text:
Should I alter personal holidays for a research visit?
The group of my professor and another professor from a distant Asian country have signed a cooperation agreement.
As part of the cooperation, me as a rookie graduate student have to visit the other professor. Unfortunately, the proposed days of the visit interfere with a few days of a personal holiday. On some other time-frames it is either too late or the host professor has deadlines to work on.
The only time-frame which fits all is the one which infers with my plans.
Both the host professor and my professor in their email communication asked explicitly whether the proposed date fits me. Of course it doesn't, but I don't know if I should say that or should I simply sacrifice my plans (a weekend + two bank holidays), lose a few days of personal traveling, and opt for the visit?

Have you already made arrangements for the holiday? Do these arrangements involve other people or major nonrefundable payments? If so, the holiday takes priority due to financial reasons or obligations to third parties.
On the other hand, if you can easily cancel all the arrangements and move the holiday to another date, be flexible. In this case, the visit is probably more important to you as an academic than the holiday would be to you as a private person.
Of course, I come from a background where PhD students are employees of the university with the same rights as any other employee. The answer might be different in a country where the student is subject to the whims of their supervisor.

How important is the research to you? And how hard is it for you to replan?
An enthusiastic grad student probably would jump onto the opportunity, but if you see it as a chore, and you do not see direct repercussions (after all, they asked you whether it works), you might decline it.
Of course, you may still be enthusiastic, but it may mean losing out on a pre-booked, expensive trip to the outback/jungle/mountains/etc. (or something else that requires a lot of organisation and/or money to arrange). In this case, the decision will be less clear-cut.

Depends exclusively on your priorities.
No one can help you but you!
Notwithstanding that, since you are the part of a team, IMO the best is not to mess up with plans of your team leader if you find the plan is good for both you and your team in the long run. A moral obligation exists, at least have an open discussion with your supervisor, random people is of no use here.
A personal side note: I would jump in to the opportunity if I were you! Well, I must say it depends a lot on the cumulative trust factor between you and your supervisor among other things.


text:
PhD crossroad: dealing with constantly absent supervisor and diverse workload?
I am in the first year of my PhD studies. Was involved with the same group since a while as a student, and then I was offered a PhD there.
Project work
The topic of my PhD is completely different from what I had done before, so the first 3-4 months passed while I was trying to get into the new topic. In the meanwhile a project arrived. It was loosely related to my previous experience, but still completely unrelated to the PhD topic.
I was assigned to this project. Soon it started hogging all my time. Project meetings, proposal, presentations, reports and all that. Months were passing by without doing anything on the PhD topic. Also it was hard switching between the topics as the context switch was immense.
I tried different strategies. Switching topics within the day. Switching topics week in week out. And in the end what worked for me was switching between the topics as the deadlines for the project were met.
Lack of supervision
On top of all this the supervisor is busy constantly. All in all I might have had less than 3-4 hours of one-to-one discussion with my supervisor within these 12 months, whereas I hear other professors have monthly meetings with their students. Also, no one from the seniors in the group has expertise related to my PhD topic. Neither there is a fellow student working on the same topic with whom I could discuss.
Assuming that my work-flow and the tools I use were faulty, I constantly looked around for approaches to become more and more efficient. To make sure there is nothing extra to be done from my side I started working actively on the weekends and did not take any holidays.
Yet, looking at my PhD topic I still think there is so much to learn there regarding the basics let alone advanced concepts. Much more than one usual candidate who is researching within a topic which s/he might have encountered previously during studies.
What next?
As the time for the contract extension is approaching I am trying to figure out what is the best to do next. Below I will list pros and cons from my POV.
Pros:

I like the PhD topic
I like the group
I like teaching duties
(although it requires significant time investment)

Cons:

I hate the project work
Lack of input from the supervisor
There is no one in the group to discuss with

Bottom line: How should I deal with this situation? Is it a common situation for PhD students?
Options:

Request a helping hand for the project (an extra student that will help me). I am even contemplating of paying from my own sallary.
Start contacting other groups worldwide and switch for a PhD there.
Visit another research group (e.g., my co-supervisor etc.) for half-a-year (or longer), whose main research aligns with my PhD topic
other...?

Update (6 years and 7 months later): Guys, I defended my PhD and graduated with honors. Just in case that anyone stumbles upon this question here, let me tell you that your supervisor and the people that you work with day in day out will have the greatest impact on your PhD.
That time-consuming project that I have mentioned above ended at some point, so that's okay... But the part regarding supervision didn't change.

At some later point in my PhD I learned that in some institutions the PhD supervisor and the student can sign a "PhD supervision agreement", but I never did that. Some Professors might not like it, because it is also legally binding.
Be more proactive in asking for supervision. Professors that have a hands-off style of supervision (like to) assume that everything is okay, unless you deliberately raise an issue.
"Remote supervising" is not good for the newbies in the group, they need close supervision in the beginning.
"Remote supervisors" have an inaccurate picture of the group. There is a mismatch between what they think is happening, and what is really happening. This also reflects in supervisor-student relationship because the demands and what is really possible do not fit.
From my observation, when the head of the group is not around also the group tends to slack.
One good thing with a supervisor who is absent is that they probably network a lot. They are absent because they are visiting some conference, giving a keynote here and there, attending project meetings etc, as such they are well-connected and you can benefit from their network.

A third alternative is starting to contact other groups worldwide and finding a co-supervisor there.

@svavil I have a co-supervisor, and I am ashamed telling him every other week that I have not been able to do anything on the PhD topic because of the other tasks

On the topic of your advisor being busy, you might these questions helpful: How to deal with advisor not allocating time to me?, How can I make my thesis supervisor be more responsive? I acknowledge that your question is bigger than that, but this subproblem can be tackled separately.

Option 3 ("visit another research group...") sounds like a great option if you have the opportunity. As a bonus, this kind of thing looks good on a CV, regardless of your other circumstances.

It's not clear to me whether you did Step 1 (or Step 2) yet.  Forgive me if you already did them.
Step 1. Talk to your advisor and let her know how much time per week (or a percentage or proportion  of your time) is being spent on the project, and ask for help and/or advice about how to balance your time more effectively.
Step 2.  Work in the library, work at home, but limit the amount of time you spend in your office where other project members can grab you or distract you.

The first and the most important  element of the PhD thesis is the topic and field of research that provide you the next years afterwards.
The thesis work needs some elements from your background and also your PhD courses.
The first thing is to think on your PhD topic that is suitable based on your background and available tools.
About your busy supervisor, if you think that you need someone to lead you on the hard path of the PhD life, my suggestion is to rapidly change your supervisor in that school or other ones.
Also, you can collaborate with well-known researchers around the worldwide on your topic, give advice how to begin, and maybe work with them as your advisor on your PhD committee members.
Based my experience, sometimes we need to dive into a topic rather than to start step by step from the beginning to the advanced level.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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

sort: votes


text:
How to formulate in academic writing when one comes up with a novel approach
In my project work I came up with a new method for solving a certain problem which has not been used before, by extending an already existing approach.
What type of wording should I use in academic writing to express this fact.
I wrote something in the lines of, but would like to have something more elegant:

Furthermore, in my project work I propose a novel approach by
  extending X and incorporating an xyz mechanism to it in order to
  get better Z metric

EDIT:
I would also like to say, that "something similar has never been done before to our knowledge"

What does your advisor or collaborator say? Or whoever else you can talk to with experience in your field?

"Extending an already existing approach" and "novel" are contradictory terms.

@Alexandros that depends how far the "existing approach" has been extended...

Novel kinda means something similar has never been done before to our knowledge.

Given that you are sure of novelty of your work, you can write something like: " to the best of our knowledge, the proposed approach is the first to do...." and show the novelty in your approach.

It's not enough to just say that your approach is novel.  You need to make a convincing case that your approach is actually novel.  This requires a thorough literature review of existing techniques for the problem you are attacking, together with direct comparisons between your technique and each of those existing techniques.
The message you want to send is "I have read every paper on this topic, and none of them do this thing that I'm about to do."  The novice reader will just believe you, but the expert reader, who has probably spent decades thinking about your problem, will look for their favorite handful of papers in your survey.  Make sure they find them.
You also need to understand the standards for novelty in your field.  The same technique can be considered completely revolutionary in one field and a standard modification of classical textbook methods in another.  (Yes, both views can be correct.)
Of course, the real reason to prepare this literature review is to convince yourself that your approach is actually novel.  Because it probably isn't.  Most “novel” techniques aren't.

