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Can I communicate two separate articles that use identical experimental test procedures but use different materials?
I am working on composite material modification with the combinations X + A + P and X + A + Q (where, X, A, P, Q are different materials). For both works, I used the same testing methodologies (experimental program). Now, I have enough data for two separate research articles on each of the combinations X + A + P and X + A + Q. Is it acceptable if I submit two papers that use the same experimental methodology but different material combinations? Note that providing all of the results for the two combinations in one paper would make it overly long.

The paper would be overly long because you feel that way, or overly long relative to various journal guidelines?

Continuing  Jon Custer's point, its also worth considering if the length can be mitigated. If its from the discussion it may be tricky, but if its just the sheer amount of figures and tables, some of these could moved to the Supporting Information if they are just another way of conveying the same info or are interesting, but not the main result of the paper.

It really depends on the true meaning of your schematic resume above. I think we can't judge. It even depends on the journal you have in mind.

@Tyberius Thank you for your input! The materials P and Q in the combinations X + A + P and X + A + Q come from distinct sources and behave differently. Also, it is not possible to accommodate the whole discussion in a single article.

It is possible to write two publications in such a case, no problem. This is a common strategy. Make sure to cite the other work where appropriate.
However, in a paper you have to address a specific research question. It could well be the case that especially the second paper is only an incremental step forward because it does not include too many fundamentally new results. So while I see no ethical issue here, you still could ask yourself if you might be able to write one very strong paper with your data. If that is true, of course, depends very much on your actual results.

Thank you for your reply! Incorporating all of the results into a single paper would make it excessively lengthy.

Is it interesting to compare the two compositions? If so, combining the results in a single paper may make for a better, stronger article, as Snijderfrey suggested. If not, separate papers that dive into the specifics of the materials may be preferable.
You say that "providing all of the results for the two combinations in one paper would make it overly long". That's probably true, but invites the question: do you really need to provide all the results? Information dumps of the "here's everything we did" variety rarely make for the best papers. In contrast, if you have a clear story and select results and design figures accordingly, it can make for a more interesting and insightful article. Often less is more. Other results can maybe be included in supplemental material, or left out entirely. Note: I'm not saying this is a route you need to take (you know your results, we don't), just noting that "providing all of the results" shouldn't be the main goal.


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Do I need to include the full name of a fellowship in CV?
I received a fellowship from my university, its full name is very long:

"[Name 1] Endowed Fellowship Fund, in Memory of Professor [Name 2]."

On my university's website, I've seen multiple ways to call this fellowship:

[Name 1] fellowship awards;
[Name 1] endowed fellowship awards;
[Name 1] fellowship

So my question is how to include this fellowship on my CV? Do I need to provide the full name in the description? If I use the abberviated name, should I use the singular form ("award" instead of "awards", "fellowship" instead of "fellowships")?

Are you a grad student?

@Azor Ahai -him- I am an undergraduate senior :)

Is the memorial fellowship any different than not?

@Azor Ahai -him- No, this fellowship is more like an academic award

No, is there any difference between receiving this award with the designation "in Memory of ..." and not receiving that designation.

@Azor Ahai -him- Oh, there's no difference

Why do you think it is a problem if the name is long?

Luckily, CVs can usually be as long as you want, so the name length doesn't matter too much.
It would be weird to put "Endowed Fellowship Fund" on your application, because you didn't receive a "Fund," you received a "Fellowship."
I would also ensure you put "Fellowship," not "Award" as the former is less ambiguous and more prestigious. An award could just be an acknowledgement.
With internal awards, it's important to use the full name so that people in other institutions can find it, if they wish. Also, if Professor Name2 has a good reputation, that can only help you.
So in summary, I would write:

Professor [Name2] Endowed Fellowship, in Memory of Professor [Name2]

If you really want to, you could (1) drop the "Endowed," since it is named without it elsewhere, and (2) use only last names instead of full names.

Thanks so much for the answer! The fellowship includes a monetary award, in this case, should I include 'Endowed' and 'Fund'?

@IGY No, I explained why you don't need "Fund." If it makes you worry less, just include "Endowed."

Thank you so much :)

There is no reason for shortening the fellowship name in an "official" place like your CV. Even if you are dealing with a page limit on your CV, this is not going to make any meaningful difference.
Not using the full name can lead to potential for confusion, as it will not be clear to the reader whether the shortened name refers to a different scheme or not.
Finally, it seems that [Name1] gave a lot of money to keep the memory of [Name2] alive, and it would feel somewhat disrespectful to me to sabotage this by leaving out [Name2].

Thank you, that helps!

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Destructive bureaucracy and how to oppose it
In my country researchers are overburdened with paperwork and are struggling with increasingly overwhelming bureaucracy while being underpaid. This all leaves them not much time for actual research and demotivates them. What is the best way to make impact against such trend? When I discussed such issues with my colleagues they all seemed depressed and pessimistic. They can't imagine any kind of protest and noone believes in succesfull lobbying since science isn't "politically attractive". All other social groups (from teachers to medical doctors and from miners to farmers) are able to protest. Why can't we?

Why can't we? Did you go to those people who said "No"? If yes, what's the reason they said "no"? Legal issue? Or something else?

This situation sounds familiar. It is one of the reasons why I left my country. Answering why science can't effectively lobby, scientists don't produce an immediate return, so if you strike, no one is going to notice for a long time.

@scaaahu I talked with them face to face and the reason they said "no" is not legal. Constitutionally we have the right to protest. We even don't have an oppressive government. Noone wants to protest because "noone would even notice. What do you want to do, to make people notice scientific strike? That's ridiculous!". Anyway everyone just seems to be pessimistic and powerless.

"Bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy." — Ian Parberry

Movements for social change are often driven by young people.  See if you can make some alliances and connections with student groups about some of their concerns.
I'd be interested to know more about the tedious paperwork that is required.  Maybe there are some creative ways to cut down on the time needed for the paperwork.

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Is it a good idea to turn my PhD thesis' introduction into a survey paper?
The goal of my PhD was to design a particular device. Such a ldesign requires many considerations, because the structure has many "moving parts" and available upgrades.
The topic has been studied for a few decades now, however I haven't seen any paper that puts all the stuff together. Finding all the papers that are useful for my design was a very long process. My beginnings were difficult and I imagine, that during my first steps in the field, such papers would be very useful to get an overview of possible tweaks and trade-offs.
From other answers I know that it's good to have a senior expert in team, who can use their experience to give evaluation and remarks, however due to my organization's situation, I can't hope for such collaboration. I already adopted a strategy to write my introduction chapter, which is the same as this strategy on writing reviews.
So is it a good idea to convert my intro chapter into a survey and publish it?

Yes, by all means, go for it! As long as you did a decent, accurate job, you will surely be able to find a journal that will be willing to publish a thoroughly executed literature review. However, depending on the quality of the review, there is no guarantee that a selective journal would publish it.
As some of the other answers have indicated, a senior colleague as a coauthor could definitely help improve the quality of such a review. However, if you have the right technique for executing a high-quality review, even as a doctoral student, you could still produce a review that could be valuable to a wide scholarly public and could be published in a journal with a wide readership.
Excuse me for promoting my own work, but I have a working paper that specifically addresses what selective journals are looking for in what they consider a high-quality review: Developing Novel and Relevant Theoretical Contributions with Literature Reviews. In summary:

A mere summary of what the literature says is rarely appreciated by selective journals.
What they typically appreciate is reviews that highlight conflicts in the literature and either meaningfully reconcile these conflicts or, for unresolved conflicts, convincingly show why such conflicts are practically important.
"Conflicts" in this context include practically important issues that the literature has neglected, as long as the review convincingly shows that the issues are truly important.
If there are no important conflicts in the literature (including important neglected points), then selective journals would most likely not find the review to be interesting enough to publish. When there is no conflict in a story, then the storyline is bland.

Hopefully, my working paper could give you ideas and strategies for finding interesting conflicts and framing your survey as an interesting and important contribution. Without a doubt, having a senior colleague would help to more effectively find valuable insights, but with the right technique, I believe even a doctoral student working alone could raise some valuable points.

Don't neglect to cite the thesis. Self plagiarism is anything but an oxymoron. Its purpose is to provide a reader with the complete context of ideas when they have appeared in an earlier publication. Yes, it is a bit different from ordinary plagiarism, though that has the same concern as one of its elements.

@Buffy, There might be differences of academic discipline at play. Perhaps in disciplines like computer science where peer review is single-blind (that is, reviewers see the authors' identities), it is common for doctoral students to cite their theses. But in double-blind peer review academic cultures (like mine, information systems), such a self-citation would normally be forbidden because it would reveal the authors' identities. That is why in my earlier comment I only mentioned citing the thesis in the acknowledgements of the article (after acceptance).

In almost all cases I would say that this is not a good idea (at least in STEM). It may be possible to get such a paper accepted somewhere, but it may not be viewed favourably by the community.
The main reason being that a survey/review paper is not the same as a literature review in a thesis. They serve different purposes and target different audiences. A good survey paper should discuss the current state of the art, synthesising research and providing insight, and discuss where the field is heading in the future. It's unlikely a PhD student would have sufficient experience in the field to credibly judge future directions for example.
If there is a senior researcher that you could co-author such a paper with then this could work. They don't need to be at your institution, it could be someone you met at a conference for example.
All journal papers should make an original contribution, including a survey paper. In the case of a review/survey paper this original contribution comes from the author's original (and well respected) insights into the field and expert opinion about the future.

