text:
About Acknowledgements part
I had a research stay abroad in an Institute 2 years ago. A short while after leaving institute (about 1 month later) I submitted an article related to my work there to a journal. Recently my article has been accepted to publish.
As I had an email address belongs to hosting server of the institute where I was working there, I want to write that as my email address. Is it right to write email address and the name of institute as the contact address for my article whiles I have left there? In addition,

Use an email address that will be valid for a long time.

Or for such case there is appropriate to select "corresponding author" - may not be the first author, but e.g. your supervisor or head of the lab which very probably work long time in an Institute and will do in future.

This may vary from field to field, but in my experience (chemistry) it is always the case that you list your affiliation as the institution(s) where you performed your work; where appropriate, you can list more than one affiliation. In the case that an author's affiliation has changed since the work was performed, the convention is to add an additional "Currently at" or "Presently at" affiliation - your publisher would be able to give the details of how to do this for your article.
For an example of a publisher's take on this, see this excerpt from the ACS publications author guidelines:

Institution Address: The author affiliation(s) listed should be the institution(s) where the work was conducted. If the present address of an author differs from that at which the work was done, that address should be given in an Author Information note


text:
Providing required formulae in mathematical statistics' final exam
In a final exam of mathematical statistics, a set of required statistical tables are allowed to be used. As a junior instructor of Mathematical Statistics, I want to know whether I can provide a sheet of some useful but huge formulae in the final exam. For instance, in the case of interval estimation there are some intervals for estimating difference between means,then can I provide them in final exam?

This is really dependent on your institution's culture and your role (what does 'junior instructor' mean?) and the amount of independence over the course you have been given.

by junior instructor I mean it is the first semester that I am teaching this course in this institution.

I don't see how anyone outside your institution could answer this in the way you'd need it to be answered (that is, for you, rather than for someone else or how they'd like it to be or even how it usually would be).

Over the years, my philosophy on exams has changed substantially and yours will probably too. My take on it is that I want to see student understanding, not doing or memorization. As a consequence, I no longer see value in students trying to remember complicated formulas (or indeed applying complicated formulas), and as a consequence my exam question sheets have often gotten quite long because they contain all of the relevant formulas as part of the question. Instead, they ask students to outline to me how a proof could work, or how one would decide between using formula (A) or (B) to assess whether a data set supports a hypothesis or not. This perspective is mostly driven by realizing that I want my students to be able to apply what they learned in the real world, where they can always look up the exact details of a formula, but where knowledge is pointless if there is no corresponding understanding. So I test understanding, not knowledge.
Applied to your situation, the question you should then ask yourself is not "is it acceptable to provide students with a collection of formulas?", but instead "what is it that I want my students to demonstrate?", and if you know what that is, you can ask yourself whether students need to remember formulas for that. If the remembering is not important to what you want students to demonstrate, then give them the formula.

There is nothing wrong with that in principle, but you need to discuss it first with the department head, especially since you hold a junior position. A tenured professor wouldn't need to clear it first, but you should.
An alternative, however, is to let students bring one sheet of paper, of a size you specify, on which they can write anything they like. Both sides. It might be as small as an index card. If you do that, you can initial them yourself so that students don't try to bring multiple sheets and switch them.
The advantage of this suggestion is that when the students provide their own "cheat sheets" they will have done some active learning to prepare them. The very preparation might make them redundant.

Yep, I often use that "cheat sheet" practice in my undergraduate courses too. When I was a student, one of our professors used to suggest that we make "shpargalki" (cheat sheets that would be easy to conceal and to read from on the exam) and then discard them: the process of creating a really efficient prop like that should make the product itself quite obsolete and if it doesn't, then "shpargalka" just wasn't good enough.

I once allowed the students (Calc 3) to bring a cheat sheet.  It was to be on one side of an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper.  One kid cut his sheet into three strips and made a Möbius strip, thereby doubling the usable area.  He beat me fair and square.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
Validating Journals: by checking publishers or indexing database?
I have recently submitted a paper to a journal and in the website of that journal it say that indexed in SCOPUS and ESCI and etc. In the website of SCIMAGO the name of the journal is available. When I check the  scopus website there exists a journal by the same name, but when I look for that by ISSN there is no journal with this title. For Emerging sources citation index I have used ESCI to validate that. Regarding its publisher, I am not able to validate its publisher because it has just one website with few information. Can you please help me how to validate the journal?

A publisher website with very little contact information is a massive red flag, potentially indicative of [predatory-publishing] practices. There are predatory organizations who will "hijack" the name of a legitimate journal and use their journal title and ratings to make their predatory site appear legitimate.
You can also verify the registered ISSN through the ISSN portal and verify that information (website, publisher, ISSN info) against what is appearing on the site itself.
In addition to checking the above, you can look to publication history, editors, reviewers, etc. I have contacted supposed journal editors, who were listed on a predatory site, who were angered to discover this, as they had no affiliation with the journal whatsoever.
Iowa State University has a nice little Guide to Predatory Publishing that is a helpful start. Most predatory publishers are fairly quickly revealed when you start digging around to verify some of this information. I usually pick a thread and pull it, and see where it leads me. Always worth it to investigate and do some 'due diligence'.

NB: This is for Scimago:
What is on Scimago is what is Scopus indexed.
Check the ISSN on Scimago if it matches.
If it does, the journal site from Scimago should be the right journal. If it is different, then you (might) have an #hijacked journal.
[Edit]
PS: Scimago might not have a broken link: like in the case of the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems (as at 15 Jun 2023)
[Edit]
Ensure you're checking ISSN and E-ISSN (where there's one).

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Recommendation letter; reminder email
I had an interview for a faculty position about 6 days ago. I was asked to arrange two letters of recommendations. One of my references sent it, but another one has not submitted  yet. Shall I remind my reference to submit the letter? Or it is better to wait.

Send a reminder only if there is a hard deadline for its receipt. A week is very short for an expectation of a recommendation letter. If the academic schedule is anything like that of the US with December finals followed by a couple of weeks of holidays, then it is especially short. The recommender has other things on their mind and may even be away.
I expect that the institution will understand all of this and not expect quick turn-around at this time. They are probably not making decisions at this moment, in any case, if such is the academic calendar.

Also think if that recommender is willing to submit letter or not and think carefully about potential reason behind not submitting the letter. If reviewer sees that you are better fit for the position, they would respond much sooner to the request. I am not saying this might be the reason. But this is important to consider. I have faced similar situations in the past and haven’t received letter from one of the recommender yet. Thinking about the reasons more deeply, they might be passively refusing to support.


text:
Addressing professors with their first name only
I am going to apply for a postdoc call and I have commenced exchanging emails with a professor. In his first reply to my initial email he addressed me with my first name (Dear (my first name)). In my second email I address him as

Dear Professor (His first name only)

and his reply on my second email was

Dear Colleague.

Now I do not know whether I can address him with his first name without using the word "professor"?

probable duplicate of https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/84410/75368

In the US, addressing a professor as "Professor Tony" (their first name) is extremely weird. I suggest you keep it formal until you meet them personally.

@Buffy Many Thanks for informing me about the above links, they are extremely useful. I am sorry for not searching a lot and mentioning duplicated question.

A bit of warning. While it isn't especially polite or sensible, addressing those perceived as "underlings" by their first name is pretty common. But people who do that may not appreciate a symmetric addressing by those they consider underlings. Hence, I suggest formality until you have explicit permission. "Professor Smythe" (family name) is always safe. "Professor Tony" or "Tony" can be read (probably unfairly) as presumptuous. If you weren't seeking something from them it would probably not matter. But here, it might.  Note that many people never address their parents by first name.

