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Getting help from friend for literature search
Suppose person A has a research project where they need to find a few articles on a particular topic, and write a review of these papers.
Being busy with other coursework, and feeling overwhelmed by the task of searching papers, person A decides to ask person B for help to find a list of articles on the topic. Person B is not a student in the course, but is willing to help person A.
Person A then reads the articles B found and writes their paper on their own.
Has there been plagiarism or other ethical violation committed?
EDIT: An additional concern is whether person A needs to credit person B's work. The goal of the paper would be to develop understanding of the field that the course is about, not specifically train for literature search. The submission will be graded.

Will it result in a publication or a graded submission?

While it's not exactly the same question, the answer to your question is fully addressed in answers to a similar question: Is it ethical to do paid literature searches of research journals for other students? https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/103056/20418

Regardless of the method used in retrieving related articles, the decision to accept the sources and use the information provided in the articles is yours. There is no violation or problem that can come of it, as it is no different than searching for articles online. Is there any other information you are withholding that could make you worried about this practice enough to warrant your asking the question?

A concern would be whether the student needs to credit person B as having done the initial search work. In addition, the course is not on literature search per-se, but rather on the topic. The goal of the paper is for the student to get more understanding of the field.

Getting a list of sources from another person is no different than finding sources using search engines or searching scholarly article databases.  Do you credit Google for supplying a list of scholarly articles or a database of articles from which you found related material? No credit should be necessary but remember doing things yourself or without help is a more beneficial experience.

Sorry for the downvote, that was not me. I upvoted.

No problem just trying to help out.


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Is a computational scientist/engineer a viable professional goal?
One one hand, there were attempts to give some meaning to the term on Wikipedia; there is a page on SIAM's website and a Master's program at Stanford.
On the other hand, there are very few jobs which use the term. However, there are positions with "Computational" and "Engineer" like "Computational Imaging Engineer", "Computational Biology Engineer" and so on.
I assume that skills and knowledge, which are necessary for doing a job with "Computational" in the name are, roughly, the same. Consequently, if a person has a core set of skills and knowledge, it should be easy to apply them in different fields.
Am I right in my assumption, and "computational scientist" is a possible career goal? Or it is too broad a term (e.g., a synonym for "applied mathematician") and should not be considered as a specific goal.

Computational science is more of a mode of work than an actual career path—using modeling and mathematical techniques to solve problems in engineering, medicine, finance, and other disciplines. Almost all computational scientists have an area of emphasis within that field (as you mentioned, computational imaging engineer or computational biologist). You can move within areas relatively closely related, but making larger leaps may be more difficult: a computational fluid mechanics expert cannot quickly be substituted for someone working in bioinformatics, and vice versa.

In what stage of a career development one should start to specialize? Is this "specializing" more about experience or about math involved? In other words, "quickly" is more like a pure mathematician going into cs field, or a statistician going into what is called data science (stats + cs/ml)

You'd have to specialize beginning as a graduate student. Note that you can still switch later—but it's not the kind of situation you'd want to jump into if you have a tight deadline.

Can getting into a "mode of work" be a career goal? Lets say that at the moment I am interested at Computer Vision, however I am not so obsessed with the topic that I am not considering any other options. Whereas, I am pretty sure about my interest in mathematical optimization and large scale computing (from a cs point of view).

Optimization is a major area of computational science. HPC (high-performance computing) is another.

That’s a different question than the main one. Just “computational scientist” is too broad. But it can be combined with an application domain to provide a career objective—such as computational chemist or materials scientist.

In most cases computation is a tool, not the specialism. Many engineers work primarily through simulations or modelling, as do many oceanographers, physicists, chemists, etc, but in most cases it's not a subject in its own right; the specialist knowledge is in engineering, or physics, or whatever, and the computational side is learned on top of that. (possibly bioinformatics is a bit of an exception here?)
Off the top of my head there are two other routes which are more about the computing side: that of "data scientist", which I guess is the computational form of being a general statistician; and the newly-emerging role of "research software engineer", which focuses on the programming side, usually in order to facilitate other people's research - analogous in some ways to a lab technician. RSE is a concept that is only just beginning to gain traction as a career path, so may not really exist in your country yet.

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Should I apply to a PhD program without submitting the transcript of my exchange studies?
I want to apply for admission to a PhD program in Canada. I hold a Master's degree. But when I was doing my undergraduate studies, I went to an exchange program in Canada and studied there for two semesters. I got really bad notes there, like C's, D's and even an F. In my home institution they considered only some of these notes to put them in my transcripts, the highest ones, so at the end, I had a good GPA of 3.8/4.0 in my official transcript in home institution.
Now that I want to apply for a PhD, I'm thinking in not putting the exchange in my CV, so I won't need to submit the transcript from the Canadian university, since it could affect it negatively instead of positively. But I'm afraid there could be some sort of network of Canadian universities and that they reject my application if they find out that I was hiding information. I'm also afraid that they could find some information if they google my name.
What should I do?
Addendum: The GPA in my exchange transcript is lower than the minimum required in most universities, less than 2 out of 4. Does this GPA matter or only the GPA of the transcript of my home institution matters?

Almost all universities require transcripts from all previous programs. It could be considered fraud to omit a transcript.
I suggest that you follow the rules but use other things to support your candidacy more positively. Later grades are usually more important than early ones. Letters of recommendation can be important to help the institution make a judgement about your future success.
More than grades are important.

Edited to add after the OP's update. An overall assessment will be made. The fact that you did poorly in one program will be considered but it wouldn't be standard practice to judge based on that alone since it wasn't the basis on which your degree was given. If you did well "overall" you should be ok. You might also have some explainable reasons for poor grades in the exchange program if you are asked about it. But don't spend much of any space in application materials making excuses. It is what it is.

If the university asks for "a minimum overall average of B+", does the word "overall" mean that I need that average in all my transcripts or that they calculate the average of all my transcripts?