I'm not fully convinced. Because in my case, I never needed a review to see the future directions, but as a map of what I can already use for my technological improvements. Also, from my (and most of my friends) sad experience, audience of the thesis is the following: "an overworked faculty member who isn't even in your field, who has to review 200 theses until next month".
I'm in applied field close to tightly funded industry, so it's not about "potential outlook" but "what works and is easily implemented".

So do you think that it changes the potential usefulness of such review?

Not really to be honest. Think about it this way - would the academics who examine your PhD see this chapter as providing original insights into the field and use it to define the future direction of their field? Or would they find that it provided the necessary background for the rest of your PhD? Those are quite different things.

Welll... maybe they would see that some parameters were more intensively studied than others? They could see that some parameters weren't studied combined together? My main concern is that I don't want other beginners to go through the same digging that I went through, and such beginner likely won't find my thesis, because theses don't get such exposure as papers. Maybe there's some other form, that could help?

I think that's a great reason to promote your thesis. You could put a link to it on your website, and add it to your google scholar profile, for example. You could also cite your thesis in other papers you write on the topic.  This should help anyone researching that topic find and obtain your thesis.

yes, you can do that I totally agree with @Tripatio ACM accepts some introductory communications too but in most cases, it is entirely necessary to at least hold some reproduction of results. Any introductory papers are too hypothetical to take it to the acceptance level and literature work is extremely neglected by EICs because these days EICs hope that it will not make an impact on the readers.

Don't neglect to cite the thesis.

It might be workable, but whether it is a "good" idea or not is up to the reviewers of any such paper. Note, however, that there are a couple of issues.
The most important is that you avoid self plagiarism using necessary citations. The paper and the thesis might need to cross cite in the worst case. It might not require any changes, but you need to keep it in mind in writing both.
The second is that such a paper would need some specific focus or central idea to be cohesive enough to get good reviews. Your "device" probably provides such a focus, but maybe not for a survey paper.
And you should also consider whether your thesis itself is where you should expose the world to this summary. It might increase the interest in the thesis - a good thing.

Can you elaborate a bit more about avoiding self plagiarism? How would that look in practice? Obviously my plan is to attribute all the results in the field to their authors. But maybe it is more subtle than that?

In particular, you shouldn't/can't just copy your intro and present it as an independent work. It isn't. If it makes any contribution (of your own) then citation is needed. It can be as simple as a statement that the paper is "largely based on" the intro to the thesis, but some ack of a prior work is needed.

I respectfully disagree with the oxymoronic notion of "self-plagiarism". The term"self-plagiarism" typically confuses and conflates other issues. What you describe here sounds like what is properly called "multiple submission". But then the resolution is quite straightforward. Just be sure to explicitly mention in the cover letter that the work is based on a thesis and then in the published article, just repeat this point and cite the thesis in the acknowledgements. With that, most journals in my field (information systems) have absolutely no problem with freely reusing work from a thesis.

COPE provides guidelines for publishing materials from a thesis. In their view thesis material uniquily provided in the thesis is not to be considered published and hence not problematic for inclusion in an article.


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How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?
When needing to ask a professor about something important and potentially delicate, what is an appropriate way to phrase the question or write the email?
Examples include:

Requesting a recommendation letter
Asking for exceptions to policy (e.g., ignoring a course prerequisite, rescheduling an exam)
Asking if you can do research with them, join a group, get into a program
Scheduling a meeting, exam, or defense
Letting them know about a change of plans
Letting them know about a life event affecting your work or studies (e.g., wedding, funeral, sickness, vacation)

Professors are people too.
There are generally no magic words or special formulas for talking to professors.  That said, it is understandable that people often feel very nervous in communicating with professors because how the professor responds can sometimes have a big impact on your future.  Here are some ideas about what works well.
Make your communications polite, direct, and succinct.
You don't need to be fancy or tell your life story.  Professors are busy people, and most will highly appreciate a simple, polite email telling them what you want and why you think it makes sense.
Here is a template for such an email to a professor:

Put the topic in the subject
In approximately one short sentence each:

Tell them / remind them who you are (unless you interact frequently)
Give the context for your request
Ask what you need to ask or tell them what you need to tell them.
Invite further communication or discussion if useful.

Examples:

Subject: Request to ignore Programming 101 prerequisite for Algorithms
Dear Prof. Brown:
I am a freshman in the computer science department, wishing to take your Algorithms course. I believe that it is reasonable for me to do this even though I have not taken the Programming 101 prerequisite, because I have previously built and released two Android cell-phone apps, demonstrating that I know programming basics. Would you be willing to sign the department form so that I can take your class? If you'd like more information, I am happy to meet or to answer questions over email.

Subject: Letter of Recommendation
Dear Professor Patel:
Your may remember that last year I took your Advanced Topics in Advancement seminar, and did a project on pico-widgets that you liked very much. I am now planning to apply to Ph.D. programs. Would you be willing to write me a strong letter of recommendation? I am attaching an informal transcript.  Please let me know if there is any additional information that you would need.

Subject: Out sick
Dear Professor Xu:
I am sick with the Martian Spotted Flu, and the doctor says I should stay in bed for a week. I'm sorry, but somebody else will need to take care of the mice while I am out. If they need information, they can call my phone and I'll answer when I can.

+1 for Martian Spotted Flu. (Seriously though, this is a great question and answer!)

Do people really ask for a "strong letter of recommendation"? Seems so rude; I can understand that the reply might be "no, I don't feel comfortable recommending you strongly", but the request doesn't need to be so abrupt for that. If I received the request, I think I'd refuse it purely for being so presumptuous.

@OJFord Personally, I am quite comfortable both asking for and receiving such requests. In my experience of US academic culture, you really don't want any lukewarm recommendations.

Asking for a reference is enough. If the Professor then suggests another reviewer instead, they really mean "I can do it, but not a strong one".

@Walter ... and this is why people ask innumerable variations of this question, because they are afraid that professors are judgmental alien power figures who will destroy them if their communications are not perfectly worded.  Most actual professors will not even notice the difference between wordings, much less respond any differently or take offense at one they believe is imperfect.

For those academics who are moving on to industry after graduation, this is the same protocol for dealing with superiors at work. Give them the information they need, no more, no less. No emotional commentary, no excessive apologies. Think of the immortal words "I'm sorry I wrote you such a long letter but I didn't have time to write you a short one."

@Walter No, it really isn’t. Like regular human beings, some professors have trouble saying no, and will agree to write a lukewarm letter rather than refuse the student. (And if the professor takes offence at your rudeness/presumption, you have your answer: no.) See above: polite, direct, and succinct.

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Is it a good idea to cite my own unpublished paper in another paper, an extension of the unpublished paper?
I have submitted a research paper in mathematics to a journal and also uploaded it to Arxiv. Another paper I have written is an extension of this yet unpublished paper. So in the second paper, I have to mention or cite the first. Since the previous paper is yet not published, I have only one option: cite it from the Arxiv link. But I am thinking that citing a paper that is in Arxiv (submitted to a journal and yet not published), will be less appealing to reviewers.
So the question: Is it a good idea to cite my own unpublished paper to another paper, extension of the previous paper ?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/162537/how-to-address-dependencies-when-publishing-a-chain-of-papers/

Actually, you don't really have an option. You need to cite your early work that is published in any form to avoid charges of self-plagiarism.
Cite what can be seen. Your submission of the new paper will take long enough that you will have an option to update the citation if the older paper is more formally published.
Reviewers understand these things. They see it, they do it. Don't be concerned.

Small addition: In your citation it could be useful to add that the paper is actually under submission as well, just to show it's not only uploaded to arXiv.

@Jeroen, I doubt that is necessary. But it, too, can be edited out at some future point. Any initial submission will be changed in some ways. Time is on the author's side here.


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How to ask a former advisor to resume 'contact'?
A few years ago, I completed by bachelor's by creating a 'bachelor's thesis'. My advisor for this thesis. The thesis went very well, I've got a high grade and my advisor was very much impressed by my work (for an undergrad, at least) during and after the project.
However, he left almost immediately after that. I do think he left amicably, he even showed up briefly during his former course and I believe that some other university simply gave him more opportunity to do what he wants.
That was the last time I spoke with him. A lot has happened since and I'm thinking of perhaps contacting him to do a PhD in his expertise, although I'm not certain.
I do wonder how I should re-initiate contact. I have much to tell and ask, but long mails may be unread for long. I think meeting 'in the flesh' is unlikely to be possible (he isn't exactly far away, but still in a different country)
If this is useful, I am Dutch, the university is in the Netherlands, the advisor has a Germanic mother-tongue and is now in Germany. (I think)

Send him a short email reminding him who you are amd ask if he is planning on taking a PhD student soon. Let the conversation develop from there.

Even better, if he works in Germany, there is a good chance that he will be able to offer PhD scholarships (actually: jobs) directly, without going through a central admission system.