In formal correspondence, including during the application process for a position, address faculty in emails with "Dear Professor [Last Name]." Even if they sign an email with their first name use Professor [Last Name]. Only use their first name if they explicitly tell you to use their first name.


text:
How to address an email to an academic office where many people reply from the same email address?
I have been sending emails (in English) to the "visitor's program" of an institute in Germany. Initially, only one person used to reply to these emails, and I addressed this person.
Recently, two more people started replying from the same account (and they seem to reply in some random order). I started addressing the person who last replied, but since then, it has happened twice that I addressed an email to "Mr. A", but "Ms. B" or "Mr. C" replied to that email.
Also, some of them write Dr. in their signature, while some do not write. And they are not professors (So Dear Prof. A, Prof. B, Prof. C won't work). Since some of them don't write Dr., I feel it may not be a good idea to write "Dear Mr. A, Ms. B, and Dr. C".
Can I write "To whom it may concern"? Is that somehow considered rude?
Although this institute is in Germany, feel free to add information about other countries.
I don't think this is a duplicate of this because I am concerned about addressing more than one people simultaneously, while that question seems to be more concerned about gender of the recipient.

What country? .

@AzorAhai-him- Germany. I have edited the question.

Ah ok - I won't answer then, but at least in the US, once a conversation is going, continuing to add salutations isn't really necessary. Are you writing in English?

@AzorAhai-him- Yes, English

There are some suggestions here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/147179/ though that question was closed.

Does this answer your question? Non-binary, more modern alternative to "Dear Sir/Madam"

This might also be on-topic question at english.stackexchange.com See relevant post there: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2112/dear-sir-or-madam-versus-to-whom-it-may-concern

I would reply to whoever wrote the latest email... it is a reply after all. When other people take over and respond, I interpret that as if the group that monitors the email is always in bbc, and is free to join in the conversation/take over when it becomes useful. When I reply, it's to the last person to have "spoken," unless I need to address something specific a different person said, in which case I might write back to both (ETA: as in, "Dear Mr. Smith and Ms. Jones, " or "Hi Sarah and Michael, " matching their tone).
There was some talk in the comments of this question about etiquette in various countries. I'm from the US but have worked in Europe for four years, and I still would go with this strategy. I know German addresses combined with honorifics are notoriously more formal than other languages, but usually when the conversation is in English and among an international crowd, the international English standards take over. I've never lived or worked in Germany, but get communications from German academics and haven't noticed any deviations from that norm.

I forgot to add some information to the question (some have Dr. in their signature, some do not), but now I have edited it. Please have a look at it.

I live and work in Germany. This is what I would do and what I expect. My department uses shared mail accounts and even we do not know who of us is responding to what half of the time – we certainly do not expect outsiders to keep track of the department's members' internal responsibilities.

@ArchismanPanigrahi Honestly it's probably better to go with first names if you're this deep into the conversation. If you notice they are really sticking to last name addresses, then I'd always just reply the last person who responded, using Dr. if appropriate. If I do need to reference two people (which should be rare) then it's fine to say Dr. Jones and Mr. Smith, though it does feel more awkward than going with first names. Take a look at how they are talking to you and how they are signing their emails.

"when the conversation is in English and among an international crowd, the international English standards take over." Indeed. I remember my PhD days (Austria), when my advisor and I would address each other as "Lieber Hr. [my last name]/Sehr geehrter Prof. [his last name]" in e-mails. However, as soon as we were in an English-language conversation with other scientists, we referred to each other by our first names: "To elaborate on [my/his first name]'s point, ...".

Typo: "bbc" should be "bcc"

The customary formal address in written English to an unknown (number of) recipient(s) is "Dear Sir or Madam". In German, it would be "Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren".
However, although German etiquette is a tad more formal than US etiquette, it's alright to just omit the salutation after the first or second reply in an email exchange.
Some other okay options, in order of my subjective sense of appropriateness (with 10 years in German and Austrian academia):

"Dear Mr A, dear Ms B, dear Ms C"
"Dear X" (with X being the person who replied last)
"Hello"

"To whom it may concern" is not a great choice. It's very formal, old-fashioned, and used only when the recipients are unknown.

Strongly disagree with your opening sentence - never once have I addressed anyone as "sir" or "madam" in English, especially not academia, and I would find it extremely odd to respond to a "visitor's office" with "sir." In any case, perhaps that could be qualified to what you mean? I know little about international English

@Azor Again -him- good to know. Dear sir/madam seems to be less common than I thought. See https://www.grammarly.com/blog/dear-sir-or-madam/ then again, this could be one of the occasions where it makes sense.

What about "To whom it may concern"? I'm not a native speaker, but I was taught that would be the go-to line when corresponding with an unknown recipient / when there might be more then one person receiving the message.

See also https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2112/dear-sir-or-madam-versus-to-whom-it-may-concern

I think omitting the salutation, while acceptable, is still impolite, both in English and German. A good indication is usually to see what the other party does.

To whom it may concern
Dear sir/madam
...

Are fine for first contact. Subsequently, respond inline, which doesn't require a salutation.

Why does answering inline not require a salutation? Omitting it is equally impolite in both cases.

@user151413 Responding inline is a continuation, the necessary salutation already appeared. Conversations open with salutations, they aren't scattered throughout.

I think there's different opinions on that. I would still start with "Dear user2768", and then respond to the points inline (possibly after an introductory sentence). You could equally argue that responding to an email is a response, and the saluation has occured in the first email. In any case, if otherwise you are polite etc., it will not matter.

@user151413 Yes, there's different opinions. E.g., salutations are impolite, they waste time.

How about signing with your name? How about correct spelling? It waste's the writer's time. Should the reader spend time! How about stating arguments clearly? Should the reader figure out what the writer meant! (I'm exaggerating, but in my experience there is a correlation between students who put effort in formal aspects of the email, and those who put some effort in the content and don't ask for things they could figure out in 1 minute by themselves.)

@user151413 There's a clear benefit in putting effort into content. What's the benefit of salutations (beyond first contact)? We're deep into opinions.

What's the benefit of the salutation in the first contact?

@user151413 SPAM detection

Good advice - don't start your email with "Respected Sir"!

@user151413 What's the benefit of salutations?

SPAM detection!

@user151413 You have no basis for your comments above?

What is the benefit of good manners?


text:
How do I politely tell a professor that I prefer not to be online-interviewed late at night?
I have applied to a graduate program in the US, and a Professor emailed me that he wants to meet on Zoom to talk about my application.
He gave me some dates when he will be available for a Zoom meeting.
How do I politely request that I don't want to meet at late night (Indian time)?
Will it be considered rude if I write that I want to meet on a certain date (among the ones he said he would be free), and also specify a time before which I want to meet?

Dear Prof. X,
Thank you for your email. Can we talk sometime Wednesday? Let me know a time that works for you.
I would prefer not to talk late at night (Indian time). Any time before 2:30 PM, EST works for me.

Does this answer your question? How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?

Just stating your preference is polite. Your example works fine. They are likely a busy person but that does not mean your own schedule and preferences should be completely neglected (if it feels like it does, that is a major red flag).
But be ready to offer some concessions. It is not academia-specific, really - just be considerate of others' needs, try to fix these small issues together, and make up for inconveniencing people if you can not help it. One time it is them adjusting their schedule, the other time it is you, that kind of thing.

"it is late for either you or them" I don't think any reasonable person would consider "any time before 14:30" as late.

@Maeher My bad, got confused with time zone names. Amended, thank you.

Attending interviews from India to the USA is a difficult job. The time zone difference is 10-14 hours depending on the place. Most of the time, your interviews will be after an evening in Indian time because that's the work time in the USA. You can definitely ask him for another time if it's late-night (after midnight) and explain that it might be difficult for you at such time. But agree to attend if they don't have any other time. US professors are extremely busy and most of the time they don't have much flexibility for their own students.

There is nothing unreasonable about your preference here.  I would suggest augmenting it by giving some explanation of why you would prefer not to interview late at night ---e.g., you could point out that you will have difficulty performing well due to tiredness late at night.  In terms of how to ask for this, I recommend you look at the time conversion and suggest a reasonable range of times that would be mutually convenient.  Presumably there is some reasonable cross-over time for the two respective countries where neither person is required to be awake at an unreasonable hour.

Your overthinking it, a request for something so obvious doesn't need justifying. Suggesting times is a good idea though.

