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After my PhD how much salary should I expect as a professor of computer science?
It's easy for me to find out salaries for tech-jobs but it seems Professor salaries are quite hush-hush. I really love to teach and would be more than willing to join academia. However, I may choose to work for a few years in the industry before doing so. But even for information sake it's really really hard to figure out a tenure and tenure track professor's salary. It's rude to just ask my professors/colleagues directly :P
I'm interested in knowing an 'expected' range for the following countries - preferably both state and private universities (Computer Science). I'm not sure if there is a difference between the MS/PhD faculty and BS/B.Tech/BE though, but it'd be great to highlight the same.

United States
Europe (Switzerland, Germany more preferable)
Australia/New Zealand
India/China

Intent of information - awareness to take a better decision on the 'money dimension'. Please don't get me wrong, I am not intending to take a job with the most money but if a faculty position pays USD $50,000 per annum after 5 years of intensive effort, I'd like to hold off for a while. If "it depends" then on what does it depend and after I satisfy those dependencies, what can/should I expect?
UPDATE: Just for clarification, I am on the verge of completing my PhD thus piquing my curiosity about the remuneration since it's difficult to ask your advisor or other faculty members. I have and mostly been asked to wait for infinity for the response, hence the question :) I just wanted to know so that I can take an informed decision when I'm at the crossroads of applying for academia vs industry. Please don't get me wrong. I DO NOT wish to undermine the value of a PhD. I'm genuinely curious and I personally enjoy every bit of my work and it's NOT ABOUT THE MONEY :)

Slightly related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/718/business-school-professors-how-different-are-they

The framing of the question is weird.  Before getting a PhD, you have no hope of a professor position at all.  The number of years you take to finish your PhD has no significant effect on your expected salary.  There is absolutely no guarantee of a faculty job after completing a PhD, even in computer science; quite the opposite.  And finally, CS professors make significantly less than their peers in the computing industry; if you're really that worried about money, DON'T GET A PHD.

@JeffE - noted and updated accordingly. Apologies for that. I'm NOT worried about the money, just curious :P

Take a look at http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/2012/univer12g.html for Canada.

For the United State, see http://cra.org/resources/taulbee/ for salary survey data in computer science.  Of course, as Suresh points out there's enormous variation.  The median salary for a tenure-track assistant professor in computer science at a US research university is about $90k, but some make quite a bit less.

Note that the $90k figure is out of date - check the survey itself. Median in 2015 is up to $99K. They survey will be a few years behind, too, so it's worth extrapolating based on growth over the past few years (seeks like ~$3K growth per year).

First of all, you assume that after finishing a PhD, your chances for a professor position are good. As far as I can say (a CS post-doc@EU university), this is generally not straightforward unless you deliver a star PhD. Otherwise, expect at least one  post-doc appointment. After a return from industry, unless you were very active in the research community during your time with a company, again post-doc is what you should expect.
Now to the answers, a European perspective. Generally in the EU, probably except for the UK, the academic salaries are governed by tables subject to annual change. In many countries these would be fixed without a variable component based on performance.
Germany:
The positions of research assistants underlie TVoeD regulation (BAT in the past). There is no special category for a post-doc, all research assistants are treated equally. The salary scale reflects the individual's experience, that is, officially years of employment. Generally that should include also academic experience abroad too. Find the current tables also here - note the scales differ for West Germany, East Germany, Berlin and Hessen. You are interested in the class E13.
Professorships are remunerated according to the W scale. Again the salary differs from state to state, but according to this, we speak a baseline of about EUR 47k, EUR 53k and EUR 65k a year for W1, W2 and W3 professorship positions. W1 is for a Juniorprofessor, roughly equivalent to an assistant professor. W2 and W3 are two different levels of full professorship, the particular difference is mainly an experience/salary issue. The salaries are again graded in steps according to the number of years of experience at the particular position. You start at 0 and from there your grades increase.
Note however, at least in CS and generally in STEM, Germany does not fare very well in terms of foreigners on senior academic positions. It's relatively rare to encounter a non-German (or Swiss/Austrian) holding a professorship at a German public university.
Netherlands:
The system is slightly simpler than in Germany, the salaries are fixed according to CAO (Collective Labour Agreement) regulation and subject to annual/bi-annual negotiation and modification. You can find the information on CAO here. Salary-wise you are interested in the salary table, columns H1 and H2 (Professor 1 and Professor 2). These are full professorships. Here we speak about EUR 65k and EUR 58k respectively as a baseline from which the annual grading increase starts. For a assistant professor, the columns of interest are 11-13, so the variance is big. E.g., 11 is also for post-docs, though sometimes assistant professors get that as well. Depends on the particular position.
Now considering positions in the Netherlands taken by foreigners, you are eligible for a so called 30% rule which basically states that you do not have to pay taxes for 30% of your income. That leads to a significant salary increase for foreigners in the first years of their employment in the Netherlands so even the assistant professor salary grades might not look extremely interesting, considering the 30% rule, they turn out to be fine.
All the quotes should be understood brutto before taxation and social system/healthcare/++ deductions.

Regarding the salaries in Germany, do these numbers include the taxes? or is this what the professor ends up receiving in cash?

@MohamedKhamis: see my comment at the end of the answer. All numbers are pre-tax, i.e., subject to taxation.

In Germany, you can (and usually will) get Zulagen on top of your W salary, which are a matter of negotiations. Having a job offer from a different university helps in these negotiations, as does having a good paper output or getting a lot of grants. Zulagen start at 250 EUR per month, but can go up to 50% or even more of your base salary. In addition, you get Familienzuschläge for having a spouse/kids, and subsidized health insurance (Beihilfe). It's an arcane system, but the W base salary definitely is not the full story.

While it is a good question which people naturally would like to know before committing for a PhD, a definitive answer is next to impossible.
Your question on Indian public sector is best answered by Prof Giridhar Madras's blog. In this post, for example, he talks about a new professor getting Rs 52000 per month plus accommodation. Then there are scholarships, consulting work for many small companies (whose numbers are bound to be high in a rising economy), vacation period of 3 months when you "get paid in international currency" (ref:GM's blog), paid conference trips, travel allowances within India, etc.
You cannot directly compare this with any private sector company: you are obviously going to get paid more, but you are stuck inside those cubicles with monotonous work and you are likely to lack intellectual freedom.
Regarding Indian private sector, things are hush-hush, and depend on your personality, education, job offers, negotiations, etc. But I would say deemed universities in India are particularly wealthy given India's population and the general affordability to pay high fees. On the flip-side, your colleagues and students are unlikely to be intelligent or sharp, as most of India's intellectual wealth generally lie within the IITs (and at times, the NITs, CEG, etc).

There are many factors that go into figuring out the answer.

location - different countries/systems have different ways of paying
area: salaries vary HUGELY across areas. You didn't mention your area, but you can expect that salaries in the humanities are less than those in engineering which might in turn be less than those in law/business/medicine
private/public: in the US salaries of profs at public universities are public knowledge - if you look up the university of Utah you can get my salary and that of all my colleagues. Public universities usually have public scales - private universities are - well - private.
level: I assume you're starting at the lowest level, but based on experience/demand things can vary a lot.

To get information, best to lookup surveys that are usually run by professional organizations in your area - they'll give you good ballpark estimates.
Ultimately you have to remember that a faculty salary, like any other salary, is a market-driven quantity with value set by the market. So it's very important to understand the local economy that drives the numbers - the above factors are some of the main drivers.

There's enormous variation in both field and university. I would however suggest that professorial salaries are not entirely "hush-hush". For example, the University of North Carolina system has all their salary information available to the public:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/24/1011452/university-employee-salaries.html
Look up the department you're interested in, get some names of their lower ranked faculty, and look them up to give yourself a ballpark estimate.
They also break down State and Non-State funding so you can get an idea of how much of the salary is hard money and how much of it is based on grant support.

Similarly for Illinois: http://data.illinimedia.com/salaries/index

You can search for faculty salaries at about 50 different public US universities here: http://www.collegiatetimes.com/databases/salaries

Australian discussion
Pay scales are available on most university web sites:

Deakin
Monash
UNSW

The first challenge is to get a job.  You may need a year or two post doc experience before you can get a level B lecturer position. For reasonable performance you'll typically go up one increment each year (i.e., B1, B2, etc. to B6). To go to C (Senior Lecturer), D (Associate Professor), or E (Professor), it is not automatic. You need to meet more criteria.

Isn't there any difference in pay across dept.s? Does an asst. prof. in a business school earn the same as one in an engg. dept.?

The general rule is that the pay is the same for equivalent rank in a given public university. However, there are a few exceptions; some business schools pay more. I have also heard people say that in domains where external job opportunities are greater that less is required in order to achieve a given rank (but this is open to debate). I'm sure there are other exceptions also.