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How can a phd student lobby against university wide publication restrictions?
Recently, my university has expressed that it wishes to enforce compliance with Plan S, an European-wide initiative to 'transition' towards open access publications, for all researchers employed by the university.
I think that while the plan has good intentions, the execution seems to ignore important features of the publication process in my field, and could be actively harmful for the development of my scientific career (I have a more detailed description of my concerns at the end of this post).
While I don't think I am the only one who would oppose this plan, nor that this concerns only phd students, I would like to have my objections to this plan heard or considered. It seems the university board would like to treat this as a 'done deal' (only shortly after announcement, in spite of initial resistance), and does not see keeping the status quo as an option.
How can I, as a (relatively new) phd student, most effectively lobby against this decision?

I have thought about the following methods, which I can easily do (and will do). However, I am unaware of their effectiveness.

Contact the phd council of my department. These people are easily approachable, and should have more experience with influencing university policy than I have.
Discuss the matter with my advisor. I'm sure my advisor would have an opinion here, and I think he would share some of my concerns, as this also affects senior researchers.

The main concern I have with this plan is that it seems to ignore the primary publication venue in my field (computer science): conferences. The workflow for publishing in my field is roughly as follows:

Submit to a conference.
Simultaneously to 1, publish a freely accessible pre-print on the arXiv.
If the conference paper was accepted and generally well-received, publish an extended version of the conference paper in a journal.

Many conference proceedings of top conferences in my field are not in open access and do not appear to be pressured by plan S to do so. (the entities that control these conferences include ACM, SIAM, and IEEE, who have quite a stake in closed-access proceedings and where the influence of European researchers does not seem to be particularly big.)
Plan S explicitly states that releasing freely available pre-prints is not enough to be compliant. This may make sense when publishing to non-open access journals, as it means the 'official' and hence mostly cited version of the publication is still not open access. However, publishing in conferences without open access proceeding does not have the same problem: For almost all important work, there will be a journal publication later, which can be open access. The journal version is the version that will usually get cited, rather than the conference version. In the mean time, any researcher can freely access the pre-print on the arXiv.
Note that disallowing publication at these venues also has the secondary effect that it hinders my option of attending these conferences. They are often held in North-America, and costs for travel+attendance are not cheap. It is therefore not easy to get sufficient funding to attend one of these conferences if you are not presenting or at least publishing something at the conference.

@holla Yes, I mentioned that. However, I doubt my advisor is omniscient and I think this question can be of use in more general settings.

This may be tangential to your question, but: (1) You can probably still attend the conferences if you submit the manuscript and do not sign the copyright transfer. I've heard some people's anecdotal experiences; the worst that happened was that the conference abstract was not published, but it did not affect the actual conference talk.

(2) The MO of researchers to publish a conference abstract first and then an extended, polished version of it as a paper is widespread and has a long history; however it might actually fall afoul of copyright and undermine open access. If your final paper is a derivative work of the conference abstract (as it often happens -- unless the abstract was really hurried, it's usually good enough to be partly copied over), then signing the copyright transfer actually gives the publisher some rights to the final paper as well. It is a non-issue in practice, but I understand ...

... why Plan S is trying to go the full way to open access. This sort of "double selling" might even become a real problem when publishers start going bankrupt and getting bought up by litigation-focused buyers who then start asserting rights against all other sorts of venues.

@darijgrinberg (1) is indeed tangential, but nevertheless interesting. Submitting, yet not publishing a manuscript was not an option that I had considered. But I'm not sure whether the conference would accept this. Are these anecdotal experiences from people where conferences are the primary publication venue?

Of course, you shouldn't say that you don't intend to publish. Just tell them, when it comes to signing the copyright transfer, that you can only sign a modified form due to Plan S. Quite possibly they will just let you do that without any issues.

You by yourself can’t do much. Your department can. Perhaps mostly by ignoring the directive since, really, the university isn’t going to have much power over how a global community does business.

@darijgrinberg: For the CS-style conferences described by the OP, the conference publication is not an "abstract"; it is a paper that has gone through a full round of peer review. Playing games with withdrawing the paper over copyright transfer is a good way to make peers in your direct area of work unhappy.

@RLH: I should have said "extended abstract" -- it's basically a paper that is meant to be a rehearsal of a longer paper. And I am not suggesting playing games; you can submit and then ask for a modified copyright agreement in good faith, as journals do this in many cases already.

@darijgrinberg: These are different from extended abstracts. They are publications of record, and have taken the time of 2-3 reviewers giving them serious review, the associate editor collating the reviews, and several higher tiers.

Plan S aims for immediate open access, not just eventual open access. The main issue here is the delay between the closed-access conference paper and the open-access journal paper. In some other fields, closed-access journal papers often become open-access after 6 or 12 months, which is also unacceptable by Plan S standards.

@RLH: Hmm. So computer science seems to treat these more strictly than combinatorics. But even my combinatorics "extended abstracts" go through 2-3 referees.

It's not clear to me which part of "computer science" this is, but in many those conference publications are archival and it's definitely not expected (though by no means rare) to have a follow-up journal publication. At the more theoretical end practices are more like mathematics and others. When you say "For almost all important work" a journal article follows, how almost, how all, and how important are you talking for your subfield? If this is a mathematics-style area the advice above may be is more viable, otherwise skipping the publication will lose your speaking slot with prejudice.

@MichaelHomer I admit that including a follow-up journal paper in the 'standard workflow' may be a bit optimistic, but it happens quite often in my subfield. So, I guess it is true that it is not necessarily expected, but still common. Conference publications are a big deal in my subfield, so I don't think I will risk negotiating publication options after acceptance, but rather before. (that is, I do not think it will be appreciated if I 'suddenly' mention that I have to comply with plan S, they would question why I didn't tell that earlier, at the least)

Plan S is explicitly meant to change the publishing practices of researchers, and the business model of publishers. This comes after decades of half-measures that did relatively little towards open access, and nothing to prevent subscription costs from increasing. Therefore, it will be difficult to convince your university and/or Coalition S to accommodate the existing practices in your field.
Some large American universities are committed to open access, irrespective of the field: for example Harvard, or the University of California. And the situation is evolving relatively fast. In this context, it may actually not be impossible to convince conferences to offer Plan S-compliant options. Lobbying for that would still be quite an effort: the first thing to do might be to contact well-known open access advocates in the field.

Asked a follow-up question here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/125756/do-researchers-from-harvard-and-u-california-not-attend-top-cs-conferences-anymo

I have to admit that I am biased on this topic and that my opinion may not be the most popular, but I honestly think you are asking the wrong question.
Those who threaten science are not the research funders who signed Plan S or the institutions that take up these ideas, but the publishers who have been using science for commercial purposes for decades. Publicly funded scientists do most of the work in scientific publishing: they produce the scientific results and write the publications, they are the reviewers of the publications, they are often the editors and, in LaTeX times, they are usually also the typesetters. In addition, they are even the ones who consume the content in the end, whereby this is usually only possible because the libraries of their scientific institutions buy access to it at a high price, again with public money. Publishers have thus made enormous profits over decades out of science and public money, while scientists have lost most of their rights to their own publications through the signing of copyright transfer agreements.
With this knowledge in mind, your question might be rewritten:

How can a PhD student lobby against publishers wide publication restrictions?

The answer to this question is a list of different approaches. There might be more approches than the ones I'm listing below.

Ask the publisher for a Plan S compatible alternative before signing the copyright transfer agreement.
Contact your library to see if any agreements are planned with the publisher that include Plan S compatibility for the conference(s) you want to attend.

If yes, ask when and how you can help.
If not, ask why not and what you can do to change that.

Contact the organizers of the conferences you want or will attend with a request for a Plan S compatible publishing agreement.

Regarding your argument that

Many conference proceedings of top conferences in my field are not in open access and do not appear to be pressured by plan S to do so.

you should keep in mind that the Open Access movement is progessing around the globe. Plan S is only a tiny bit of the whole story. Even US institutions are picking up these ideas. All bits together will in the end hopefully switsch scientific publishing to Open Access. Plan S is an approach to Open Access that tries to give scientist a more important standing while they are requesting fair publishing agreements.
I also want to address the following side note you made.

For almost all important work, there will be a journal publication later, which can be open access. The journal version is the version that will usually get cited, rather than the conference version.

This highly depends on your very specific discipline. Most Computer Science disciplines I know are usually not publishing most conference publications later in a journal, in fact, it's vice-versa in these disciplines. Plan S covers all disciplines and their peer-reviewd publication which, in fact, makes it difficult to match perfect to each discipline but if the goal is to make all publicly funded research publicly available, also conference publications should be included.
If you think this is not an answer to your question, feel free to request deletion.

Most answers here seem to challenge my assumptions, but the information in your answer is still useful to me. It is comforting that the move towards open access is progressing globally. I agree that the ideal situation would be to comply with plan S and be able to publish at the top conferences. However, my main concern is that if I have to choose between the two, I would rather be able to make this choice, instead of being forced. My secondary concern is precisely what you note: plan S does not seem to be designed with care for my specific discipline.

I would have loved to see scientists making the choice to Open Access and push forward this idea instead of being forced to do so, but over the past 16 years - since the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in 2003 - the majority simply didn't or even thought about it. That's why initiatives like Plan S seem to be necessary and important.

