Go to the doctor, even if there are hour + wait times. Missing a mid-term generally means that unless you have a medical certificate for the date of the test, you will not be allowed to write a make-up. In some universities (like mine) it is a formal process in which you have to apply for and be approved by at a faculty or department level.

"The rules for your school might differ, but if you have a medical certificate that verifies your illness, your TA/Lecturer must provide an alternate sitting for you. " This is not the rule at any university I have attended.  Where have you been that this is a university regulation?  Also, physicians are not in the business of deciding whether their patients are sufficiently ill to miss an exam.  Physicians are required to provide written documentation when asked.  The note is certainly not going to say: "I guarantee that Mr. X is fit as a fiddle; I don't know why he didn't take his exam."

Thus a policy in which the instructor has no discretion would be open to abuse.  In practice, all instructors I know make some kind of reasonable acommodations -- not necessarily a new exam; I don't give makeup midterm exams myself -- when they have no specific strong reason to disbelieve the student.

@Peter L.Clark Well I'm a lecturer at a Group of 8 University in Australia, and this is the policy. If students can provide medical certification that is approved by a board of examiners via a faculty process (known as special consideration), we are required to organise an alternate sitting for an in-class midterm/test or alternate assessment task (this does not mean the content of the test changes, this would depend on the type of exam). If it's a formal exam, they defer the exam and sit in the exam period.

If documentation provided is not approved by the faculty, then students are not able to sit/request an alternate assessment (i.e. if the medical certificate is fake etc). It's a formal process that is actually meant to make it easier for the lecturer. I prefer it, it means if students want to sit a remake because they were 'sick' they have to have it approved at a formal level, it takes the judgement call out of my hands and the ensuing harassment I might experience from students (which as a woman, I do often) if I didn't comply with their requests.

Thanks for the clarification.  It is interesting to know where this is taking place and immensely relieving to know that there is some oversight at the university level.

@Peter L. Clark I think more universities should adopt this approach to be honest. We also use it for extensions of more than 2 days. Students still abuse the 2 day extension request, but anything more than that has to be approved at a faculty level, and students apply through an online system. It's very bureaucratic and maybe a bit micromanaged regarding lecturer input (but we get a final say regarding the recommended extension date), but it means not having to negotiate with students constantly about extra time.

It sounds pretty good to me...