This is good advice.  Let me remark that how much to cite varies considerably based on the academic field [as we've discussed before].  In my subject of mathematics, citations are used rather sparingly, to the extent that citing papers to show a lack of connection is not usually done unless there is a significant expectation that the typical reader would expect such a connection.  In any case, doing an extensive literature review for one's own sake is dead on.

Thanks for your answer and suggestions, although I believe it is a bit off the mark. I was just looking for proper wording and not what novel means in terms of science and research. Of course I came to the conclusion that the approach is new after thoroughly reviewing related work and consulting my supervisors

As they say in creative writing courses, "show, don't tell".

This paper presents a novel method for achieving Z metric.  The method uses xyz mechanism combined with existing method x.  This combination yields performance capabilities relative to z that were previously not possible or feasible with x alone. To support our claim of novelty, the following paragraphs present a comprehensive review of the relevant literature and comparisons to our method.

Then you follow with literature review and comparisons

If the question is indeed about proper wording that balances the novelty / modesty, why not:
Confronted with problem X, I tried all known approachs without success. Further analysis showed that approach Z yelded the closest results to the intended goal. Based on this observation, I worked on a Y mechanism allowing a better metric and, by integrating it with Z approach, developed a novel Z++ approach.

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


text:
Abbreviations (abbrv.) in journal (jrn) articles (artcs)
As we all know, you typically abbreviate something the first time that particular term shows up in a paper.  However, I've been told in the past that certain things in a paper should be written in such a way that 'it stands on its own'.  One such thing would include the abstract of the paper.  So, perhaps a <STRING> appears in the abstract that I want to abbreviate.  Now one of two things can happen.
1.) If <STRING> appears more than once in the abstract, I could abbreviate the first instance and then just use the abbreviation from that point on.
2.) If <STRING> appears only ONCE in the abstract, then I shouldn't abbreviate it because then I would have defined an abbreviation that I would not have used again (given the concept of 'the abstract should be able to stand on its own).
The problem with (2) is that people will immediately think that the 'first instance' of <STRING> should be abbreviated and don't immediately consider the 'stand-alone' idea so I'm either having to revise or try to put up a convincing argument for what I did.
Also, I've been told by some that tables and figures should be able to 'stand on their own'.  So, if the abbreviation for <STRING> appears in the table somewhere (or the caption), then I should explicitly spell out <STRING> and then define an abbreviation for it right then and there, even if I have already done so earlier on in the text of the paper.
So, my question is, what is the proper way of handling these abbreviations and is the idea of 'this piece must be able to stand on its own' valid (and if its valid, what exactly does this idea apply to)?

Additional Information:
I am a computational chemist so we pretty much are forced to use the alphabet-soup of acronyms.  MP2 is preferred over "second-order Moller-Plesset perturbation theory" and is commonly used.  CCSD(T) is preferred over "The
coupled-cluster method that includes all single and double substitutions as well as a perturbative treatment of the connected triple excitations".  The list can go on and on.  If this wasn't abbreviated in an abstract, having to 'spell it out' even a few times would make for an incredibly long abstract, figure caption, table, etc.

The first comment will be, do not abbreviate just because something occurs more than once. Abbreviations other than established ones (within your field) such as DNA, EDTA make reading more difficult. Of course all established abbreviation were new at some point but the message is, be restrictive. I understand your field may be in need of many abbreviations so make adjustments to these general comments accordingly.
Now as for the abstract, I would recommend to not abbreviate anything even if it occurs more than once or twice (again barring established abbreviations). The abstract should be seen as a separable part which is (hopefully read) by a wider audience than the paper itself. If you need to abbreviate something in the paper, do so in the main paper as the "first occurrence".
Tables and figures should be made to stand alone if possible (which probably is 80+% of the time). Often figures and tables may be the parts others take up when they describe your work. To have self-explanatory figures and tables is thus useful. With a table the table caption should be an integral part so I think it is reasonable to have abbreviations in the table body as long as the abbreviations are explained in the table caption. The same could apply to figures as well but I would go further and aim for making the graphics along self-explanatory even without its caption.

I have updated my question to deal with this response.

I have updated my answer to keep the general recommendations but highlight the need for field related adjustments.

In my opinion the general rule is that abbreviations should be used exactly when they make reading easier; in particular, in some circumstances it will be easier to understand a sentence when a long term is abbreviated (provided the abbreviation has been defined of course). The same rule should apply in abstract and captions, except that the cost (in term of reading comfort) of having to look for the meaning of the abbreviation is usually greater.
The problem comes from the fact that we tend to use abbreviations when they make writing easier (or quicker), and this does not coincide with reading easiness.

very good point about easy reading ./. easy writing

If the abbreviation is so common that people use it instead of its real meaning (e.g. I'd call EDTA EDTA, but if I'm asked for the spelled-out name I mentally reconstruct that from the structure of EDTA - as opposed to knowing ethylenediamintetraaceticacid and reconstructing the structure from that) I'd use the abbreviation in the abstract.
If the abbreviation is really common, but not the "primary name" of the thing in question, I'd spend that one word in the abstract and give both.
Otherwise, I'm a big fan of a table of abbreviations. That way it is much easier for a reader who is not deeply familiar with the field to find the meaning than to search through the text to where the abbreviation first occurred.

See also: Shall acronyms in scientific papers be expanded exactly once?

I would write it out in full the first time that it appears in the abstract, and again the first time that it appears in the main text. This isn't authoritative, however, it's simply what "seems right" to me. The abstract needs to stand on its own, and the introduction should also make sense to somebody who hasn't just read the abstract.
Additionally, as some have said, in some fields there may be abbreviations that are so generally accepted that there is no need to expand them. To pick something that is not field-dependant, nobody would expect an author to spell out LASER or RADAR.


text:
How to automatize the making and sending of event's attendance certificates?
Our department make a lot of attendance certificates, for events we run, and we waste a lot of work typing attendance lists and sending them by email. Most of the public are students are from my institution, and we can get a list of names and email address. We make about 1.500 certificates by year.
We are thinking about using a event system, but I'm having trouble to find one that makes certificates and don't cost thousand of dollars.
Anyone have a suggestion? A better solution?

This doesn't seem like it's really about academia, as stated in the FAQ, and it is also a shopping question which is also explicitly called out as off topic in the faq.

Oh, sorry. Maybe I can edit to make less "shopping question". As making attendance certificates is a part of many events, like conferences, I assumed the question to be on topic.

But it still doesn't really fit the topics as listed https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

Managing symposiums/congresses/conferences/courses is a central part of the "Life as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, university professor".

(Changed the mysterious "os" to "of" in the title...)

Sounds like a candidate for a mail merge or even vba macro... could try looking on stack overflow for examples...

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it would fit better at software recommendations.

So you basically want a program that'll print off a certificate for each person in a list of 1,500 names?  Or would you prefer to email the certificates?  Or, what precisely would you like the system to do?


text:
Affiliation for a student's internship project
Though related to this question on undegrad student affiliation, I am in a somewhat different situation…
I am an undergrad student at the Miskatonic University. For completion of their BSc, students at MU are required to perform a 6-week research project in a research lab, which I did with a professor at another institution: Unseen University. I loved it, extending my stay there for 3 more weeks into my summer break. Now, we will submit a paper with the results of that internship project, but I don't know what affiliation(s) to put.
The specifics are:

I am not paid by MU, and did not set foot there during my research project (not using the library, nothing)
I was not paid by the research institution (UU), either
Though I am keeping an eye on the research project, I did not do any significant work since my internship ended (vacations, then too busy with courses)

I think I should put UU as my affiliation, because I used their resources. But maybe UU being the affiliation of the main authors (grad student and professor on the project) is enough? And should I put MU as affiliation?

Huh? Ain't you a professor? haha

@CharlesMorisset  Nice to know. Thanks for the info!

I wonder what are the disadvantages of writing both.

IMHO being paid or not doesn't matter at all (e.g. a PhD student payed by a scholarship doesn't list the scholarship as affilitation but the university, funding goes into the acknowledgements).
I'd list both adresses
What matters is that there is an official relationship. Official relationships the student has with both universities:

MU for the studies (not going there outside lecture time doesn't matter - you are allowed to study at home after all, and noone forces you to use their library). MU is also where you are now while writing up the paper.
UU for the internship. Presumably there is some kind of supervision agreement or something.