I understand why Plan S is not going to make small steps and is intent on forcing researchers to transition to open access. (they should be forcing the publisher, but the problem is that the publisher cannot be forced as long as the researchers continue to do business with them) I simply do not like the fact that this transition risks building (perhaps only temporary) speed-bumps that may limit my ability to publish at top venues.

You can't have the one without the other. Scientific publishing is a self-reinforcing system that deals with reputation (impact factors, top venues, bibliometrics, and so on). You have to start somewhere to change the system. Publishers won't move as long as they see any chance to hold on to the current system because it's so profitable for them. Since publishers won't move and scientists didn't move much either, research funders are stepping in. You can definitely dislike the temporarily occuring side effects of this but the goal is worth it and should be supported, at least in my opinion.

"You can definitely dislike the temporarily occuring side effects of this but the goal is worth it and should be supported, at least in my opinion." This aligns with my opinion as well, except that I do not think that this is a good moment in my career to put the plight of the scientific community before my own.

In this case, you should maybe address the issue of science evaluation which, in my opinion, is the major cause of the self-reinforcing system? Since scienticts and their careers are currently mainly evaluated based upon bibliometrics (amount of publicatins/citations, height of impact factors, and so on) and other countable stuff (number of grants, amount of raised money, and so on), they need (or at least, feel the need) to publish (work) accordingly to get forward. How about changing this system of evaluation in a way that takes quality and openess more into account?

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

I'm not sure how much Plan S is really going to cost publishers.  I just had an article get accepted, and during the copyright transfer form bit there was an option to choose to publish it as an Open Access article.  For about $2500. While there are grants and funds these days to cover these costs, I kind of get the feeling that's more than the publisher would normally get out of the article.

@zibadawatimmy Most funds do explicitely not cover these hybrid Open Access Fees, instead they only cover pure gold Open Access Fees. Unfortunately, some publishers love to mix these terms up.

@FuzzyLeapfrog Well they used the phrase "gold open access" to describe it, though whether that means the same thing you say it needs to mean, I don't know.  I don't have access to any such funds anyway, so I usually have no choice but to use traditional paywall publishing, and so don't pay much attention to the open access options.  In this case the incredible cost really caught my eye, is all.

@zibadawatimmy Additionally, as far as I understood Plan S until now, hybrid is only allowed within a transition phase while the publisher transitions a journal to pure gold Open Access. If there is no progress towards this transition, hybrid is not an option. But Plan S is still under development. Since this discussion is again becoming off-topic (the question was explicitely about conferences and not journals), a switch to chat should happen again.

@zibadawatimmy If there is no official fund, just ask your library or check all the pure gold Open Access Journals without Fees. And now let's move to chat.

I've been to a European Plan S consultation, and the prime message they keep repeating is: they are looking for input on how best to achieve their goal of a full transition to immediate, copyright-preserving open access.
A lot of the input people gave their somewhat ignored that point, and therefore unfortunately in turn also gets ignored.
So, if you want to lobby against potential career impact, keep that in mind: the goal is paramount. That means that the most effective way would be to offer alternatives that do not impact your career as much, but will still allow them to achieve those goals in the same timelines.
That said, you are not the first to voice this concern, and wouldn't be the first to think of other ways (more specific than "do this slowly"). Hence, I think the realistic thing to do is to realise that these concerns have been weighed against the upsides, and that you adding a +1 isn't going to change that.
However, I'd also realise that you're not the only one who might no longer publish at certain places, and not to underestimate how unwilling the publishers are to lose all of you. Plan S also hasn't come into effect yet, and publishers will have several years to transition, so I wouldn't worry too much about immediate impact now.
And otherwise, I'm afraid you'll have to look for other sources of funding, as the one who pays calls the shots...

I think you have very little ability to influence the university, as a new student.  Even a very senior PI would just be one voice amongst many.  Yeah, you could write articles or talk to the PIs or administration (who actually vote in departments and such).  But the return on investment will be miniscule.
You have much more important things to work on (like your research) than the issue of what fads your university is getting involved in.  New students are not usually swimming in completed research.  This needs to be your focus.
Note this answer is irrespective of if Plan S is good or bad.  I actually understand your position quite well and don't have a problem with it--you will get a lot of pushback here though since "open access is good" for the Internet oriented crowds, like you will find on a Q&A site.  But again, my advice is irrelevant of if I think Plan S is good or not.
What you can do is "vote with your actions". The requirements have not been installed yet.  So publish where you choose.  (Of course this requires doing some research, not agitating on policies.)  Even when/if it gets installed, you may find ways to get around it and publish where you like.


text:
Best way to poll students during a class by web
I'm looking to get feedback from students fairly seamlessly during a lecture. I know that there is a reluctance to raise one's hand (if part of a large audience), and my experience of such polling attempts (as a student) has been to break up the flow of a lecture quite considerably. Personally I don't want to get into a high-school teacher role of trying to tease out responses to questions so providing a platform for quick and semi-anonymous feedback would be useful.
But how to achieve this? Crucially most of the students are unlikely to have laptops, but are almost universally going to have smart phones. I don't want them to be struggling to take down the URL to a poll from a lecture slide, or having to log into some terrible VLE like Blackboard in order to get access to a link. QR codes could, in theory, be used to provide a link - but QR codes don't seem to be used much by casual users these days...
The reason for a digital rather than paper poll is that I can immediately respond to the results. Most of all I'm looking for as seamless an integration as possible into the lecture environment.

To avoid QR and the like, you can ask them to fill in their email in a form and send them the link just before each lecture.

Why has "best way to poll" turned into a shopping list for "best tool to poll"?? C'mon!

You might check with your IT or academic tech department (sometimes in the library); ours has "clickers" that you can check out specifically for this purpose—like pub quiz handsets. They have their own associated software.

@1006a My school required students to purchase these (from the school book store) for any class that required them.

@Mindwin Well, what sort of answer would you expect for this question other than suggesting a tool?

@DavidZ some reader years from now stumbles into this thread with the same problem, and the top voted apps do not work on his android 74 "breathmint" or his iPhone 66s. Whereas if someone has a polling technique that can be used in a classroom, this can be applied even by the Amish without conflicting with their Ordnung

I've updated my answer to include the process in addition to the tool.

Poll Everywhere is a good, easy one. It's free for 25 responses per question. Students can respond on their smartphones, laptops, or even old-school cell phones via texting.
Plickers is another good one. For this one you print out the possible responses and hand them out. Then students hold up the card corresponding to their answer. You use your smart phone camera to scan the room and the app calculates the responses.

+1 for Poll Everywhere. It's more likely that everyone has a cell phone than that everyone has a smart phone.

@MissMonicaE:  if I understand Plickers correctly, the only person who needs a smartphone is the instructor.  But for instructors without one, Poll Everywhere is probably better.

An example of what you are looking for is a system called ARSnova. It is a system which allows the students to answer questions or give feedback during a lecture on their smart phones. The system allows to generate a session code (which is a six digits number) which the students have to enter in oder to join the session for the lecture. Alternatively, a QR code can be shown which directs the stundents directly to the session.
As far as I know ARSnova is Open Source and is developed by the Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen.

I used Socrative in my course. I think that it works fairly well. They can download an app or go to the website. They put in your room name, which you make up, to access the question. My students were able to answer questions in about 2-3 min per question.
The procedure I use is to have the same Room Number every class. Most students log in when they get to class, and see a "holding" logo since I haven't activated the question yet. When we get to the appropriate point in the lecture, I click a button and their screens switch to the question. I verbally give students a 2-minute countdown on most questions to keep the class moving.
After they answer, I display the answers on the overhead screen. If there is more than one popular answer, I ask them to describe why their answer is correct. This helps me to see what the popular misconceptions are.
At the end of the semester, I download all the student responses and write a simple script to give students credit for participation.
For everything I have done, Socrative has been free. You may need to pay an annual subscription (currently $29.99) if you want the more advanced features.

The best implementation of such a system that I am aware of is Learning Catalytics, which was developed by Eric Mazur (and team) at Harvard and is now owned by Pearson.
https://atg.fas.harvard.edu/learning-catalytics
I used it personally at a demo talk - it is easy to use for both instructors and students, is accessible on any device, displays analytics of the student responses, and also facilitates interactions among students after the responses (e.g if you have a multiple choice question, once students have responded, you can use it to group up nearby students that have different answers so that they can try to convince one another).

Strawpoll is perfect for this situation. It's easy to set up and is accessed via the browser. It's also updated in real time. No download required.

Nice suggestion, but the extended DNS of any of the individual polls would be mildly problematic

What do you mean? As in, I don't understand what you're saying.

Sorry I meant URLs

Why not take feedback through twitter? Most students will likely have semi-anonymous accounts there already anyway, and apart from length the feedback won't be format-limited. Plus, it is quite easily accessible from even the most basic smartphones and free to use by any number of respondents.

Cahoots works and my students use it frequently to poll each other in student presentations.


text:
Is there a way to automatically categorise a list of journals into disciplines?
I have a list of references from a systematic review and I would like to produce some summary statistics of roughly how many come from various different disciplines.
Is there a way of doing this rough categorisation using either:
a) Some kind of master list of journals which I can use to cross reference with my lis (although journal title abbreviations may be a problem)
or even better
b) Uploading the reference list or DOIs to an online tool which will categorise it for me?

