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Should expository papers (e.g., in American Math Monthly) be listed in CV under Publications?
Should expository papers (e.g., in American Math Monthly) be listed in CV as if they are regular publications? These are usually not totally original research papers. For example, this is the description of articles to be submitted to American Math Monthly:

The Monthly's readers expect a high standard of exposition; they expect articles to inform, stimulate, challenge, enlighten, and even entertain. Monthly articles are meant to be read, enjoyed, and discussed, rather than just archived. Articles may be expositions of old or new results, historical or biographical essays, speculations or definitive treatments, broad developments, or explorations of a single application. Novelty and generality are far less important than clarity of exposition and broad appeal. Appropriate figures, diagrams, and photographs are encouraged.
Notes are short, sharply focused, and possibly informal. They are often gems that provide a new proof of an old theorem, a novel presentation of a familiar theme, or a lively discussion of a single issue.

Let me supplement my answer by remarking that I have had two articles rejected by the Monthly.  These rejected notes had clear exposition; breadth of appeal is quite subjective.  In practice, this is a hard journal to publish in, and the amount of novelty appearing in an average Monthly article is greater than that of certain less choosy research journals.

@PeteL.Clark: Approximately how many weeks did it take them to inform you their decisions regarding those articles? Thanks in advance for your reply!

@JoséHdz.Stgo: The first one was long enough ago so that they sent the rejection by non-electronic mail to a no-longer current address.  (But it was less than 15 years ago, so even at the time that was a weird thing to do.)  So that was a bit of a fiasco.  For the second one, I think it was probably 3 months or so.

@PeteL.Clark: Did it also take them approximately 3 months to write you back in those three occasions that they accepted what you sent in? Thanks in advance once again.

I think that more than half of the articles and notes published in the Monthly contain original research.  ("Totally original" does not seem like a useful standard, as many well-written seminal papers contain substantial portions which are not original research.  I am currently translating Serre's 1972 paper on torsion points and am struck by the extent to which he was willing to be expository.)
I work at a large research university, I have two Monthly publications (and article and a note; the former appears in the December 2014 issue) and I happily -- indeed proudly -- list them alongside my other publications.  There is definitely original research in both of these publications.  (I apologize for the excessive horn-tooting, but it seems perhaps relevant to mention that Google Scholar finds a citation for each of these publications in a research paper written by people I have never met.)  It is not the same species of research that I would publish in the Journal of Number Theory or Crelle, but since they occur alongside publications in these journals, I think their existence reflects positively on my research profile.
If you clicked on my webpage, you may have seen that I do separately list expository documents.  These documents do not contain new results (though in some cases they contain proofs that I at least have not found in the literature).  But I think it is not a coincidence that none of these documents have been published, although three out of the four have been submitted.  I don't seem to have a good handle on the genre of "truly expository journal aritcles"; in fact, I find that it is as much work or more to get these published and I do think that the value to me would be smaller.  There are also surprisingly few avenues for the publication of mathematical exposition, so because I am less interested in the certification or credit that the formal publication process brings, I have for a while been content to "self-publish" these results on my own webpage and/or the arxiv.
One default way is to list as research publications those which are archived and reviewed by MathSciNet.  Alas I am not entirely clear on how these choices are made.  It seems that in recent years, most Monthly publications get archived and many get reviewed.  For the other MAA journals -- Math Magazine and the College Math Journal -- it seems to be rarer to have reviews.  For instance my recent Monthly publication references a 2012 note of Kantrowitz and Schramm, but MathSciNet has no record of this publication.  I just looked back at the last few years of CMJ, and I am a bit confused: I don't know why they don't list certain short articles (I think they should...) and how they choose to review the articles that they do.
Upon further thought, here are two rules of thumb I like a little better:

"Rule 1: Do not mislead".  If your Nature publication is actually a letter to the editor correcting someone's birth and death dates [this is a totally hypothetical example; I have no idea whether this journal would ever publish such a letter] and you don't list this explanatory detail on your CV, I worry that you are trying to misrepresent yourself.

"Rule 2: Subject to Rule 1, make the publication list an accurate reflection of your own views."  Thus, notwithstanding what I wrote above, I might perhaps submit this tiny note for publication in something like the CMJ someday.  Unlike most other stuff I've written, it is wholly and sincerely aimed at actual intermediate-level undergraduate math majors, and I think that it might actually help some people if it were published.  But there is just no mathematical novelty here, and I think it would dilute my own record by listing it as a research publication.

Yes, absolutely!
I work in a research-oriented department and have been on the hiring committee for three years now. We care more about research articles published in prominent journals, but an AMM publication is unambiguously a plus.

I work at a small, four year, liberal arts school. Here, the answer would be most definitely yes. At schools higher up the food chain, I would suspect you should still list it. How much importance would be attached to it will depend on the institution. I will have to defer to the insight of others for this situation.

Yes.
And it holds for other mainly didactic papers (e.g. The American Mathematical Monthly, American Journal of Physics), but which are peer-reviewed and considered of high quality.
While novelty is a crucial quality of most of research, it is not for all of publications. For example, review articles are highly valued even if authors "only" complied and summarized already existing results.
In any case, people in your field know what profile of journals and will judge it accordingly.
If you add a few such articles there is no risk of diluting "more serious" results. Of course, if you have mostly such papers, you can be viewed as a person mostly interested in didactics (which may be true in this case).
(Side note: I have had an article rejected from AMM.)