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Doing a PhD or starting an industrial career?
I will finish my Master degree in electrical engineering (in Germany) soon, but at the moment I am quite unsure about my future after that. Quite some of my fellow students just joined the institutes of the university whose professors supervised their Master's Theses. There they will work as assistants of the professor and go for the PhD.
I have to do an industrial internship during the next months to finish my Master. After that, I would have the opportunity to join my institute as PhD candidate as well (I know that because one of my friends already told me that they are looking for staff at the moment).
Now I am stuck with the decision whether to go for a PhD or to start working in the industry. Usually I really enjoy research and solving problems while exploring some new topics, like I did in my Master's Thesis. But when I think back to the time of my thesis, there were several problems and "wrong" results (that partly contradicted theory, like wrong simulations) that caused a lot of frustration. Back then, it took half a year to write my thesis, but a German PhD in engineering will take 5-6 years. To be honest, I was really relieved when this half year of writing the Master's Thesis was over and I achieved to submit a really good thesis.
Another thing that discourages me is the way that scientists seem to work these days: The university/faculty/professor wants you to publish at least one paper during a certain period of time. But that contradicts my vision of science: You should publish papers if you discovered something new or at least relevant in a field of study, not because some schedule tells you to.
My supervisor at work (who has a PhD) told me that you should never go for a PhD just for having the title or having better career options. He said that you should truly enjoy research because those 5 or 6 years will be a very tough and often frustrating time. If you lack the passion of research you should not go for it.
I am quite clueless at the moment. My basic goal in life is to be happy in general, not necessarily obtaining the highest educational degree. I really do not know if I have the frustration tolerance to find joy in these 5-6 years of doing a PhD.
Long story short:
Which advice would you give any Master graduate who is facing the choice of whether he should start an industrial career or go for a PhD? Can you provide some experiences of your time as PhD candidate? Which questions would you see as most important to be answered to make this decision?
Best regards!

What are your ideas about an industry career?

I am in a different field and live in the US, so this may not be completely relevant, but I tell everyone who asks about doing PhD to consider the following: pursuing a PhD is a significant financial set back, and it drastically reduces your career opportunities

@stochastic In Germany this is better. During your time as PhD candidate you have a full-time job at the institute. It is not as well-paid as in the industry but far better than minimum wage and in addition to that, having a PhD usually means that you get access to very high salaries in the industry after finishing your PhD. So from a financial point of view, the PhD is mostly the best option if you look at it from a long-term perspective (I can only speak about the situation in Germany). But as I said above: My top priority would be happiness in life, not only money.

There's a big personal component to this question - what you enjoy and what you don't - so only you can really answer this question. Still, some factors:

Assuming you want to pursue an academic career, then you must get a PhD. No real option there.
Assuming you want to work in industry, then I don't agree with your supervisor. A PhD really is about the title and better career prospects. A PhD gives you greater responsibilities, better starting pay, and (hopefully) a better ability to respond to unexpected situations at work. If you are able to find a job afterwards, then you can look forward to a better life.

So having a PhD is never bad as long as you're able to find a job afterwards. Then the question becomes "is it worth it?". To answer this one needs to look at what the PhD costs.

Time. You need to invest 5-6 years of your life (likely the best years of your life too) into the PhD. If you don't actually enjoy research, this will be a painful time, and it gets even worse if you don't finish the PhD since it'll go to waste.
Money. Odds are you can find a paid PhD position, but you won't be paid well. You can try checking websites like salary.com and comparing vs. what you are likely to get as a PhD student. Salaries vary depending on where you are of course, but in most of the world outside of some European countries, a PhD student is paid barely above minimum wage. It's enough to survive, but savings will be minimal. Again depending on your field + location, you might be able to earn a lot more by joining the workforce at once.
To add on to the above, not all money is created equal either. If you've seen charts of exponential growth or guides on how to retire early, you'll know that the sooner you start saving the better. Taking five extra years to start saving can impact your retirement funds by a massive amount. Viewed from this perspective, doing a PhD delays the time when you can start saving with the hope that you will eventually be able to save a larger amount per unit time. Whether this is worth it depends on the specifics, but I would suggest doing the calculations to see in concrete terms what you are going into.
The last thing I'd consider is the logistics of PhD study. You might have to move cities to do PhD studies, or possibly move after completion to find a suitable job. Are you OK with this (be sure to factor in any significant others or children)?

Finally I glossed over finding a job after getting a PhD. You can overqualify yourself out of many jobs by getting a PhD. Take a look at the job market, again keeping in mind whether you're OK with moving cities, and check out the jobs that require a PhD in electrical engineering. Compare them against the jobs that only require a Masters degree. Are the jobs requiring a PhD also jobs that you find more desirable, enough so to commit the time and money to get it?

Thanks for the good answer! The financial aspect is not that dire in Germany, as I mentioned in the comment under my original post: The salaries as PhD candidate are far better than minimum wage. And I think my supervisor at work referred to the frustration tolerance when he mentioned that enjoying research is the most important thing about PhD.

Doing a PhD is a wonderful experience. It requires from you to become monomaniacal and obsessive with a very narrow topic in your discipline. There are many highs and many lows while you work on your doctorate. But the motivation should be your very own desire to learn and deeply engage in our discipline. Doing a doctorate for any other reason (e.g. professional opportunity,social status), will not keep you motivated enough -- let alone guarantee professional attainment. If your Master's thesis or your understanding of how academia works ("publish or perish") did not invigorate you to go for a doctorate, I would discourage you from spending your time and effort in pursuing it. Whatever you decide, good luck!

This ^. Do a PhD if you want to do research. Ask yourself, if i do a PhD, and not finish my thesis, will i consider that time lost or will i be happy that i got  to spend time on research?

If you're uncertain right now, then take a job in industry. I concur with Allure's cost-benefit analysis.

You've seen a lot of academia, and you may as well get paid more reasonably while you examine what industry is like.
If you want to go back for a PhD after a few years in industry, you may be a better candidate: you will have valuable experience and a better sense of what part of the field you want to specialize in and why. (Ideally, you'll be taking note of questions you run across in industry that don't have satisfactory answers, or limitations on current practices that could be eased by further research.) You may also have better time management and clearer goals, allowing you to complete your degree more quickly.
Perhaps this is different in the European context, but I doubt that spending time in industry would be a negative factor when you seek a PhD position. (In contrast, common wisdom says that if you get a PhD and then work in industry, it is harder to then get an academic job.)

However, on the negative side, it is often harder to uproot your life to go back to university (and live on a doctoral student salary) after other parts of your life are more established, if you go into industry first.

"common wisdom says that if you get a PhD and then work in industry, it is harder to then get an academic job"... Depends, for example in Germany you are required to have several years of industry experience if you want to become a Professor at a university of applied sciences.