Clarivate Journal Citation Reports (paid) categorizes journals into disciplines.  It is unclear here if you want to categorize journals or articles.  Those are not the same thing.

At least in my area of research that would seem to be impossible and unreasonable to do, as journals are confined only loosely to disciplines, papers are confined only loosely to disciplines, and the boundaries of disciplines themselves are not clearly defined.

Consider the Journal of Chemical Physics and the Journal of Physical Chemistry, both real journals. Are they the same or different?

Does this answer your question? Is there an official, widely used subject classification?

There are at least two comprehensive sources that I know of that provide reasonably credible mappings of thousands of journals to disciplines: the Scimago Journal Ranking (free) and the Clarivate Web of Science (library subscription required).
For your purposes, the advantage of Scimago is that it is free, which is a big advantage if you do not have access to Web of Science through your library. The disadvantage is that it does not seem to have any API that would let you automatically categorize journals as you would like to do in your option b). Web of Science, however, does have an API, which allows some automatic functionality, though programming would be required. That said, I am not sure if its API supports your specific use case: uploading journal identifiers and returning the journal discipline categorization. You would need to study the API to verify that.


text:
How to promote reduction of carbon footprint for conference participation?
Researchers need to get together with each other in conferences to give talks, listen to talks, discuss with others, network, etc.  But travel to conferences is expensive and adds substantially to one's carbon footprint.
How can this kind of academic interaction be accomplished remotely, i.e. without traveling?  How can remote participation in conferences be set up so as to approach the effectiveness of in-person attendance?
Edit:
I would like to see someone discuss the choice of location.  I got this idea from the answer that mentioned Energy Star.  I once visited the Canary Islands and saw political graffiti saying "no more concrete."  I wonder if holding a conference in an area with poor urban planning, with explosive building patterns, would have a disproportional effect on local climate, species diversity, populations abandoning traditional farming and migrating to the city and underemployment... these are thoughts that are just starting to form.  I hope someone with a better understanding of these things can weigh in.  For example, is there a way to relate these factors to the technical component "carbon footprint"?
What about how much food needs to be flown in?  For example, a conference held on an island that doesn't lend itself to producing fresh fruit, vs. a venue that can source more locally grown food?
Then there's fuel for heating and air conditioning, and gasoline for getting from the airport to the hotel.  I wonder whether conference organizers ever think about any of these considerations....
But I would still like to understand how remote participation can be shaped to yield similar benefits to in-person attendance.  Maybe it would help to form some small interest-based subgroups?

Some proposals include: carbon offsets, carbon-aware conference location, and conference colocation -- http://www.pl-enthusiast.net/2016/06/08/carbon-footprint-conference-travel/

I would like to see some evidence that airline travel is bad for global warming, more than eating meat and diary, I would like also to see some proof that automatisation is much more better than human contact, We spend days and years in labs and close rooms, conference is only way for us to spent with mindlike people.

If I go for a week-long conference in, say, Geneva, I would get a flight from Stockholm to Geneva, over Frankfurt. This would cost around 240 kg. of CO2 (source: http://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?lang=en-GB&tab=3)
If I, in the same week, decide to eat 200 g. of beef with a side of 10 g of butter per day (on top of my additional meals, which are mostly vegetarian), I would be down roughly 15 kg. of CO2. Substantially less than the flight. (source: http://timeforchange.org/eat-less-meat-co2-emission-of-food)

Well, one way is to avoid organizing conferences in huge hotels running A/C at full throttle trying to keep a room temperature of 18 °C in the middle of summer ;-)

What about decentralized conferences?
People could meet at two, three or more smaller conference centers instead of meeting at one large conference center (Europe, US, ...). Each researcher would have to travel less. Live streaming of the sessions and discussions would allow a broad participation.
There would be a loss in networking but not completely. Organizing such events might be more difficult but I would give it a try.

Personal, disputable view follows.
Even if you avoid a conference, you save only a few kilograms of carbon. There's millions of other fliers that don't care about it and are travelling at the same time.
The best way to protect the environment is through technological advances: planes that work with eco-friendly fuel, are faster or more effective, better virtual reality technology that allows one to avoid travels, maybe even quantum teleportation and all that kind of stuff.
How do we advance technology? Through scientific research. How do we get it earlier? By advancing scientific knowledge as fast as we can, in the most efficient way. So go to that conference, don't worry about that minor O(1) saving, and do your part to obtain the O(n) or O(n^2) one later on in the history of humanity. Maybe that theorem in homological algebra that you are presenting today is going to be instrumental to quantum teleportation in 100 years.

+1 for the illustration with quantum physics and algorithm analysis (and humor).

"better virtual reality technology that allows one to avoid travel" -- can you describe how this might work in practice, allowing one to still do the interacting and networking?

@aparente001 Drones projecting holograms indistinguishable at sight and hearing from a real human being, and a VR headset to control them remotely. And then, of course, everyone brings their own beer. :)

@FedericoPoloni - Ha ha!

So far, it seems at least equally plausible that advances in technology hurt the environment.

s/a few kilograms/a few tonnes

Faulty reasoning aside, this doesn't answer OP's question

"instrumental to quantum teleportation in 100 years": with the way we're currently headed, it looks less and less plausible that quantum teleportation will be what's needed on Earth in 2122...

Environmental sustainability institute propose several strategies for lowering carbon footprint. It can be applied generally in any occasion.  See http://cotap.org/reduce-carbon-footprint/
Selected quotes from that page:

Reduce Your Carbon Footprint From Driving
  some conferences organise excursions for participants and planar speakers, chooice wisely most appropriate transport, and Get a hitch-mounted cargo rack, Tire inflation and other tuning. Properly inflated tires improve your gas mileage by up to 3%. It also helps to use the correct grade of motor oil, and to keep your engine tuned, because some maintenance fixes, like fixing faulty oxygen sensors, can increase fuel efficiency by up to 40%. Avoid traffic. Being stuck in traffic wastes gas and unneccessarily creates CO2. Use traffic websites and apps and go a different way or wait.
  Misc. Combine errands to make fewer trips. Remove excess weight from your car. Use cruise control.
Reduce Your Carbon Footprint From Air Travel
  Work Air Travel. Increase your use of video-conferencing tools like Skype and Facetime.
  What class? Economy class is best, for the same reasons as carpooling and public transportation. Each flyer’s share of a flight’s carbon emissions is relatively less because it’s spread out over more people.
Reduce accommodation and conference place Energy Carbon Footprint
  Make energy efficiency a primary consideration when choosing a place where conference will be held. Products bearing the ENERGY STAR label are recognised for having superior efficiency. There are many accommodations that claim they are green, eco friendly, self sustainable.
Reduce Your Carbon Footprint From Food Eat locally-produced and organic food. It has been estimated that 13% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions result from the production and transport of food. Transporting food requires petroleum-based fuels, and many fertilizers are also fossil fuel-based.
  Cut the beef and dairy. It takes a lot of resources to raise cows, and it’s especially bad if you buy beef from somewhere like Brazil, where it was grazed on land that used to be tropical forest but was cleared for agricultural use. Deforestation is a top contributor to carbon emissions and thus climate change.
  Go vegan for brunches
Water usage ower the amount of energy used to pump, treat, and heat water by washing your car less often, using climate-appropriate plants in your garden, installing drip irrigation so that plants receive only what they need, and making water-efficient choices when purchasing shower heads, faucet heads, toilets, dishwashers and washing machines.
  Reuse and recycle.  It has been estimated that 29% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions result from the “provision of goods,” which means the extraction of resources, manufacturing, transport, and final disposal of “goods” which include consumer products and packaging, building components, and passenger vehicles, but excluding food. By buying used products and reselling or recyling items you no longer use, you dramatically reduce your carbon footprint from the “provision of goods.”
Carbon offsetting should not be done in place of taking steps to reduce one’s carbon footprint. Carbon offsetting and carbon footprint reduction should be done in tandem. Measuring your carbon footprint not only reveals where you’re currently at, but also helps to identify areas for improvement and track your progress.
  Offsetting the amount which you are not able to avoid empowers you to take full responsibility for your carbon pollution, which is your contribution to climate change. In this context, COTAP offers a unique and meaningful solution in that we focus on certified forestry projects in least-developed regions that create life-changing income for the world’s poorest people.

By far the most significant part of your carbon footprint attending a conference is the flight there (if you are flying there). In fact, if I'm not mistaken (I'm no expert on these things), this dwarfs everything else combined.
So if that's what you optimize for, you need to do one of the following:

Decentralize the conference
Have more local conferences instead of global ones
Encourage travel by rail and/or sea instead of by air (yes, it would be much longer)

Now, this might seem excessive to us right now, but just wait a few decades until oil and other combustible fuels are more scarce, and if we haven't developed compact fusion engines for airplanes it might not seem outlandish to expect someone to take a week to get to an overseas conference...