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Citing a Work that Cites a Personal Communication
I'm interested in knowing if/how to properly cite a personal communication within a reference and if credit should be given to the primary source (the personal communication), the secondary source (the reference that cites the personal communication), or both.
Hypothetical example:  There is a textbook which has tabular data that I would like to reference.  The textbook cites the tabular data as being from a personal communication with another author.  I see this as a quandary since:
(1)  If I reference the textbook without the personal communication, I am not giving proper credit to the original author (even though they never published the data separately in its own right)
(2)  If I reference the personal communication, this would be incorrect and perhaps fraudulent as it was not between myself and the author, I am only a third party, and I would not be giving proper credit to the textbook authors, which is how the data was published.
(3) If I reference both, that is somewhat awkward as that would imply that I found the data from both sources independently, even though I only found it in one.
What is the proper way to reference this?

Given how little you know about this data and its provenance, are you comfortable using it in your paper in the first place?  If it turns out to be erroneous, what would it mean for your paper?

@NateEldredge Given that it was published in a very reputable and widely used textbook in my field, I do feel comfortable using it, because should it be wrong, it would look far worse for the textbook than my publication.

That doesn't seem like much comfort if you're forced to retract your paper! "At least this other guy is embarrassed too. Never mind that he has tenure, while I'm on the job market and need as many publications as I can get."

@NateEldredge I respect your opinion and agree with your concern, but what I'm trying to get at here is finding a means of giving fair credit where credit is due, as a broader issue; I gave this example as a means of illustrating the details.

Ok. My point is that citation serves a dual purpose: giving due credit, and creating a chain so that results used are traceable to their original source and can be appropriately evaluated by the reader. Maybe you are only asking about the first here, but I think in this case there are much deeper concerns about the second, which goes to research integrity. If that is of interest I can try to write an answer accordingly.

This is a very odd situation, and you may want to consider carefully whether to use the source, per Nate Eldredge's comment above.  If you do want to use it, however, I would recommend citing the textbook, but mentioning their original source in prose:

blah blah context context, per the table in [citation of Textbook], as attributed to [their source].

This way you give the citation and appropriate credit, but do not assert you have personal communication of your own.

I would not put the original source ("John Doe, private communication") in my bibliography, because, as you noted, it gives the false impression that I was the direct recipient of the communication.  Rather, I would include the textbook ("Jane Roe, "Introduction to Astrology", Predator Press, 2010") in the bibliography and then write in the body of the paper something like "Table 17, due to John Doe and published in [Roe, 2010] ...."

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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What is the difference between (Green) Open Access and Creative Commons?
I recently published an article, not under Open Access (I paid zero fees), but under Creative Commons, and received an email that indicated I could share my article anywhere in its final form.  There didn't seem to be any restrictions.  The text of the email is below.  How is the sharing via Creative Commons different from Open Access?

Your article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution license which allows users to read, copy, distribute and make derivative works, as long as the author of the original work is cited. You may self archive this article in any location of your choice, including on your own website, an institutional repository or funder’s repository and make it publicly available immediately.
How can I share my article?

Your final article (Version of Record) may be shared anywhere, at any time, by you or by anyone providing they observe the terms of CC BY and credit you as author, as described above.

So whether you want to share your article on a website, a scholarly collaboration network, by email, on social media, in teaching, or anywhere else, you’re free to do so!
Announce your publication

We encourage you to forward this email to your co-authors. Additionally we recommend you mention your article’s publication and its DOI on your website or your social media profiles.

EDIT 1/15/2024 Perhaps I need to qualify my question.  I understand that there are two main types of Open Access and that "Green" allows for self-archiving and sharing (and that "Gold" just makes the article free on the publisher's website).  So, how does Green Open Access differ from using Creative Commons to self archive?

From whom did you get that email?

@Buffy The publisher, in this case Springer.

Where did you read that your paper is "not under Open Access"?

Was your work published as part of a larger collection? Say one paper in a print volume of works on a similar topic?

@FedericoPoloni In reading the webpage that lists recent articles, some have "Open Access" next to them, others do not.  Our article is one that does not.  Also, we opted out of it, so I don't imagine the publisher would give Open Access for free after choosing not to pay.

@Buffy No, it was not part of a larger collection.

If "green open access" means you can self archive, why do you ask how it's different from self archiving? It seems like you are asking what the difference is between an apple and a Granny Smith apple after acknowledging you understand they're both apples.

To quote directly from Springer:

Open access (OA) refers to the free, immediate, online availability of research outputs such as journal articles or books, combined with the rights to use these outputs fully in the digital environment. OA content is open to all, with no access fees.

The CC BY licence is the most open licence available and considered the industry 'gold standard' for OA; it is also preferred by many funders. It lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. It offers maximum dissemination and use of licenced materials. All Springer Nature journals with OA options offer the CC BY licence, and this is now the default licence for the majority of Springer Nature fully OA journals. It is also the default license for OA books and chapters. Other Creative Commons licenses are available on request.

In other words, CC BY is a commonly used license for OA publications. It seems unlikely that a publisher such as Springer would be willing to publish a non-OA paper under such a license, as it would be trivial and permitted to sidestep any paywall.
Possible reasons for why you might have published an article under a CC BY license without being asked to pay any fees include

the journal is diamond open access (no fee to either authors or readers),
you may be subject to a transformative publishing agreement with the journal or publisher that makes publishing open access free for authors, or a similar agreement between your institution's library and the publisher.
your fees were otherwise waived. Normally you would have to ask for needs-based waivers, but sometimes new journals have promotional periods with zero fees in order to attract papers.