Which advice would you give any Master graduate who is facing the choice of whether he should start an industrial career or go for a Ph.D.? Can you provide some experiences of your time as a Ph.D. candidate? Which questions would you see as most important to be answered to make this decision?

Well, it depends on your likes and dislikes. According to my opinion, I would suggest one go for a Ph.D. if and only if

He/She has a deep passion for doing research. one should be very interested and take that as a fun, otherwise it is going to be like hell, like many people in my lab are feeling.
Ready to accept challenges/failure. one should be ready to accept the success/failure. Research is something that you are exploring something which is not known before and sometimes it is going to be very challenging and should take that easy.
Ready to spend at least 5 years in research, because good research takes time.
Very important, aim to become a researcher. One's aim to do Ph.D. should be towards achieving a research career. It should not be done to get a good position in the industry because for that you don't need a Ph.D.

else go for a job.

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Is it possible to find a PhD without being in the lab all the year in Europe?
I am just finishing my master in computer science in France.
but the problem that I have a hard situation, I must go to my country many times and staying for a bit long time so I cannot stay all the year in Europe. I can stay three months in Europe and three months in my country and so on.. and to make the situation harder I cannot have a contribution between a university from my country and a university in Europe because the sanctions on my country. So I am searching for advice to do a PhD while I can go and return between my country and Europe. Because as I know in France it is not possible in the rules that I could be outside the lab for three months.

Please give more details regarding the visa issue.

There are definitely universities in Europe that allow you to be physically away from university for extended periods of time during a PhD. In fact, I would be surprised if you cannot find one in France.
I think a bigger problem than the actual rules, both for a potential supervisor and for yourself, is that it sounds like you might be too preoccupied with your external situation to do an excellent job as a PhD student.
Have you considered options for resolving your situation before you start your PhD? Maybe work in a temporary research position while you are trying to resolve it?


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Who should I get LOR from : manager of big prestigious company where I worked 5 years back, or unknown small company where I worked recently?
I am applying for MS in CS. 6+ years of work experience.
I worked for a huge, globally well known company for less than a year straight out school. This was 5 years back.
I also worked for a very small unknown company for about 3 years.
I can get letters from both, and the content of both will be about the same I think.
Which one should I use for applications? I already have 1 from my professor with whom I did research, and another from my last company where I worked. I just need to submit a 3rd one.

The badge, of whatever worth, for having worked in a "globally well-known" company is already in your cv.
And, it is just "few months work straight out of school", begging the question "coffee anyone?" (only half-jokingly).
But chances are, in the "very small unknown company", your role was much more critical, compared. And it was for three whole years.
If I was the reader, it would be this second letter that would be more believable in my eyes if it mentioned anything about efficiency, professionalism, and dependability.

If only one manager has a graduate degree, use that one. If one went to a higher ranked university, use that one. If neither one has a graduate degree, or both have equally ranked degrees, use the one with the higher ranked undergraduate degree.
If you don't know and feel uncomfortable asking for this information, you could use the more senior or more experienced manager.


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Is it unethical writing two papers addressing two aspects of the same research project
I am currently a master student working in robotics. In my research project, I have been building up a systematic framework for my research problem. I have collected a dataset in the process and experiment with it using some advanced algorithms I have proposed. And the paper 1 I have written address in detail how those advanced algorithms are defined and come in handy, while addressing the framework in less detail (more details are focused on the algorithms, making the scope of paper really large already. Only a simple logic procedure of the framework is briefly discussed). The first paper's already submitted in a computer science conference & is under review.
Then after some experiments, I have realized that, the systematic framework I have applied in Paper 1 can be a more generic framework, applying to different scenarios for different application purposes. In this case, the experiment I have in Paper 1 with the advanced algorithms can be seen as a complex extension to this generic framework & the advanced algorithms I have used for paper 1 experiments can be adapted or even simplified to better suit the framework. I have written another Paper 2 discussing this generality aspect of the framework, with the simplified yet slightly different experimental setting as a case study for the framework. A portion of the dataset originally proposed with Paper 1 is used. I have also discussed in depth how the generic framework can be applied for a completely different scenario, but I did not have the case study for it at the moment.
Also, while paper 1's still under review, I have submitted an ArXiv preprint. All similarities in paper 2 compared to paper 1 are properly cited, noted and discussed if necessary, when writing paper 2.
So the question is, is it OK to have this paper 2 submitted to another conference (an automation conference vs. the previous cs one) for review? Is paper 2 considered to be an "unethical salami slicing"?
Thank you!

Others have given good answers already, I'll add: You could combine paper 1 with paper 2 and submit to a journal, rather than submitting paper 1 to a conference.

If it were in general unethical, there would be many fewer papers (how do you know something is completely 'finished'?). There is theory and application, growth of a new material and uses of a new material, initial results and final full results. There are always additional side alleys to go down if you want to (and have the time). There are papers targeting different audiences around a topic.

Thanks for the comments here, almost missed them. Journal definitely is an option I'm considering.

Is it unethical writing two papers addressing two aspects of the same research project

Not necessarily. However, the following would be unethical:

Submitting two papers with any overlapping material without one citing the other and explaining the parts that overlap (giving credit to where the idea was originally proposed)
Submitting essentially the same idea to two different venues at the same time (farming to see if one of them gets accepted)
Submitting two papers with exactly the same idea, but making it sound like they are two different ideas

Basically the rule of thumb here is: be honest. It is fine to split an idea across multiple papers; my advisor has suggested doing this a few times, and it's worked out well. But if you are doing anything to mislead the reviewers, then you have a problem of misconduct.

I have realized that, the systematic framework I have applied in Paper 1 can be a more generic framework, applying to different scenarios for different application purposes...I have written another Paper 2 discussing this generality aspect of the framework, with the simplified yet slightly different experimental setting as a case study for the framework.

Congratulations on this realization!
This sounds like a significant advancement over your Paper 1, and it constitutes research progress. So there is no ethical issue with writing the second paper.

Also, while paper 1's still under review, I have submitted an ArXiv preprint. All similarities in paper 2 compared to paper 1 are properly cited, noted and discussed if necessary, when writing paper 2.

Great! It sounds like you have already taken the right steps here.

So the question is, is it OK to have this paper 2 submitted to another conference (an automation conference vs. the previous cs one) for review? Is paper 2 considered to be an "unethical salami slicing"?