"I would suggest augmenting it by giving some explanation of why you would prefer not to interview late at night" Please do not do that. Know your audience. If you over-explain such a basic concept, it's going to count as a mark against you. Just ask for the time slots that would work for you. Tell them the time zone you'e in. There is no need to explain yourself anymore than that.


text:
Manuscript went from 'awaiting referee selection' to 'awaiting decision'. What does this mean?
I wonder if anyone has any answers to this? I am quite worried! I submitted my manuscript to a top international relations journal and it went through the usual admin checks and one day went to 'awaiting referee selection'. The next day it went to 'awaiting decision'!
I wonder if they made an error and decided to now make an editorial decision instead of sending it out for review? It seems to have skipped 'awaiting referee assignment' -> 'awaiting referee scores'.
Any info would be most helpful! Thank you!

I don't think this is a duplicate question. I searched thoroughly without finding a satisfactory question (or answer) like mine.

It means nothing. These status should not be taken seriously. Just give it some time; either you will get a decision or it will go for the review process.
It it is desk reject, then reviewer means the editor herself. If it is not a desk reject, then it will surely go to the external peer-reviewers for review.
Further, if you are thinking of sending an email to them, then I would say, don't. Wait! It is not late yet. Just ignore your paper for few months (of course, depends on your fields.).

Thank you. No intentions of emailing them at this stage!

It means the editor is making a decision without inviting reviewers. This is not a good sign. The most likely result is a desk rejection. The next most likely result is a revise decision because something's wrong with your submission, e.g. you forgot to submit a crucial figure, the paper's English is poor, and so on.
This is not likely to be an error. The editorial management systems I'm familiar with don't easily let you make decisions unless a review has been received. If it is an error, it'll be reversed soon enough, since the editor-in-chief is likely to want to glance at the reviews before making a final decision.

Thank you for your info I was suspiciously pessimistic as well when it went from 'referee selection' to 'awaiting decision'. Ah well!

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


text:
Is having a chapter in an open-access book valuable as a publication?
So I work in a project where the consortium is planning to write an open-access book with Springer publications.
There might be a chapter regarding the work I have done in the project. The editors of the book will be some other people, but every chapter will have the authors of the dedicated work.
Doesn't this mean that irrespective of the chapter's content, at the end if one cites the book, only the editors of the book are cited and not me?
I am just not sure how does it help when one considers writing chapter(s) in a book helpful in academia?

It looks like you are describing an open-access book, not open-source

Yes. That is what it is called.

When book chapters have different authors, of course you cite the chapter and its authors.  The same way you cite a journal paper, not the whole journal.

Valuable in what way? Are you asking will it be valued for grad school admissions? For tenure?

@Shan-Desai I edited your question to change to "open access", feel free to revert if you think my edit is incorrect

Why is "open access" relevant?  Either the book chapter is refereed or it isn't.

Note: I'm assuming that OP meant an open-access book (the term "open source" applies to software).

Doesn't this mean that irrespective of the chapter's content, at the end if one cites the book, only the editors of the book are cited and not me?

No it doesn't: it's very likely that your independent chapter can be cited with you as author, that's not an issue (example of an open-access book with chapters by different authors).

I am just not sure how does it help when one considers writing chapter(s) in a book helpful in academia?

In this case the open-access book is paid by your consortium, so it's not as prestigious as having a paper accepted in a competitive peer-reviewed journal for instance. But it's still a valuable publication, the editors are supposed to make sure that the chapters satisfy academic standards.
This kind of publication is more and more common due to open-access requirements by some funding bodies, for instance the EU.  The advantages of this kind of publication are:

the thematic unity of the book. Among the other chapters, your work is put in context in a way which is supposed to show its relevance.
the freedom you have about the content. You have room to give details and, unless the editors impose specific constraints, you can present any aspect of your work. This can be an opportunity to offer a perspective that wouldn't be easily accepted in a different context.

For the kind of book you seem to describe, I think citations would be to chapters of the book, hence to the authors.
But pretty much any reviewed and edited publication you have helps you, though some more than others. Since you have done the work, consider the relative merits of having this vs not having it, or someone else having a chapter in your place.
If you still had the work to do, you might consider where your time and efforts would be better spent, but with the work behind you, the writing effort should pay off over time. If no one else cites it, you certainly can in work that builds on what you did. It gives you visibility with the other authors as well, and can lead to future opportunities.
I don't see any negatives other than the time spent in writing. And, saying no to the editors might not be the wisest move.

I agree that citations for specific material would be to the relevant chapter and would therefore primarily cite the author(s) of the chapter. The book and its editor(s) would be named later in the bibliographic entry. The only situation where I'd cite the book without citing a specific chapter is to give a pointer to background information on a general topic, so the book as a whole would be relevant.


text:
How do I use MLA citations for the title of my paper?
I have a short quote as part of the title of an essay I am writing, and was wondering how I'd cite a quotation in the title of my essay in MLA format?

You don't include citations in the title of an article.
Enclose the quoted phrase in quote marks, so it's clear that they are someone else's words, and then give the source in the introduction.

"Taking Arms Against a Sea of Troubles": Swiss Foreign Relations, 1683-1715
By user18347
Shakespeare's character Hamlet considered one of his options to be "taking arms against a sea of troubles" (Shakespeare, p. 123).  A similar choice was faced by the leaders of Switzerland in the late 17th century. [...]

Then include a reference to Shakespeare's work in your bibliography or list of references, as with any other source.
If the quote and its source are common knowledge, so that's it's more a proverb than a quote, then it's probably not necessary to discuss the source, unless it gives useful context.
If this is an essay for a course, then if in further doubt, consult your instructor.


text:
Efficient Note Taking during literature review?
I am doing a literature review for the first time and I am struggling with what kind of system I should be using regarding note-taking so that I do not have to go back and forth between papers.
Is there a systemic way of taking notes/capturing the main ideas/contributions/challenge of a paper so that a quick glance at my notes can refresh my memory and understanding of a paper, as well as help me see how it fits in the big picture?

Exactly.
Either create a template:
Purpose/Gap
Claims
Literature/Framework
Methodology
(including context / participants)
Discussion
Conclusions / Implications
Working theories
Quotes
1 (2 max) page for each article, chapter, book, etc.
Make sure you keep track of citations (zotero / endnote).
More recently - I started to write a paragraph that includes - major concept/claim, participants, framework, findings and implications or conclusion) (and then limitation of study or implications.
This way this is ready to be inserted into lit review (and then editd as necessary).
HTH
And, READ STRATEGICALLY:
abstract, then conclusions... and then skim sections and and READ only what necessary to get the gist of the article!

@GoodDeeds - Hope that helps is how I decoded it.


text:
Is it reasonable to ask update on recommendations letter twice?
It is important to know that I have requested about 7/8 letters per professors ( 3 total ). I have told them that I was conscious that it was a lot of letters to write so I was content with a general letter for most of the schools I wanted to get in and maybe one letter that was a bit more personalized for the school they felt I would have the highest chances of admission.
The nearest deadline is 10 days away. I have asked about this in late January and I haven't gotten anything yet.
I asked for an update in early March and the profs were either working on it or were being bottlenecked by the administration. But since then I got nothing.
The deadlines are approaching quickly and I hope you understand how stressed I feel about this. Would it be too petty to ask for a second update?
I need at least 3 letters, and I have only asked to 4 professors, one of which didn't answer so I think he doesn't want to write me one (for a reason I ignore). I may have made a mistake and should've asked more professors, that's on me. The point is I don't want to upset because if at least one of them decides that I am too annoying I can already cross half of the schools I wanted off the list.