Possibly an explanation that you were at MU as an internship (summer) student would be good (e.g. acknowledgements: thanking your supervisors - particularly if your MU supervisor is not coauthor of the paper?).
Unlike the situation in the linked question, here it is clear that MU officially wanted you to do the internship (and for the internships I know you usually also have supervisor at MU), and UU officially had you over there to do the internship.
But looking up how we deal with this, I find that all three possibilities are used in practice:

giving only MU, as this is the "main" affiliation of the student (I think nowadays I'd give both affiliations - but my UU supervisor entered the affilations, so if he's OK with me being MU only, that's fine with me)
giving only UU (I'm at the UU side, but I know the project is also a consulting project for studies at MU. But AFAIK no supervisor from MU was actively involved in the student's work.)
giving both affiliations. Having multiple affiliations is increasing in my field as we have more and more interdisciplinary centers, and people give institute adresses rather than the university or the department. Working at a non-university research institute, students here usually have an affiliation with both our insitute and the university.

Update: policies

At my institute, the policy is "discuss with the director".

Hovewer, some universities have policies on the net, e.g.

University of Adelaide: Authorship Policy :

This Policy applies to all staff, students and titleholders
  [...]
  1.5 All individuals and organisations that contributed to the research outcome (e.g. research assistants, technical writers, funding bodies, the University), must be properly acknowledged within the publication.
  [...]
  2.5 As an acknowledgement of the institutional contribution to the delivery of research outcomes, authors must cite their institutional affiliation or affiliations in any publication.

Washington university in St. Louis: Policy for Authorship on Scientific and Scholarly Publications

Applicability: Faculty, Staff, Postdoctoral Scholars and Associates, Fellows, Trainees, and Students affiliated with Washington University

A paper that I have recently read may be a good reference (or example). As can be seen, one of the co-authors, Xuemei Liu is under Baidu, Inc. Shanghai. The research work was done when she (gender inferred from the name) was done during her internship at HP Lab.
She wrote the affiliation as Baidu, and used a star mark as the footnote indicating the work was carried out during her HP Lab internship period.

Update: Another more relevant example:
This paper here is exactly the case. The first author is a student under Shanghai Jiaotong University (student and thus, unpaid). The work of the paper was performed when he was an internship under Microsoft Research Asia. They adopted the same way: affiliation is still the university and a star footnote indicates the internship connection.

That's an interesting example… and yet it doesn't fit exactly my case: I assume that as her affiliation is listed as Baidu, Liu was employed (and thus paid) by Baidu. I am not paid by Miskatonic University, which I think changes things.

@F'x  Oh, I get your point. I remember I have seen another example matching your case. Wait and see if I can find the paper any more.

@F'x  Please see updated answer.

Yes, that's usually what I do. The affiliation is my base-organization, and a footnote with "this work was (partially) done while the author was at ..."  In addition, I thank the internship organization for hosting (paying?) me while part of this work was done in the acknowledgment part.


text:
Commercial company wants me to list all prior "inventions", give up everything not listed
I'm a post-doctoral researcher in computer science, but my next position will be in industry.  I've been negotiating a contract with this commercial company to do R&D work (not while I'm employed at a university). It's been a negative experience overall, because - like many companies - they did not write their draft contract themselves, nor gave it serious thought, but had some lawyer draw it up (without seriously reading it afterwards).
Not going into all the horrors of what the IP part looked like - here's a bit of it:

"Invention" shall include but not be limited to improvements, designs, discoveries, developments and works of authorship or artistry (including without limitation software, integrated circuit, printed circuit board or computer design, and documentation).
... (etc. etc.)
I have attached hereto, as Schedule 1, a complete list of all Inventions to which I claim ownership and desire to remove from the scope of this Agreement, and acknowledge that such list is complete ("Prior Inventions")

and basically they get to own everything else.
This may (?) be just fine for people who move from employment in one commercial company to another and never feel the need to publish anything or have rights to develop anything independently - each company makes you essentially say "you own everything" and then they can dish it out amongst themselves. But - it obviously won't fly if you're involved in continuing research - earlier, in an academic institute and now independently, outside the scope of your commercial employment, and/or if you're writing free software. I've had lots of ideas, notes, open ends of other work, talks with people, etc. which may be developed further - in addition to things you've actually published or registered in any way. I can't just recite all of them - nor do I want to tell the company all about them.
My question is about how to deal with this situation, or perhaps - how indignant I should be about it. Some options:

Just strike out that section of the contract and explain to them it's an unreasonable request.
Try to tweak the wording so that the list isn't wholly definitive ( <- A bad idea IMHO)
Write a list, but add items which are general and vague to represent half-baked (or unbaked) stuff, sort of catch-all "inventions" you could later claim cover actual things you pick up on.
Give in, write down some sort of a list and hope they don't go after you.

Suggestions with concrete examples are especially helpful.
Notes:

It isn't just this one company, I've seen similar contract drafts in several places already. It's not like this everywhere, but I don't want to have to rule out workplaces just because they are careless about their contracts (that is, assuming they don't actually want to suck you dry of your independent contributions).
I have no problems rewording this part of the contract whichever way I like, so I'm not asking for help with reading or writing "legalese" here.
I'm not in the US (and I don't want to make this question country-specific).

Choose a different company to work with... This might be better on the Workplace Stack or Legal...

@SolarMike: See note. Of course that's always an option.

You might want to try asking this on Law.SE, or even consult an IP lawyer. Similar corporate IP contracts that I have seen usually give them ownership of things that you invent during your employment and that relate to the business you are engaged in with the company. Although, it probably depends on the specific industrial area.

Just to clarify is this for R&D work to be done at a university or as an independent contractor? Our university has a team of lawyers and IP experts to deal with exactly these issues. Otherwise unless you can afford to have a lawyer protect your side it's probably better to avoid.

I think it might help if you could be a bit more specific about what these 'prior inventions' of yours are. Do you have patents for them? If so, I don't see why there would be much risk in declaring them up front.

@Time4Tea: I don't have problems interpreting this contract, nor changing the wording. I'm just not sure what I should do.

@mg4w: Not as a university employee, just as an R&D engineer. They don't care about my independent research (or perhaps - they do).

@Time4Tea: Patents? I'm against those on principle.

The one thing Cummins forgot to patent was the most important...

@einpoklum as I'm sure you know, patents are one of the main ways of protecting an invention against industrial competitors. I would expect this prospective company will be wanting you to generate them on their behalf. So, if you are opposed to patents in principle, are you sure you will enjoy working there?

@Time4Tea: Please don't be facetious. The question is not about the work I do for them, it's about protecting my previous and ongoing independent work. (Also, patents do not "protect" inventions just like private ownership of land doesn't "protect" that land; patents are merely guarantees from the state to artificially help their holder to monopolize use.)

@einpoklum I'm not trying to be facetious, but I'm struggling to understand exactly where your 'hang up' is. If you have no patents, then (at least from a legal standpoint, and assuming US) the only way you can protect your pre-existing ideas/inventions from commercial exploitation is to keep them secret. So, could you not carry on keeping them secret during your employment with this company? What is it you are concerned they are going to do?

Regarding your last sentence, that you are not looking for legal advice: with all respect, a legal professional that has expertise in commercial IP may well have relevant experience in this the area that you lack. For example, regarding practical legal areas such as enforceability of such contracts, and/or actual experience of litigating such cases in court.

@Time4Tea: The thing I want to avoid ("protect" against) is a company claiming an "Invention" of mine (to use the contract's terms) as its own, except for ones that I first put into some kind of expression while working for them and being paid for it. About your second-to-last comment - I meant I don't need help with the "legalese"; edited the question.

If your inventions are software-related (you mentioned free software in the question), then it's probably outside my area of expertise. I have more experience with physical electro/mechanical products, which may be different. Perhaps you could look into the issues surrounding writing/releasing free software whilst also being employed by a software company?

Look, you already know you don't want to work with this crew. Tell 'em "Thanks, no thanks, best wishes, and adios muchachos".

Even if OP doesn't want to work for the company over their bad attitude towards employees' creations done on their own time, it might be worth striking the language and making a counter-offer and seeing how they respond. It would be a useful experience to have gone through in developing strategy for handling future offers with such odious clauses.

Is the clause even legal? A company may claim ownership of all inventions made during your time with them. But I don't see how the company can claim ownership of an invention you made earlier, but forgot to list. Could this be an instance of the business model "Fuck-Up"?

@DavidRicherby: There are many questions on this site about the process of transitioning from a position in academia to one in industry - and so is this one. Will edit the questio  to clarify. I ask that you consider rescinding your close vote.

@einpoklum Is my edit OK? (Or at least close enough to the truth? If, say, you've very recently finished your postdoc and haven't worked since then, I'd leave the claim that you're currently in academia.)