Your expectation should depend on both the potential salary (which the other answers are provided reasonable estimates of) and the probably of the outcome (which most of the other answers have not touched on). If you have not started a PhD program yet, your expectation about how much you will make as a professor should be $0 since the probability of becoming a professor is essentially zero. Even using generous numbers 0.5 get into PhD programs, of those 0.5 finish PhD (0.25 of those who apply). Of those only 0.5 will get a post doc position (0.125 of those who apply for a PhD). Then you have TT position (0.06) and tenure (0.03).

Australian starting salary with a PhD is around 70-80K USD. Up to 100K after 5 or so years, ++ if you are a super academic/head the faculty etc.
Cost of living is quite a bit higher than the US.
Tenure doesnt exist in Aus, you will be an academic as long as you can bring in research dollars/you teach important subjects that bring in students. There are no private universities here.

There are private universities in Australia, they are just relatively uncommon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_university#Australia

Australian  computer developer salary is about 120K-160K Australian USD

in Spain you can max out some 35k€ / year
Some details to complete the answer:
I am "Profesor Titular" (senior lecturer with a tenure position, like a second class Professorship). I have 15 years experience
My total income last year was EUR 45ooo. That included 2ooo for an extra course, 27oo for a positive evaluation of research and 86oo for the 15 years. That gives a basic salary of about EUR 31ooo when you start. But when you start you have a lower category, so the first salary is lower. There are also variations depending on the region.
I pay about 12ooo for taxes and insurance. That leaved some 33ooo as true income.
With the cutbacks, I expect some 30ooo this year.

Any references to support that?


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Asking for an invitation letter before applying to the Fullbright Scholarship?
So I'm currently applying for the Fullbright Masters Scholarship. I want to do Masters in Computer Graphics and there are very few universities in the US that deeply explore that area namely, Utah, Cornell, Stanford etc. The problem with Fullbright Scholarship is that they are responsible for placing you and there is no guarantee you get the University you want.
Since I've a couple of personal research projects already on my Github, I was hoping to email a professor asking for an invitation letter from his university if I appear promising. However since, this is a Masters, I certainly don't want to get bound and give my Master's thesis under the same professor as I haven't even explored all the sub-areas and haven't developed my interests fully. I was thinking that an invitation letter from the university I wish to join will certainly bolster my chances of getting placed there.
So is it appropriate to ask for an invitation letter under these circumstances and if so, should I explicitly mention that I've not made up my mind regarding a specific research area? Any tips or advices are helpful as this is my first time.

Note that the Fulbright program is run differently in different countries. Hence the answer to your question may depend on the country you are applying from.

I want to do Masters in Computer Graphics and there are very few universities in the US that deeply explore that area namely, Utah, Cornell, Stanford etc.

Are you sure there are very few? This website is a very good resource for seeing which programs are active in an area: CSRankings -- Computer Graphics. It lists many universities with faculty who are actively publishing, including in order: Stanford, MIT, UCSD, CMU, NYU, Cornell, Texas A&M, etc. (Utah is only #19 in this ranking, which is based on number of publications at the top venues).

Since I've a couple of personal research projects already on my Github, I was hoping to email a professor asking for an invitation letter from his university if I appear promising.

This is perfectly appropriate, but it does sound like the kind of email many professors are likely to ignore, especially since you are looking into Masters programs and not PhD. So I would be careful to keep it brief, to the point, and state your qualifications / accomplishments early (and/or link to your CV or webpage which states those things).

However since, this is a Masters, I certainly don't want to get bound
  and give my Master's thesis under the same professor as I haven't even
  explored all the sub-areas and haven't developed my interests fully.

You would ideally email professors who you would broadly be interested in working for; to not do so is misleading, as you are essentially emailing to open up a connection of mutual interest between you.
However, you should not be worried about being formally bound at this stage. Sending an email is not a formal binding, and as long as you are honest, there should be no hard feelings if your plans change after you join the program or after you are admitted. Research interests inherently change over time, and many people switch to entirely different areas (let alone sub-areas). You can also check with the program to see if students are formally bound to advisors on admission, or later.

should I explicitly mention that I've not made up my mind regarding a specific research area?

I would briefly mention this, yes -- it's along the lines of being honest and not giving a bad impression. Be as specific as you can without being dishonest -- "broadly interested in computer graphics" is fine if that's all you are sure about, but if you know some sub-areas you are interested in (that might align with the professor's), that can help as well.

Hey thanks for the response. About the first part though, I find that most of those universities mentioned in the link don't have any detailed out program specifically for Computer Graphics. You won't even find Computer Graphcis as a research area if you explore it on MIT's website. I did my research on most of USA's universities based on the coursework and the faculty members, I found that the above mentioned universities were the best in terms of the overall program. Especially Utah's program is mostly focused on exploring most of the areas inside Computer Graphics.

@gallickgunner I really recommend trusting CSRankings over manually searching coursework and faculty members, as you seem to have missed a great deal of professors publishing in graphics by manually searching. As a case in point, see MIT: CSRankings lists at least two professors publishing prolifically, 24 papers each in the last 5 years, Wojciech Matusik and Fredo  Durand. If you check both of their pages you can see if their work interests you. They have a graphics group called CFG

I have been through the searching process before, and, like you, I mainly trusted what I found on university web pages about specific faculty. My #1 regret about the search process is that I did not have something like CSRankings available. I'm not here trying to promote some random, not-well-known website; it's widely used and well regarded. The point is that if you do a manual search, you miss a lot of things.

Bottom line, it is totally up to you to decide what is interesting to you, and that is certainly more than how often they publish in top venues. Coursework for instance is extremely important especially for a master's, and CSRankings doesn't include that, so it's good you've been looking into that. I'm not in computer graphics so I don't know the programs. But, if your interested in research prospects, you really want to know what universities are publishing, and you seem to have overlooked some programs.

Oh, I found a link to the graphics group website: MIT Computer Graphics. Anyway, sorry if I got defensive, I just think your statement that MIT doesn't have a good program is really fishy given that they seem to be the top program in this area. Of course you may be right in terms of the "overall program" and qualities that are important to you. I would seek advice from an expert in the area, who can serve as a mentor.

No worries, I don't mind. I'm actually into the CG field for quite some time now. The 3 universities I mentioned above have quite a history with the field of Computer Graphics and are a dream of any guy in this field to get into. Most of the notable people in CG came from Utah including the former president of Disney and Pixar, Edwin Catmull. I'm in no way trying to belittle MIT but imo Utah still has one of the best programs when it comes to CG. Try asking on a graphics forum and you'll see what I mean.

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A student offered to let me read my letter of recommendation for a mentorship award
I am a graduate student at a US university, and earlier this week I asked a former undergraduate mentee if in her evaluation I qualified for an "excellence in mentorship" award. She responded enthusiastically, and just today wrote the she finished it. She also offered to let me review it to make sure she's included all pertinent information.
All the past letters of recommendation I've received have been closed-envelope letters that I don't have the opportunity to review, I am not sure how to respond. I trust her to write a good letter, and would probably have little if anything to say, but I certainly wouldn't mind having a chance to be sure.
Basically, years of closed-envelope letters of recommendation have conditioned to feel that it is not appropriate to be able to read your own letter. However, the only reason I know for that is to allow writers to speak freely, without the pressure or awkward situation that would arise if one were to ask for the opportunity to read their own letter. On the other hand, this one was freely offered, and so I am not compromising the writer's ability to speak freely.
Do you see any reason, ethical or practical, to turn down my mentee's offer?

People offer “freely” all sorts of things with an eye towards benefiting somehow from the things they are offering being accepted. Not reading the letter is the only way to be sure you are not taking part in a quid pro quo of some sort, and that the student is incentivized to write the truth about you and is not influenced (consciously or even unconsciously) by other factors.

I've done this (made the offer) but generally with the expectation that it will be declined. I consider it a friendly gesture, nothing more. If they decided to read it, fine, it's not a big deal.  I expect nothing in return.

finished 'it' what is it?

This is clearly a judgment call, but upon reflection my advice is for you not to read the letter.
There is a tiny chance that the student wrote -- presumably unintentionally -- something that you won't like, but that is really going to hit hard in the present context.  (Long ago a faculty member wrote a recommendation letter for me and it got accidentally sent...to me!  I didn't know what it was until I started reading it.  The letter was overall very positive, but the one flaw in my work was...well, I won't say, but that was more than 15 years ago and I still remember what it was.  I don't remember anything else in it specifically.)  I don't think this is a serious worry, but compare that to what you have now: a totally positive, sunny black box.
More significantly, although the student "offered to let me review it to make sure she's included all pertinent information," if you actually find something that seems incorrect, getting her to change it gets awkward really fast: calling for a factual change should be ethically permissible, but I would rather not get anywhere near the terrain of rewriting the student's letter.  You say that you trust her to write the letter, so...great; you're not worried about needing to change what's in it.
I have read lots of letters of approximately this type: namely, where a student says nice things about their instructor (in the context of a departmental tenure / promotion case, a teaching award nomination, and so forth).  There is really not much in the way of specific expectations for what a student should say, how they should format it, and so forth.  I find it quite unlikely that this letter is going to be read with the kind of critical eye that would justify even getting the student to take the trouble of revising it.
Finally, the student probably doesn't know the academic culture that these types of letters are usually not read: from my limited experience with the nonacademic world, I believe it's quite different out there.  I think the student is trying to do something nice for you but has landed on the wrong thing.  Here is a suggestion: tell the student that you don't need to read the letter and in fact are used to thinking of academic recommendation letters as confidential.  But if she would be willing to write a small note or card addressed to you, you would enjoy that and would hold onto it.