Open access is more about who pays for publication, though it normally implies a CC or similar license to the work for readers. In (gold) open access the authors (or their institution) pay the costs of publication and readers have immediate access, but with some possible restrictions. Whether the right to make derivative works is included might vary. The publisher or, more likely, the authors retain copyright.
CC license doesn't entail money and such a license can be given without a publisher. Readers have the rights given by the license and authors retain all other rights. Authors can give a CC license to any of their creative works and distribute/publish them as they please.
In your case, Springer is presumably paying the cost of publication (not open access) and will charge for access to recoup costs and make a profit. The letter seems simply to be a reiteration of the CC license and your rights. It surprises me, actually, that Springer would allow such a permissive license, especially the right for derivatives.

Following the comment of Federico Poloni, are you sure that it isn't Open Access? Did you pay a substantial fee for publication? Note that some journals require some fees (page fees) that don't imply open access, but open access fees are normally much higher.

Maybe one subtle difference is that Springer does not make your paper freely available on their website to non-subscribers.
Being CC means everyone can share it for free when they have a copy, but it doesn't mean that Springer has to make it available to everyone.
You can probably confirm this (or disprove it!) by visiting the journal's website from outside your university's network.

Do not mix the copyright terms (CC policies) with the publication styles (all the colors of Open Access you can think of).
Green OA is not strongly defined. In terms of most publishers, it means the publication will be available after an embargo period, but often it is not CC or other open content policy.
For an overview of the open access schemes: have a look at this figure:

Figure 1:
Jamie-farquharson - https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21598179
Venn diagram highlighting the different levels of open access in scholarly publishing, as a function of cost to the readers and authors, copyright retention, and peer review. Adapted from Farquharson, Jamie Ian (2018-07-31). "Introducing Volcanica: The first diamond open-access journal for volcanology". Volcanica 1 (1): i–ix. DOI:10.30909/vol.01.01.i-ix. ISSN 2610-3540.
With gold and diamond the authors can decide what to do with their copyrights.
I am surprised that the big publishers did not yet came out with an Open Access model where both the authors and the readers have to pay, and additionally they can only access papers through their free-to-use closed source reader (I am kidding, I know this model already exists, it is called traditional publishing).

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Do scientists/researchers only get awards by application/nomination, or can their achievements ever speak for themselves?
For instance, Katalin Karikó, key researcher in mRNA technology in immunology and therapies got a bunch of awards in 2021 as a result of the COVID19 vaccine being developed based on her work.
Did someone on Karikó's behalf fill out applications and nominations for each of these awards/prizes/medals, or had the publicity from her work just lead these organizations to pick her because they just know how impactful and important her work is?
Edit:  I want to emphasize the question is not about self-nomination, it's about getting awards without applying or being nominated at all.
The question is, does anyone ever win awards/prizes/etc. because the accomplishment is so major and widely known that the committee just says "There's no doubt, this is the clear winner, it's so impactful that no nomination/application is required or expected."
The COVID19 vaccine based on mRNA work is a prime example. It literally affects every human being on the planet in a life or death way, right now.

It doesn't really have anything to do with "achievements speaking for themselves" but rather how committees, organizations and formal processes work in the modern age.  In fact most awards (whether in academia or not) are voted on by a large group of people ("members" typically) and so in order to focus and not waste their time, there is almost always as smaller group of people (the "nominating" or "nominations" committee) who review a much larger list of candidates and narrow it down for the larger voting membership.

@RBarryYoung That is exactly my point.  Does the nomination/application process ever get skipped because the accomplishment is so obvious the award/prize organization already knows about its importance and impact?

That would be subverting the power of the committee and supplanting the rights of the members.  The only times things like that happen is when one person (or a small group) have near-absolute power in the process (such as an autocratic president pardoning people without respect or regard for what his own people recommend).  It has nothing to do with worthiness of the cause or award, and everything to do with the exercise of power within the system.

@RBarryYoung Thanks, you make a very interesting point.  So is it fair to say that the case of Katalin Karikó, when the COVID19 vaccine had shown a major effect, colleagues/coworkers of Karikó's at BioNTech or Univ. of Pennsylvania nominated her?

In the interest of transparency and upholding meritocracy, you can't really skip the process, even though it's an easy or obvious case.   There are many people who do not know why someone received an award.  Also, with any case you think it's a slam dunk, there will be at least one person who disagrees, and may lodge a formal complain.  Hence, it's best to follow due process.

In general, the process of awarding awards is as follows:

The organisation bestowing the award has an 'award committee' (which may deal with one or more distinct awards). Often this will include ex-officio representatives of the organisation and (perhaps) previous awardees.
The committee solicit nominations for the award. Usually there is a prescribed form for the nomination package, e.g. a one-page statement on why the individual deserves the award and a copy of their CV, plus a certain number of letters of support. There will usually be some restrictions on nominators: commonly, self-nominations are not accepted, and a nominee's recent collaborators/students/supervisors/etc may be excluded from writing letters of support. Often, nominators have to be connected to the awarding organisation in some way. Members of the award committee are often barred from supporting nominations directly, but they may be influential in encouraging others to make nominations.
The committee meets to consider such nominations as have been received, and select a worthy recipient.

Of course, when self-nominations are not accepted, people can (and do!) ask friends or colleagues to consider nominating them for particular awards.
In response to question edit: No doubt there are exceptions, but usually an awarding organisation will have bylaws (or similar) that stipulate the procedure that must be followed. The committee cannot disregard these. However, the individuals on the committee may choose to put less effort into advertising and encouraging nominations if the outcome is 'obvious', and the meeting to determine a recipient may be brief.

Appreciate the response, but the question is more about achievements speaking for themselves than about "self-nomination" per se.  I've rewritten to be more clear.