To set up a new trend, it would be nice to start with a listing of the benefits involved. In addition to reducing the carbon footprints, moving towards digital conferencing would substantially

reduce the expenses incurred
reduce organizing overhead
improve ease of access
save time

However, a digital conference may not appeal to the feel of a traditional conference. Also as @FuzzyLeapfrog pointed, it would lead to a reduced affinity for face-to-face networking.
A suggestion I might give to promote this would be to conduct it digitally but with the similar benefits of traditional conferences, such as

a chance to get a version published in a special issue of a reputable journal
a digital help-desk for any queries
chat rooms for each special guest


text:
Are pay announcements worth their price to hire people?
Recently in my university research group (scientific fields: computer science and bioinformatics) we had some open positions for PhD students and PostDoc.
For the hiring phase, we decided to insert some announcements on many free websites.
We avoided pay websites, such as IEEE Job Site or others.
Now, the hiring phase has just ended up. We've found some good applicants, but not so good as we expected.
So I am wondering what would have happened if we had chosen the pay way.
I searched for some prices for a 30 days announcement on some popular job websites, and here are the prices I've found:

Linkedin: 140 €
ACM Careers: 380 €
IEEE Computer Science Society job board: 400 €
IEEE Job Site: 212 €

Do you think that these prices were worth to find better PhD or PostDoc candidates?
Do you think that next time we should pay one of these announcements in order to get better candidates?
Have you experienced before with them?
Many thanks

Did you try the CRA ?

@Suresh - Does CRA stand for Computing Research Association? I googled CRA, and thats the closest match I found in top-10, but wanted to be sure!

Yes, that's it. It's better for postdocs: not so much for PhD students

Yes, it's worth paying for an advertisement if you end up hiring a stronger candidate.  I tend to be fairly frugal, but I think of your situation in terms of one-time cost vs. recurring cost.  When you pay for the ad, you pay just once.  When you hire a weaker candidate, you pay every day in terms of lower productivity and lower quality results.
In the U.S., a typical annual salary for a postdoc in math might be in the range of $40,000-45,000 (33,000-36,500 €); in CS, it would likely be higher.  Even the IEEE price (the highest of those you list) is roughly 1% of that.  So, if you're fairly confident you'll get a better candidate by paying for a few ads, IMHO, you'd be foolish not to do so.

Thanks, very interesting. So, do you think that candidates coming from pay announcements are generally better than those coming from free signs? Have you personally experienced this?

I think often pay announcements generate more candidates, and some of those are likely to be better.  Last year, my department placed an ad on MathJobs, possibly the highest traffic site for math jobs in academia.  Granted, we were hiring in multiple positions, but we got something like 800 applicants.  I believe this was significantly more than in previous years when we did not use the site.  And I think the candidates we hired were quite good.

Using mathjobs.org for mathematics postings is practically mandatory.  I don't know if the outlets in the question have the same "market share".

The research center I am affiliated with had a difficult time filling a couple of the senior level posts. Basically, they were looking for people with associate professor type qualifications who were willing to work on a 3 year project with limited research freedom, but generous funding. We resorted to using a head hunter, which was a couple of order of magnitude more expensive, but well worth it. The head hunter found candidates that we couldn't.
For studentships and postdocs, I am not sure the people you are looking for are browsing the pay sites. The amount of money is small enough that it is probably worth it, especially if you can get a couple of posts into one advertisement. I would suggest building up your groups network. Talk to your colleagues at other universities. I think in general there isn't a shortage of good phd students and post docs, it is just getting an inside scoop on who they are.

Very interesting. Just a curiosity: how much did you pay the head hunter?

@DavideChicco.it As I said in the answer, a couple of orders of magnitude more than the adverts. I think we paid about 25% of the first year salary for each post/person appointed, which was about £15,000 in our case. While this is a huge number, it is easier to justify when you add all the other costs in (benefits, space charges, research expenses, startup package, etc) and actualize it over a number of years.


text:
Who actually is a Post-Doctoral fellow?
Many of us often talk about Bachelor's and Master's students, PhD students, researchers, professors, and postdocs.
But, do we know what we actually intend when we say "Post-Doc"?
We all know that a Post-Doc is a person who, after finishing his/her PhD, works for one or two years as a scientist in a scientific research group. Beyond this simple definition, I would like to know what you think about Post-Doc roles inside a laboratory and a group.
What is actually a Postdoc fellow?
Is he a debutant researcher? Or is he just a ultra-super-student? Or is he half a super-student, and half a researcher?
What is a Postdoctoral fellow supposed to do?
What do you expect from a Postdoctoral fellow?

In my neck of the woods, we call debutante researchers PhD students.

Things get even more confusing if you consider pre-doc positions.

@ArtemKaznatcheev Naaaaahhh... don't think so, they're just graduated students.

In general a postdoc is someone that soon realizes he made a huge mistake about his career.

"We all know that a Post-Doc is a person who, after finishing his/her PhD, works for one or two years as a scientist in a scientific research group."  Sorry to say: we don't even know that much.  There are many postdocs who are not scientists, and many who work for more than one to two years.

According to PhD Comics: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1721.

A pre-doc, in Belgium, is a post-doctoral student who is, in a sense, on probation, and needs to complete some additional courses before becoming a full-blown PhD student.

limbo: Not in student hell anymore, not in fully employed heaven either...

There are many formal roles that generally fall under the category of "post-doc":

The simplest is as a post-Ph.D researcher working with a faculty mentor and doing their own research
Some postdocs have a role as "lab manager": they help with advising students.
In addition, if given an appropriate title, a postdoc (as "visiting/research faculty") can write their own grants or collaborate on grants that might support them.
The limit of the above is a pure soft-money position that is not "supervised" by a faculty member. Such faculty are also often called 'research faculty', and may be many years away from a Ph.D
In wetlabs, a postdoc role might also be as a lab technician or lab manager, handling supplies, tech work (making knockout mice for example).

I think a post doc is also a temporary/transitory position. I know of some permanent "lab managers", with PhDs, who have no desire to write their own grants or move on. I don't consider them postdocs.

Joining @DanielE.Shub, I think research faculty is more or less a permanent position while post-doc is not.

I agree with the idea that a postdoc is, by definition, supposed to be a transient position.

To quote (jokingly) a rather blunt friend of mine, a post-doctoral fellow is "someone who has a Ph.D. but is still nobody." I don't quite subscribe to so dismal a view, but it usually means someone who hasn't achieved full independence yet (inasmuch as they still have at least a nominal advisor).
I expect a postdoctoral fellow in my group to be a competent researcher who doesn't need much instruction on the basics of how to do research, but might need some training on the particular skills needed in my group. She should be capable of taking over virtually any duty in the group, and would be expected to take on some of the duties that would be associated with being a professor (or staff member in a research lab somewhere). That would mean being responsible for supervising undergraduates doing research projects, occasionally covering lectures, and being responsible for supervising the lab (purchasing equipment, and so on).
That said, the post-doctoral fellow would not be left entirely to her own devices: since she is still effectively in a training situation, she would be given help and advanced notice. I would not just surprise her with duties; they would be assigned per mutual agreement, and always with a specific purpose in mind. (In other words, I am not simply "dumping" duties on the post-doc.)

In my field, a successful PhD student is already not nobody.

@JeffE: Fair enough. I don't think that it's quite so dismal. But I do think a postdoc is by definition not quite a fully established individual. I've edited my answer accordingly.

This answer is a bit different from the others. The other answers deal with what a postdoc is. My answer describes the difference between the roles of grad students and postdocs in two ways.
The first distinction is this: A graduate student is an apprentice, while a postdoc is a journeyman.
The academic system in which a student earns a doctorate and eventually becomes an academic is based on the apprenticeship system.
The graduate student is the apprentice . The graduate student is learning his or her craft from the adviser (master). The graduate student hones his or her research skills performing the research of the adviser. Completion of the PhD defense signals that the student has completed the apprenticeship.
The post-doctoral fellow is the journeyman, one who has completed training in the basic skills, but is not yet considered a master. To this end, the postdoc seeks out other masters to learn from. Since the postdoc is not an apprentice, the postdoc is given more freedom to design and implement his or her project. The postdoc is also expected to be able to work with minimal oversight from the adviser. A postdoc journeyman becomes a master upon successfully securing his or her own academic position.
The second distinction is in terms of classification and compensation. At most US institutions, the graduate student is a student. The grad student may receive a stipend and benefits, but someone pays tuition for that student. A postdoc is an employee who receives a salary and benefits. No money is paid back to the institution by (or on behalf of) the postdoc.

I like and use the apprentice, journeyman, master description I'm not sure that it is correct to say that the academic career path is based on the the ranking system of the old craft guilds. It is just a convenient way to describe the relationship to people outside of academia.

The two systems are related. They both came about in Western Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries. See the similarities described in these wikipedia pages: medieval univeristy and Guild: European History.

Thanks to the recent PhD Comics, I have a link to a pretty definitive definition
.
The NIH link is: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/all_personnel_report_faq.htm#774
This links to a letter to the US National Postdoctoral Association: http://grants.nih.gov/training/Reed_Letter.pdf

At some universities, a Post-Doctoral Fellow is a different title than a Post-Doctoral Researcher due to federal regulations in the USA.
The Post-Doctoral Fellow is paid through a different funding mechanism (e.g., NRSA training grants) and is not considered an employee (thus is excluded from health insurance and retirement benefits) and is treated more like a student (may take classes or do a clinical residency; receives a non-negotiable stipend which is not ordinary income). There may be a citizenship requirement for this funding mechanism.
The Post-Doctoral Researcher is an employee (qualifies for benefits but does not take classes or receive training). It may be easier to deal with visa requirements through this position.
In both cases, postdocs do research. Neither is guaranteed to advance your career to being a professor, but pretty much everyone has to do it.