I agree with most of this, but I would be careful about the suggestions in the last paragraph. It seems the most straightforward reading of the student's comments is that showing the OP the letter is a request for content editing, not a subtle way to compliment the OP. And a request from a person in a position of power, to a student, to write a note or card could put a student in a very awkward situation. I think the enthusiastic willingness to write the letter in the first place is all the affirmation one needs and can reasonably expect.

I have some questions motivated purely by curiosity:  Did you agree that it was a flaw?  Do you think becoming aware of it was positive, overall, for your development as a mathematician?

@Greg: I am certainly sympathetic to issues of power dynamics in academia.  I would say that the OP should be clear that they do not want to read the letter, and if the student wants to give him something to read, they could do that separately.  Also when I was writing the answer I did not have in mind that the OP solicited the letter in the first place.  With that detail in place I actually wouldn't mention the last part.

@Steven: The gist of it was that I was doing good work using the tools of others rather than making my own tools.  I am not really sure whether I was doing that any more than other mathematicians in my cohort.  Nor am I sure how much I do that today!  The biggest effect that it had, honestly, was to remove the temptation to read what others have written about me since then: it didn't ruin my day, much less my life, but it would have been better if I hadn't read it.

First, kudos for being in the running for the award, and for earning this kind of student response.
I would thank her and decline the offer because it makes you uncomfortable. You could tell her that or just say as per Pete Clark's answer that it's just not done in academia.
In an analogous but not identical situation: when I a write letter of recommendation for a student I regularly show the student what I have written before submitting it in the traditional sealed envelope (nowadays that's a web form). The student has usually waived the right to see the letter but I have not waived the right to show it to them.

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Google scholar changes my profile into non English language, how to fix this?
Hi Google Scholar changes my profile into Thai language, how do I change it back? My Google account language is English. I contacted Google several times but never got any response: Google seems don't have any client service, disappointed...

Thank you very much @Anton @GoodDeeds @ Solar Mike.
I tried the way shown by Anton and find my own language setting is already English. I also know the way to manually change the display languages by GoodDeeds. The problem I encountered is that whenever other people searching my name in Google, my Google Scholar profile will be popped up, which shows only in Thai. I hope to find a way to let Google Scholar automatically display the languages in English as what they did before. The main purpose is to help others to read my profile in English.  This problem happened about one year ago, I contacted two or three times Google through certain online feedback form, but was never replied and the problem was never corrected. I will probably try to use Twiter or Facebook to contact Google

If you want to complain about Google direct your complaints to them - even try facebook and twitter.

Visit your GS profile, and go to settings section, where you will be able to handle Languages. Direct link is: here

You can change your language preferences in your settings, as has already been mentioned in the other answer. In general, however, if you come across a profile in a different language (for example, via Google Search), or if you are logged out / don't have an account, you can change the language by modifying the URL of the profile page.
To do this, just add the query parameter hl=en at the end of the URL (replace en appropriately for viewing in a different language). For example, change
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=<id>

to
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=<id>&hl=en

for viewing the profile in English. Usually a language is already specified in the URL via this parameter, so you could either override it by appending a new value to the end or fix it by modifying the existing string.
Also note that following an URL that already has a language specified will override your settings. So if you click on a profile from Google Search that contains the hl=fr parameter, the profile will load in French even if you have set your language preference to English, and this can be fixed as described above.


text:
Shall I start my example with "for example"?
I'm trying to give an example in my research paper. The first variant:

Example 4.6. For example, this expression is true: ...

The second one:

Example 4.6. This expression is true: ...

Which one is preferred?

Since each example is labelled as such and numbered, there’s no need to further prefix the text with For example, and the second form is certainly preferred. That is, avoid obvious redundancies.
Use For example for inline non-numbered examples only.


text:
Is it reasonable for my master's supervisor to forbid me from having private communications with my co-supervisor?
I am an electrical engineering master's student in the USA. My research is in a slightly different area than my supervisor's background, and so I suggested adding a co-supervisor at a different institution. My supervisor agreed and the co-supervisor was added.
However, my main supervisor has now mentioned repeatedly that I am not permitted to communicate with the co-supervisor without him being present or involved in the communication as far as the research is concerned. I do cc both in emails, but the issue here is that he said I cannot contact (either by email or phone call) the co-supervisor for any private conversation concerning the research.
Is this ethically right or is there something wrong with him or this situation?

@Giant, how exactly was this request phrased? "Please be sure to cc both of us on emails/schedule joint meetings" seems a bit different from "You must not communicate with Supervisor B unless I am involved."

@matt. At the beginning he had  made the rule that both must be cc'ed and joint meetings which I have been abiding by. However he has mentioned again and again  "note that you are not allowed to communicate with B  without me. " I can communicate with B without you, but you can not communicate with B without involving me

It isn't clear why you would want a private communication about the research without the primary supervisors involvement (if only a cc).  Can you give a concrete example of the sort of communication that you would not want to share with your primary superviser?  As the primary supervisor is the one with ultimate responsibility for project management, the request doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

My guess is that your supervisor wants to minimize the burden on the co-supervisor. Frankly speaking, master's students don't know very much yet, and this includes knowing which questions are appropriate for the experts. So, it would make sense if your advisor wanted you to come to him first, and then he can refer you to the co-supervisor (or any other expert) as needed. This is altogether appropriate.
Another appropriate reason would be that they are trying to avoid miscommunications that happen when the two supervisors are only communicating by passing messages through you. This "noisy channel problem" is sub-optimal at the best of times, and can lead to real difficulties.
But we are just speculating. Ultimately, we can't say if this is reasonable without knowing the reason, and only your supervisor can tell you the reason.
So if you don't want to ask your supervisor, I think the best we can do is to say that such a request is not inherently unreasonable, and you should plan to abide by it.

Thanks I normally cc both when it comes to exchanging mails on the research. However I just feel I should be able to have conversation with either of them solely if need be. He doesn't want me to have any personal conversation with the co

Yes, I can imagine situations where you might want feedback on your performance, or might even want to discuss strategies for "dealing with" your primary supervisor. In this case, being allowed to have unfettered access to your co-supervisor would be beneficial. That said, it's possible that having these kind of conversations with the co-supervisor is not a good idea; without knowing both sides of the story, I can't really say that your supervisor's policy is unethical.

Yes @cag51. Some situation may call for "the need to want to discuss strategies for "dealing with" your primary supervisor. In this case, being allowed to have unfettered access to your co-supervisor would be beneficial"  as you mentioned.

To one point of speculation: It might make grading difficult, if the advisor does not know what the student asked and hoch much the co-advisor actually shared. Finding one clue or getting a tip makes sometimes a huge difference.

My first impression is that he doesn't want you to get contrary or conflicting directions that might lead to trouble down the line. That would be perfectly ethical. If the co-supervisor is somehow also being supervised or mentored by the main supervisor, it could be an additional reason: training of the co-supervisor. This might happen if the co-supervisor is a postdoc or otherwise inexperienced.
There are other, less valid, reasons that could be in play, of course (insecurity, ego, ...), but not necessarily so.
Schedule joint meetings. Copy everyone on emails. Don't treat it as a big deal without further evidence that it is a problem.
You could ask him the reason, of course.

Thanks for the reply. In this case the co is actually the higher mentor to the main and both are not in same institution. I just avoid asking him to avoid some issues

The maybe the co is the one insisting behind the scenes. Probably above our pay grade.

No, the co is not the one. I actually enquired from the co if this is a kind of unwritten rule or something but he said no, that as far ashe is concerned in his own institution, the student can contact either of supervisors personally on research if need be. He asked if I could call for a meeting for us three to address but I said no. Because I know the main is likely to take it out of context

so, you've already gone behind your supervisors back to discuss non-research-related topics.... maybe there was a reason your supervisor asked you not to do this, and you're insisting on proving them correct...

Thanks for your contribution

If the cosupervisor is more senior, then the primary supervisor is likely worried that you will make them look bad. Many Masters students overestimate their competence. They want to keep an eye on you so you don’t embarrass them.