Grigori Perelman solved the Poincaré conjecture and for this a committee voted to award him a Fields Medal but he turned it down. Since that was also a Millenium Prize problem, he was offered that award as well but similarly turned that down. So in a sense, his work spoke for itself but he just chose not to accepted the awards.

That doesn't mean there were no nominations, of course. I would expect that there were many for the Fields, actually. The Millennium Prize award is automatic, however, once the result has verification.

This is true, but I interpreted the question in the sense of, is it possible to win awards purely by research alone where your peers will recognize you and you personally will not have write applications to be recognized

@Ihatepostingonline You are spot on in your interpretation.  Thank you!

why did he turn down two massive awards ?

For prestigious awards, I'd suspect that self-nomination is rare, but nomination by someone in the community is very common and likely required in almost all cases. A committee is unlikely to choose on its own to avoid questions of bias, such as in-group bias.
A friend of mine won a top award in CS from ACM. A group of us were involved in his nomination and support for that nomination. He had no part in the process and was surprised when it happened. Certainly Nobel prizes work that way, though some people lobby for nominations.
For minor awards, however, self nomination might be acceptable and accepted. In the ACM, one can apply for Senior Member status (IIRC), though it has little prestige value. But Distinguished Member requires outside nomination.
But for some local things, such as teaching awards from a university, a committee might decide to give the award and the recipient will be surprised when it happens. This just happened to my daughter. This works locally since the community has knowledge of potential awardees and can easily gather more information.
But nomination in some form has to happen. They don't spring forth from the forehead of Zeus. It is possible that someone in the committee makes a nomination/recommendation, but, as said above, for prestigious awards they probably come from outside, perhaps, as in the case of my friend from several people who can support the reasons for the nomination.

Appreciate the response, but the question is more about achievements speaking for themselves than about "self-nomination" per se.  I've rewritten to be more clear.

At one point, it fell to me, as my department’s personnel committee chair, to try to get awards for faculty. So I sent an e-mail to all departmental faculty asking if anyone wanted to be nominated. One faculty did, and knew the award they correctly felt they deserved. Long story short, it was easy to get very strong nomination letters of recommendation, the nomination package was not much work, and the faculty member won. It did not hurt that one of the letters was from a future Nobelist! That was one of the more enjoyable service activities, in stark contrast to merit pay.

The vast majority of awards available to scientists are given out by scientific organizations.  Eligibility is limited to dues-paying members of the organization, or a subset thereof.  The award takes a small portion of the dues paid by members and returns them to a member.
Receiving the award is indicative of:

willingness to pay dues to the organization
popularity among a small number of organization's members who select the award recipient

A small minority awards available to scientists, like Nobel Prizes, do actually reflect major achievements.  They are not self-nominated.  In most cases, a scientist's achievements are recognized by publication in an important journal and the award of grants.  These are "self nominated" in the sense that the scientist submits them to journals and funding agencies.

Appreciate the response, but the question is more about achievements speaking for themselves than about "self-nomination" per se.  I've rewritten to be more clear.

I think the rewriting is actually less clear.  Award announcements usually state the criteria for the award; maybe you should look at them.

Do you have any examples?

I suggest you check with a scientific society that interests you.  If you want comprehensive information about academic awards, there is a paid database: researchprofessional.com

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Appropriate response to fellowship award notice via email
I received an email notifying that my colleague and I have been awarded a fellowship, sent by an administrator but signed by the director of the programme which is a professor. The institution in based in the US. The professor and another administrator are copied in that email. The only instruction in the email was to contact an administrator notifying them of my acceptance.
What is the appropriate response? Should I reply to the initial email thanking for the fellowship in addition to writing the administrator? Should I include the director of the programme?
Being based in northern Europe, my initial impression is that a "thank you" email sent to everyone's mailbox would be an annoyance, but I'm completely ignorant of etiquette in American academia. Would a lack of a thank you email be seen as a lack of gratitude?

How much are they paying you?  And are you a PhD student?

It is a very small amount (about 1000 dollars) that works as a seed money for establishing further cooperation. They will also offer training and media coaching, which also adds to their costs.

And I'm not a PhD student.

For that little money, I would not give it thought.

There is no reason why you can't just reply-all to such an email, letting everyone know of your decision at the same time. Those who don't need the information can just ignore the mail. And include a thank-you with the acceptance.
If you decline it, then the same would apply, with "thank you, but ..." for the award.


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Thanking administrators for bulk information email
I have recently started to communicate with scholars and administrators at an American institution (I myself am based in Europe) as part of a fellowship program. I have since then received several emails with general information which were addressed to me but likely sent in bulk to all participants. The director of the programme (herself a professor) and another administrator are also copied in the messages.
Should I reply to those emails with a "thank you" email? If so, should I include the professor and the other administrator in the reply?

No. You probably don't need to reply.
You should reply if:

You have reason to believe that it will help your administrator to know that you've received the email.
The email is unusually important/helpful to you.
The email is unclear and you want clarification.
The administrator is going "above and beyond". For example, because they are sending everyone general information following your suggestion or a discussion they had with you.

If there is a small number of participants, it could also be helpful say thanks if you do not usually receive emails from this administrator or group of administrators. For example, to give them feedback about including you in their mailing list.
To be sure, I suggest you briefly discuss this with a friend or line manager. Customs vary between research groups, so it is possible that customary thanks are expected.
This answer is based on etiquette in the UK, which I expect to be similar to the US.

What's a "line manager"?

@AzorAhai Line managers have direct managerial responsibility for employees. In this case, it might be one of the academics leading Kenji's part of the investigation.