It is OK, since you have cited paper 1 and made it clear this builds on it. Now, it is up to the reviewers to decide whether it is too much overlap to be novel. You may find that the reviewers love the idea, or maybe they will say it's not clear to them how it is an advancement over paper 1. Either way, it is perfectly ethical to submit and see what they think, assuming you have been honest and professional.

For comparison, here are some examples of ethical behavior (roughly taken from experience):

We have a new idea, which we write up in Paper A and submit as an invited contribution. At the same time, we are working on an application that uses the idea from A, and in order to make the paper self-contained we need to explain some things about that idea. We write Paper B which applies the idea, and we put Paper A on arXiv and cite it in Paper B. Paper B has a section on the new idea and explains clearly that this idea was originally proposed in Paper A.
We have a paper which is too long and needs better motivation, so we decide to split it into two papers instead as part of the paper is not really helping the reviewers like it anyway. We write Paper A which basically contains the bulk of the original paper minus one section which studies a particular theoretical aspect. Then we write Paper B which studies the theoretical aspect. We rephrase Paper B to only contain the parts that were specific to that aspect, and remove parts related to Paper A, so that the papers no longer have any overlap.

Thank you for your detailed reply. Those are indeed helpful examples.

I'll guess that you are fine submitting the second paper, but I haven't seen them both.
But you can do a thought experiment and come to a better understanding and decision for yourself.
Imagine that the second paper has an author or list of authors not containing yourself: that it was written by others. What would your reaction be if you were a reviewer of that second paper. Does this paper stand on its own or is it a trivial extension/variation of the first paper? If an honest review suggest that this is sufficiently novel or distinguishable from the first then it is fine to publish - assuming quality, of course.
There are lots of things in research that depend on the same basis, such as a model created for one purpose with implications elsewhere. At one extreme, when CERN runs a giant experiment on the collider if there were only one paper produced it would need to be thousands of pages long to include even the implications noticed at the time. You aren't at that scale, of course, but your framework is sufficiently complex that it would be hard or impossible to completely explore it in a single paper of reasonable length. And the variations possible also imply that the different aspects should be meaningful to different subsets of the scientific community.
And, of course, the actual reviewers of the second paper will make a judgement.

Thanks for the reply. Speaking of extreme, another thing about algorithms in Paper 1 is like, it actually limits the experiment in a really specific scenario, which actually hurts the generality of the framework. Generally speaking, generic framework in fact allows scenario 1 and 2. I have discussed scenario 1 in detail thanks to the algorithms I proposed. While algorithms have a good performance, using the algorithms from paper 1 will not make sense in scenario 2 without adaptation, and I discussed this fact in detail in Paper 2. Still you're right reviewers will make their own judgement.

Receiving message, "Thanks for the feedback! Votes cast by those with less than 15 reputation are recorded, but do not change the publicly displayed post score." Probably gonna try another time.


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failing a lower division class - impact on grad admissions?
I am a third year math major at a top 30 US university. I fear that I may have destroyed my chances for graduate school (or perhaps I am being dramatic). I would really appreciate if someone could give me some unbiased advice and perspective.
It is likely that I am going to fail a lower division class (Multivariable calculus). I have As in my real analysis courses so far, but I struggle with calculation focused math classes geared towards Engineering majors.
I have a 3.9 GPA in upper division proof based courses (I've taken six so far), TA & tutor experience, and an REU this summer. I am so thrilled by mathematics (especially algebra), and I cannot wait to get involved in research - and yet what will graduate admissions committees think when they see my checkered transcript? Am I doomed?

Related, possible duplicate: Does a bad grade in one course (with otherwise OK record) affect graduate admissions?

As a third year student, you can retake it in your fourth. Having a grade replace or improvement is a good indicator.

In the US, grad admissions is broad based. It is unlikely that any single thing is determinative. Letters of recommendation are especially important. No, I don't think you are doomed, but a failure isn't helping.
The rest of the things you mention ae all very positive. You might get a question about a failure, of course.
It is also possible that you have more insight in some fields of math than others. That is to be expected. Have a chat with your advisor or another trusted faculty member about your options.

Caveat: There are a few things that, alone, will keep you out of grad school. Academic dishonesty might do the trick, or being accused/convicted of serious crimes. I add this only for completeness, as there is no indication of it here.

Yes, you're being dramatic
Admission to a graduate program does not require perfection in all past activities; it requires that a student has worked themselves up to a point where they can show solid evidence of being at or above the required level of skills/mastery for admission.  If you fail a course that is bad, but you can retake it and do better next time.  You can still get through your courses over time and show the requisite level of knowledge/skills/mastery to be a good candidate for a graduate program.
As I've noted in a similar question (in answer to another student being similary dramatic) there is at least one example of a person who led a militant group that conducted bombings of public buildings in the US, and then he later became a university professor in the US.  So if he can do that and still become a professor, you can certainly fail multivariate calculus and still get into grad school.

Don't you think that story may have a fair bit of survivorship bias to it? The existence of one professor who formerly bombed buildings says very little about the effect of bombing buildings on graduate school acceptance rates, and says even less about the effect of failing calculus.

The example is there to highlight the fact that failing calculus is a very minor issue n the scheme of things, and something that is possible to recover from academically.


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Late withdrawal from all the courses after the census date as I had an accident and will be undergoing surgery
I will be undergoing surgery due to an accident that happened to me 2 months before the start of the term and I have been. The term has nearly ended and I wont be able to sit for final exams as I will be undergoing surgery based on doctors advice.On top of that this injury has been affecting my studies to a great extent.But if I withdraw from courses right now, I will be excluded from the university.I need help regarding this.

You have to see the people at the university - we cannot give you a definitive answer as regulations etc vary by location etc
There are most likely student advisors or equivalent, admissions dept, your course head, even the department dean who can all be contacted about your situation.
Make sure you have documentary evidence so they have something to work with - doctor’s letters etc
Best of luck.

I faced a similar situation, when diagnosed with cancer requiring surgery while I was a graduate student. The graduate student advisor knew the right petition to present to the right committee to let me drop from full time to just a couple of course units of research.

My experience, both as a student and as a faculty member, has been that universities are very accommodating of medical problems.  As this answer says, make sure you have documentation showing that you truly have a medical need; I'd expect the appropriate authorities can and will solve the problem for you.