"I don't want to make this question country-specific": that's not really going to work with legal issues. E.g. in my country (Germany) those clauses would be void because the law on inventions by employees doesn't allow to deviate from its defaults to the disadvantage of the employee. Thus, the question would be whether to sign irrelevant text or whether to negotiate "Look, this clause is invalid. I'd like to have a working contract, please".

@J...: The country is Palestine, the state is Israel; few people will know the relevant legal details to give a specific answer.

@cbeleites: Luckily, this is not a legal question (otherwise I would have put it on Law.SE).

@DavidRicherby: Your edit is fine. Actually I've already worked for about a year after my post-doc, but that just complicates things without adding useful info. Also - how come you're still listed as having cast a close vote?

If your profile is accurate and you are in Israel, you may want to read this. Your contract seems to be dancing around the requirements of the 1967 Patent Law. When they are talking about inventions it sounds like they mean patents, specifically. There is much more detail in the link - was going to post as an answer but... closed. It may provide insight as to what your employer is trying to protect and, also, what tools you have at your disposal to likewise retain options for patentable work you invent on your own time while employed there.

@einpoklum: The obvious recommendation to move on and look for another company aside, I don't see how recommendations about contract clauses can be given without taking legislation into account: whether it is void or something you should fight nail and tooth to not get trapped or is just the legal default spelled out at least to me makes a whole lot of a difference.

@cbeleites: I asked for a recommendation regarding how to react, not regarding how to word the contract clause; and my hope was to draw upon other academics' experience in similar situations.

@J...: Actually, my contract as a US-style contract which was partially, and not always validly, adapted to Israeli law, but I really didn't want to get into those specifics. I (presume to) know what my employer wants to protect, but the laywers drafted something very expansive.

@einpoklum In any case, if your interest is to understand where the law provides you with latitude to restrict those clauses in your contract, and what requirements must be met for them (and upon whom the burden of proof rests in cases of dispute), then I should think it relevant to at least understand the content of those two Israeli laws.

@einpoklum I didn't want to retract my close vote until you confirmed that my edit was OK. Now that you've done so, I've deleted my original comment and voted to reopen.

I have voted to reopen because this is a very common sort of question for researchers in industry.

This is pretty standard among tech companies in CA and WA.  What I have seen is, they have potential claim even if solely on your own time/with your own resources if it "demonstrably" relates to current or planned R&D (meaning there need to be some tangible documentation of their interest to pursue such a field).  Also, contracts I have seen stipulate that you should disclose new "Inventions" (broad list as you describe) immediately, so they can make that determination at the appropriate time.  However, it will alert them to your activities which may be perceived unfavorably ("not dedicated").

@abc: 1. You're commenting half a year later. 2. It can't be "pretty standard" - otherwise such companies would not be able to employ academics with ongoing research. 3. I've gotten an offer from a California company without this demand.

@einpoklum 1. And?  It's living documentation for future readers.  Don't look at it if you don't want.  2/3. Your theory and single anecdote, or multiple offers I've seen from FANG&co + plenty of online corroboration?  4. Learn some social skills.

I work at an R&D company that has a pretty similar clause in its contract, and in fact most R&D companies will.
The core reason is that things change quickly in R&D, so an area that the company has no interest in today may be a big part of their in business in 5-10 years.  Moreover, employees like you are likely to be the ones who create new business areas like that, and if they don't put in a very broad clause, there's nothing to stop you from taking work you've done at the company to a competitor or spinning off your own company (see, for example the fights going on over self-driving tech).
So, what should you do?  Well, it really depends on the reason for your objection.

If you've got moral objections to IP being controlled by companies, don't work in commercial R&D.
If you want to keep contributing to existing free and open software projects, put that down as a general reservation in the "prior inventions" section. Most reasonable R&D organizations will accept that in some form (though it may take a bit of back and forth on the wording), since for most companies that's never going to be their competition.
If you want to be able to pursue new side projects: embrace the clause! Don't think of it as "the company wants to steal my ideas" but instead as "the company might want to pay me to do my side projects".  In a healthy R&D organization, what you do with a potentially commercially interesting side project is essentially give them "right of first refusal" -- and if they don't want to support it, then it's yours.

Now, unhealthy organizations are a whole different story, of course, but there's lots of better reasons you wouldn't want to work for one of them in any case.

Adding in a clarifying note based on the comments:
While we can't know for sure without seeing the full statement, what has been shared, however, doesn't actually say the company is claiming all prior works. Instead, it appears to follow the usual practice of clarifying which IP the company agrees cannot be claimed, due to their origins in prior works. Prior works not listed, if they come into dispute, just have to have their origin established in other ways (e.g., scientific publication, date-stamps in metadata).

"pretty similar" is often very different. At any rate, you're describing a false dichotomy, between this clause - which takes away everything I've done by default - and not having any IP rights transfer.

As for your suggestions: 1. Again, false dichotomy - either accept things as-is or don't participate at all. 2. It's not about existing FOSS projects - that's not so hard to list. It's about my ideas which are not current projects, and may become projects in the future. 3. No, the company doesn't want to pay me to do my side projects; where did you get that from? It already pays me without me surrendering ownership of my independent work. And frankly, I wouldn't sell that to them.  -1.

@einpoklum Maybe I've misunderstood: are you considering becoming an employee, or becoming a consultant / independent contractor?

Why would this matter? But - if it helps your answer, suppose it's either part-time or full-time employment.

Not sure about the third bullet - plenty of companies aren't interested in you working on your own ideas on their time, but will still happily claim ownership of anything interesting you come up with. But otherwise, IMHO good advice.

"pretty similar" can mean every invention created during work time or relating to the employer's specific field, which is pretty reasonable IMO.  Most R&D jobs will have a clause about IP, but the scope varies substantially between contracts.

@einpoklum For a consultant or independent contractor, the relationship is assumed limited, in which case the clause would be inappropriate and unusual and could be negotiated away.  For a salaried employee, the relationship is open and indefinite in scope, which makes the clause both more reasonable and likely non-negotiable.

@immibis Often it doesn't have those limitations, however, because "during work time" isn't well-defined for companies with flexible hours (as is the case for most R&D companies) and "the employer's specific field" isn't readily limited for an R&D organization with broad interests.

@einpoklum At the end of the day, I would worry not about the IP clause, but about any potential non-compete clause.  Enforceable R&D IP ends up becoming well-defined by copyright and patents, and in good ways as well (e.g., anything published is fair game). Non-compete clauses are what really tries to regulate how you use your thoughts after you depart a company.

I don't see how a clause (potentially) pulling IP dating outside the employment contract into the employer's IP can work in general. Most new employees had employers before, and those previous employers usually have rights about potential inventions the employee made when employed with them. Including the right to keep the invention secret...

@jakebeal: That's another annoying clause I often see, but I've had success limiting them, plus, in most countries they're essentially unenforceable (except if you start your own actually-competing business.)

@Jakebeal
I think the rub is that they claim everything he's ever made in the past, every "work of authorship" etc such that if he doesn't list this stackoverflow post in the list then they can claim ownership of it.
Companies do something try their luck with insane clauses. I was once offered a contract that included the company claiming my power of attorney in perpetuity.

@cbeleites Murphy We can't really analyze without seeing the full statement, which has not been shared. What has been shared, however, doesn't actually say the company is claiming all prior works. Instead, if it's the usual practice, it's attempting to clarify which things that may be discussed or disclosed in the future are non-claimable due to their origins in prior works.  For example, if you contribute to free software projects, you can declare that you're going to keep doing so and that the company has no rights over that work.  Similarly, if you have an invention that isn't yet patented

@jakebeal Work time is the same time that counts towards your contracted 40-ish hours a week, of course. They've already had to solve that problem in order to say that you will work 40 hours a week.

My question is about how to deal with this situation, or perhaps - how indignant I should be about it.

I suggest that you start by simply bringing it up for discussion with the hiring representative, and explain your point of view and what kind of leeway you are looking for in terms of freedom to work on side projects, whether academic or related to open source projects, that are unrelated to your regular company work. Good communication is your best bet in my opinion - if they have a good understanding of what you’re asking to change in the contract and why you’re asking to change it, I’d think they’ll be more inclined to make concessions. And if they still won’t, maybe the place is just not a good fit for you.
Some additional thoughts:

You ask how indignant you should be. IMO an emotion like indignation doesn’t belong in this situation. Somebody offered you a contract with certain terms, you are free to negotiate or ultimately refuse to accept the offer. It may be frustrating, but I don’t think these terms are unfair or immoral ones.
Another thing I think you shouldn’t do (certainly not in your discussions with the company, and perhaps not even on this forum which is after all public and easily associated with your name) is make dismissive claims about how the company didn’t give the contract serious thought, or are careless about their contracts, or that even the lawyer who wrote the thing “didn’t seriously read it afterwards”. At least the part that you quoted proves nothing of the sort. Based on the information you gave us, to me it seems possible that the contract says precisely what they want it to say, even if it is objectionable to you. So basically what I’m saying is, when you raise your objections with them I suggest doing it in a respectful, emotionally neutral way that doesn’t imply the people you’re dealing with are stupid, careless or incompetent.