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Transition from PhD to project-manager position
I’m approaching the end of my PhD adventure and I’ve started looking around for job opportunities. Recently, I found a job posting that fits my career goals quite nicely, but it has more managerial ingredients in it than pure research. It is concerned with managing/coordinating multiple research teams – something I’d like to do eventually but maybe at a later stage after gaining some more research/management experience as a postdoc.
Yet, I found the job description really encouraging:

Requirements: experience in project management or a strong desire to learn it.

That’s why I decided to try my chances anyway. Lucky enough, I'll be interviewed for this position.
In the past, I have had students (BS, MS) who did their theses and semester projects under my supervision. Additionally, I’ve had a graduate-level course on general management and took the lead role in a small research project. Even though these experiences were valuable, this job would arguably require managerial skills at a higher level.
So, my question is as follows: What type of difficulties/changes should I expect from this transition that I may undergo: from a technical PhD to a research manager/coordinator?

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about working in industry as opposed to academia. You might get better answers at PM.SE

Thanks for your suggestion. I asked this question here hoping to get some insight information from other academics that made a similar transition to a research project management, which I believe this is the correct place to ask.

If you've taken Project Management classes and have taken lead roles in regards to projects and BS and MS students, you'll find Project Management to be a more intense version of that. For example, you'll be needing to ensure everyone is working at the pace they should, getting the needed work done, and be prepared to figure out ways to remedy issues that occur. You will be working closely with stockholders, include managerial people, customers, etc, and you need to have the ability to answer any questions they may have regarding your project, even though you yourself are not the one directly creating that content. You'll need to figure out how to effectively communicate with people under you to get a sense of what they're doing and how things will impact the project. Be prepared to do scheduling of the project, which includes figuring out things in terms of Man Hours required for project in contrast to what you have available as resources. A lot of these things are similar in respect to what you've done in school, though to a higher degree: there's more riding on it, and these people aren't grading you, they're expecting it to be done right the first time.
As far as difficulties, if you have done all the above in classes or with your BS and MS students, then just be prepared for the faster pace and higher volume of stockholders. It can be a bit overwhelming, but doable.
Having a technical PhD will help you in these situations, because you'll have a better understanding of what your workers need to complete their tasks, how fast it will take them, and what it is exactly that you're working on. In fact, it will give you a leg up on other candidates or PMs that don't have technical backgrounds. If you can listen to a technical explanation of what's happening, and relay it to stockholders in a way that non-technical people can understand, you'll be fine.

Doing PhD research usually means following waterfall methodology or iterative waterfall, while most project management requires Agile and Scrumban. You just need one course on project-management methodologies and you can be in and be even better than other project managers who have no PhD experience

Surely there's more to management than just throwing around the right buzzwords...

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Found published work that doesn't reference previous related work
I have been researching a specific topic in computer science for a couple of years now and a well established professor and his students have recently published a couple of publications in that topic too. In their work they do reference the well known and well cited previous work that basically everyone in that topic references, but I have noticed that they ignore (don't reference) a couple of publications that are doing essentially what they are publishing about, i.e. extremely related work. And I am wondering even though there is a gap of a couple of years between the work they have published and the available previous literature how did they miss referencing the relevant previous work? Was it done intentionally or did they just do a hasty job at finding more recent related work?
Either way my main concern here is if there is anything that can be done to remedy the situation now, since the paper has already been published?

@corey979 one of them is mine the other one isn't. How should I write that email? "Hey by the way you missed to reference this and this paper in your x publication as they are essentially doing the same thing you are trying to do in x"

They can't update the references of a published article. The best they can do is citing those references in the next related paper.

So their literature survey was not perfect ... tough, many many papers could show similar omissions. They can’t do much except go forward and neither can you...

Email: "Dear X, I saw your interesting paper on Y. You might be interested in the following paper of mine on Y that addresses a similar question."

@Michael Greinecker that would actually be a good answer.

"they ignore (don't reference) ..." why do you assume that the lack of a reference is due to a decision to ignore? To ignore something means to refuse to take notice of it. Your very way of phrasing the question assumes malice on the part of these researchers.

Realistically, there is nothing you can do to change an already published paper. There are some options for extreme cases, but they are unlikely to apply.
What you can do is try to have the record correct in future publications. Unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (and usually even then), it is best to communicate on the basis that this is not an act of malice. You can write the authors of these papers (and authors of preprints on the topic) a polite email stating that you liked their interesting work and have done related work that you think might be of interest to them. What they do with that information is up to them then.

For the interested, here's a couple of those extreme cases described on Retraction Watch: Example 1, and Example 2.

What do you expect to see in references? Every article on the topic?
References should contain the articles that the article in question actually reference. They publish some results. If these results are in the area that those "well known" articles defined and set up - they reference those. If they use certain results found in other articles - they reference those. But they don't owe you a reference just because you do similar stuff in parallel. If your results weren't used in their work, there's nothing to reference.
If they are writing a survey, they should include every notable result and reference it. If this is the case, you could actually contact them and ask (in a non-aggressive manner) why your work hasn't been included. But everyday articles should just cite the articles that they base the work on.
If you suspect they simply don't know about your work, feel free to write something friendly like "hey, looks like we are working on the same stuff, I noticed that you found Fact1 about Topic1 in Article1, I managed to find Fact2 in Article2. do you think Fact3 could be true? have you managed to do any work on that yet?"

I strongly disagree with the second paragraph. If you are writing a paper about doing X, and there was a publicly available and reviewed paper doing X (or a very closed task X'), then you have to reference and discuss it. You cannot just keep reinventing already known stuff and claim it as new ignoring the past work of everyone else.

@ClementC. I disagree.  You should only reference what you need/used for your paper.  The existence of a paper doing the same thing if anything should merely be reason for an editor to reject the publication of your paper if they agree it is too similar to the previously published work.