You can stop worrying.
It is not unusual for professors to wait until the last minute to write letters.  Although busy, they are experienced at meeting deadlines and will get it done.  It only really takes an hour or two to write a recommendation letter, and submitting it to 7-8 places is no big deal at all.  What you've asked of them is completely reasonable.
It is certainly fine to contact them, though I don't think I would phrase it as "asking for an update".  I would write an email like:

Dear Professor X,
Thanks again for agreeing to write me a recommendation letter.  I just wanted to send a friendly reminder that the first deadline is April 1 (for University Y).  The remaining schools and dates are in the list I sent you previously.
Please let me know if you find that there is anything else you need.
Sincerely,
truvaking

Also, if you have recently made any significant accomplishments that you think they might want to mention in the letter, you can communicate this in your email as well.
I really don't think you will upset anyone by doing this.  It would be incredibly petty and unprofessional for a professor to go back on a promise to write a recommendation letter, solely because the student sent some reminder emails.  Likewise, I think it is still fine to re-contact the fourth professor if you think their letter would be helpful.  They may have simply overlooked your original request (professors get a lot of email).


text:
Can a peer-grading system still work despite malicious students?
I'm asking this as a purely theoretical question, out of curiosity.
Let's say you are teaching an undergraduate class with complete autonomy. Instead of grading it traditionally, you decide to have the students grade each other. The goal is to significantly (by at least 50-90%) reduce the instructor's grading burden and promote self-assessment for students.
My initial instinct is that any such system will always be vulnerable to students collaborating to grade all papers 100 or 0, disregarding the rubric. Is this the case? Are there any peer-grading systems that work without the "honor principle"?

Give students access to 10% or more peer grades and some just want it all whatever the "system"... Most will play fair but some never will.

The title and the content don't seem to match. "malicious" would mean intentionally doing bad things to the grading -- like giving a paper worthy of an A an F. What you describe is "gaming" of a more generic sort -- but also just the basic difficulty students will face in evaluating other students' work.

I think the word 'malicious' can lead to different meaning as mentioned by @virmaior

If students were truly malicious you wouldn't see 100's and 0's. You would see 83's instead of 88's, and such.

@virmaior Intentionally overgrading or undergrading fellow students IS bad.

"bad" and "malicious" are not the same. A child getting hit by a car is bad, but if the person driving it didn't intend the action, it's not "malicious" because it lacks intent. Generally, the motives of students (who in my experience mostly tend to grade each other very generously) are not born of malice.

The goal of reducing grading effort in this way is malfeasance. As the instructor, it is your judgement that should be the dominant factor in student evaluation. And I'm a big believer and user of peer evaluation. But you can't substitute the judgement of non professionals for your own and expect any good outcome.
Self-assessment is different from peer-assessment, by the way and it is also a useful and valuable thing to do, but not if the main goal is to make the instructor into a mere clerk.
In an ethical system in which student evaluate and mark their peers the instructor effort is actually likely to increase, not decrease, since you have to both judge the original papers yourself and the evaluations given by others. It is valuable to do that if done well, but is inconsistent with the goal of reducing instructor effort.
And of course, if the students need to expend effort to evaluate their peers the results should be part of their own evaluation as well.
I've often used self and peer evaluation to get some feedback on what students do in a project setting where their work is done outside my direct view. I still have to evaluate the project, of course. But the self evaluation is to have students describe their own main contribution to the work. The peer evaluation is to ask students who were the top contributors to the effort and why they make that judgement. Note that all of the questions are stated positively. What it has taught me is that some students who don't appear to be particularly engaged in the classroom can be major contributors to group work. That is valuable to know and it has to come from students, but it doesn't reduce my effort.

This doesn't seem to answer the question.


text:
How to quickly assess the legitimacy of a conference?
Academics commonly get invitations to conferences. Some of these are legitimate, but many are simply scams or bogus. How can you tell at a glance which is which?

Default - it is bogus. Unless the invitation is from somebody I know, have met in real life, and trust.

Who is the sponsor? If it is a reputable and known organization, then it is probably ok. But if you just get a blind email from somewhere/someone you don't know, then beware. Lots of in-between cases, of course.

@Buffy there are very questionable conferences sponsored by reputable organizations. Thus I don’t think the sponsor is a good guide. A better guide is to look at the papers that were presented in past years and to look at the organizers.

The fastest way possible is to use a policy of "don't call me, I'll call you" with venues (conferences, journals, etc.). If you don't already know them, discard correspondence from them. In most cases there are already too many options to chose from on where to go and where to submit, so there is little to lose from discarding unsolicited contact from people you don't already work with.
The next, more open, version is to ask a few sensible people you already know. "Hey, have you heard of XYZ conference?" Assuming the people you know and respect are not carbon copies of you, this should net you a very high percentage of recognition if the conference is worth bothering with. Asking people you know and respect, and who are not exactly like you, is a great way to broaden your horizons if you are not yet familiar with what the useful venues are already.
Note that I take a somewhat snobby view of venues here, in that I don't actually care about mere legitimacy, in the same way I don't care to eat at a restaurant because I won't immediately be robbed for going in. I want a way to spend my time, effort, and money that is much better than my existing options. Some conference I've only heard of because of some unrequested 'invitation' is vanishingly unlikely to provide an option better than the ones I'm already aware of.
If for some reason something new appears that really piques my interest, I would look to see who supposedly is on the organizing/editorial committee, and see if there are people I know and respect and would like to work with (and if so I might also contact them directly to ensure they actually are affiliated and approve). I would also read previous papers/proceedings/abstracts and see what they have to offer. If I am not impressed with the quality - really, genuinely impressed by how useful and applicable the papers are to my work - easy slam-dunk into the trash bin.

Is it a conference you've heard of? Do you know any of the organizers? Do you know any of the main speakers? If the answer to all 3 questions is no, it's probably not a worthwhile conference.
Academics are usually fairly aware of the main conferences and researchers in their field. Most of the scam conferences I get invites to are in far away locations, in fields that are at best tangentially related to mine (signal processing, education), or are hopelessly broad in scope. They are put on by Universities and organizers I've never heard of. There is very little chance of mistaking them for a legit conference.

but a new one needs to start somewhere, right?

@Ooker The new one starts by having established organizers who promote it in their own circles.


text:
Why do some states have such opposite patterns of mobility for science and non-science PhDs?
The NSF conducts a survey of PhD recipients in the US. Among other things, they look at which states are attracting many new PhDs and which states PhDs are leaving. They break this data into science & engineering doctorates:

And everyone else:

The broad pattern isn't all that surprising, there are major differences between US states and it makes sense that some provide a good environment for PhD level workers while others don't.
However, looking closely at the two maps, there are some odd differences:

California attracts a lot of S&Es (on top of its own large output) but there's a net outflow of non-S&Es. Massachusetts and New Jersey have a similar pattern.
Wyoming attracts a lot of non-S&Es (it's actually about 75% if you mouse over on the map) while S&Es are leaving. Colorado, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Utah have a similar pattern.

I would have thought that with such a broad grouping as S&E vs not, the dominant effect would have to do with having a PhD at all as opposed the kind of PhD. Obviously there could be differences between these two categories, but I would have expected differences of degree rather such strong opposites as in states I list above.
What is special about these states? How do they manage to be so attractive to one group of PhD-level employee, while being so unattractive to the other? Is this a recent development, or an old historic trend? Is it to do with the economy of the state, or some kind of social reason? If social, is it to do with the universities in these areas, or the population of these states in general?

This is asking for some pretty broad socioeconomic factors. Consider New Mexico - Los Alamos, Sandia, White Sands, and AFRL all hire way more PhDs than can be produced locally. Yet, there are few opportunities for non-STEM PhDs, whether generated in-state or out-of-state. California has high-tech, but a high cost of living. And so on...

@JonCuster Actually, New Mexico has a net inflow of non-STEM PhDs.

@Trusly But the net inflow is much higher for STEM PhDs: 98.9% vs 3.6%... Some of those may well be significant others of STEM PhDs who found good opportunities in NM.

Some of the Midwestern states have hugely successful public land-grant universities compared to their populations, and attract students from all over. One thing these data don't show is where the students originally came from, it just shows discordance between where PhDs are earned and where they are employed.