@Dawn, then I would say this is some kind of insecurity on his part.

It is not necessarily insecurity: the supervisor may not trust you yet. Furthermore, keeping a good impression in the eyes of senior faculty is important to the politics of promotion, so it is a reasonable concern.

If the co-supervisor is not at your degree awarding institution, your supervisor has responsibility for making sure your master's is marked correctly, and that you are treated fairly, that reasonable workloads are put on you, etc, etc.
It's actually pretty reasonable for the supervisor to insist on being kept in the loop, as they have to monitor all this. If co-supervisor sends you off in a different research direction, or asks you to do a much more intensive project than supervisor thinks you can reasonably complete in the time, this could cause you problems. By insisting on staying in the loop, supervisor can head these off, and also monitor your contributions. As it is supervisor awarding you a mark at the end of the process, it's reasonable to check that you're not being inappropriately spoon-fed or pressured by co-supervisor.
This is the main difference between a master's and a Phd - as a Phd student, this would be a little strange, as you're expected to be forming your own research bonds, and you've got a bit (not a lot) more time to go down rabbit holes that supervisors might send you down.

Indeed, I could not help but to think, that if the OPs supervisor didn't ask to be kept in the loop, then the OP would be back here in a year or two asking about help with a dis-engaged supervisor ...

I feel there is more to it than being kept in a loop tho.

@lupe, your last paragraph is actually where my concern is because Indeed this is a 2nd masters and I am not just a fresh graduate from honours and infact I should have got a PhD or almost done if I pursued it earlier. But that's not the matter just to let you know am not a fresh graduate and have been in research for a while which makes it kind of worrisome if I can not contact my co for some private mentoring on that subject considering he is the one who has more knowledge in the area

@Giant - I think that's fair, but we'd treat all master's students equally. The one thought I'd have is that prehaps your supervisor has concerns of you getting pulled off track? Is it something they've spoken to you about? This sounds like a thing my old boss would do if he had a smart but slightly distractible student

I'd add that concerns might even be.greater if you've been round research for a while - a masters is extremely time compressed, there's not a lot of time for research tangents that you might be used to following

Seems to me that your supervisor is trying to create and maintain order in the communication process. There are tons of reasons why he might be making this request. Here are 10 potential reasons (which are not exhaustive) why he might be asking you to go through him:

Co-supervisor is at another institution, you are not a student there, so the onus is on him to make sure that you aren't chewing up resources of another institution inappropriately as you work on your thesis.

He probably just wants to stay in the loop. It may be just as much about getting your supervisor up to speed in this new field as much as it is getting you up to speed. Academic types are naturally curious folks and he may want to learn from your co-supervisor too.

It's just good etiquette to loop him in.

He may want to further cultivate his relationship with the co-supervisor and build a productive working relationship for himself. Grad students are ephemeral connections they tend to move on, it would be better for him career-wise to own that relationship.

He may want to provide his knowledge, opinions, and expertise to any conversation.

He may have dealt with this person in the past and had a bad experience, and is trying to protect you from a difficult personality.

He may be protecting you from conflicts of interest.

He may be trying to teach you a lesson in professionalism within academia.

Training grad students might be what he likes about his job. He may want you to come to him because he wants to see you learn and grow.

He might have an ego issue going on, by requesting the co-supervisor in the first place you put him on notice that he wasn't what you want or need. Even worse, he acknowledged that it was probably true. I'm not saying that this is for sure going on, but he may be a little bit wounded. You should recognize this and give him some grace because he did show a large amount of humility by allowing you to get the co-supervisor in the first place.

Thanks @Ryan, I definitely relate with what you mention in point 10

If you would put the list as a pool, I am quite sure you would have an overwhelming majority of 2, with a bit of 3.
Regarding point 1, using resources from another institution for free: it would be a dream for many :D

The obvious hypothesis is that your supervisor is a micro-managing control freak, which would not be unheard of. However, there may be all kinds of reasons your supervisor might be uneasy about letting you talk to the co-supervisor alone, independent of whether you've given him a concrete reason for it. We don't know enough details to decide that, and I'm not sure if it would be wise to share too many more details here.
This leaves you with all of the hypotheses already posted here, (and I came up with some additional ones,see below), and you still have to figure out what to do about it.
So, what to do about it?
I think the best way for you to decide this would be to either talk to your supervisor about his reasons directly or (if that thought makes you nervous) to someone else on the team. They might have some additional insights that can help you decide whether to challenge the order. If you do, my strong recommendation would be not to directly give your position but rather to ask your supervisor to elaborate on his reasons, make sure that you understand those reasons, and only then state why you think it puts a burden on you. You are much more likely to get a positive reaction if you can demonstrate to your supervisor that you understand his concerns, and can make a plausible claim that relaxing the requirement would help you without causing an issue.
I think that course of action should also minimize the risk to your MSc project because you probably don't want to quarrel with your supervisor while trying to do science. Even if you conclude that your supervisor is in fact a micro-managing control freak, you might still want to go through with your thesis project, so it's better not to burn bridges.
Some more hypotheses to test
All of the above seem like possible scenarios, and I have more:
Your supervisor may be worried that you misrepresent some of his own work to the co-supervisor, or that the co-supervisor might have some misconceptions which you might unwittingly reinforce. So he wants to be present to stay aware of (and occasionally correct) how his colleagues at another institution perceive the work being done not just by you but also others at your university. The same applies in the other direction.
And, more generally: He might want to cooperate with these people in the future, and that can be a difficult diplomatic rope to walk. He might be worried about you getting on the co-supervisor's nerves, naïvely or accidentally disclosing or misrepresenting something commercially or strategically sensitive, or otherwise affecting his relationship with the co-supervisor in some way, and he does not want to put the burden of responsibility for these things on you.
I know academics who have blocked each others' papers and cancelled collaborations over technical disagreements, and others reacting very strongly to the idea that their collaborators might try to use some information to gain an unfair advantage in an area where the two institutions are competing for grants.

Two legal reasons I can think of: your advisor is doing research on a sensitive topic, i.e. DARPA funded or something. There are laws saying what you can and can't share and they could be trying to make sure they abide by them.
Similarly, even if your research is not sensitive, your advisor may be considered that the communication across institutions looks suspicious, especially if boarders are crossed. For example, here is a case of a professor who was arrested but later all charges were dropped due a misunderstanding by the FBI about what he was collaborating on with foreign institutions.

Yes, your supervisor is possibly worried about your ideas or his/her ideas being stolen. Whatever you are working on is part of the research that goes on in your lab, so your conversations might also involve information about other projects. It might be due to not trusting the co-advisor enough but it does not have to be, if you mandate a rule like that, you prevent a lot of damage. I have seen people experience this and almost always it was at the student's cost, and of course also the supervisor's and at times lab's.


text:
Can I cite an article only once that I use for a whole section of the MSc dissertation?
I'm writing a section of my thesis in LaTeX that belongs to a state of the art chapter. This section contains the summary of a scientific article (many sentences are copied literally while others are summarised) and also some figures coming from the same article.
I need to cite scientific articles and space missions about trajectories to near-Earth objects, hence everything I write comes from documents where I selected some paragraphs/sections and I want to report these in my thesis. From here, the need to put a single quotation at the beginning of my sections.
I would like to insert the citation once at the beginning so as not to repeat it in every paragraph as follows:
\subsection{title}
The article [1] reviews the methodology used by...

By clicking on "[1]" the reader can immediately read all information about the source, so this is an hyperlink to the bibliography of my thesis.
Is this correct? Should the figures be cited individually or is the citation as indicated above sufficient?

Ask your thesis advisor or committee chair!

I've reformatted a bit the text, to avoid too many PSs.

A single citation is ok, but you also need to clearly indicate exactly what is taken from the article. It isn't enough to give a citation and then just copy-paste from the article. But if you say "The quotations in this section are all from ..." then that should suffice, provided that you quote. Even paraphrasing without specific citation is dangerous.
Note that you shouldn't write in such a way that a reader is required to follow the citation and then sort out what is used from it and what is yours. Make it clear.

Thank you @Buffy. Since I need to report a summary of the article, I decided to remove the paraphrases and I reported some fragments without text ri-elaboration.  I wrote: "This section reports the main aspects of the article [1]". Is this ok?