I couldn't disagree more... I don't know what your field of research is, but in mine omitting citations in the "Relevant work" section is a major sin.

@ClementC your field has a section of the bibliography called "Relevant Work"? We literally call ours "Work Cited", if we don't cite it, we don't include it. Not having read every single article is common. Even the best Cervantista will find it impossible to have read every single work on Cervantes, so even if you felt citation were mandatory, I wouldn't call the lack of it a sin, because that implies that it is possible to (a) know if every single article in existence on the topic, (b) have access to them all and (c) read them all.

@guifa No, we have a part of the introduction for this discussion. And my fiels is theoretical computer science (the OP states theirs is computer science), so close to math. If you prove a "new" theorem and don't cite a paper from the year before who already has shown the same result or something similar, then you have a problem. You should have read it, discussed it, and cited it, you cannot ignore the fact that the theorem (or algorithm, or result, etc) was already known.

@ClementC The OP isn't talking about a new discovery, simply "related work". If the paper claimed a discovery that was published several years prior, it doesn't matter whether they cited or referenced the previous work, the editor should not have let the paper past their desk. Ultimately, if the paper were truly that relevant and fundamental, I'm sure the editor would have noted it and requested or demanded its inclusion.

@guifa I am not sure we are on the same page with regard to what constitutes a discovery in computer science, theoretical computer science, or related fields. A new method/algorithm that performs a given task with better accuracy or time complexity than the others is a discovery. Showing "Task X can be performed in time blah to achieve guarantee bleh with my algorithm" is a discovery (if previous work had worse running time or accuracy).

@clementC Where we place the semantic bounds of "discovery" is moot.  At the end of the day, if it were actually important for the author to cite article X, the editor should have required its inclusion. Relevancy is subjective, and minor advances to a subfield may not actually need be cited in every single paper in the subfield here on out, absent literally being quoted. The editor clearly felt that the paper was fine as is. The OP isn't claiming the other paper plagiarized or falsely claimed credit for anything, so I don't see  how you can be so sure an extraneous citation is so needed.

@guifa To be frank? CS is conference-based, with short review times. I do not necessarily share your faith in the editor (in this case, reviewers and PC members). But my point is -- editor aside, if the OP's claims are true, then they should have been cited. Your whole point now basically boils down to "The OP must not be right in their claim [their work is relevant], or the editor would have caught it." That's changing the whole premise of the answer.

@ClementC. I think we have a different understanding of the problem here.I agree that if you find an algorithm that does X in n^2.15 time you should discuss and compare it to the previous result that same in n^2.18. I read the question more like "we investigated the P=NP problem from the [..] viewpoint. The problem was set up by the famous papers [x] and [y]" and that might not need to reference everyone (or maybe no one at all) working on P=NP in the last few years.

@Džuris With that reading, sure. But then, well, there is no real scenario someone could actually call their own work relevant without blushing, I reckon.


text:
Why are there no computer-friendly versions of papers?
I believe that many people read articles from their computers. So, tiny fonts and many columns have no advantage.
Why don’t journals make alternative computer-friendly versions of the articles? For example, with a gray background, single column, double-spaced? I guess it wouldn’t be difficult because they are compiled with Latex, so, adding a single line of code would suffice.
I have heard about this problem from many students and professors. Aren’t journals aware of this demand? What can be done about it?

It might be more difficult than you think to change from two to one column, e.g. if there are page-wide figures. But anyway, if you read on your computer, can't you zoom in? I have never been disturbed by this (I'm much more disturbed by the terrible output from Word and similar  when dealing with mathematical notations).

@anderstood: "It might be more difficult than you think to change from two to one column, e.g. if there are page-wide figures." - as there is no requirement for a graphic to be in any fixed location related to the text when reading on a computer screen, that one is a non-issue. But I agree some semantic information about the intended text structure may be lost in the process of producing a camera-ready version of a paper.

There are many efforts on the way to implement this. Here is one of the better examples http://lens.elifesciences.org/about/

Digital rights management (DRM) is often in contradiction with computer friendly or user friendly documents. They prepare watermarks with downloader IP, and some want the user force to see advertising on the website before downloading. Much effort is done to prevent any automatic or assisted downloading from the website, even if the downloader has already paid for the access. A computer friendly format could easily bypass that.

Technically almost any .pdf reader has an option for dark background; about the rest, how is single-column more computer friendly than double-column?

Let's be frank, the PDF format and the 2-column layout are total disasters of portability, flexibility, and readability. A legacy of the old age when we were reading on paper and when PDF had some sense because there were not better technologies.

@GennaroTedesco can you please tell me which PDF readers can  set a  dark background on a PDF document?  Color background is a property of the document, and as far I know it cannot be changed.

@user4050 For example Okular, Zathura and even Acrobat Reader. "Color background is a property of the document" what does this mean? Everything in the document is "property of the document", this doesn't mean it cannot be amended. Moreover "Let's be frank, the PDF format and the 2-column layout are total disasters of portability, flexibility, and readability" why is that? What is the difference in portability and flexibility compared to the one-column layout?

@GennaroTedesco thank you, I had no clue this was possible and very easy!

I eagerly await the day the two column format breathes its last. It's horrendous.

@XanderHenderson "when one gets to the bottom of one column, one then has to scroll back to the top of the same page to begin the next column" - I wrote my own PDF viewer to address this.  Let me know if you think it would be generally useful.

"I guess it wouldn’t be difficult because they are compiled with Latex" - this just isn't true in several very large fields.