Because the states are different...


text:
Writing critically about previous work
I'm at the stage of my PhD where I'm beginning to write my thesis.
At the beginning of my PhD, my supervisor asked me to go back and repeat some work done by the student who had the project before me. This was meant to be a 'breaking in gently' exercise, but ended up taking over 18 months because of missing data and incorrect conclusions necessitating things to essentially be redeveloped from scratch. I think in fairness there was a certain degree of naivety on the part of my supervisor not realising how long things take - he's quite hands off, especially in recent years as he got elected to become head of the school.
That said, this situation has caused a fair deal of conflict over the last 4 years. My supervisor resents the fact that I spent so much time not 'getting anywhere', and I resent wasting a large proportion of my funding not really doing anything useful (the previous work has been published, and my new contributions don't deviate so significantly to warrant an additional publication). The whole situation is compounded by the fact that the student in question was the 'golden girl' of the lab, so any criticism of her work falls on deaf ears (its something of an  in-joke within the group, as the girl in question is generally understood not to be terribly great in the lab).
I recently gave a draft of a few chapters to my supervisor, and without reading them fully he immediately asked them to be re-written to avoid any criticism of the previous work, citing me as the issue, rather than the previous work (multiple people have verified the mistakes with the previous work).
I'm unsure of what to do, and would welcome some advice. I don't really need my supervisor at this point as I already have a job and don't need his permission to submit, but at the same time would like to ameliorate the issue to reach some kind of compromise.  Equally, I don't want to yield to his will, as after wasting 18 months fixing the previous work, I want to tell the story.
To clarify, and as I can't comment - my supervisor wants me to ignore the entire 18 months of work. For obvious reasons this is undesirable.

Forget about the story for now and focus on the work. You can tell the story after your defense.

Try this list of subtly critical phrases. http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/being-critical/

The question does not make an adequately strong case for including substantial criticism of previous work. The feeling I get is that you want to put it in because you spent significant time on it, not because it is important to the theme of your thesis.
While time and effort are priceless resources, the merit of research must be judged by results(positive or negative) rather than the researcher's journey. Breaking this thumbrule is unbecoming and does not augur well for an academic, especially one with a PhD degree.
It may be noted that the improved approach, despite correcting some inadequacies of the original approach, fails to produce significant deviations from the original. It is natural to question why space has been devoted to something 'insignificant' in terms of results. In light of this observation, additional information-such as the competence of the previous researcher- is of little import.
Therefore, I agree with henning, and would advise you not to dwell on this too much; to finish and defend your thesis with minimal exposition on the backstory. Even if you disagree with this answer, you may notice that the odd-numbered sentences contain critical statements-  a sort of meta-example of what Fbolst and Dawn suggest in comments/answers.

Every published work has at least a few sentences that criticize previous published work or a collection of them. They are often constructive, in the sense that they generally point limitations and how to build upon them, in sentences that are similar to Dawn's comments.
Now, I have no idea what kind of criticism you made, but a common pitfall for junior academics (and I am one myself) is to end up over-generalizing a claim, both when discussing their own results and when criticizing other's work. The other student may have fallen into the former trap, by over-generalizing their result (you said they presented incorrect conclusions). But you may be falling into the latter trap by being overly critical and, maybe, not having sufficient data to back up your claims that the other student's conclusion is wrong. Your advisor may have detected it by simply glancing over your text, which is easy with enough experience.
In general, I advise people to be very cautious of what they are criticizing, especially if it is not a limitation of the other study, but something they got wrong. It is often a better idea to talk to the other person before openly criticizing them. The other person is likely to know their work much better than you do. If you manuscript falls into their hands for review (which probably won't be your case, but still), and you are wrong, it's a strong argument for rejecting it.
Now, if you still feel that you are right, that you are not over-generalizing, that you have sufficient data to back up your claim, that it would be relevant to include it in your thesis, then ask your advisor. Explain how this criticism would be important to your thesis (or paper in preparation), and ask how you should include it without being overly critical.
If it is not relevant to your work, it would be weird to see an unrelated note/section discussing how someone else's unrelated work is incorrect, even if you spent 18 months on it (which is a lot of time, and certainly unfortunate, but these things happen, and you should talk to your advisor and other people about how to avoid spending large amounts of time without progress).


text:
How are papers on NIPS Proceedings licensed?
I can see that there is a copyright claim on the NIPS Proceedings webpage for the years 1987 to 2017 but I haven't been able to find under what license the papers are copyrighted. How can I see that?
In particular, I'm looking for the license of the images in the paper "ImageNet Classification with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks."

The proceedings of NIPS is presently published by Curran Associates (2005–present) under the name Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. So, it follows the copyright and license as per Curran Associates regulations.
Please see the link here: [Curran Associates]

Can you comment in layman's words what this implies for usage? Is this similar to a CC license?

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


text:
Elsevier Review Speed
I've submitted a new paper to Knowledge Based Systems journal for Elsevier.
But currently, after about 3 months, its status is still "Under Review"
I have to mention that about 6 weeks after the submission, its "status date" has been changed but its status not!
May you please tell me how long I have to wait for the decision about my paper?
I've checked the paper status in journalinsight.elsevier.com. For the journal, the first decision speed time is about 7.2 weeks. But my paper is still under review after about 3 months.
Thank you

Hi and welcome on this site. Review time has nothing to do with the publisher, it varies a lot between disciplines and individual journals. It even varies between individual submissions to the same journal. No one here can answer your question, check the linked post for averages per field.

The numbers in publishers' page tells nothing about the review speed. It is just a mean estimate of the review time.

I have to mention that about 6 weeks after the submission, its "status
  date" has been changed but its status not!

The status date changed because, either the editor sent the paper for review or any of the reviewer accepted to review the manuscript. Either case is possible. The status changes/date changes occur when some step has been taken by the editorial side or reviewer side.

May you please tell me how long I have to wait for the decision about
  my paper?

I guess, nobody can give you a numeric estimate of this duration. It is completely dependent on the reviewer and their response to the editor's reminders. As a reviewer, we get around 4 weeks to review an article. However, they may remind us once or twice or sometimes give us an extension to do so. If the reviewer is very popular (bigshot), the editors sometimes don't care much about the timing rather focus on getting a strong and bias-free review from such reviewers. That takes time.

I've checked the paper status in journalinsight.elsevier.com. For the
  journal, the first decision speed time is about 7.2 weeks. But my
  paper is still under review after about 3 months.

I have been waiting for last 6 months (and counting) to get the very first review on my paper; not in this journal, but something similar. If you are so curious to know, you should send a very gentle email to the editor asking about it or just a hint to remind him about your article. Because, in a pile of many articles under review, the editors sometimes may not look into your article. Probably something like this:

Dear Editor
Could I ask you about the present status of the review of my following: submitted manuscript?
  Title: Knowledge-Based Analysis of Review period of the Journal X (ID: KBS-16-xxxxx)?
Sincerely
You

Remember, editors are busy persons; he many not respond to your email too. And, Computer Science/Mathematics journals often take a lot of time for review purpose -- This is well-observed fact. No proof of this hypothesis is required!

Thank you for your response. Actually, after about 3 weeks of the submission, the status changed from "With Editor" to "Under Review". And after about 6 weeks of the submission, without change of the status, the date has been changed.

@Vilture that means one of the reviewer have submitted the review. Wait for other reviewers. Good luck!

Not sure what the date change could mean... It could be many things. But if you think it takes too long, a gentle email can always do the trick.


text:
Unable to present my accepted paper in conference. Can I now submit the paper to another conference?
My one technical paper was recently accepted for one international conference.
But, unfortunately, I am not able to attend as the Conference dates are conflicting with my official assignments. I intimated the Conference about my inability to attend. On my request, the conference acknowledged that they will not publish my paper to their Journals/proceedings. (I have the full set of email communications with the conference secretariat.)
I wish to submit the same paper for an IEEE conference. Is there any issue? Please advise.

Huh? Why didn't you check the dates of the conference when you submitted?

And why wouldn't you ask a co-author or a colleague to present in your place?

On my request, the conference acknowledged that they will not publish
  my paper to their Journals/proceedings. (I've the email transactions
  with the conference secretariat.)