For a single methodology section in a paper, just one citation is generally fine as long as it is clear the entire section comes from that reference. Keep in mind it is a good practice for a standard method widely used in the field which you are using in your work, if - as is often the case with theses - you are reviewing/evaluating multiple approaches and techniques instead, bulk quotations and borrowing large quantities of writing material are a bad practice more often than not.
There is a tendency among students (at least in my practice) to not cover enough sources, but this is for your advisor to decide. The genuine need to cover the approach taken from a single source in great detail, as opposed to summarizing it briefly and discussing what others have done, is rare. Far more commonly, the outline would be more like
"X method was pioneered by A and B in xxxx [ref]. It consists of the following steps (as described in [ref]):
(description goes here)
It has been applied to Y and Z kinds of problems with great success [ref][ref], however, its applications in ... remain limited due to R [ref]. C, D and E have previously addressed the problem of R by doing ... and ..., and R was found to be two-fold: proposed techniques only succeeded in mitigating R1 but not R2 [ref][ref][ref]".
If something is widely known and accepted, there is no need to pepper it with references. The way you school teacher told you about Newton's laws might be how you know about them, but redirecting the reader to said teacher (and, optionally, Principia) would be of limited use.
Including the reference in figure captions, however, is a good practice even if this same reference appears abundantly throughout the text. Good graphics are valuable, especially in education, and chasing down apocryphal sources can take a lot of time (plus there could be reservations about reproducing the images!).

I suggest to my students a simple method to determine if the ideas or words of others are clearly marked:
(   )  ->

Is the beginning clearly marked?
Is the end clearly marked?
Is it clear where it comes from?

That is for direct quotations:  " [exact words] " (reference)
and for indirect citations: Smith defines blah blah blah (reference, page). She also finds that waffle brittle waffle (reference, page). If you think you need to take an entire page, take a good look at what you are writing and see if you can't do it better.
The point is to reference for your READERS, not to make your life easier as a writer. Make it simple for a reader to see when you are speaking and when you are summarizing someone else.

Thank you very much. The point is that I need to cite scientific articles and space missions hence everthing I write comes from documents where I selected some paragraphs and sections.


text:
Etiquette for institutional affiliation if you changed institutions during the review process
I recently got a job at a new institution, and recently one of my papers is accepted for publication. At this juncture you are allowed to change your institution on the paper. However, all of the work was done while at my previous institution where I was a postdoc, so I feel like the paper should display that institution's name.
What is the etiquette in this case? Does this depend on subject area?

This depends on the subject area.

Many journals allow you to include a "current address". If the journal that accepted your paper is one of these, then your affiliation should be your previous institution, where you worked on the paper, and your current address should be your new institution, where people can find you.

If the bulk of the work was done at the old institution, use the old institution and simply add the new institution as a footnote.  Thus:
Zero the Hero,
Tea Department,
The Oily Way,

[as footnote on title page]:
current address:
Inner Temple, The Milky Way

If the bulk of the work was done at the new institution, then add an acknowledgment:

Part of this work was done while Zero the Hero was a Master Builder at the old institution.

Usually when moving between two institutions I got a "guest appointment" for a few months (normally just to keep e-mail working while I move institutions). You could try and get that at your old place, then list both institutions as your affiliation. I've found that universities will easily hand out guest appointments (as it doesn't cost them anything) especially to people who just finished working at the University.

You could just use a dual affiliation, while providing your current (new) institutional e-mail address if you are the corresponding author (or if all the authors should provide e-mail addresses).
If your old institution is paying for all related expenses (publication fees, or conference travel), you may add a footnote or similar saying "The majority of the work for this publication was done at University of Awesome").
If you are hoping your new institution will pick up the cost (as I know many will actually gladly do that in such cases), just use a plain dual affiliation.

If you no longer have an actual affiliation with the previous institution, you shouldn't claim that you have. One important use of affiliation is to make it easy for people to find you.
However, as you say, you owe them something for their support. An acknowledgement section, or even a footnote, is the place for this. "This work was done as a post-doc with the support of ...".
The two issues are separate.

This would be completely insufficient at places I know. Universities must show productivity based on the publications of their people. If the work was done at institution A, it should be the affiliation. When I finished my postdoc, they would surely be very angry, if I didn't use the old affiliation in the paper that described my results. I would beasically steal all the  progress for the new institution.

I wrote a paper while visiting xxx on sabbatical; the journal listed xxx  as my affiliation.
This footnote followed:

On sabbatical leave from Bryn Mawr College. Present and permanent
address: Department of Mathematics, College II, University of
Massachusetts at Boston, Boston, Massachusetts

with no email address since this was in the days before email.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
Re-Using own figure from IEEE conference proceedings, which have not yet been published
Does anyone have experience with re-using their own figure from IEEE conference proceedings, which have not yet been published for another conference (not IEEE)?
I have contacted IEEE but have not yet received a useful answer. Usually with IEEE getting permission for copyrighted work is very simple. However, if the paper is not yet published on xplore.ieee.org/ then there is no standard procedure, and I was hoping someone already had to get permission for a not yet published figure.

I finally received an email from IEEE including the permission. To get there, I contacted all contacts that are listed on the standard reply one gets when messaging pubs-permissions@ieee.org.

Take a safe path, do not reuse, make a new one.

Why re-use something when you know sooner or later you will sign-off on its copyright?

@prof.SantaClaus I am not sure if I understand your question. I reused the figure since I could not really change it and it was necessary/benefitial for the understanding of my paper.

From a purely scientific context you can always cite a figure the same way you quote verbatim text. This guide might be helpful for citing figures.
Now on the other hand, there is also the aspect of legal copyright. As such it is important know where you plan to re-use it. By submitting your work to IEEE and signing their copyright transfer form, you gave the ownership of that figure to IEEE. This applies regardless on whether your accepted paper is already available on IEEE Xplore or not. If your intended re-use will be at IEEE you should be fine, since they have the rights on that figure and there will be no conflict (you should still cite it though). If you are planing to use it for your thesis or a journal or conference at another publisher I would recommend to re-do it (still add a reference to the original).
PS: For a legally binding answer you should consult a lawyer. If in doubt follow quantum's comment and take the safe path.

Sorry, I think my question wasn't precise enough. Usually with IEEE getting permission for copyrighted work is very simple. However, if the paper is not yet published on xplore.ieee.org/ then there is no standard procedure, and I was hoping someone already had to get permission for a not yet published figure.

Guess you will have to write them an email then. See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/reqperm.html :
"If you are not able to use the RightsLink service, permission licensing may also be obtained through www.copyright.com.
If you experience difficulty with the RightsLink service, please contact the customer care group at customercare@copyright.com or write to IEEE Publications at pubs-permissions@ieee.org."

As I updated my question writing multiple emails and being persistent (or patient) worked. Inititally, I received numerous emails telling me to follow standard procedure, but in the end I was given instructions on how to cite the figure (including copyright sign and so on, but I won't post this since this is maybe case-specific).


text:
Should I publish my first paper in a conference?
I am a Masters student. I wrote my first paper and sent it to a conference in Spain. To my surprise, they accepted my paper. Now I am hesitating, because I am afraid that my first work is not good enough. It will affect my future plan to study for a PhD. Should I publish it, or just cancel the conference submission and complete the paper to publish later in a journal?

Please don't tell me to ask my supervisor , he is such a type of person who let you count to one thousand before asking a question.

I am asking here because I consider that I don't have a supervisor.

What is your field? In fields such as computer science the primary venue of publication is conferences...

@DMlash Yes, my field is computer science , the conference name is ICITST.

The conference looks fine to me, don't worry. The first paper will not have a great impact on your career. Go ahead, go to the conference, meet people and continue to do research.

I am afraid that my first work is not good enough — Do not listen to the Impostor Syndrome.

@Paulo I can't comment on that particular conference, as it is outside of my area. Perhaps another user on this site can comment specifically. To give an answer that is broadly applicable: every discipline/subdiscipline has its own set of "premiere venues". In computer science these venues are typically conferences, with the premier conferences being specific to each subdiscipline. To answer your question, you shouldn't regret publishing in a conference, since you are CS. You should, however, be concerned with the prestige of the conference in question.

Depends ver strongly on field, as @DMlash said. In some fields (e.g. economics), conferences don't even have transcripts hence conference papers don't count as a publication. Is this the case or not?

Personally, I don't think that it is considered "bad" to publish a conference paper. Even less so, if it is your first paper. Nobody can expect you to release in a top journal of your subject all the time and especially not with your first article.
Where I am from you do not need to publish anything before your PhD, so I am not sure how important this is in your case. From my point of view, though, anything published is better than nothing (in this case at least).

Thank you very much, the problem is i don't know if the conference is good or not .

Well, that is often difficult to find out. Criteria that might help you decide are: Has the conference existed for a long time? Have known scientists contributed? Have you read any of the papers published there and how did you deem their quality?

This is the 11th year for the conference , i found their previous years (from 2012 to 2015) proceedings in Ieee explore

@Paulo: The first source for conference quality in CS is the database maintained by Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia. Unlike many other "lists of good conferences", they have a clearly defined and frequently evaluated method to do their ranking. ICITST is not in their database, though, which, however, is not necessarily a bad sign. The second source to check is the acceptance rate of past instances. You can find this in the preface of the proceedings. Roughly, an acceptance rate < 20% maps to A and < 35% to B level.