Regarding LaTeX paper: I have encountered more than once some journals that have online versions of papers. Those versions are usually rendered like a blog post in pure HTML. I guess it's done automatically from the LaTeX.

Why don’t journals make alternative computer-friendly versions of the articles?

They already do. It’s usually called HTML version. I couldn’t find any statistics on how widely available this is, but as far as I know, all major journals in my field (physics), all mega-journals, and Elsevier offer this.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Ironically (?), I haven't seen this for CS papers—except for occasional authors who post HTML versions themselves. I could just have not been looking in the right places though.

Actually, many columns still do have an advantage even on PC because shorter lines allow for faster reading. Conversely, double-spacing which unfortunately remains very popular in Word-written theses (probably because guidelines were written by people with no typographic background) would impair the readability of both on-screen and printed versions of a paper. And the good a grey background would do (reducing contrast between the background and text) is beyond me.
In fact, the present-day versions of articles in all journals I need in my field (chemistry) are well typeset and pleasing to read both on screen and on paper — mainly because a simple set of rules is followed that improves readability in both. Conversely, I only see ‘tiny font [sizes]’ in footnotes that I only need if I’m interested in the authors’ institutes. These font sizes are still large enough to be read well on paper and I can read them equally well on screen.
Furthermore, I wish to strongly question the assertion that ‘journals are compiled in LaTeX’. If they were, publishers such as ACS publications and Wiley-VCH would be much keener to accept LaTeX-manuscripts rather than Word-written ones. Their authors’ guidelines read to me as if Word is strongly preferred. I want to guess without having access to actual evidence that journals typically use high-end publishing software, way beyond what ordinary LaTeX does. They probably also perform a non-neglegible amount of tweaking to make sure the articles fit well on paper and that figures and tables are at least in the vicinity of their mentions in the text.
What I consider to be computer-friendly is actually only one last minor step: that citations are clickable and open to the paper which is cited. The big chemistry publishers actually do that — aside from in Elsevier’s case also providing a HTML version.
Finally, I have never heard anybody voice the concerns you voiced. Thus my conclusion is: there is no actual demand therefore nobody does it. If there were demand, there would be awareness.

"Actually, many columns still do have an advantage even on PC because shorter lines allow for faster reading." - I fail to see the advantage in having to scroll up to the beginning of the page when I arrive at the end of a column. Yes, a column that is less wide than the screen is desirable, but many columns (read: more than one) are, IMHO, pointless on the screen when the goal is to sequentially read a document from beginning to end. "double-spacing (...) would impair the readability of both on-screen and printed versions of a paper" - it can help avoid losing the line when switching lines.

"the good a grey background would do (reducing contrast between the background and text) is beyond me" - at least one possible advantage is to make the text more readable when the reader is in a dark-ish environment. Switching between that environment and a glaring white screen causes at least a perceived strain on the eyes, as far as I can tell. "Finally, I have never heard anybody voice the concerns you voiced." - to counter your anecdotal evidence with mine: Not only have I heard plenty, people actually publish on this.

@O.R.Mapper No, double spacing helps lose trace of the line between the lines. Spacing of 1.3 or so is optimal. Contrast reduction can be done to the screen, there is no need for the paper itself to do that.

RE: "Actually, many columns still do have an advantage even on PC because shorter lines allow for faster reading." Lines can be made as long or short as the reader likes by resizing the window.

It is my suspicion that double-spacing actually comes from lower levels of schooling, where it is important to allow teachers to mark up a paper with edits, comments, and so on. I would guess that there are a good chunk of people in higher academia who have never given a second thought to typography and continue to double-space (and insist on it from  theses they read) just because that’s how they’ve always done it and been told to do it and they assume there is a good reason for it.

@Warbo depends on what you mean by short. A 200 character long line in pdf will still be a 200 character line no matter how you resize it.

@gmatht: That's exactly the point. A line in PDF can only be zoomed, the characters on the line won't change by means of a dynamically moving linebreak.

Some journals certainly do have HTML versions. For those that don't, the answer is probably a combination of institutional inertia and an eye on the bottom line.
In my "spare time" I am assistant editor on a very small, open access peer-reviewed journal. Even though it was born digital (meaning that we only publish online, and have for the entire decade or so of our existence), layout is done in Adobe InDesign1 and aims for a print-ready look. This is partly because the founders of the journal were used to that, and partly because so many of our readers actually print out and read articles, rather than reading them online (we know because we've surveyed).
Even though we are a small, new journal, I strongly suspect that many/most of the larger, more established journals also use traditional desktop publishing software rather than LaTeX, as they were (by definition) founded before LaTeX was a thing. I also suspect that most of these are specifically using InDesign, which currently dominates the professional market. Traditional desktop publishing may be part of their workflow even if authors submit papers in LaTeX.2
Over the years I have tried a few times to switch our journal over to a more onscreen-friendly format, but given the demands of our readers and board the only option is to add an online-version, not to do away with the print-friendly version. This is harder than it sounds. First, final-final edits aren't made until we are in InDesign, when they're easier to spot in proofs. That means that I don't have a raw file to work with, but rather need to output from the InDesign file if I want to be sure the text matches. This is not a very slick process (getting figures into the right place in the flow, for example, is very tricky). What that means is that I have to essentially type-set two different versions of each article.
Which brings us to the second major issue, the bottom line: I personally do not get paid extra for doing extra work to make a second version. You can probably guess how high my motivation is to do that gratis work when the first version is adequate for 99% of applications. Larger for-profit publishers would need to pay someone extra to do the extra work (people who do the grunt work of typesetting and the like are almost the only people who get paid for any part of the actual creation of academic articles); this again is likely to be a low priority if there is not an off-setting financial upside for them.
I do expect that there will be movement in this in the near future, however. For one thing, the technology for porting between one format and another is getting better/smarter, making the barrier to entry for HTML versions much lower. For another, there is a new focus at least in the US on accessibility of documents, and HTML is better for this because it is possible to embed more meta-data to facilitate technical accommodations. My brother works for a very large academic publisher, and he tells me that they also all work in InDesign. However, they are currently in the process of making HTML versions a higher priority, due to accessibility requirements.