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How to educate bachelor and master exchange students from Asia?
I am working at a university in Europe.  We have a great number of exchange students (one semester, year, of multiple years).  I am having difficulties reaching some of these exchange students, especially, it seems, but not limited to those from non-Western cultures (e.g. China and India).  Treating them in the same way that I would treat native Western students is proving ineffective.  I am looking for ways to improve my teaching strategies to better serve these exchange students, and especially those from Asian cultures.
Here are some of the things that I would like help with:

I am having trouble getting them to attend class.  Sometimes it seems that presence at classes and labs causes them some tremendous pain.
They have complaints about the too high difficulty of the courses.
They often prefer to communicate via email. It is very difficult to elicit interaction from them during class or lab.
Communication is sometimes difficult, and when I ask them how I might best help them, some invisible barrier prevents me from discovering a solution.

Note: Although some of these problems are endemic to exchange students (such as a focus on things besides class), the alignment of this, cultural barriers and language barriers are causing me an especially difficult time reaching out to students from Asian cultures.
Thus, I am especially interested in strategies for improving the following metrics for my Asian exchange students:

class attendance
class engagement
engagement with me outside of class
engagement in person, rather than via email.
class performance (grades)

My sample size ~100 of those students in two years. It is not a big sample at all (including my cognitive biases as well). However, it seems that my poor results at improving the outcomes for my exchange students are not unique to me, as my colleagues report a similar experience.
My questions:

What are some strategies to improve my teaching impact for Indian and Chinese exchange students?  This includes improving class attendance, engagement with class and with me, and class performance.
In what ways are their educational systems and culture at home significantly different from those in Europe?

Note: I know that "Asia" is an extremely large place with a lot of strongly different countries, so feel free to limit your answer on India and/or China.
Update
As I state before, there are common problems in the population of exchange students in general. It seems that they are coming for different reasons than study (finding new friends, experimenting with new drugs, investigate different culture ...).  However, I am capable of recognizing and dealing with the popular strategies of Western exchange students: finding ways to abuse rules for their profit, etc.
Unfortunately, my strategies for improving outcomes with Western exchange students are proving ineffective for my Indian and Chinese students.  I do not really understand their behavior.  My questions are mainly about how to gain a greater understanding of their behavior so that I can make all-around improvements to our teacher-student relationship.
Day after edit
According to the excessive number of comments (all of them interesting I have to say), I need to make this clear. I am not saying they are not good students at their universities or in general. I am just unable to work with them in the same effective way as with the local students. So I would like to know the origins of this ineffectively and I would like to utilize different approaches of education to reach their potential (for their benefits).
Stating that they are "awesome students" (at their home) and I am "an ignorant teacher" does not help. I already know this.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Please upvote/downvote the question itself based on its own merits, and please use comments only to ask clarifying questions about the question. Please do not use the comments to discuss exchange students in general, or Asian students in general, or any other general topic. Note that future comments of this nature will be deleted without warning.

What is the language of instruction? And is there a requirement to demonstrate proficiency or working knowledge of the language of instruction before matriculating/transferring/arriving for the exchange?

As a general strategy, it is helpful to use language that focuses on "how can I improve my behavior to help X" rather than "how can I make X stop bad behavior."  The first is a constructive observation about yourself: You have failed, and you can improve you.  The second is a nonconstructive observation about others: They have failed, and that failure is some inherent property of their "they"ness.  The difference is subtle, but you would be amazed at the polarization it causes on this side of the pond.

mostly asian students complaining about the level of difficulty compared to western students? That is very interesting

I do think your first point is a little strange as in my experience (American university, CS), the Asian students always attended and were often the ones that stayed after during the additional review time.  I have much more experience with Chinese students so I will tailor my answer to them.

Avoiding doing work/learning - This can be attributed to many factors some of which could also be exhibited by local students.  The most generic could be course material; if a course is basic, not part of their core curriculum, or vocabulary focused, students  may not work as hard to learn the material.  The vocabulary focused part is extremely pertinent for foreign exchange students as it can be extremely frustrating for them to have to relearn terminology for a course they already took in their country (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, etc).
Not asking questions - This is very common and a definite cultural difference between Asian countries, or more specifically East Asian countries (China, Korea, Japan), and the west.  In Asian schools, test scores are often posted publicly for all students to see and poorly performing students are often ridiculed.  This also applies to asking questions in front of the class.  This can be seen in younger children in the west but teachers often encourage them to ask questions and try to eliminate the perceived shame of the students lack of knowledge at a young age.  You will more commonly see western students shamed because of their lack of athletic abilities since school sports are much more of a thing in the west than in the east.
Not talking directly to you in person is very strange.  From what I have seen, the Asian students in my class often approached the professor in droves after class and were often the only ones to utilize the professors' office hours.  Even the most intimidating and tough professors received plenty of questions from students so I would even hesitate to attribute it to that if this applies to you.

As a start, it would probably be a good idea to advertise your office hours more if you have them and attempt to get your students to utilize them more.  An example would be if a student emails you a question, specific or general, to ask them to come to your office so you could better understand the question and explain it to them.  If this fails, you may have to do some thinking yourself since I don't think there is enough information here, from a recent students' perspective, to give a more accurate answer.
Here are some points that I think are important to think through:

Is your course a core class?  As a university student, I was not particularly interested in my science courses because I was getting a CS degree and would not be using the knowledge from those classes.  This is mainly because they were a lot of work, had required labs that had to be attended in person, and I felt they were sucking up too much time that could be used for my core courses.
Is your course vocabulary heavy or highly theoretical?  Learning terminology or theory in another language would be quite difficult.  It may be the reason some of your students asked questions that didn't seem like they had a subject.  Often times they will go to their upperclassmen for help with classes like these and the help from student to student is not always constructive for learning the subject matter.  In this situation, I am not explicitly accusing them of cheating, but rather finding shortcuts, online resources, or tips on how to get a good grade on the exam(s).