A conference that's supported by a major professional body/learned society (like the IEEE) is generally a safe bet.  But be sure to check that it's listed by the body in question, there are plenty of fake conference websites that will lie about everything.  This one is listed on the IEEE website which is encouraging.  That's not to say that it's the best conference in the field, but that doesn't matter -- a minor but correctly specialist conference is much more manageable early in your career than a huge conference with thousnads of people, many parallel sessions, etc.
Go for it, don't do anything stupid, talk to people, and it has a much better chance of helping your career than harming it.  And as you're quite new to the field, make a point of getting to all the plenary/invited talks you can -- the former in particular should be a great introduction to areas you haven't learnt much about yet.
Practice your talk in front of a real audience at least twice, taking the comments from the first time into account before the second time.  You really do need to talk to your supervisor at some point regarding authorship etc.

"that will lie about everything" - or, even when assuming less straightforward malevolence, will make statements that can be grossly misleading for inexperienced readers, such as "publication of proceedings with IEEE planned".

@O.R.Mapper, good point.  I'd read not long ago about a conference claiming all sorts of eminent scientists on the panel, none of whom had even heard of it, hence jumping straight to the "gross lie" type of predatory conference.

You are suffering the Impostor syndrome.
You send a paper to a conference, they read it and most likely without looking who you are decided that its good enough for the conference. That means that your work pairs with the other people's work quality or at least that the committee decided that your work would be interesting for the audience. So, go for it!
Additionally, academics are, in general, quite aware of the limitations/capabilities of students in different levels of their education. When you are there, presenting, they won't try to force you to have the knowledge/skills of a professor, but probably instead will be thinking "amazing student, he is still in his masters and already is presenting us nice work". Conferences tend to be casual and friendly, and you'll have people approach you more to help you than criticize you.
Additionally, if you are planning to continue your studies as a PhD students, this is a brilliant opportunity to meet academics around and ask them about possibilities for your future.
About the journal: later, you can always extend conference works into journals. It is a common strategy in lots of fields to publish preliminary results or "half papers" in conferences and then extend them to a jorunal article.
In short: Go to the conference. It will be fun.

My experience in computer science (albeit ten years ago and in a different subfield) is that conference submissions are not reviewed blind. I got papers to review with full author information all the time.

@HenningMakholm which doesn't mean that they check who the authors are. Some conference reviewers parse +20 papers, often they dont even bother checking the authors name/affiliation

@HenningMakholm: That depends a lot on the subfield. There are subfields where blind review (or even double blind review) is done by many conferences, and others where it isn't.

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


text:
Does the International Math Olympiad help research mathematics?
I was reading a note of Hojoo Lee on inequality which is written for International Math Olympiad (IMO) participants. Although he writes that “target readers are challenging high schools students and undergraduate students“, it appears to be quite advanced.
It occurred to me to ask, do these IMO problems contribute towards research work in math? Do these math notes/books give good overview for research work?
I am not interested in examples of Fields Medal winners who had previously participated in the IMO.

Olympiads are for competition, find or inspire talent, not to open new fields of research.

If you participated, that means you will be in demand by top universities.  After you get in, which shouldn't be a problem, you get better resources ($ or other liked people), and hence you will be in a better position to make significant contributions.  You basically have the Matthew Effect.

@Greg maybe they should throw in some unsolved problems with a disclaimer, just to see if someone comes up with a solution. I think there are plenty of easily understandable problems that are still unsolved.

Several academic colleagues I know did these types of competitions. They demonstrate interest, motivation, out-of-box thinking and many other qualities useful for research. In addition, of course, you need also long-term thinking to be successful, but some essential aspects of personality can be seen already in competitions.

Closely related: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/4846/advantages-of-imo-students-in-mathematical-research

The first part of @Greg's comment supports a positive answer to the first question (interpreted broadly): yes, IMO problems contribute to math research because they inspire smart young people to pursue mathematics.

There are very different areas of mathematics, some are more theory-oriented, some are more problem-oriented. Theory-oriented areas (like e.g. algebraic geometry) are built from bottom to top, while problem-oriented areas (like combinatorics, discrete optimization) offer you a bunch of methods that are suitable for solving problems and you need to cleverly combine them. The spirit of the latter areas is much nearer to the "Maths olympiad feeling" while the former areas require different skills.

I think of Olympiad problems more as "parlour tricks". They're really difficult, and it's super-impressive if someone's good at them, but the skills are very different to the skills you need in research. As a big example of a difference: the Olympiad rewards quick accurate leaps of reasoning, because you're under such time pressure. Research rewards long-term grit and persistence through blind alleys and repeated failure.

Something can't both be 'really difficult' and a 'parlour trick' - this is incongruous. As it stands your answer has an unwelcome derogatory tone. Although I agree with your central point of performance in olympiads not translating to performance in science I would downvote for needless belittling.

In the very next sentence he acknowledges, that they are indeed "impressive". He does not belittle those skills in any way. This is a good answer.

This is the same circumstance with programming competitions in which individuals aim to solve a puzzle in the quickest time or with the fewest lines of code. It's an impressive skill and a clear exercise of intelligence, but not very adaptable to, say, engineering software in a large-scale product.

@Spork Something can't both be 'really difficult' and a 'parlour trick' - this is incongruous. No, but figuring out a trick and using it all in short time can be really difficult.

@JoshuaTaylor Agreed. I'd say for a lot of techniques in math "parlor trick" is a good description. Once the magician tells you how he did it, it can all seem so simple. But if he doesn't tell you, you might spend ages mulling it over being unable to figure it out.

A parlor trick is a small trick, often easy to figure out, like The Detachable Thumb. A cheap trick. It's akin to saying Penn and Teller use parlor tricks. Even 'baking' is a better metaphor - the more experience you have the better the result.

@Spork But Penn and Teller do use parlour tricks. Really skilfully. What you think of as a "parlour trick" seems not to be the same as what lots of other people think of as a "parlour trick".

Something can't both be 'really difficult' and a 'parlour trick'. — Counterexample.  Counterexample. Counterexample.

Have you checked wikis list of IMO participants? I would not say that theses are just parlour tricks after reading this. It looks like the percentage of people who proved something really important there (Perelman, Tao and many others, just read their pages) is significantly higher than the percentage in the graduation class in the very good university.  And I am comparing really important stuff to publishing some crappy papers in low-quality journals (because you know that majority of academic researches publish just for the sake of publishing).

I'm aware that people who are good at the IMO tend also to be good at research. However, I claim that one doesn't contribute to the other. Do we have a list of world-class researchers who didn't do the IMO, and/or a list of IMO participants who didn't become world-class researchers?

@JeffE touché, and thank you for the entertainment. I'm surprised by how many people disagree with my understanding of the term 'parlor trick' (which, I thought, are simpler things than 'tricks' in general). Point taken.

@PatrickStevens Do we have a list of world-class researchers who didn't do the IMO, and/or a list of IMO participants who didn't become world-class researchers? using the same argument one can say the following "Winning the boxing summer Olympics has absolutely no correlation to being a good pro-boxer." Because "do we have a list of world-class boxers who didn't do BSO, and/or a list of BSO participants who didn't become world class boxers?".

@JeffE I can do that. Here, hold my beer. No, not like that! Ewwwww. No, I'm not happy that it's back in my glass now. Jeez!

Disclaimer:
I participated in the International Math Olympiad,
and have a PhD in operations research,
which is essentially a type of applied math.
There is some overlap between math olympiads and research math.
However, as others have noted, mathematics is a very broad field,
which includes subfields such as:
algebraic topology, theoretical computer science, combinatorics,
control theory, optimization, statistics/machine learning.
The amount of overlap with math olympiads depends very much on
what subfield of "research math" you are referring to.
Math olympiads have more overlap with say combinatorics,
and less with say control theory.
In training for math olympiads,
I learned how to try special cases
to get intuition about how a problem works,
and how to simplify a problem step by step,
and how to write a logical and complete proof.
I also learned how to persevere,
and to enjoy the challenge of tackling problems which are difficult,
and also when to give up when sometimes I am just stuck.
I think that these are skills that also are required in research math.
Therefore,
I think that there is positive but imperfect correlation
between performance at math olympiads
and performance in research math.
If you don't do very well at the IMO,
you can still be a successful pure math professor;
and if you get a perfect score at the IMO,
that does not mean you are guaranteed
to have a successful research math career.
Finally, the math olympiad is an artificial competition,
in that the problems in the olympiad
can all be solved in a fairly short time
with a relatively small set of tricks.
On the other hand, in the real world,
research math is much more open ended,
you need to find and define your own research problems,
and oftentimes the problems cannot be solved!
I would use the analogy that
olympiad math is like an RPG such as
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,
whereas research math is like real life,
extremely messy and open ended.

I want to upvote every paragraph individually and the second (non-disclaimer) paragraph twice!