1 When I started, the journal was actually still being formatted in Word, so InDesign is actually an improvement.
2 For example, even though Elsevier asks for submissions in LaTeX, they tell advertisers that they use a "PDF workflow" and a recent job posting for a Graphic Designer asks for "High level proficiency with Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop)" but doesn't mention LaTeX.

I am really glad that you mentioned accessibility, as in accessibility for people with disabilities. LaTeXed PDFs are very much not accessible to people with a variety of disabilities. From my personal experience, the mathematical community at least doesn't seem to care very much about this. It would be ironic indeed if the hated academic publishers are the ones who pull the field out of the dark ages in this respect.

@Elizabeth What sort of things make LaTeX'ed pdf's worse than other formats?

@TobiasKildetoft For starters, they don't work well with screen readers and they can't be adjusted for color, font, or font size as individual needs demand.

@ElizabethHenning If you have specific examples and needs, it might be worth asking over at TeX.SE what can be done to improve the accessibility of the pdf. I think that such a question could be very useful to everyone.

@MassimoOrtolano: Accessibility is still a Major issue for TeX. Even MS Word creates tagged PDF nowadays, LaTeX is not able to do so. The problem is quite complex unfortunately, so an easy solution to implement it in LaTeX is not near.

@MassimoOrtolano The question has apparently been asked several times, in different ways; as of last year (date of the answer to, I think, the latest question on the subject) there still were significant obstacles: "While the accessibility.sty package is a useful tool for simple documents, it is incompatible with multiple packages and commands."

In mathematics, among other fields, it is common to post preprints to the arXiv. It is quite typical to read these versions in lieu of the officially published version.
A little-noticed feature is that you can download the LaTeX source for papers. Among other things, this lets you tweak the formatting if you like. Indeed, once I did this myself: I didn't like the formatting on a paper that I wanted to read carefully, and so I downloaded the source, changed the formatting, and recompiled it to my liking.

How do you download the latex source? I've often wanted to do that e.g. to get an idea of how they were type-setting an equation.

@LyndonWhite On the right there is a part called "Download" where you can choose either "PDF" or "Other formats". Under the latter one you can find the source (usually).

In my field (mathematics) I find that many PDFs are "computer-friendly" with features such as

hyperlinks
with target both inside the PDF (e.g. cross-references) and outside (e.g. link to the DOI of an item in the bibliography)
searchable
table of contents

Besides papers with HTML versions, there are also journals which offer print & screen versions of their PDFs. For example, the journal Algebra & Number Theory:

Of course, it is up to the "customers" to ask for extra features and up to the journal to decide whether implementing extra features is worth the extra effort.

I believe this is for technical reasons -- it is common to use LaTeX, and LaTeX is very, very bad at producing HTML versions of papers -- there are various hacky ways of doing it, but none work well.
While it's easier to get HTML out of Microsoft Word, it still isn't entirely automatic, or nice to look at.

But preprints/reviewer copies are often single-sided PDFs just by selecting a couple of different options.  They would be better for reading on screen.  the question says nothing about HTML

LaTeX is a markup language- it can be used to generate any desired style of output you'd wish. That's the point of separating the specification of content from the display and layout of the content. It's often as easy as finding someone's carefully crafted document class and changing one line of code. Whether anyone actually uses LaTeX to generate HTML or screen-compatible output is a separate question, but you definitely can. I've done it with good success in the past.

LaTeX isn't a markup language, it is an executable text replacement language. It's impossible to understand a LaTeX document without executing it. That's why it's so hard to write alternative back-ends for LaTeX.
If you want to say "what about MathJax", that only parses a small part of latex, and doesn't support writing extensions in latex.


text:
Studying Abroad - do they need my high school transcript/diploma?
I'm thinking about studying in Germany next year at a university. I am a US citizen. I have completed a 2 year Associate's degree program at a trade school and also finished my general education requirements, at about 45 units as a combination of AP tests and classes at a community college.
When applying, they the schools ask for an official copy "school-leaving certificate" - I'm guessing this means diploma. Do I need an official copy of my high school transcript and/or diploma? Does my Associate and other college credit infer that I have already successfully completed high school? As I haven't quite mentioned any specific schools, I think this answer is probably the same regardless of the country of the institution.

Yes, German universities oftten require an official copy of your high school certification, even if you already have a university diploma which implies the completion of a high school. The same happened to me when I was starting my PhD in Germany - I also was required to present my high school certificate, although I also had two university diplomas (bachelor and master). In a similar manner, both of my university diplomas were required.

Thanks! Did this include high school transcript in your case, or simply the diploma? what about SAT scores?

@Deannakov Just the diploma, no transcript nor SAT. AFAIK, SAT is just a US thing and European universities generally don't expect you to have SAT scores.

You not only need to show that you completed high school, you also need to provide something that includes your grades*.
In most (all?) study programs in Germany, applying students are ranked by high school ("Abitur") grades, and a cut-off is used to decide who gets in (numerus clausus). The cut-off differs per subject, and may differ by university.
*include a key for the grades, as they differ in every country: e.g. highest, lowest, pass limit; or even better an official translation of US-grades to German grades.