Was the registration for the paper done, i.e. you had paid the registration fee? Was the camera ready version already submitted?
If you had not paid the fee already, then obviously they won't publish your work. In fact, they won't consider for scheduling the program as well. If you had already paid the fee and submitted the CR version, be safe and keep the email transactions with you for possible conflicts in future. However, AFAIK, many conferences don't publish the work unless the registered author presents the paper in the conference. Make sure this is the policy for this conference as well.

I wish to submit the same paper for an IEEE conference. Is there any
  issue? Please advise.

If you think you are safe in the first question (above), then you could go ahead with submitting to another conference.
You can further view the following related questions in academia SE:

Would my paper be published if I missed the conference due to visa-related problems?
What to do if I can't get a visa to attend a conference that accepted my paper?
Etiquette when unable to attend a conference

BTW, I had a question, why did you submit the paper to the already-accepted conference at the first place if you were not sure about your attendance? I feel this is not a good sign.

If you had not paid the fee already, then obviously they won't publish your work. — Not so "obviously"! In practice, this strongly depends on the conference.  For major conferences in theoretical CS, authors are expected to register, but nobody actually checks; camera-ready papers and copyright forms are due long before the registration deadlines.  As long as somebody presents the paper, the conference organizes are happy.  (I've presented several conference papers for authors whose visa/health issues prevented then from attending.)

The online registration was done, but the registration charges not yet paid. The camera ready version not yet submitted. As I had mentioned some official assignment came conflicting with the dates..


text:
How to get the published version of my own article?
My article has been published in "Sensor Letters" journal in September 2016.  But, we have not yet received the published version of the article. Since that time, we have sent several emails to the  editor-in-chief of the Journal. Also we even called him, but I haven't received my article yet. What can I do about this problem (getting the article from the journal)?

it might sound strange, but have you checked your 'spam folder'? Some publisher just send a link to the published article, once it is published online, and maybe your email program has perceived it as 'spam/junk'?

Just order a copy. It's only $113 plus tax. Surely the article is worth spending a little bit of money on?

Ask a friend or a peer.

Sensor Letters or IEEE Sensor Letters?

Technically, I don't think they have to send you a copy. It all depends on the copyright transfer / publishing agreement form that you signed, but I don't recall ever seeing it mentioned in one (at least in my field).

@CodesInChaos  You're joking, right?

@NateEldredge The former

Give us the full reference and I'm sure someone can dig it up for you!

I certainly empathize with wanting to have an official copy of your own paper (e.g., to upload as part of your tenure dossier). Many journals give you such a copy when the paper is accepted, so it's smart to check your spam folder as was suggested. However, not all journals actually share the official version. Having the "proofs" is probably enough for a tenure dossier. But if you want the official copy then you can:

Try to get it from your university library, or through interlibrary loan.
Ask a friend for it (perhaps even the editor who handled the submission, who surely has access to the journal).
Buy it.
Obtain it another way. There are some websites for people who don't think it's reasonable to pay the journal for their own article, when they're not paid by the journal for the right to publish the paper.


text:
What are some typical reasons for a professor to not list their publications on their school website
I know of a full professor who doesn't list any of his publications on his website.  He just gives name, title, email address and phone number.
Nothing more, literally.
When I search for his work internally through our library he has plenty of published work.
What are some typical reasons why he wouldn't want to list his papers online, especially in the publish or perish culture of academia?
I notice some other full professors do this too, nothing but a name, email and phone number is on their school website.  No advertising their work at all.

Maybe they're too busy publishing to maintain a website.

Why would it be a question of ethics? Being active on the internet is not a moral imperative.

If you know him, maybe you could as him.  Maybe he will say: "I don't know web site construction.  How would you like to fix up my web site?"

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/69275/do-academics-look-down-on-well-designed-academic-websites

It's a spam buffer, though the discipline matters. Some faculty use minimalist pages as a buffer against the "crazy" spam, which can come from the public or undergraduates. For example, those working on infectious disease do not want dozens of e-mails daily accusing them of genetically engineering a new black plague or from freshman interested in creating a new plague. Sexuality, finances, or work related with stem cells may be similarly kept quieter. It is assumed qualified collaborators would still e-mail.

I've worked in universities where getting updated information on the university website is a such a fight (no direct access to edit it), that this got changed very infrequently. Since then, I've made the conscious decision to concentrate on sites that I personally own or control. I also think that, now academics will work in many universities during the course of their career, it is most important for them to concentrate on their own professional online presence, rather than one owned by their university.

There are several reasons why this would be the case. The most prominent of which is simply they don't have the time to do it. Most institutions have departmental and faculty websites which contain such information (depending on how much the University/institute keeps up to date with it) and is managed by someone other than the professor.
Sometimes, the role of updating the website is relegated to lab members (postdocs/students/assistants) which may be people who don't know how to build or edit websites or aren't reliably updating them.
For example, I've been given reign over our lab's personal website (we have an official institutional one) but I have no idea how to code html or any other web-based programming. When trying to get personal statements or papers of note from lab members, very little will people actually reply with these details making the website partially filled out.
If you really care about the publications from a professor, look them up wherever your primary resource for articles is There's no hiding on there and I would be highly skeptical about it being an issue of 'wanting to hide their work'.

"If you really care about the publications from a professor, look them up in PubMed"? You don't believe that academia only consists of people doing medical related research, do you?

@Sverre God, no, not again

@Sverre I read it with an implied "or whatever might be most appropriate for your field" tacked on - it just sounds classier to leave it implicit instead of explicit.

@corsiKa In this case I would prefer being accurate over being classy.

Yowzers. Didn't mean to russle so many people. As @corsiKa said I meant it as an implied 'look it up yourself, wherever it may be'. I've edited it to as not to annoy anyone else.

@Eppicurt It's just that, for many fields, there simply is no such place where all publications are cataloged. In those cases the OP's question is quite valid.

@Sverre Fair call, however I didn't intend to insinuate only medical researchers are academics either.

I want to address another point in your question:

What are some typical reasons why he wouldn't want to list his papers online, especially in the publish or perish culture of academia?
I notice some other full professors do this too, nothing but a name, email and phone number is on their school website. No advertising their work at all.

Personal webpages are, generally speaking, not the primary way that professors "advertise" their work.  If I have a paper that I've written and I want to make people aware of it, I'll probably go to a conference or two and talk about it.  In my field (physics), I can also post it to arXiv, which a large fraction of people in my research specialty are looking at on any given day.  Academia.edu has become somewhat useful for discovering other interesting work in my research specialty as well.  A personal web page might be useful for me to promote my "brand" as a public speaker, but it's not where I would expect someone to go to learn about my work, nor would I automatically go to someone else's personal web page to learn about their work.
Similarly, the "publish or perish" culture isn't really affected by personal webpages.  When a professor applies for a grant or a promotion, you can be sure that they list every single one of their publications on the CV that they send to the evaluating body.  The evaluating body will not, as a general rule, start looking at materials that the applicant hasn't submitted;  they generally don't have the time or inclination to go beyond what's in the applicant's portfolio.  A professor's success is not determined by what's on their personal webpage.

Institutions often set up a basic web page for each faculty member with exactly the information you mention.  It is then up to the faculty member to embellish.  Or not, as the case may be.  Reasons for not embellishing include having more important things to do, i.e. lack of time, and disinterest in working with the web when one could be researching or writing.

Indeed - somebody in administration makes a big push to get everyone a faculty page. The department admins gather a bunch of information (possibly including 'recent' publications), throws it all into a standardized template, and it is all done and shiny brand new looking. Then, nobody bothers to update it ever again until they are forced to by the next wave of enthusiastic bureaucrats who think researchers care about faculty web pages. Very typical of virtually all faculty pages at any university I've ever visited...

I have had a script updating my bibliography regularly from my bibtex files. It doesn't look nice, but was quite complete. Then, the institution impressed on us using the university-internal system which cannot be scripted. Which means that since I cannot automate the process and I have no time for maintaining two separate databases, one becomes on-demand only, and the other is only maintained pro-forma.