Good luck!

There's going to be a bit of jurisdictional aspects of this, but in the United States these types of agreements are fairly common as part of work for hire agreements when intellectual property is being created (e.g., software development, engineering, artistic works, etc.). I'd have to see the full scope of it, but it seems like it is a fairly standard template that effectively says:

Any intellectual property created during your employment or inspired by your employment, and relevant to your job, is property of the company.

There's not much you can do to get around that intent.
Likewise, the scheduled list of prior inventions is to protect both of you in the case things go to court (i.e., you can point to the schedule as evidence that an invention existed prior to your employment and was not inspired by it). There's also not really much you can do about that either since not listing things puts you at legal risk (i.e., prove you came up with this before your employment).
So really the amount you can push back is going to depend on how much they want to hire you. Best case is if you are working on a narrowly defined problem you could modify the agreement to say something like, "Both parties agree that work after DATE related to PROBLEM SPACE is a result of employment by COMPANY and all inventions are the sole property of COMPANY." Obviously that would prevent you from starting a new company with a product in that product space, but might save you a lot of time enumerating a bunch of other work you've done.
If you've worked in the space before you are really just going to need to sit-down and write out the list. Or decline the job offer.

A person who has any presumption to do research could never sign a clause such as the one you listed. You are always inspired by your previous work; and what this means is that the company will essentially own anything you do that's related to what you did for them. 2. I would have been ok with the first part of the clause; but what I quoted effectively recognizes that anything related to the company's business, that you did not explicitly list, will have been be created during my employment - while this might not in fact be the case.

@einpoklum Not just research, but pretty much any work that falls into an IP space. However, that's also why these types of agreements tend to be really hard to enforce in the US at least. Basically, I seem to recall, that in the US that unless they can prove you explicitly stole something the company has very little grounds to go after you. Hence why a modification of the contract to just cover a problem space might be easier.

@einpoklum I think the issue of whether they will have a claim to your future inventions will depend on the specific wording of the contract you are being offered. Also, this is where a legal professional would be able to advise you regarding enforceability. It is one thing having something written in a contract, but quite another to enforce it in court. That aspect may depend to a great deal on the legal context of the jurisdiction you live in.

@anonymous: So, you're saying that (in the US), people sign these things, banking on their non-enforceability? Also, FYI - I'm not in the US.

@einpoklum That's pretty much the case.

@anonymous: This is interesting. Unfortunately, those people are probably those who never contribute to free software projects or other freely-distributable-and-usable endeavors. Because the taint of such an agreement is such, that contributions from a person who has signed it need to be rejected due to clashing with the project license; and the likelihood that rights-holders may not come after anybody may be good enough for a personal gamble, but not for a public project.

@einpoklum: Software companies typically have processes and policies in place for open-source contributions, creating exceptions to the intellectual property assignment or granting appropriate licenses. It's not typical for projects to blanket reject all contributions from anyone who might have signed one of these agreements; while it does create additional legal risk, it's not as bad as you seem to think.

@einpoklum Or, as is often the case, the company is happy to have its employees contribute to free software projects and formally gives permission to contribute under the appropriate license.

@jakebeal: 1. We're talking about former employyes. 2. A company may or many not oblige such a request by a former employee, but: 2.1. It's a complex request (the wording on the company's side is not trivial) and 2.2. I don't want them to decide.

I've been negotiating a contract with this commercial company [...]. It's been a negative experience overall [...]

I wouldn't expect things to get better once you're hired. I'd keep looking for other jobs instead.
PS. This should be in workspace.se since this is not a question related to academia per se.

In my experience, this is typical in industry. Most companies (especially large ones) are going to be very reluctant to negotiate/reword a standard employment contract.

@Time4Tea: I do have the same experience with large universities and research institutions, though. It may be more a matter of size and culture than of academia vs. industry.

I have my doubts that they will compromise much unless they really, really (did I say "really, really" enough?) want you. If they are paying you gigantic money for your mind, then you may want to accept. But I would probably want to look elsewhere.
I think that such clauses, while, perhaps, not quite so blatant, are pretty common. The company does, in fact, have an interest in keeping IP that you develop with their assistance, in any way, from being exploited by others if you leave.
So, I think your concerns are very justified. Among your bullet points you might be able to negotiate a bit over the wording of your third point, but you are likely to fail on the others.
If they employ such lawyers, then the WILL go after you and put a lot of resources behind it. And they will probably laugh if you try the first point.

Mostly, however, people in such companies are allowed to publish things. I know some folks who publish a lot and have such agreements in place. But patentable ideas are another matter altogether.
For a young researcher, who is involved in research and ideas that are potentially patentable, I suggest that you employ a strategy that can save you in such situations. I learned this from a researcher at IBM. Create a "Patent Book" for yourself. It needs to be a bound book, not a loose leaf collection. You should probably create a new one each year. In the book you write down the essence of any potentially patentable idea that you have. You date the entry and sign it. You get a trusted colleague to also sign the entry and date the signature. Don't let any significant time elapse between the signatures. write in pen on good paper. Do not ever erase anything in the book or you will invalidate it.
Now, if you need to establish priority on any idea, you have evidence, with dates and with witnesses.
And if you need to make a list of prior art for a future employer, you also have the basis for one that is very difficult to counter. But all of the above elements are necessary. The record needs to be immutable (ink, paper, no erasures) and witnessed (with dates).
Also note that while you are employed, anything you put in such a book can probably be claimed by the employer. And the dates in the book and the dates of employment are evidence they can use. You really do give up all rights to your IP. But after you leave, new ideas not represented in the book during employment are also, perhaps a bit protected from claims by the company.
Finally, for such a company, also look to see what the non-compete clause looks like and how long it extends past your leaving the company. Some will claim perpetual ownership of your IP. That can possibly be challenged in court in some places, but doing so is an expensive proposition. Beware and be forewarned.

Hmmm. Would anyone be kind enough to explain where I went wrong here? The votes surprise me.

I didn't vote on this answer, but your information about a poor man's patent might be outdated (a poor man's patent was traditionally putting a letter in a sealed dated envelope, but the lab note might be similar). The America Invents Act of 2013 changed the law (e.g., see an article by a law firm  that will happily answer you patent questions, for a fee).

@RichardErickson, but I didn't suggest that it is in any way a substitute for patenting, just evidence of prior art. Let me ask my colleague about current practice at, say, IBM. But, I suspect that having such evidence would aid the OP in this case, specifically.

I'm curious about current practice. I've heard the same use of lab notebooks by chemistry and pharmaceutical labs, but that was over a decade ago. Thanks for asking about it.

Engineering Notebook is a more common term for what you are referring to, but in a lot of this advice is pretty dubious since they are usually used by organizations to defend patents under work for hire agreements. Basically, lawyers get involved and it gets really messy really fast.

@anonymous, Research notebooks are also useful for remembering ideas that you don't have time to follow up with now, even when patents aren't involved at all.

Right, but the issue is that one has legal standing and the other one doesn't. If you look at an Engineering Notebook from IBM (or a Laboratory Notebook from a pharmaceutical company) it's got a bunch of legal jargon and features that make it evidence in a legal sense, is technically property of the company, and users have specific training in the proper use of the Notebook. In contrast he notebook I keep in my desk for jotting down ideas and working through maths is only nominally useful in a court case.

@Buffy - this has been the case at IBM for yonks. They own your dreams, your photographs, your derivative works. You are compensated. But you must disclose prior work in case it taints anything later (especially in a FOSSy manner). Their CBC may also require divesting competitor stock.