"fellow" is a status w.r.t. to an organization, "researcher" is a description of what you do. I don't see why a post-doctoral fellow isn't always a "post-doctoral research fellow" or "post-doctoral researcher fellow". But, well, I guess sometimes terms are used somewhat artificially.

"Whatever else they may be, postdoctorates are one of the greatest bargains in the US economy. Where else can one hire Ph.D.s, whose training and smarts put them among the best and brightest in the world, to work 60 hours a week for $30,000 to $40,000 a year, with limited benefits and little power to influence their working conditions and pay?" -- Richard Freeman, Thanks for the Great Postdoc Bargain

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2002_08_30/nodoi.4149859741665864757

This does not seem to answer the question.

Interesting link.

A postdoc is also someone that needs to be hired by academia to do a task, that is, a contractor for academia. I am a scientific programmer, but I am hired as a postdoc because that's the only kind of contract they can give in academia. I publish no papers, have no interest in an academic career, and I have no other duties other than coding (or at least that would be the plan).

In some institutions, you'd be deemed 'research staff'

In my university, you'd be "research associate" (assegnista di ricerca), not PostDoc.

@Suresh it all boils down to the wild west academia lives in when it comes to hiring contracts. Companies trying to hire with the academic terms would be eaten alive by worker unions, but in academia this is somehow considered the norm.

Because postdocs don't get unions - they are the equivalent of migrant labor

@Suresh Postdocs ate unionized at Berkeley.

In some cases, postdocs are seen as a means to shuffle newly-minted PhD's into "alt-ac" careers.  I just came off of one such postdoc myself.  Since the postdoc was very programming/data/technology centered, and I actually went back to school to get out of programming, it didn't really take with me.


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Priority of application materials for admission decision
As I've already saw, many people here are related to admission process. And I want to ask their opinion on what is priority of all stuff from application: what is the most important (letters of recommendation or personal statement, GPA or maybe test scores), what is less important for admission and what is the least important? Would admission committee prefer applicant with good scores, high GPA, but with not outstanding personal statement and without letters from famous or well-known professors (for example, my scientific advisor in undergraduate school get his PhD only a couple years ago), or student with less GPA, test scores, but with letter from university's prof?
Some graduate schools require General GRE (Graduate Record Examinations). Would it better to send GRE scores (general or subject or both) even if it's not required (in case of relatively good result), or them wouldn't be considered at all?

As aeismail says, what we are looking for is concrete evidence of research potential.  So, in decreasing order of importance:

Decent grades and (if required) test scores; otherwise, no one will read your application at all.  Here, "decent grades" means three-point-something from a good undergraduate program.
Research publications, if you have any.
Recommendation letters.  You must have at least one (and preferably three) strong recommendation letter from a faculty member who praises your research potential in specific and credible detail.  Letters that draw specific comparisons to other successful PhD students are best.  Letters from junior faculty are perfectly fine; they can draw comparisons to their recent graduate school peers.  Letters that say only "He got an A+ in my class" are useless; we can read your transcript.
Research statement.  Your statement must discuss your research experience and interests in specific and credible detail.  A statement that only describes your sources of inspiration ("Ever since man walked on the moon...") and/or brags about coursework is useless.
Other concrete evidence of independent research/scholarship/creativity.
No red flags.  Potential red flags include low grades in classes central to your proposed research area, missing key classes entirely, abysmal test scores, negative (or overly delicate) recommendation letters, recommendation letters obviously written by the applicant, spelling and grammar mistakes in the research statement, any evidence of immaturity or personality issues, and any evidence that the applicant is not prepared/informed/serious about research.

Notice what's not listed.

I wonder, what are the symptoms of a recommendation letter written by the applicant?

In some cases, the statement and the letter(s) had several descriptive phrases in common, or even entire sentences.  In other cases, letters for different applicants, ostensibly from the same person, had significantly different levels of English fluency.

Thanks a lot for your answer. And once again about tests - are they used only for pass-fail decision (red flag)? Do better test scores increase chances to be admitted? And what about sending test scores when they are not required?

That varies a lot by department, and even from one evaluator to the next.  There's no way to tell in advance whether your target department will care about your test scores, so it's best to assume that yes, higher scores help.  On the other hand, I don't see any advantage of sending non-required scores, unless they're truly outstanding and/or you need to overcome some other weakness in your record.

@JeffE Thanx for your answer, very interestin'. Are these considerations you listed valid both for PhD admission and PostDoc admission?

@DavideChicco.it The list is not that different for postdoc hiring (not "admission"), at least in my field (computer science).  The big differences are (1) grades do not matter at all and (2) the focus  changes from "potential for research" to potential for intellectual leadership backed by actual published research.

If we're talking about a PhD candidate, the most relevant factors, for me, are those that demonstrate the applicant's capability to be a productive researcher. That means a compelling statement of purpose (why the applicant wants to be a PhD student, with ideas for potential areas of exploration, if not necessarily an entirely thought-out project) counts for quite a bit.
Equally valuable are letters of recommendation that actually talk about the candidate. I don't care for a letter that regurgitates the student's academic performance, or that reads like a template in which the name of the applicant was swapped in for somebody else's. That does me no good in evaluating a candidate, and to some extent can work as a mark against a candidate, since it indicates a lapse in decision-making (why get a letter from someone who doesn't know you well?). A really good letter of recommendation, however, can sometimes make the difference between somebody who's on the bubble and somebody who gets an offer of admission.
Transcripts and test scores do matter, but for me are less valuable, because they don't give me a lot to go on—it's not easy to tell what's a "good" performance and what isn't, particularly when schools use "nonstandard" scales (such as reporting scores out of 100 without telling me what the average score is!).
The other factor that we do here that not all programs do is an interview (in person or via Skype). This is perhaps the most important part of the process for us, because we can see if the paper record matches the "actual" applicant. Sometimes candidates look good in writing, but can't really talk knowledgeably about what they have studied. That's usually a clear sign that someone really won't be a good fit as a graduate student.


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Managing lab funds
I am very fortunate to have several sources of research fundings to run my lab. Like many other skills needed for running a lab, I have no background in accounting (?). Different funds come through different systems with different restrictions, and my institute does not provide a unified solution that fits my needs. I asked around, and some of my colleagues tell me that they do back of the envelop calculations and do not keep track of detailed expenditures. This is very stressful for me, and I would like to learn to manage grant monies like a pro.
To clarify, the grants management office does manage federal grants, but I also have other sources that they won't handle.
What are the best practices for managing heterogeneous sources of grant monies? Anybody willing to share their spread sheets and methods? Is there a software suitable for this purpose?
Some identified hurdles: (1) encumbered funds for hiring, (2) indirect cost calculations per category, (3) restricted/unrestricted funds, (4) students/staff partially paid by other sources, (5) general bureaucracy, (6) lack of accounting / human resources knowledge.
STEM field, R1 institute in USA.

Doesn't your university have an office to manage grants? I'm surprised if an R1 doesn't.

Your profile says Stony Brook. Go find the "Offices of Grants Management and Sponsored Programs". I'd be surprised if their "assistance" isn't required. Of course, they will take a part of your grant for "overhead".

Perhaps I shall inquiry, but as far as I know, they only manage federal grants. Maybe I should update the title of the question.

Then I'd suggest that you convince them to handle all your funding. Otherwise, I'd suggest that you hire (from the grant funds) an accountant and get a lawyer on retainer. Many grants have reporting requirements and there may be legal implications in some cases. Spend your time on research, not this stuff. It is hard enough managing the students and post docs and (perhaps) lab assistants, etc.

The department or college administrative staff might also be able to help with some financial matters. Even if that isn't the case, I'd expect them to know who you should talk to.

I'm very surprised your grants office won't handle everything. The typical case is that the university requires everything to go through them.

@BryanKrause Presumably it does go through the grants office to some degree, e.g., an expense claim will be filed with a grant number and an accountant will check the claim is in order, but the OP seems to want more detailed tracking of spending.

I find the other answer to be not so useful because it omits many of the practicalities of grants management. The reality, as I'm sure you've already found out, is substantially more complicated:

Each grant has money in a variety of accounts (senior personnel salary, fringe, student salary, travel, equipment, etc) that have different rules and between which you can't move money. At the same time, if you have (say) a 3-year grant, it is largely up to you in which year you actually spend the money in a given category (as long as you can credibly explain why you didn't follow the original schedule, and as long as you make progress as promised in the proposal).
For some kinds of grants, you can't even move money within one category from one year to another.
If you have multiple grants, you have to explicitly say which grant you or a student is paid from for any given month -- your grants don't get pooled into one account.
There are restrictions on money: For example, NSF will generally not allow you to pay yourself for more than two months per year from NSF grants (total, over all your NSF grants combined).