@JonCuster At my former institution, I noticed in the alphabetical list of faculty a link for a colleague who had died a couple of years earlier.  I thought it was nice that the school had preserved his online presence... until I clicked on the link and found an empty template page.

@JonCuster My impression from my own administration is not that they think other researchers care about faculty web pages, but that they think parents of prospective students might. They would like us to brag about accomplishments in a shiny, centralized spot that admissions can easily point to.

Because once they are tenured, they don't need to.
The important point in your question is that you are speaking about full professors. Your observation will probably be completely different, if considering post-doctoral researchers and assistant professors.
The point is: In academia, personal web pages are basically a means for self-advertising. This is, of course, completely legitimate. It is just that not everybody likes to do this.
As a young researcher seeking a career in the "publish or perish culture of academia", there is basically no choice: You have to advertise yourself and your work all the time. So you maintain a detailed personal web page.
Once you have reached a safe position (formally by being tenured, informally by being known in your community), you have the choice if you want to continue investing time and energy into a web page. Some decide it is not / no longer worth it.

I think it's not so much "don't want to" as "don't bother to".
And some of my colleagues "of a certain age" are still disdainful about the internet, and disdainful about learning how to write basic HTML and put documents on-line. Some of this may be a hold-over from a time in which computers were thought of exclusively as devices to do computations, rather than to communicate. Further, some mathematicians were/are disdainful of computational mathematics... And I've had people (now mostly retired) very directly say to me that "maintaining web pages is not part of the job of a mathematician". (I'm pretty sure that these people had ulterior motives for claiming this, but, still, they were willing to say it!)
And it does still appear to be the case that no amount of on-line stuff can substitute (in mathematics, in the U.S.) for traditional journal papers (even if they are hidden behind pay-walls), so, again, some people simply don't bother. Even listing things might be construed as pointless, if all that matters for some purposes is impressing one's department head, dean, and funding agencies.
It is also true that (perhaps motivated by security or economy concerns) many universities are changing to a "cloud-based" web-page model, which makes access much more complicated (from my viewpoint) as opposed to the straightforward (from my viewpoint) access via a unix/linux-style file-system allowing simple movement of files from one's home directory, for example, or via "scp", and remote access via "ssh". Indeed, it has taken significant effort to at least temporarily prevent this kind of change in my department, for faculty web-pages, and it was irresistible for departmental and grad-student pages. I'd wager that before I retire, it will change for the worse... Then it would become much less simple to update and change things.

Often, the prime way of publishing is through a journal or conference managed by large institutions. In the process of submitting your work, you will still too often be asked to give away the copyright to your work to these institutions. Sometimes you are then not allowed to publish the work individually as well.

I think you may have mistaken listing with posting as full text.


text:
Is It advisable to release a manuscript as a preprint while it is under submission at a conference
It is common, especially in Computer Science fields, to see papers that are under review at conferences and are also available as preprints (e.g. arXiv).
However, I am uncertain about the potential advantages or disadvantages of this approach.

Does uploading a paper to ArXiv during the conference submission process have any significant impact on the review process?
Is it generally considered a good practice to pre-publish on ArXiv, or is it more advisable to maintain a blind submission until the conference review is complete?
Are there specific scenarios or types of conferences where pre-publishing on ArXiv is more beneficial or discouraged?

I also saw this question:
Is publishing on arXiv early a good idea?
and, this question:
Double blind review allowing arXiv submissions
But I think what I'm asking is something different. I want to know if it is advisable (or acceptable) in different situations to arXiv the paper, especially if you are submitting it to a conference in which reviews aren't blind.

Note that some CS conferences allow Preprint submission even if reviews are double-blind.

1. The impact of preprints on the review process
A preprint is a non-peer reviewed publication that is often to be peer reviewed in the future and because arXiv requires the use of real names, if a reviewer were to search the title of the submitted paper (often discouraged by reviewer policy when double blind) and finds the preprint, or otherwise accidentally stumbles upon it, then this would break the double blind policy by de-anonymizing the identity of the authors or contributors of the paper.
Related arXiv policies:

Real identity required in user registration
authors are expected to self-submit
Third party submissions allowed in some specific cases

Once double blind no longer holds in that case, the reviews know who the authors and contributors are, which brings in all its potential for bias in the review process. This bias is what blinding tries to avoid for a more technical and unbiased review.
There may be reviewer policies that prohibit such searching for such knowledge, however that is more of an honor system than an enforceable rule. Also, a reviewer's technical review may benefit from conducting a brief literature review, and the preprint (or technical report) could accidentally be discovered during that review.
The brief literature review can be beneficial, for example, whenever the expert conducting the review needs to confirm with evidence that this work provides (or does not provide) a novel contribution to the current state of the field. Or, they may need to verify or better understand niche specifics being cited from other works.
2. Are preprints good practice? or maintain blind submission?
The "good practice" answer depends on the cultural norms of your field of study. Far more important is whether the publishing venue that the paper is submitted to has a policy that allows preprints or allows active efforts to promote social media publicity of the submitted paper or its content.
If preprints or publicity is not explicitly stated to be allowed in the publisher's policies, then send them an email to confirm this before doing so, especially if the review process is to be double blind, or otherwise intends to keep the paper's authors and contributors anonymous.
3. Specific scenario where preprints were discouraged
Wikipedia has a list of academic publishers' policy on preprints, including some who do not accept preprints.
Below, I briefly discuss one of the most popular machine learning conferences that recently prohibited the active publicity of preprints.
CVPR 2021-2024 Publicity and Media Restriction
The Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) is an example of a conference having discouraged and even setting rules against sharing your submitted article before acceptance or rejection. It was referred to as a "Publicity / social media policy" or "media ban" and was based on a motion passed in the CVPR 2015 PAMI-TC meeting. CVPR 2021 seems to be the first case of it enforced without some loophole. CVPR 2022 strengthened the policy and CVPR 2023 continued with that policy. This policy seems to also be in effect for CVPR 2024.

"Papers submitted to CVPR must not be discussed with the media until they have been officially accepted for publication. Violations of the embargo will result in the paper being removed from the conference and proceedings".

The social media ban does not prevent any non-peer reviewed preprints, such as arXiv, or making a public project page, but prohibited the publicity of the submitted or preprint paper or any project page, in particular within a specified "silent period", for example, for CVPR 2022 it was originally "projected to be from 10/19/2021 to 03/02/2022".
On that same linked page under header faq there is more details including reasoning.

Authors must not:

Talk to the media about their work as "in submission to CVPR".
Make any posts to social media or elsewhere that can be linked to a specific CVPR submission (e.g., mentioning the title of the submission or details and content).

Authors may:

Talk about their work in an academic presentation without saying it's submitted to CVPR.
Submit to arXiv without mentioning CVPR.

The purpose was to preserve the anonymity of a submitted paper's authors and contributors as much as possible and avoid biases introduced from the reviewers' finding out whether a large well-known company, organization, or individual was involved in the paper.
Benefits of preprints
Non-exhaustive benefits of preprints:

You get the work out there faster than waiting for finished peer-review for people to see, learn from, and possibly use or build upon.
You can get informative feedback from others this way to help improve the quality of the work.
You have date-time publicly documented evidence of your contributions from the preprint. Useful for whenever you need or want to prove "I was first." If that matters.


text:
Is it safe to commit to the hiring process of an academic research position without an official offer letter?
After being offered a postdoctoral position by email, I was asked by the university’s administration to submit some documents allowing them to start the hiring process. According to them, this process will take 2 months.
I was wondering if it is wise/safe to wait this long without an official letter at hand. If not, how should I proceed?
Note that I am aware of the position details based on the job description and the discussion with the PI, but I was expecting some official document (signed by the administration/PI).
I have seen this similar question, but I have added a country tag to my question so that I can get specific answers.
Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts on this!

Keep looking.  If you find a firm offer that's about as good, take it!

Where are you based right now? Which citizenship do you have?