Typically -- despite the "acknowledge that such list is complete" language -- failing to list something on the Exhibit does not mean that your prior inventions are assigned to the Company.
The actual language of the assignment clause governs what Inventions the company is claiming.  Usually that clause will cover all Inventions which are conceived, discovered, reduced to practice "in the course of your employment" (or sometimes the broader "while I am employed by the company") and so would not cover prior inventions.  The exhibit is provided as a way for you to very clearly exclude things you've done previously from the agreement and is particularly useful when you've created inventions in the past which are similar or in the same line of work as you'll be doing for the company.  If you don't include it on the list, but you've invented it in the past, the invention probably does not belong to the company although you might end up in a situation where you have to prove that you invented it earlier (with, e.g., lab notebooks, emails, patent applications, other contemporaneous evidence dated before you started work).  If an invention is on the list, then you can probably avoid that whole issue of proving you invented it earlier, so it's good to list things you think might be related to what you'll be doing for the company.

I often encounter boilerplate (template) contracts with clauses that are a problem. Usually you can work around them.
In this case they want a list of work that i claim for myself. So that's exactly what I'd do. I would aim to be reasonable and my goal would be to let them have the problem instead. Which is fair, its their contract after all. I answer it as best I can, and then shrug, I can't answer it any better.
So my own approach would be, to boldly add to the bottom of my own list, like this:

[Item of work]
[Item of work]
[Item of work]
Any works or ideas which I have conceived, worked on, undertaken preparatory work for, or been involved in, prior to commencing this employment, and to which I retain any ownership or rights at this time.
Any works or ideas undertaken outside this employment, or in other previous employments or capacities, or  undertaken as a result of my own personal choice and not as part of my work duties, or arising after this employment ends, or to which I retain any ownership or rights at this time.

They will probably object, and I'd shrug and say, "You asked what I claim, I can't provide an absolute list. I'm a PhD in Computer Science with X years experience and a ton of hobbyist and other work. [Optional: I do coding and creative ideas 18 hours a day, 365 days a year, since I was a kid. That's what you're hiring me for.]  I must have worked on tens of thousands of ideas in that time. If you need me to waive or sign over rights to certain specified agreed works, such as works in the course of my duties, I can do that. But I can't possibly list all I've already done, every last item, in my entire life, so if you ask for what I claim that's the honest best I can do."
They might not engage you. But most likely they'll scratch their heads and consult internally, and see the problem (which is a real one, and of their own making since its their own contract). Maybe they'll suggest a way around it if faced with an actual honest answer.
You actually have a quite serious second problem, that you might not know what you own rights to, or which ideas are yours, and should be claimed. That's because typically any previous employer will have broad terms about ideas you invented while there, or related to.work.  Unless each of  the possible wisps and creations of hours during your working life is tested in a courtroom, you have no idea for most of them, if they are indeed still yours to be claimed, or legally belong to some past employer. The scope to certify incorrectly is huge - and you may accidentally certify things you cant or shouldn't. To be honest, these kinds of clauses might be universal, but this particular variety that says to list anything claimed, and claims the rest, is unanswerable as written. You might well  need to accept that.
They might decide not to engage you, or try and pressure you. But if they see the problem but insist on a list of specifics only, that you know you can't do, then its an impossible contract for you to sign anyway, so no loss.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні

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


text:
Choosing an email address/provider for academic work as you change positons
I'm an on-again-off-again academic, I guess you could say: I've switched positions in and out of academia several times over the past decade. When I write academic papers (or even Free Software in the context of academic work), I often face a dilemma regarding which email address to put down in my contact information. The dilemma is not always the same; I want to focus my question on two scenarios:

Research work you pursue "on your own time" which is not a (direct) part of what you work on at your current employer; and when you know your employment is likely to end soon.
Research work you pursue between periods of employment, or which your current employer is not interested in being associating with.

So, here are some options of what to use as your email in these scenarios, by no particular order:

An email account on the university you got your PhD from, which is guaranteed not to expire (as much as these things can be guaranteed), and does not indicate whether you are a student, or currently a faculty member etc. Example: your_name@alma_mater_uni.ac.xy
Your general-purpose personal email address at some large, free mail account provider. Example: your_name@gmx.com
A professional-affairs-only custom email address at one of the large, free email account providers. Example: your_name_academic@gmx.com, or your_name_phd@gmx.com or something better-sounding.
A personal email address at a smaller, academia-oriented mail account provider. (I don't know any of these but perhaps they exist - with free or paid accounts.) Example: your_name@academia-mail.com or your_name@academia-mail.edu
A professional-affairs-only email address at a smaller, for-pay mail account provider. Example: your_name@fastmail.com

Which do you believe is the best choice, and why?
A related question: Which email address should a student use in a publication?

Why not to use gmail for anything you do? it is pretty common today to see gmail as a corresponding Email in the research papers.

@student: Gmail is terrible - they data-mine your personal correspondence, never delete it, and send a copy of everything to the US government. I would discourage you from using it altogether.

If you have a personal website, get an email domain and use that email!

@TheGuy: I wonder if you can get an MX record associated with a github.io site.

@einpoklum yes, I have one.

After some of my personal e-mail hopping (also as corresponding emails on papers), I'd recommend getting a domain name and linking it to one of your email accounts. That is, only if you do not get to retain your academic email indefinitely if you have one (the uni I used to be at has the regulation to delete the e-mail and do no forwarding...)
By having your own domain, you can move services but keep the actual email consistent over time. I.e., you can use name@domain.org and where that points to just changes.
Any kind of service (and domain) that you cannot move around nor have any assurances for longevity on, are to be avoided IMO. I made that mistake with both my university and a corporate account so I learned the hard way...

I (largely) agree, I'll add: domains are cheap. (I disagree with using an academic email, since it is unclear which of the indefinite academic email addresses should be used. Also, it assumes that indefinite survives policy changes...)

My current policy is to maintain a professional webpage which provides my current professional email address. This webpage must be properly indexed by Google, so that anybody searching a reasonable combination of my name and domain would find it in the top results (in my experience it helps to host it under an academic institution website, since it's usually very well referenced).
Rationale: I tend to consider that using my employer-provided email address is a way to give them due credit for my academic production, this is why I use it even if I'm on a temporary position. As OP rightly suggests, somebody might try to contact me later with an obsolete email address. My assumption is that somebody with a relatively serious request would at least take the time to google me when their email bounces back, then they can find me and contact me easily. And to be completely honest, I don't mind missing the emails from those who wouldn't do this small effort.

You may use an alias such as one provided by IEEE (yourname@ieee.org). You can map it to any email-account and since the mapping can be changed to any other email account, you don't have to write different email accounts in your research paper when you change organizations. Plus, they look very professional.

That's an option, but you have to want to be associated with the IEEE in a very fundamental way, which is something not everyone wants.

You can get a domain name for less than 25 bucks per year maintenance.  Google gmail will allow you to then create an email that looks like a corporate email.  For example epl@differentialfluids.com.  The cost of the gmail is ~50 USD per year.  You can use the same domain for consulting work and even get an LLC if you need/want.  This will serve you well in being more permanent, professional, and supporting you in moving around.  If you publish at a university or company, I would try to stick with your "brand".  But if they insist to have theirs, list yours as additional using a little footnote as "alternate email" or "permanent email".
P.s. Not advertising Google.  They are just a default vendor.  I'm sure there are alternates.  But you get the concept.

I use fastmail, myself.  So far, I'm happy with them.

You are actually advertizing Google. Also, they are the opposite of the "default vendor" - they're some place that is completely absolutely impossible to use if you want even a semblance of privacy rather than sharing all of your mail with the NSA and some of it with advertisers. So - please replace it with someplace else. Also $25/year for a domain name is rather expensive for an itinerant - i.e. non-tenured - academic.

Until recently I used my personal address as it should remain long term stable. However, due to spam, I decided to periodically rotate email addresses used for contact information. If the email address starts to get too much spam, I'll switch it to an autoresponder with a link to a web form someone can use to contact me.
The address format I'm using at the moment is:
[venue+year]@[researchdomainname]
As others have suggested, it can be useful to register your own domain name for long term stability. Right now these addresses just forward to my personal email address.
The use of the autoresponder hopefully will avoid the problem of old email addresses becoming invalid.
I've also considered not listing an email address and instead linking to a page in a paper, e.g., https://trettelresearch.com/contact.html (this page does not exist at present). The contact page will contain a web form to email me. I'm not sure how many journals will accept this arrangement, but it should be long term stable and avoid spam.
Personally, when I look to contact a researcher, I usually try to find the most recent contact information I can. I do not know how often people try to find more recent information vs. simply email the address in the paper, though if most people try to find the most recent contact information, it might not be worthwhile to worry about having stable contact information in papers.
My ideas on this are presently evolving, so I'd appreciate any feedback on this. If you think having a different email address for each venue is absurd, I'd like to hear from you.
Also see: How can corresponding authors protect themselves from academic spam?