So it is complicated. In practice, it is made more complicated because if you have multiple grants, they typically don't run for the same length and the same number of years but one will end before another; in many cases, the budget years for each of these grants will even be different (one from September to August, another from January to December).
As a consequence, I don't actually know anyone who has more than a single, small grant, who would have a reasonable scheme to work the finances out rigorously. Over the past ten years, I've generally had 2-4 grants at any given time and my group has had a budget of $200-400k/year from which to pay myself, students, postdocs, and travel. Although I would like to say that I've figured this out after these years, the reality is that I haven't; yet, my finance people keep telling me that I'm better organized than almost anyone else in the department.
So how do I do it? Every few months, I sit together with my finance people and we talk about what and who needs to be paid, what accounts there are, which of these expire the earliest or have the most restrictions, and then we allocate costs to accounts. If a certain student or piece of equipment could reasonably be paid from different accounts, then I will generally try to allocate that cost to the account that expires first or that has the most restrictions -- because this protects money that I can carry forward the longest for future expenses, or that in some cases can be used more flexibly. Beyond these conversations and keeping a general overview of what moneys you have in my head, I can't say that I really know exactly what I'm doing. The university has a system that allows me to project into the future the current spending rate -- but because costs keep being allocated and re-allocated all the time, or are infrequent costs, I've found that these tools are not overly useful.
I'll end by noting that I've generally found it most difficult if I had only one or two grants at a given time because then you really don't have a lot of flexibility: If you've got a student that needs to be paid, you only have one account where that could come from and that account can't run out before the student is finished, nor should the student finish before the money runs out (because then you have to give money back). In some sense, it therefore becomes easier if you have multiple grants and multiple students. Except, of course, that then you also multiply the level of responsibility you have for others and towards the funding agencies.

Speaking as research administration staff at another R1 institution, here are a few things to think about.
For Sponsored Projects, Utilize Your Research Office
Many of the commenters noted this and it's great advice. For your external grant funds your institution's sponsored projects office will help you with the accounting. They will know exactly what you can and can't do with your grant funds and may have tools to help you manage them.
Staff Assistance
There are many kinds of funds that a sponsored projects office typically won't deal with. These could include internal funds (like start-up funds or departmental research), gifts, contracts, or other instruments. However, in most institutions I am familiar with your department should have accounting and finance staff who can help you manage those funds. If your department doesn't, ask an investigator who has been around your institution longer for advice. Maybe there is another department or organization who can help.
If there isn't, you should consider hiring someone. Although grant funds may be too restricted for this, your other funds may not be. A small or medium sized lab probably can't afford a full time accountant or grant administrator, but you may be able to buy the time of an existing staff member in another department.
Your research office could probably point you in the right direction, even if they don't provide the service themselves. Other researchers might have already discovered a solution and may tell you what they did.
Some Other Tips
Assuming you don't have help, here are some general tips:

Review your expenditures, income, and balances on a regular basis. The grant administrators often do this monthly, but you can get away with less often if your funds aren't too dynamic.
Encumbrances are your friend. If you encumber funds, you aren't likely to forget them when projecting future balances.
If you have staff, remember to budget for payroll increases (both salary/wage increases as well as increases in benefits and tax liability).

A major part of fund accounting is determining what pool of money can pay for what resource. Think critically about what source of funding for different kinds of purchases.
Lastly, it's great that you are interested in the financial health and stability of your lab. But don't let it consume you. If you regularly review your expenses and fund balances, and keep an eye on where your money goes, you will probably be fine.

What are the best practices for managing heterogeneous sources of grant monies? Anybody willing to share their spread sheets and methods? Is there a
  software suitable for this purpose?

Manage your accounts as if they were for a business. Your lab is probably akin to a small business, so a spreadsheet should suffice. How that spreadsheet should be setup depends on your personal needs. (Unlike a business, you needn't comply with accounting regulations, so you can omit anything that isn't useful.) Your first sheet might include the following.

Account balance, the amount of cash you have available in some account
Grants, a sum of your total grants, possibly computed from another sheet which lists your grants
Incoming, a sum of any incomings (e.g., consultancy work), computed from another sheet, possibly organised by grant
Outgoings, a sum of any outgoings, computed from another sheet
Errors, computed as (grants - account balance) - (incomings - outgoings)


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Consulting while being a postdoc
I would like to hire a postdoc who is working for another institute as part time consultant for my (proposed) federally funded project (in USA). But I don't know if this is even possible for a full time postdoc paid by a private university. Is this a plausible scenario, or should I forget about it?

By "working in another institute", do you mean "working for another university", or do you mean working in another department within your university?  In the later case you would have to arrange to pay part of the post-doc's salary and reduce his/her effort on the other project.

My group had a few split post-docs, but there were all at the same university. Funding is always tight, so you should ask the post-doc's supervisor and the post-doc and see if they'll allow it/are interested, then deal with the administrative issues that may come up only if the supervisor and post-doc are willing...in the US there can also be Visa issues if the two jobs are disparate enough...

@BrianBorchers Yes, I meant "working for another university". Thanks for the useful info.

@daaxix no VISA issues. I just wanted to see what was done out there.

It's possible that the post-doc working for another university has an employee handbook or employment contract that limits their ability to "moonlight" for another university.  If the post-doc is not a permanent resident in the US, then their visa would typically not allow them to work for another employer.

Having done such an agreement in the past, it's certainly a plausible scenario. A couple things to consider:

Consulting means they can't access their university's resources. If you need that, it'll likely need to be a subcontract, and there are some institutions that allow postdocs to do that on their own, and some that do not.
There are almost certainly rules at the postdoc's university regarding consulting - it can be everything from "don't do it" to "don't let it interfere with your job here" and everything in between. They should check to see what the peculiarities of their institution entail.
While it may or may not be required, the postdoc should almost certainly clear the consulting work with their supervisor.
Non-U.S. citizens working in the U.S. have a different set of requirements, and again, they should check on the specifics of their situation to make sure they're allowed to do so.

TL;DR: It's perfectly plausible, but the specifics vary widely.


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Writing recommendation letters for two fellowship candidates, conflict of interest?
Let's say there are two applicants to a private foundation fellowship which requires a faculty sponsorship and additional recommendation letters. Would there be a conflict of interest for a faculty to sponsor one applicant with an accompanying letter, and write a recommendation letter for the other applicant?
I thought there would be no conflict, but my fellow faculty member disagrees. What are the possible issues with this situation?

There are no conflicts of interest for the letters. Many of us are at large universities where it is very likely that multiple students will ask for letters for the same fellowship/job. As long as you don't say that multiple students are each "the best student you've had in twenty years," you aren't perjuring yourself. You don't have to select a favorite.
Student sponsorship / mentoring-fellowship is more complex. It's often best to have the student write to the search committee and ask. Some places are fine with faculty sponsoring multiple students, others aren't. Some will note this explicitly in their instructions to faculty. It's best to check with the organization.
So I don't think there will a problem with the faculty writing two letters but only serving as sponsor for one student. And the fact they are not  the sponsor for the other student won't be seen as necessarily negatively prejudicial. Students select  their sponsors for a variety of reasons and vice versa.


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Color space for papers: CMYK or RGB?
This is a bit technical question, but might be frequent enough in this community.
My PI and I disagree on which color space to use for figures and manuscripts.
I like CMYK, because I care about how it prints out. Even for online-only publications, a lot of people still print them out to read them. (I also care about black & white printing and color blind friendly colors, but that's another story). My main tool for editing figures is Adobe Illustrator with CMYK default (of course I can change it).
My PI likes vibrant red and blue colors which are in RGB space and not in CMYK. I agree that it has better visibility on screen or presentations. It would also be more flexible for switching for different requirements since RGB space is in general larger.
What is the best practice for preparing manuscripts with color figures (and possibly color text)? Do you make the figures in RGB which has a larger color space, and only adjust to CMYK when sending the accepted version to the publisher? Or let the publisher figure it out? (What about self-archived preprint versions?)
(I don't want to worry about color space consistencies and do more research!)

My PI likes vibrant red and blue colors — My eyes! My eyes! (I always use CMYK.)

If you have the tools and the time, try to deduce from a few of your publisher’s PDFs, whether they are not going to mess with such things anyway – before you waste your time.

Use whatever the journal requires, or if they don't mandate a colour space then use what you usually use. Just don't use overly bright colours (which you can't really do in CMYK anyway). Relevant: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13616/colors-in-research-papers/13620#13620

I used switches for TikZ styles (I did all graphics with TikZ) and some parameters of xcolor and hyperred in my Master's thesis. I was thus able to easily produce all combinations of screen vs printer friendly and color vs b/w. This included using RGB for the screen and CMYK for for the print version, iirc.

You follow the publisher's instructions.
If your target journal asks for CMYK, you give them that.
If they ask for RGB, you give them that.
If they (are one of the few IME that) express no preference, then have a think about whether the charts will be viewed more on screen (use RGB) or printed on 4-colour printers (use CMYK).

+1. Just please (with my Copy Editor hat on), don't care about such a detail as RGB or CMYK. Remember that 99% of scientists have no idea what do you speak about. More care about making the article well.

+1, although from what I have seen, the strategy "If they ask for RGB, you give them whatever your graphics applications output (probably RGB) and If they ask for CMYK, you give them whatever your graphics applications output (probably RGB)" is the single most frequently used and generally successful strategy, and it is even a bit easier to achieve than the one outlined in your answer.

@yo' 1% of scientists is a lot! Bakeries serve much smaller amount of people and still take care to make bread taste good. If one strives to be excellent in some field, let not discourage.

As a matter of practicality, one may prefer sRGB simply because software bugs tend to be more common in CMYK or other less commonly used color spaces.