In addition to this more clarification on Chinese/Asian/general Foreign Exchange students:

Foreign exchange students often form close-knit communities to help ease them into the new culture.  Although this may defeat the purpose of studying abroad, people of all cultures would likely do this in a study abroad situation.  This usually leads to students getting help from their upperclassman rather than the professor since it is easier to communicate and the results are usually more instant.
Students study abroad for very different reasons.  You already listed some of the more cynical reasons in your edit and some of those could apply to your students.  Another reason that you did not list but is a popular reason for Asians to come to Western universities is that the opportunities afforded are better than what they could get in their home country.  This could be a better educational opportunity at the university itself or better opportunities after obtaining their degree.  A lot of Chinese students go abroad because they did not get into one of the top universities in their country.  Even a mediocre foreign university looks better on a resume there than a non top x university in China (x used to not spread misinformation).
Chinese students may be looking for a break.  High school is very very rigorous in Asian countries and their college is more of a breeze.  This is very different to the United States and perhaps Europe.  They are probably a bit burnt out from high school and if they are coming with any university experience in their home country, they may have already gotten a taste of that more lax university life.  The difficulty and time required to get a degree in the west may be burning them out.

It is also reasonable to think that there will be culture shock.  If the course you teach is a first or second year course, they may still be going through that or it may have worsened in the time since they got there.  They also could be homesick or missing their families.  Morning courses in Europe are close to the time their family/friends would be going to sleep and evening courses are when they would wake up so they may be calling their friends or family instead of going to class.
I hope this post at least gave you some points to think on since I do think it is a little hard to answer the question at hand objectively and accurately since we do not know the students personally.

“China, Korea, Japan” is not a conventional set of South-East Asian countries.

So far, you have provided the most usefull informations.

Going further than what Michael commented: you managed to use a set of countries that nobody (to the best of my knowledge) would consider South-East Asian although parts of the Chinese southern border coincides with the northern border of South-East Asia.

I used that subarea only as a means to separate it from the rest of Asia even though I know it is not part of the traditional SEA area.  I will edit my answer to reflect that.  I really never heard anyone refer to East Asia but I guess most of the time they will refer to a certain country rather than the area.  Thank you for the help improving the answer

East Asia is a term I’ve heard before to refer to the countries @Michael mentioned. When I say Southeast Asia, I usually mean countries including Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, my own native Singapore, etc. there is cultural overlap between SE and East Asia, and many people of SE Asian nationality may be ethnically Chinese.

I teach at a university in Asia and I could say the exact same thing about our European/American exchange students.
Quite simply, exchange students have very different incentives from regular students. They often convert their grades to a simple pass/fail on their transcripts so they just need to pass the class (we get students from very reputable institutions in the US Canada and Europe, I was surprised to hear about that practice at first). In addition for many of them it’s their first time in a new and exotic location. They want to party and travel. With all due respect, lectures are the last thing on their mind.
Some of the exchange students are hard working, but I would say that they are a minority.
To conclude I think your question has a bit of a cultural bias to it. European students can be equally annoying in an exchange program.
Edit: the question is biased because it seems to attribute this behavior to the students’ “Asian-ness” rather to them being in an exciting foreign country, away from their parents, dealing with a new language and academic practices, and all that within a few weeks. All of the bad practices the question describes can be easily observed in European/American students who come on exchange to my Asian university. Also, lumping together all students from Asia (or even just India/China) is completely inaccurate, and an over generalization of a group of people constituting the majority of humankind. I would suggest that the OP revisit their own beliefs and consider the circumstances under which they observe this group.
By the way, we also get exchange students from China and India. Surprise! they do fine in general, because to them our university/location is not particularly exciting or different! It’s like if an American student had a semester in the UK. Sure it’s different, but a lot of things are the same. Have you considered that option?
Edit 2: (reflecting OP's edit and discussion below)
There are, of course, cultural differences between Students from different cultural backgrounds. By and large, students from China tend to be quieter and ask less questions (this is especially true for female Chinese students in my experience). There are several great suggestions in the comments and in other answers: listen to them, do not be confrontational, try to schedule office hours where these students might feel more free to interact with you.
With all this out of the way: I think that the solutions offered above are not quintessentially unique to handling Asian students. They are excellent approaches to handling any reserved student, regardless of their background.
Moreover, exchange students (American, European, Asian or African) tend to be  more difficult than regular students (as I describe above). This is a far more important factor in this equation than the cultural parameter from my own limited experience.
I think it's great that the OP is looking to improve their teaching, I just don't think that the difficulties have so much to do with cultural differences as they do with the universal difficulties that arise with foreign exchange students.
As an aside, there are some comments in the threads that are very close to sounding like "I'm not racist, but...". In my opinion, that is unfortunate.

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

I would argue that your answer is only talking about study abroad students and not  foreign exchange students.  To me a foreign exchange student is there for the full 4 years/whatever they need to finish with the intent to get the degree from said university.  A study abroad is taking 1-2 semesters to study at a school in a foreign country.  I agree with your answer in reference to study abroad programs but not foreign exchange students by my definition of the term.  You should add something to differentiate or make clear your views regard both cases.

I think in my university the terms are used exactly the opposite way!

This doesn't answer the question at all, even after the edits. It just accuses the OP of bias and then defends that accusation. Have you got any suggestions on how to get through to exchange students generally?

@Cloudzzz why would you call someone who is enrolled for the entire length of the course an "exchange" student? I've only ever seen the adjective "exchange" applied to students who are visiting for a short time, and do not participate in the entire degree course from start to finish. That's what exchange means, after all, it comes from the idea that a university will send one of its students to another and the other university will send one to the first. So they will exchange students.

@terdon At my school we had study abroad programs where we could go study at a foreign university for a semester or two.  I suppose I would be an exchange student by the common definition although I'm not sure if students from said university came to my school.  I only experienced a legitimate exchange student program in high school.  I guess all I was asking for was some differentiation since OP stated that he had students doing the full 4 years and some doing study abroad/exchange programs.  You at least have to admit some difference in those situations regardless of terminology used?

@Cloudzzz of course. I was just confused since I thought you were saying that only someone who is enrolled for the full course would be an "exchange student" for you and, for me, those will not be exchange students by definition. They'll simply be students who come from another country. In my experience, the term is only used for students who are visiting for part of a course's length.

@terdon I suppose either term can be used to mean essentially the same thing.  I think by the technical definition a lot of programs would be study abroad since there isn't an actual exchange of students at most colleges.  I did go to a rather small university but I only saw students that came to our school through a study abroad program and the ability for our students to go to schools in other countries.  Most foreign students at my university were there for the full program with 1 year or less university level education from their home country (Masters/PhD students excluded).