I would recommend an alumni address at the institution you graduated from.  That hadsa clear academic imprimatur.  However, anything that is clearly a permanent address (including Gmail) should be fine.  I had a graduate student who preferred to use his Gmail address even while he was in graduate school, and he has continue to use it since then, through post-doctoral positions and even a faculty position in a third-world country.


text:
see/cf. followed by e.g. / for example
Consider the following sentences:

foo is bar (see, for example, baz).
foo is bar (see, e.g., baz).
foo is bar (cf. for example baz).
foo is bar (cf. e.g., baz).

Which of these are valid to use, and which is better? Or - does it depend on what we actually instead of foo, bar and baz?

“cf.” means “compare”, not “see”. See, e.g., here. And as for your question, cf., e.g., this.

@DanRomik: In that case, I've seen it misused. But +1 on your comment.

I've also seen it misused, but its proper use is well-defined (see, e.g. cf.).

The recent trend in non-legal English formal writing is to just use the English equivalent of the Latin abbreviation, so compare rather than cf. and for example rather than e.g. This also obviates the confusion about what cf. means and the distinction between e.g. and i.e.
On the other hand, using Latin abbreviations like et al. and ibid. for citations makes more sense.

The term means compare.  So you would normally just see "c.f. X" where X is what you want compared.  Like:
Foo is bar (c.f. SNAFU).
P.s. You may have instances where you want to emphasize that there are many comparisons and thus use the e.g., but I would typically omit it and just give specific comparison(s).  Tighter writing.

"Cf." abbreviates a single Latin word (some form of conferre), so it only gets one period.


text:
What's an appropriate phrasing of a caveat about self-citation?
I'm writing some report, and at a certain point I give an example by citation. The citation format is such that you don't see any names (e.g. "[123]") without visiting the bibliography; or maybe it's just initials. And I wasn't the only author. I would like to "warn" my readers to take the citation with a grain of salt, as I am relying on what is at least partly, if not mostly, my own perspective or my own arguments elsewhere. At the same time, I don't want it to sound like I'm boasting about being an author; nor that I'm making a stronger pitch of the cited paper; nor that I'm disparaging it somehow.
What's a good way to phrase this limited-caveat/weak-warning?
Note:

I'm currently writing alone, am not using the first-person voice at all, and have just a handful third-person  "it is the author's opinion that" and similar expressions.
I can't presume to individually take the credit for the work in [123] which was a group effort.

@Guest: The "we" in [123] is myself and some others; but what I'm writing now is just me.

The citation format is such that you don't see any names — So don't do that. One simple fix (which I strongly recommend for other reasons) is to give people explicit credit in the text. "The previous best algorithm for factoring roosters, discovered independently by Knuth [42] and Turing [222], was recently surpassed by Rozenberg [123]."

Following from @Guest, alternatives include: In collaboration with X & Y, I ... [123] (you can drop "In collaboration" if you like) or Myself et al. [123] (particularly useful if you were the first author, but still works if you weren't).

@JeffE: The style of using people's names in the text or in citation keys is essentially unheard of in my discipline.

Seconding @JeffE’s comment — phrasing references so that no names are visible at the point of citation is always unfriendly to the reader, worries about self-citation aside!  Except under exceptionally tight space constraints, there’s no reason ever to write just “as shown in [2]” — even when journal style specifies number-only references, you can write “as shown by Smith [2]”, or similar.  (I like to believe that number-only reference formats were originally intended to be used this way, not the nameless way.)

@einpoklum So you have an opportunity to stick out by making your papers more readable!

"In previous  work [1-3] the author showed that ..."
or
"We have recently shown that ... [1-3]"
With phrases like that I never had a complaint from a peer-reviewer.

The wording suggests that in [123], I did all the work and the other authors didn't really contribute much.

It is easy enough to use the variation:
"In previous work [1-3] the author, et. al., showed that ..."

I doubt that you need to do anything at all that you wouldn't do for any other paper or author. I think self-citation is really only an issue when it is overdone and/or no one else agrees with you.
But if they (hopefully) believe what you are writing at present, they don't need to be "warned" that you also wrote something similar or supporting in the past.
If you normally say "Smith in [3] says,..." and you are Jones, then you can say "Jones in [5] implies..." or similar. There are other answer/comments here that give other suggestions if you really think you need to be more specific.

One of the authors, together with others, has done something of note in [123].
A, B and C also claim this and that [123].

That said, you can probably leave the warning off the paper. Anyone interested in the claim will check the supporting source for credibility, or at least they ought to. If you do not believe in the claim, qualify the claim as is relevant for how credible you think it is: Call it a conjecture or guess, write that the claim has been suggested or is worth investigating, or whatever you feel is true. Then write that the other paper (also) supports the claim.

I would like to "warn" my readers to take the citation with a grain of salt, as I am relying on what is at least partly, if not mostly, my own perspective or my own arguments elsewhere.

Unless there’s something specific about the context that you’re not telling us that makes this a good idea, in general I see no need for such a warning. Your readers are capable of thinking for themselves. They will look at the citation, see what it says, think about it (taking various pieces of information into account, including the knowledge of who wrote it), and decide if they agree with it. The fact that it’s a self-citation is basically irrelevant from the point of view of the way you should be presenting things. Treat it as a citation to any other work by any other person.

At the same time, I don't want it to sound like I'm boasting about being an author; nor that I'm making a stronger pitch of the cited paper; nor that I'm disparaging it somehow.

Those are somewhat valid concerns, but at the end of the day again my recommendation is to write whatever you would write if the cited paper was written by anyone else: if it deserves to be praised, praise it, if it deserves to be disparaged, disparage it, and if you think it should be referred to using a neutral tone, then mention it in a neutral tone. If you are acting in good faith and aren’t saying something that’s obviously over the top and ego-driven, reasonable people will not find fault with what you wrote.

If you're saying that there is already some work on a subject, but it's just your (and your collaborators') work, it's different than saying that there's community interest, for example.

@einpoklum agreed.

A good way to phrase this caveat would be to subtly acknowledge your involvement without undermining the credibility of the citation or appearing boastful. Here's an example of how you might phrase it:
“It should be noted that this citation [123] includes perspectives and arguments that are also discussed in my own earlier work. While the conclusions drawn are based on the cited source, readers are encouraged to consider this context when evaluating the points raised.”
This phrasing keeps the tone neutral and professional, gently alerts readers to the potential overlap without overemphasizing your personal role, and leaves room for critical evaluation of the source.

My first thought would be to cite in the style "Smith et al. [123] discovered" or similar as mentioned in the comments above, so that it is clear who wrote the paper if the work is significant.
But realistically if the paper you are concerned about citing was published in a peer reviewed journal you don't need anyone to take it with a grain of salt because a group of your professional peers reviewed it and said it was acceptable.
If you really want to acknowledge that you are building off the reasoning in that paper say something along the lines of "as suggested by Smith et al. [123]" or "this is similar to what the author reasoned when working with Smith et al. [123]".
Bottom line is that if the source you are citing is peer reviewed, that means that it is accepted in the body of work for your field and you should be able to cite it without caveats, barring obviously the case where you blast a paper for some fallacy (in that case you should acknowledge your part, and why you changed your mind).


text:
Is it acceptable to setup a survey online (but not send to human subjects) before getting IRB approval?
I am doing a small survey-based research project, where I need to setup surveys online. I was wondering if I needed full IRB approval before I can setup the surveys online on Qualtrics/RedCap/Google forms? (I'll of course wait after approval before sharing the survey with any human subjects that would fill in the survey)
Addenum:
It's social science research, it's a few questions from a validated survey we will be using. I'm pretty sure the protocol will be accepted. There is a visiting student for the month here and to gain time I thought he could setup the questions on Qualtrics. Would this be acceptable?

Yes, this is quite standard. There is nothing special about setting up the survey in Qualtrics that requires IRB approval. Just be prepared to make any changes the IRB requires/recommends during the approval process.
Note that you should not SEND your survey to human subjects using Qualtircs. But taking it yourself or working through the bugs with an RA would be fine. Think about it this way - if this was a "paper survey" you would be allowed to type your survey before handing it into IRB. But you wouldn't be allowed to mail it to any subjects.

To necessitate IRB approval work must involve human subjects and be considered research according to the following definition:

[a] systematic investigation, including research development, testing and
  evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.
  (Department for Health and Human Services, obtained from irb.purue.edu)

Working on the design of your surveys and testing it yourself are acceptable (i.e., taking the survey to be sure the data is being recorded as you expect). However once you move into sharing with others for research, even a pilot or feasibility administration, you should already have secured IRB approval.