@user151413 non-EU citizenship, but currently-based in another EU country. (Sorry, I prefer not to mention explicitly which ones for anonymity) Why do you think this matters? Is it for the in-person signature of the contract as you mention below? (Thanks btw, it seems I don't have enough reputation to upvote)

@mbl20 Primarily because if you are a non-EU citizen, you might need a visa (even if you have a Schengen visa right now - but this is tied to a different job), and (as mentioned below) visa processes take time.  On the other hand, for a visa application you do need a letter from the university stating that they will hire you.  If that's the situation, it might make sense to check what part of the process takes 2 months.  (Also note that hirings typically go through the staff council, which can take its time, especially at large universitites/research institutes.)

@user151413 Thanks for clarifying! I've been told that the 2 months are for preparing the work contract, without explicitly mentioning what the different steps involved would be. It might include, as you say, the staff council. The visa is a whole different story, not accounted for in that duration (unless I start it in parallel...)

@mbl20 The thing is: If it is a publicly funded position, it has to be first "publicly advertised" for e.g. 2 weeks, before the process can even start.

@user151413 not sure how the funding is managed exactly. But, the position was advertised, this is how I knew about it :)

@mbl20 Yes, but the question is whether this was the "official" i.e. formal advertisement.  It is not uncommon to solicit applications, then select a candidate, and then only do the formal official advertisement (which is then rather focused).

@user151413 ok, I wasn't aware of this, thanks! Is there a way to know whether it's publicly-funded (besides explicitly asking the PI)? Are there some keywords to look for in the description perhaps?

@mbl20 Certainly not in the informal ad. You can try to figure out if the PI has grants from private agencies. But it could well be that the rules are that all jobs have to be officially advertised.

This is very common in Germany: public service contracts can take one to two months to prepare. They also won't sign anything until they have checked that all your documents are ok, but at that point, they will directly send you the contract. This is somewhat unfortunate for the PIs, who cannot guarantee anything beforehand, but it does not seem that it is a priority for them to speed up the process...

Don't you think "this will take two months" could be true only if it included time for reference and back-ground checks? If that's so, why would they not give you a conditional offer letter? On the other hand, as Bob Brown says…

I wouldn't be concerned.
In German academia, it is rather common to make PhD/postdoc offers informally (i.e. just via email etc.), and the formal process is only completed at a much later point.  I know of many cases where people only sign their contract on their first working day (in particular in pre-Corona times, administration wanted to do the signing in person, so if you were in a different place, this would be postponed until you arrived).
On the other hand, even without the contract, you can get a confirmation that you will be hired in the future, once the necessary paperwork is completed.
However, it will be impossible to get such a confirmation without having the required paperwork completed - just imagine that in the course of that, it turns out that you don't have the required qualifications (no PhD, no degree, ... ) - the administration will not sign that they will hire you unless they are sure that this is legally possible.
One thing you can do to speed up at least part of the process - to make sure that you don't "accidentally" miss a qualification (very unlikely) - is to supply all required documents as soon as possible and check that they are sufficient. Even if the process is not completed yet, this should give you additional security that things will not go wrong for formal reasons (again, rather unlikely - they hire people all the time).
Finally, while on the one hand I understand that you want a more formal "safety" that you will get the job, as I said this is rather normal, so no need to worry.  But more importantly, you should note that even if you have a contract, within the first 6 months you can be usually fired on short notice and without a reason given (I'm pretty sure this is more or less the same in other places, that there is an initial period where both parties can terminate the employment on short notice, not to speak of places like the US), so even if you have a written offer or even a signed contract, there is still some amount of risk involved, like essentially always in life (unless you have a tenured position).
Edit: Maybe to add a comment, hiring decisions typically have to be approved by the personnel council, and possibly other bodies (equal opportunities, etc.), which can take its time, especially at large universities or research institutes. In addition, if this a position funded by public money, it has to be publicly advertised in one way or the other, and the advertisement has to be open for a certain amount of time (I think 2 weeks at least), before the whole process can even start.
So putting all these processes together,
2 months might well be the minimum time it takes.

Perhaps it is worthwhile mentioning that also the "equal opportunities officer" can, depending on the state, effectively veto a hiring process, and this person will not be informed until the hiring process is started. This is another reason for why there are no offer letters - they would either be meaningless in such an environment or promise something that the hiring university cannot actually guarantee, which is legally highly problematic.

The concept of an offer letter is not a universal one.
Based on my own experience in Germany, as well as what I've heard from colleagues, I don't think they really exist at German universities. I once was in the process of being hired on a temporary professership at a German university, and they had me sign all kinds of ancillary paperwork and got to the point where I was listed as the instructor on the course pages I would have done without there ever being something like an offer letter.
I don't think there is anything more reasonable you can do than going along with the process, and not stop considering backup plans.

Professor hirings in Germany (i.e. Beamter) is entirely different. This is not a good comparison.

I can't speak directly about Germany, but acquiring work visas for foreign postdocs in China can take 3-4 months. The official offer letter from the university only comes after the visa is acquired. Your new PI should be able to tell you if the process of generating an official offer letter after a faculty has requested one to be made has ever fallen through. For us, HR will evaluate the candidate immediately and let us know if there are any issues (e.g. insufficient work experience; candidate cannot supply a diploma). At our institute I'm not aware of any cases where a qualified candidate did not get an official offer.
I will add that the COVID-19 pandemic is adding a lot of uncertainty to these things. It is possible that the university suspends hiring for budgetary reasons.


text:
Is the use of we / us (in the sense of the reader and writer exploring the topic) accepted in a PhD thesis or bad style?
Before, referring just to some other question that sounds likely to be the same, e.g., about can I write: "I/We have developed X?", what I am asking about is: "Let us (you the reader and I the post author) discuss if the use of we in this context is acceptable". If you don't get the different meaning of the use of we, don't answer.
For instance, I am talking about the use of "Let us consider that in the context of this thesis, $x$ is ...". Or a phrase as the following: "For this reason, we can assume ...". When I read something, I think this style really good for explaining difficult topics. But an experienced colleague (post-doc) said that I use we/us to often in my PhD thesis. I said that I use it as we / us in the sense of the reader and writer exploring the topic together. However, he did not understand what I mean with that. I also think if he really thinks I am talking about me with the phrase we/us makes no sense. It would be crazy because I am only one person. In the feedback of my both supervisors / profs it was not mentioned, although I guess on their corrections and comments they read the section deeply.
Is it bad style or can it be used? Maybe bad feedback? Should I ask my supervisors if that is an issue? What is your opinion on that? Some articles with more information of this discussion?

@Nobody no, it is not about the kind of I use it.

@henning no, it is not about the kind of I use it.

This? https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2945/choice-of-personal-pronoun-in-single-author-papers

@henning: not the question, but a citation in the accepted answer sounds great: "There is nothing wrong with the editorial "we", but if you like it, do not misuse it. Let "we" mean "the author and the reader" (or "the lecturer and the audience"). Thus, it is fine to say "Using Lemma 2 we can generalize Theorem 1", or "Lemma 3 gives us a technique for proving Theorem 4". It is not good to say "Our work on this result was done in 1969" ... is always bad."  Paul Halmos (Section 12 of "How to Write Mathematics"). Just thinking why the post-doc does not know this kind of "we"?

Ask your supervisor.

Your question is based on a false dichotomy. The answer to your literal question is:
Yes, it can be used.
Yes, it can be bad style.
The above is true for most aspects of writing. Figuring out where your writing falls is the tricky part and arguably can't be done just based on your snippets.
Learning the nuances of academic writing and improving your style takes many years (decades?) of repeated writing. One key element to improve is to take into consideration feedback from others. In particular, your supervisor is a great source of feedback on your writing! You don't need to agree with all their feedback, but if you disagree, try to find out exactly what they are trying to say. Do not just dismiss their concern outright.

Some people think it is OK, and in some fields it is common.
But your examples sound verbose and slightly grating. For example, "Let us consider that in the context of this thesis" could probably be changed to "In this thesis."
I agree with your colleague. I think you should use it less.

I think that the mistake you are making is that in academic writing the writer and reader are not exploring the topic together. The reader and writer have distinct roles: The writer makes his/her/their point, and the reader checks if they find that argument convincing.