I hate to answer by stereotyping, so I'll do my best to avoid it.  That said, there are differences between people in different parts of the world.  Some are easy to see and anticipate, once you know to look for them, and others are much harder.
Some people, for example, have cultural mores about open criticism.  They may take great offense as being called out as less than perfect in public, but in the privacy of your office, it's fine.  People coming from societies like this may never reply to "Do you understand?" in the context of a class, but need to be asked the same question in private, or encouraged to privately contact you if they need to.
As for sitting through class, I don't know of any social issues that might interfere, but I can certainly sympathize with people who have a language barrier that makes class less useful than trying to catch up later, from, say, a book.
It's a big world out there, and learning to work with wonderful people with different social norms that make them seem a bit odd to others is challenging, but worth pursuing.
I suggest asking colleagues from different parts of the world, who have been living where you live for some years, for advice on how to best communicate with people from these parts of the world, and ask if there are any social aspects that you don't know about that might help you understand your students.
As an addition, this is pretty close to my stereotyping concern, but knowing about it before I (and the student I was trying to work with) was frustrated by it would have been nice!
Such issues are one reason WHY study abroad and other international experiences are so important.

If their "issuess" here are related to some kind of shyness or insufficient ability to survive criticism and another public bashing, then living in Europe must be hell for them. I could try to separate them from the pack and investigate this option.

@matousc -- it might very well be, but if the people that they work with were more aware of such sensitivities, it might be a  little bit better.

I wouldn't necessarily try to separate them from the pack, though.  I might try to provide more than one type of scaffolding to suit different kinds of students with this in mind, and let the students choose which ones they use.

Play the "parents" card
I lived in Taiwan 11 years and have seen many sides of this. Yes, part of the challenge is about foreign students regardless of the country they are from or in. They tend to be from families with enough money to pay the higher cost. That leads to some "affluenza".
In Taiwan, high school is the hard part and university is a breeze. I have known a number Taiwanese students attending schools in Taiwan who were failed in classes because the prof decided they took too many absent days, even though there is not a set number for maximum absences. Attendance and hard work is expected to be not expected so much, at least in Taiwan.
Family is a big deal and holds greater weight in the Eastern cultures. Mom and dad, maybe grandparents, are footing the bills. If/when the parents discover that their money went toward failed classes they will be irate! Your students probably know this.
I have watched for 11 years, parents watch closely and many Taiwanese students seek a university out of town to escape the shadow of mom and dad. Once they are away, they can make terrible decisions. I know one student who emptied $3,000 USD in value from a bank account for some "friends" because dad wasn't there to stop him.
Also, I know of one local professor who has trouble with similar behavior of a student who won't attend class because the parents pressure the school and actually win, so the student gets a passing grade that should be failed. Perhaps your students expect something like this, so you need to remove that as an option for their consideration.
Somehow, you need to make things seem as if mom and dad are present, somehow. I don't know your powers at the university, but for the sake of the students, you can get permission from your dean to issue warnings, notices, and use creative words that speak the language of their particular cultures.
Here is your equation to keep in mind:
failure = angry parents = very bad

Yes, communication is often indirect and they like emails and text messgaging. Try a modified and/or augmented version of something like this:

I am not aware of how much money your parents have budgeted for you to retake failed classes, nor food and living expenses for an extra semester than they planned. However, it is my duty to inform you that if you miss XX more days of class and do not earn XX% minimum on all remaining assignments, you will fail without any way to retake the class. I will not discuss this further in email except to set an appointment to meet in person where we can see if you can earn extra credit to increase your chances of passing.

If you succeed, these could be some of your best, most proud graduates of your career. If you must fail them, then perhaps it was more important for them to learn a valuable lesson they learned nowhere else. This way, at least you will have helped along the way.
Good luck!

Afterthought: Thanks for the background info. I do not find the cultural context biased, there is nothing pejorative in what you wrote. We all have problems and strengths, but we are all different. And, where we grew up affects the glasses through which we see the world. Knowing culture should inform us how to be fair to all people, mainly because it shows us how "fairness" may need to be different for different people. For those who genuinely want to help all people, knowing our different backgrounds illuminates the path forward, removing excuses for bias and prejudice. Thanks for the relevant background!

First, you need to understand the cultural differences. Teachers in Asian countries are generally regarded as an authority and someone you would not question. Having said that, language also plays a vital role in foreign student's progress. If students have problems with language (including accent, pronunciation, grammar and fear of judgment if they have to participate in any discussion).
I think the proper way to enroll any foreign students is through interviews and language test. It takes time to overcome cultural barriers, and Asian students are somewhat shy and introverted compared to students in Western countries. My suggestion is that you give them more assignments (perhaps group assignments) that require interaction with domestic students. Have them sit next to domestic students and let them counter-argue domestic students views in any in-class discussions.

I agree, and I think this needs to be done in a structured, not an ad-hoc manner. We have quite a few Chinese students in our CS classes, and whenever the lecturer says "now discuss this with your neighbor for a few minutes and come up with point" they tend to be very unresponsive. Maybe a less on-the-spot format for engagement would help them.

Depending on what you teach, following may be helpful for more student engagement.

Interactive engagement - Having group discussions for about 10 minutes with random groups in each sessions. Student interaction may improve as groups will be random every time. Everyone would get to know the class & may be engaging more with each other.
Iterative Learning - Dividing the class into random groups & assigning an iterative project related to your coursework. This project should have a larger goal & can be accomplished through lessons learned from class. The project needs to be graded in the same manner (iteratively); I recommend 25% of the grade for the group project.
Interactive Teaching - Video & interactive sessions viz. Fun Quizzes or Trivia as part of the class. Some minor weightage in grades for this (viz. 5%).

I recommended the above to my Professor during graduation; applied the same when teaching voluntarily in India. I personally do not believe language or authority are barriers. Usually education in Asian countries may be less interactive; so more interaction would be interesting & new to students.


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What should I do when my accepted paper is subsequently rejected?
My paper was accepted for publication in a journal. I have also received an acceptance letter and even I have filled out the copyright form. The corresponding editor first told me "Your paper is published in one of the volumes of 2017" and next time said that my paper is "published in 2018", but now I have received an email that my paper is "rejected because the paper is not in the aim and scope of the journal"!!!
Really I do not know, what should I do?

It sounds like the journal messed it up very badly. Have you complained this to the Editor in Chief?

I don't have any advice, but just to make it clear, this is appalling. Whilst you were waiting for your accepted paper to be published you could have submitted it elsewhere. Be under no illusions, this isn't just a minor issue, you have been wronged and you have every right to pursue the journal in rectifying this matter (don't let them tell you otherwise).