Note that at some institutions (including where I went to graduate school) all projects must go through an IRB determination as to whether or not a project was human subjects research, rather than that decision being left to the investigator.

You should have IRB approval as soon as possible. One of the aspects of IRB approval is approving your protocol - how can you set up the surveys if you don't know if the protocol has been approved?

It's social science research, it's a few questions from a validated survey we will be using. I'm pretty sure the protocol will be accepted. There is a visiting student for the month here and to gain time I thought he could setup the questions on Qualtrics. Would this be acceptable?

@TheFermat It depends entirely on the IRB - though given it's already a validated survey, the risk of having the IRB object to your protocol enough that that effort is wasted seems minimal.

What if this was the case: Protocol accepted, there is a visiting student for the month. It takes 2-3 days for a personal amendment on a protocol. Could the visiting student already go ahead and start setting up the questions online?

@TheFermat That is a question for your IRB.

This answer doesn't make sense. Setting up the survey in Qualtrics is not different than typing it in Word in the olden days. There is not a problem with doing that prior to IRB approval.

@Dawn The suggestion is that sans approval, staging it in qualetrics may be a waste of time if the IRB objects to questions or phrasing

In my experience, changing wording in Qualtrics is fast. The issue is setting up skips, randomization, special code to get random numbers generated etc.

@Dawn That's possible. Mostly the answer is informed by working with more than one IRB with a hair trigger

The question is not "might I waste some time?" The question is whether or not this is acceptable.

@Dawn Answering the more general case of "Is this a good idea" was a deliberate choice. It's been the policy of every IRB I've ever worked with that the only people who can actually say if something is acceptable to the IRB is...the IRB. So it was either that, or voting to close as unanswerable.


text:
Is it normal to spend a whole day reading and writing about a single paper for a literature review?
I'm not native speaker and I'm doing a lit review at the moment. My Question is it normal to spend a whole day reading and writing about  one paper? So I read the paper deeply and then write about it. The process takes more than 6 hours.  Is that normal or should I try to double that?

There is a nice paper entitled 'How to read a paper' by S. Keshav

@Rabbit care to add a link?

I read that paper before. @F'x google it!

For me, doing a paper in 6 hours is lightning speed (especially if both reading the paper and writing the review are squeezed into this interval), but I'm in math. and never tried to write a literature survey myself.

@F'x http://blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/keshav/home/Papers/data/07/paper-reading.pdf

I disagree that academic papers are not meant to be read (although many are unfortunately written that way...). But usually not every part of every paper is equally relevant for your work.
So how long reading and digesting a paper does/should/can sensibly take depends on

how familiar you are with the field
how much/which parts of the paper are relevant for your research
the kind of relevant information: is it a bunch of facts that you need (prevalence of disease X was fount to be Y in population P - here a day would be very long) or do you need to understand a method including what the idea is behind, what assumptions are made, what caveats exist, how it behaves, and so on (a day would be very fast)?
(how familiar you are with the language).

As to the actual reading skills, I like to mark important parts, and that will later on also tell me what parts I read thoroughly and what parts I just skimmed. And, while I also go over abstract and conclusions first, I'm a bit wary of accepting statements from there only: often, the detailed discussion or the description of the experiments give (explicitly or implicitly) important limitations. So that may need double-checking.

Reading efficiently takes practise. I think it is reasonable to spend such time on a paper in the beginning. I am sure the speed will improve over time. that said, however, you probably need to check on how you read. It is normally not necessary to read every word in a paper. There are parts that you could skim to get an idea of what is going on and then focus on the stuff your really need to know. You should start making notes about the parts you skim so that you easily see if you have read it in detail later on, and if need be return to it at a later stage. In the end you will get more skilled in reading efficiently and the key lies in evaluating what is key and what is not.


text:
How to reference studies mentioned in a paper without having to read the original papers?
I'm review the literature at the moment. Now I'm reading a paper that mention other studies. How can I reference them without reading the original papers?

Don't.  Just read the original papers.

I'm starting to notice a pattern in your questions ... they're all about seeking any shortcuts instead of doing a thorough literature review. This is a very bad strategy, that risks leaving you with patchy, incomplete, incoherent knowledge.

Possible duplicate: What's the correct way to cite a paper cited by another paper?; there is also a cross-style review of indirect reference at http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7776/5920.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13305/64

Let us assume, for example, you read Doe (2011) and find Smith (1966) referenced therein. Technically, you can say something like "Smith (1966, cited in Doe, 2011)", or alternatively "(Smith 1966, cited in Doe, 2011)." The exact format depends on the format of the journal (it is also possible to phrase it "cited by" instead of "cited in").
That said, however, it is very dangerous to provide such quotes since you do not know if the person(s) citing the paper has understood it correctly. It is not unheard of that people cite for very odd reasons and not double-checking works cited may just propagate such errors.
So, it is possible but not recommended.

now it is clear. but in this case do I have to put Smith (1966) in Reference List?

Both should be in the reference list

If you are using the American Psychological Association (APA) style, the secondary source is listed in the reference list and the primary source is not. (See, for example, http://apa.org/support/publications/apa-style/secondary-sources.aspx). So if Doe (2011) cites Smith (1966), then Doe (2011) should be in the reference list while Smith (1966) should not.  For more on the APA style, see also http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/05/secondary-sources-aka-how-to-cite-a-source-you-found-in-another-source.html

I'll just leave this here... http://xkcd.com/978/

If it is relevant to your work, why wouldn't you read them? If they are not relevant, why would you cite them?
The only case I can think where it might make sense is if you are reading a review paper, and want to actually cite them as a collection rather than individually. Because there are a large number or for other reasons. Then you would write

Doe et al. collected in their recent reviews a large number of earlier work in (Doe, 2012 and references therein)

or

Doe et al. collected in their recent reviews a large number of earlier work in (Doe, 2012 and references 15–73 therein)

"If it is relevant to your work, why wouldn't you read them?"  One possibility is that a copy of the work is very hard to obtain, for example, it could have been published a hundred years ago in an obscure foreign journal.

It's also possible that the primary source is a personal correspondence.  Or when the secondary source converts the technical language of the primary source into layman's terms.  See http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/05/secondary-sources-aka-how-to-cite-a-source-you-found-in-another-source.html

I wrote a post on writing literature reviews in psychology.
Here's my advice:

Cited In: Good literature reviews do not use "Cited in". Literature
  reviews which summarise Author B’s citation of Author A’s work write:
  "as Author A (1999) says as cited in Author B (2002) …" . However,
  good literature reviews, when they see that Author B cites Author A,
  go and get Author A’s article, read it , and draw conclusions about it
  directly.

So it is only in rare occasions that you need to indicate that an article was cited by another author. Just because you learnt about a study because it was cited somewhere is generally not relevant. Read the original so that you know enough about it to incorporate it into your literature review.
Of course, there are many less common exceptions where you may wish to indicate the relationship between two papers:

You want to discuss how Paper 1 uses Paper 2. For example, you might want to draw attention to how various papers have mis-used a citation in order to justify some misguided methodological practice.
You are performing a meta-analysis and you want to indicate that you used a previous study to find references.

There is also a potential plagiarism issue around over-reliance on a single paper to generate your literature review. If for example, you took 95% of your references from the one paper, this would be questionable in general, but at least by using "cited in" you are being honest. Of course, I think this strategy of reviewing the literature should be avoided in general.
More generally, finding literature by following the citation trail backwards (by looking at references) and forwards (using tools like Google Scholar) forms part of a general set of strategies for finding literature.

As JeffE above said, "Don't". When you make assertions in your published work, they should be based on either

Something that you have demonstrated yourself in the work
Something that another person has demonstrated (so you cite them)
Something that is sufficiently well known to the intended audience that no citation should be necessary (you don't need to cite Newton for his law of gravitation for example)

To consider the bigger picture for a moment, something that is published does not suddenly become a part of scientific dogma, even if it's published in a top tier journal. The motto of the Royal Society is "Nullius in verba", that is, "take nobody's word for it". If you are relying on established results for your work, then reading these results is the very minimum you should do. In an ideal world where you would then proceed to replicate the results that you are depending on.
Of course, this is usually not practical because of constraints on your time but at the early stages of your studies you should at least consider replicating some results since:

It will give you a far greater familiarity with the domain
There's a very high chance that you will expose some misconception that you had held about the work you are citing
There's a reasonable chance that you will expose a deficiency in the original work

In closing, you should consider that every time you publish something, you have added to mankinds knowledge. Every time you cite a paper without reading it, you dilute that knowledge.