+1 for pointing out that the training is part of participation

@theonlygusti I could write a whole essay about how to train for the IMO. I recommend that you refer to the site https://artofproblemsolving.com/

I'll go against the other answers and say experience with math Olympiads helps a student to become a better researcher, although in a limited way. Math Olympiads give you a larger "bag of tricks", with which you can solve faster the easy-medium problems that you may encounter during your research.
Moreover, you arrive at university with a larger math background and understanding, struggle less with the material and are probably more likely to retain what you see in the lectures. For instance, separating the nontrivial ideas from the tedious details is much easier when you already have a lot of experience in solving problems and writing proofs.
And in maths, everything you know can suddenly become useful in another field. It's useful to have already seen something. As a numerical analyst, I have on occasion used ideas from other fields in my research: combinatorics, algebra, inequalities...
That said, Olympiads tend to produce "problem solvers" rather than "theory builders", and some students burn out after doing maths for so many years (but it's a very small minority) or lose focus in the lectures at the undergraduate level because they find them not challenging.
Disclaimer1: I have been an IMO contestant twice, and now I am heavily involved in the organization of the Italian Math Olympiad.
Disclaimer2: all of this is anecdotal (but so are all the other answers I have read up to now). I don't know if there is any rigorous statistical investigation on that.

I took part in the B(ritish)MO but didn't make the IMO. I don't think the insights gained from the BMO really helped with undergraduate mathematics, let alone research (which I didn't do), but of course the level I was at, my total preparation and retrospective would be best expressed in hours rather than days. But having the sort of interests that lead to me trying the BMO in the first place certainly did make undergrad easier. To some quite large extent, participating in these competitions is a symptom of being good at mathematics, not a cause of it!

@SteveJessop 1. I agree with you on the cause/effect relationship, and this is certainly one of the reasons why quantifying the influence of math Olympiads is difficult. 2. At least in the way we structure the competitions in Italy, there is a big step in the amount of study and theory needed to compete at the national and international level. I believe that the preparation that may mostly affect positively your future research career is the one for international competitions.

@SteveJessop I'm not sure what your basis is for saying that insights from the Olympiad wouldn't help with mathematics research, since you didn't do that. Research in any field is very different from studying it at undergraduate level, so "it didn't help me as an undergrad" doesn't let you conclude "it wouldn't help a researcher, either."

@DavidRicherby I think there is a greater burden of proof on those claiming that Olympiads help with research rather than being symptopm-not-cause as Steve Jessop suggests. You're welcome to email me if you want particular discussion but some indication of my POV is https://www.mccaughan.org.uk/g/personal/maths.html (Disclaimer: I did some pre-BMO competitions but did not put myself forward for the selection competition to BMO, let alone IMO)

@YemonChoi This whole answer is a justification of the claim that Olympiads help with research! Steve made a claim to the contrary with, IMO (*baddum-tsh!*), very poor justification so I called him out on it.

@David: "Moreover, you arrive at university with a larger math background and understanding, struggle less with the material..." seemed to me to be a statement about undergrad. I'm just cautioning against deducing causation from correlation, since even if IMO gave no benefit whatever, it would still be the focus of the kind of activity that can give benefit.

I think that there is only a weak correlation between capable researchers and Math Olympiad champions. In fact, some of those "math savant" types make poor researchers since they cannot frame their mathematics in formal and well constructed ways. At my university, we had a few students score in the 40s and 50s on the Putnam exam. I think two of these six or so students went on to a graduate degree in math. And it took one of them three years after graduating to finally get around to doing so.
Also, the problems on exams like the Putnam exam and the Math Olympiad exams are already established mathematics. It would, in my experience, require large leaps to produce publishable research from such questions.

I don't know the Putnam exam, but Math Olympiads already require you to write in formal and well constructed ways. I speak from experience only on a national level (in Germany), but it was always necessary to formulate correct proofs and I can hardly imagine it would be different at the IMO.

"I think that there is only a weak correlation between capable researchers and Math Olympiad champions." Over which population? Do you mean that an IMO participant isn't much more likely to become a good mathematician than a random guy on the street.

Successful Math Olympiad competitors are no more "math savants" than trained researchers: their success is the result of a long, thorough, and deep training process. The whole "special math genius" trope is harmful both to society at large (where it puts people off of mathematics) and within mathematics (where it fools us into valuing apparent genius over hard work).

I think two of these six or so students went on to a graduate degree in math. - This says nothing about the research abilities of those who do well on the IMO or Putnam.  Also, is 1 out of 3 about the norm for going to math grad school outside of people who do well on the Putnam?

The correlation between IMO success and research success is indeed less than complete, but by calling it "weak" you are understating it a lot. Everyone from the German IMO team in my years (2004-2006) is involved in research (maths or CS) today. Same holds for the majority of the top 20 from IMO 2004 (just one example). This is not to say that the rest have failed at research -- they might have chosen a career that suits them better.

Have you checked wikis list of IMO participants? I would not say that theses are just parlour tricks after reading this. It looks like the percentage of people who proved something really important there (Perelman, Tao and many others, just read their pages) is significantly higher than the percentage in the graduation class in the very good university.  And I am comparing really important stuff to publishing some crappy papers in low-quality journals (because you know that majority of academic researches publish just for the sake of publishing).

At every International Congress of Mathematicians since 1990, at least one of the Fields Medalists was previously a medalist at the IMO.  Seven of them got perfect scores.  (Fewer than 200 people have received a perfect score through 1995, the most recent year relevant to the Fields Medal.)

@SalvadorDali to my knowledge, none of Blecher, Effros, Paulsen or Ruan were involved in Olympiads; yet operator space theory really is important stuff. Not everything that is due to not-Fields-medallists is automatically inferior; and not everyone who scores well in Olympiads has the same impact that those such as Tao or Gromov have had.

Math competitions serve more as platforms for students to join the mathematical community than as actual tools for research.
Many of my mathematically inclined friends and I would probably not have developed an interest in math until college (or not at all, if some other subject got to us first). The impetus to compete in middle and high school led us to develop curiosity in the field, eventually leading us to pursue more advanced mathematics and enter the research world.
However, to directly answer your question, math competitions themselves are not directly used for research purposes.

do these IMO problems contribute towards research work in math?

No, not the problems themselves. IMO problems must be unambiguously solvable in a few hours. They are not research questions. However, you can easily make an argument that the IMO process helps mathematical research by encouraging young talent (see some of the other answers).

Do these math notes/books give good overview for research work?

No, if you mean an overview of current research. Research is heavily sub-specialized. IMO must be accessible to not yet super-specialized high school students. However, in a very general sense, IMO questions and research both involve a fair bit of writing proofs; perhaps IMO can be considered an "overview" for research in that sense.

There is some IMO-problem which was influencing research-math:
 https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/imo-2009-q6-as-a-mini-polymath-project/
In short it is used for testing

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

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


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Is there a way to check to which scientific journals a specific library has access?
Is there a way to check which journals are available in a specific library/university? For example, my university library has access to some, but not all, the scientific journals related to Machine Learning in Springer. It would be helpful in case I need to move in order to get access to a specific topic or group of related papers.

Might work for university libraries, but in the public ones the answers usually don´t go further than the name of the publisher..

Since you (marsop) wrote Austria as place of residence in your profile, you may be interested in the EZB database that lists university library electronic journal subscriptions for most institutions in 5 countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia, Switzerland) and a few others (including the Library of Congress in Washington, DC). It also supplies information for many non-university libraries that typically have electronic journal subscriptions.
To use it, first click on "Choose Institution" on the left side of the page. Then select your institution (if it is listed). If you then search for journals, you will see a color code next to the journal names indicating whether members of the institution have (electronic) access to the journal's content.

The EZB is incredibly useful, and if it's only to figure out which friend to mail for having an article downloaded... Maybe you can mention the countries it's covering, so that others can judge whether it might be useful for them?

This is exactly what I was searching for, thanks.

These come to my mind:

The best way is to ask the librarian to give you a list of journals available in their library.
Check the website of the library/ university you are interested to study in, they may list the journals and publications which they have access to.
Very few journals/ publishers list the libraries/ research institutes where their journals are available in.
Also, you may email the journal and ask their customers service whether they are available in a specific library or not. I have never tried this and I am not sure whether they are going to answer you.

I would precede this with "0. Check the library catalogue", but 1 is a good followup (most libraries will have this to hand). The catalogue will almost always list every subscribed title, but won't always include all the "extras" from a Big Deal type subscription.


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Revealing manuscript referees' identities after review: Why is this a bad idea?
Motivated by the How can an author get assurance that his work will not be stolen by journal staff or reviewers? question:
Authors submit their manuscripts to be reviewed by a journal or conference. Unless the submission is double-blind, the authors' names are listed on the submission, so the referees know who the authors are. Anonymizing referees during a review makes sense, since, for example, you don't want the authors contacting the referees while they are performing the review of the manuscript. But what about after the review has taken place?

Why don't journals and conferences make available to authors the names
  of the referees who have reviewed the manuscript?

It really makes no sense to me.
Other questions on this site related to the present question:
What to do if a referee plagiarises the result after rejecting a paper?
Are the referees of a journal allowed to reveal the title of the papers they review after the review process?
(And there seem to be many more related questions...)
One common gripe in related questions seems to be the worry that referees can "steal" ideas presented in manuscripts. (I've personally not worried about this at all in my previous submissions.) A possible tactic to thwart "idea-stealing" is to post the manuscript on a pre-print server (e.g., arXiv); however, not all fields/sub-fields think it is kosher to do this.
Thus, given that the "post-manuscript-on-arXiv" solution is not applicable to everyone, this question seeks to determine what are the main, logical reasons why referees' identities are not revealed to authors post-manuscript review.

One obvious reason is that reviewers might refrain from being completely honest if the authors were going to know their identities. (Imagine a junior researcher having to give an honest but negative review of a paper authored by someone very influential in their field?)

Yes, and at the other end of the spectrum, perhaps "big-shot" reviewers wouldn't be so quick to dismiss ideas without giving them a fair and thorough analysis if they knew their identities would be known. @ff524

The fear that referees will steal results is almost completely unfounded so guarding against it is a low priority. For example, one could ask why clothing isn't routinely waterproofed so that people don't need to be afraid of being squirted with water-pistols while walking down the street. Sure, you could give reasons about waterproof clothing not being comfortable but the real reason is just that being squirted with water pistols in the street isn't a significant enough risk to be worth doing anything about.

@DavidRicherby Attempts to steal results are, in my experience as editor, quite rare, but not unheard of, and very unpleasant to deal with. In an important result with possible popularity, I can see why authors would worry. It is important that one can trust the editor to do a good job in this matter.

Some journals have an "open review" option, which basically is what you are asking about.

Note that I can see pros and cons of optionally permitting reviewers to disclose their identity, or even making peer review completely transparent. But the following focuses on the problems of disclosing reviewer identity after a decision has been made about the manuscript.
It creates a conflict of interest for the reviewer.
There is an incentive to provide a more positive review. For example, there is the possibility that the author may be more positively disposed to the reviewer in the future, if the reviewer provides a positive review. Also, the reviewer may not want to damage an existing relationship.
There is little difference between perceived conflict of interest and an actual conflict of interest. Thus, even if the reviewers are not influenced by this disclosure, others evaluating the integrity of the publication may perceive a problem.
It can create more work for the reviewer. If a reviewer knows their identity will be disclosed, they may have to spend more time being tactful. It's hard enough getting reviewers, if the workload of every review increases because the reviewer has to spend more time being tactful or worrying about the consequences of their review on their reputation, then this may make it even harder to find reviewers.

I would't still prefer all reviewers to be at least reasonably tactful. We are humans dealing with humans. Sometimes there are "big-shots" dealing with first time authors. People need constructive criticism, not rude reviews.

@skymningen Maybe the editor could do something about it?


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No financial advice disclaimer in a research paper
I'm about to submit my research paper to a journal concerning finance and investments. In the work, I say something like:

The results show that fields/industries/companies "A", "B" and "C"
appeared to be a reasonable choice for investment during the
investigated period.

I wonder if I should add a kind of a disclaimer that the paper's information is not a financial recommendation? Am I supposed do it in a scientific paper? If yes, how can it be properly done?

Academic papers in finance do not usually need a disclaimer like this, since the context of academic work means that it is understood that the work is a general scientific work, rather than a specific piece of advice to a financial client.  Nevertheless, if you're worried then it can't hurt to give a disclaimer, and I doubt the journal will object (unless they want to prevent the floodgates opening on the issue).  Something like the following should get the job done:

Disclaimer: The present publication is an academic paper published for general scientific purposes and is not intended to constitute financial advice to any person.   The author hereby warns all readers not to rely on the information in this paper for financial investment decisions or any other financial purposes, and to seek independent financial advice from an appropriate professional.  The author does not give any warranty as to the accuracy of any information in the paper to any person for purposes of financial decisions.

My own disclaimer: The present post is for general knowledge in academic discussion only and is not intended as legal advice to any person.  All readers are hereby warned not to rely on this post for purposes of obtaining legal protections or for any other legal matter.  If you want to obtain a legally effective disclaimer then you should obtain advice from an appropriate lawyer in your jurisdiction.  I give no warranty as to the effectiveness of the above disclaimer.

Your formulation makes it clear that you are talking about the past, not the future. By changing the words to "appear to have been a reasonable choice" this could become even clearer.
Scientific papers do not usually carry this type of disclaimer. They are not meant to be read among the public, but by scientific peers who would not be able to read this as a recommendation for the future.

Would you answer change if I talked about the future?

Then you would be providing financial advise. Unless you acted maliciously, I do not see how you could be held liable, but then it is a matter for the lawyers.


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Is it by any means premature to put the title of your thesis in resume?
This summer I’ll be graduating with a BSc in Computer Science: would it by any means premature and childish to put now the title of my thesis in a resume under a specific education accomplishment?

I removed the image because it was not relevant for the question, and moreover it wasn’t clear whether it really represented your situation. I also adjusted the phrasing to make it clearer the sequence of events. Let me know if I’ve got the situation right.

Your undergraduate thesis, which you have started already? Sure, go for it.

It is fine to put "work in progress" into a CV. Just mark it as such, since it isn't yet "accomplished work. Usually a separate section for such things is good to have.
You can do the same for other, not yet completed, projects.
Make it clear and it is fine.
It is a bit harder to justify if you haven't yet started, but even that can be marked as "future directions" or such.

You don't consider this "immature" or "premature" to do, given that my resume is 1 page only currently?

Not at all. You've got to start somewhere.

@AlixBlaine - the last resume I put together was one page, excluding the list of publications. I’m likely never writing another one before retiring, but I hate long resumes that don’t focus on the job one is applying for. I say that as someone who regularly hires for PhD staff and other positions. An undergraduate should have a one page resume.

@JonCuster, WOW! Interesting. To you, what would it mean, if a person has a piece of written article published at some big name company?

@AlixBlaine - depends on the job one is applying for. An undergraduate doing a thesis is not unusual, a journal article is a bonus. Masters and PhDs I'd expect journal articles. But just counting articles is far from what I do...

Big name as Microsoft!


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When did lecturers and teachers stop wearing academic gowns regularly?
In the English-speaking world, around when did academic gowns fall out of favour as everyday wear for lecturers and teachers?

This varies by place. Long ago most places in US. More recently in some places in UK. Cambridge, for example, though IIRC the "gowns" were perfunctory.

on the day academia fell out of favour.


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Does anyone have any concrete evidence for the time distribution of student assignment submissions relative to a deadline
My question is about submission deadlines. When do students submit their work relative to a given deadline?
I see a lot of second guessing and anecdotal evidence and "in my class I have seen this and that". I wondered if are any verifiable and controlled studies which are statistically significant.
Is it really true that most students will submit close to the deadline. Can this be quantified in a meaningful way?
And as a follow on - is this related to particular disciplines or is it all students? Is it mainly 1st years or also post grads? And if it is a problem, can it also be seen in other walks of life?
I would really like to see some evidence. I am struggling to find any studies. Perhaps if you know of some you will be happy to share them.

Just curious what you will do with this information if you get it.  Also, it's going to depend on a bunch of factors such as assignment type, whether it is group or individual, whether it requires computers or other equipment that must be reserved, etc. etc.

Before computers, most everything was turned in the day it was due because that was the day of a class…

The data will hopefully settle the question as to whether this actually occurs in the first place. Then, what we can do about it in terms of help with time management and also ensuring sufficient time for assignments which can possibly be managed holistically to account for multiple deadlines as well as set times.

Jon, yes and no. If the assignment administration was handled by a 3rd party administrator then we would see lots of paper submissions ahead of the deadline. But there is a wider point, the flaw in looking at the submission distribution is that you assume people submit once they have finished the assignment. Nothing is perfect. And at the moment we are left with anecdotal evidence suggest as what you said, which is somewhat helpful but far from conclusive.

What is "close", what would not be "close"? There will always be a moment closer to the deadline than when something has been submitted, and there will always be a moment further away from the deadline than when something is submitted.

This sounds like a research topic. Have you consulted an academic librarian? Just searching student assignment submission deadline in an academic library search and limiting to articles, I see multiple articles about academic procrastination, submission patterns, etc. One is even titled "Patterns in assignment submission times...."

One professor's observation is here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/50035/16183

You’re assumption on time management is that students submit assignments as soon as they are completed, which is certainly NOT true.  I for one only accepts handwritten assignments submitted in class on the due date, else the logistics becomes rapidly overwhelming.