Is it okay to ask which journal? I would like to avoid it.

Does their claim about the scope have any merit? 2) Did concerns about the scope come up in the review process at all (i.e. from reviewers or editor correspondence)?

@noslenkwah It's irrelevant. It should have come up much, much earlier. They cannot drag OP out for a year with nothing to show for it (we are not talking reviews).

@CaptainEmacs - Its by no means irrelevant. His question is what should he do. "What should have happened" is what's irrelevant. If the paper is indeed within the scope then its probably worth trying to convince them to publish anyways. If it is indeed out of scope its probably in everyone's best interest to submit elsewhere.

@AytAyt Good point - I read "a year" (or at least a considerable period) into that. A clarification should help here.

Thank you so much for all responses. The journal has impact factor of near to 1 (an ISI journal). It is published in a famous publication. I have written a letter to the Editor-in Chief, 10 days ago, but I have not still received any responses.

Did you call to confirm about it? In such position reversal cases it may be alright to reply to the author directly about what caused changes.

@AliTavakoli: After many years, I am curious to know what happend to this paper? Have you received the Editor-in-Chief response? What have you done?

Check with the journal. Especially do this if the rejection email you received looks like an auto-generated email. No rational journal would act in such a way, so my gut feeling says there was a mistake somewhere, most likely human error. It is possible that, e.g., the final status of your manuscript was accidentally set to 'reject' instead of 'accept'.

Yes, simple mistakes happen from time to time, with our without automation.  (Never attribute to malice...)

Allure, at the core of what you're saying is, "Make sure you have all the facts before acting." Always good advice.

This is unacceptable. If this is a reputable journal, then you can make the point that they made you wait and the research results become stale, and that you have every right to expect them to honour their approval for publication.
They simply cannot retroactively change whether the paper fits into aim/scope of the journal - that decision had been taken with acceptance. If they made a mistake in judgement, you cannot be expected to be the person to bear the cost of this.
If the journal is not reputable, you probably dodged a bullet - and if it is "reputable", and they insist on not publishing your paper after this protest, you can be assured that they are on the way to becoming not reputable, fast (I would, however, not make this point in your protest email).

This is assuming that no publication fees have been paid yet. But if they accepted, you paid fees and then they say rejected then there may be a chance of this being a scam.

@Daniel Good point - however, most such scams take the money and publish, just that the publication is not worth anything. It wouldn't cost them much to just print the article, especially if they intend to continue the scam operation (as they seem to do, if this indeed a scam).

... and if you can help accelerate that decline by going public about the affair if they do not get their act together, then your community will likely thank you.

Aren't publication journals are private businesses?  I thought businesses are allowed to engage in morally reprehensible behavior provided it is legal.  I can't imagine the author can really do anything other than "beg."  Of course, if the journal repeats this offense multiple times, their reputation will diminish.

There are several indications that this is not a reputable journal. For instance, why would an editor inform the author about the volume / year in which their accepted paper would appear? In any half-decent journal, post-acceptance work of that kind is handled by the publisher's production team.

This is pretty disturbing. You should immediately contact the editorial board of the journal and explain the situation.
I would also doubt the quality of the mentioned journal by looking at the series of events.

You should contact the editor in chief and make your complaints clear, that is awful behavior on behalf of the journal. If I were you I would do it as fast as I could and I would take it as far as I could.
I wish you good luck and I hope it was a simple mix up.

Yes, of course you should complain, and the editor and chief does owe you an explanation.
That being said, total devil's advocate (just because the other answers seemed to all have pitchforks ready)...
If there has been a change in the editorial team it is somewhat their choice what direction they take the journal. The (hypothetical) outgoing editor is partially to blame for making a commitment they couldn't keep. Taking a moment for empathy, they were just trying to help the incoming editor out by having stuff in the pipeline. The content of journals, their standards, their quality, their requirements all drift with changing editors. Maybe you caught someone new to that side of publishing... they're learning on the job and might not have really thought of this from your point of view. Try to be kind. :)

Chances are they just don't care. There are a lot of journals out there on the lower end making money by very twisted schemes that don't include concepts like ethics, scientific rigor, or quality.


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How to deal with Pension as a postdoc regularly moving country?
I am a postdoc from the UK that currently lives in France paid by a Canadian institution as a contractor (not employee). I move country roughly every 1-2 years. How do I get a pension for old age? UK pension funds won't accept people living abroad and my employers do not pay into pensions.

This is more of a workplace issue than an academic one.

Related: How to take care of pension funds if career is spread over many different countries? on Money.SE.

Get a more permanent position, or start saving for yourself.

@JonCuster As the meme says, one does not simply get a more permanent position. Basically every postdoc is already trying to do that, not only for their pension.

One does not simply get the position they want. The want of a pension may well change what position is acceptable, whether in academia, national lab, or industry.

When I was in Canada, my postdoc supervisor told me: your first job is to find a permanent position; your second job is to work for me.

@Buffy I'd argue it's more of a finance issue than a workplace issue.  Pensioners don't normally have a workplace :)


text:
Independent research publication in pure math
I did my MS math in a poor math department from south Asia. While as a MS student I wrote a solo author research paper in finite group theory (without any advisor or help from anyone). I don't know any one who works in my area or who can understand my paper completely. I have no experience of writing any research paper. I have now completed my paper and want to submit it to a journal. I have no idea about submission or appropriate journal. At this point what should I do?

There are journals devoted to mathematics papers written by undergraduates.  Examples: https://scholar.rose-hulman.edu/rhumj/  ,  https://pubs.lib.umn.edu/index.php/mjum/about

@GEdgar, it seems the OP was no longer an undergraduate when the paper was written.

First question: Do you have an understanding of what is and what is not known in the specific area of your paper? If no, then you aren't done with the research yet - maybe the stuff you've proven is already known? You'll need to try and figure out what are the right keywords to put into eg Google Scholar to find the papers you need to read first. If you've completed this step, proceed to the second question.
Second question: In which journals were the papers you've read that seemed similar to yours in topic and how groundbraking/impressive/of general interest they are? These would be the natural candidates for you to submit your article to. Have a look at what these journals have recently published. Would your article fit in there? [At this stage, you'll also want to reconsider the presentation of your paper. You'll want to adapt your writing style to the target audience.]
Once you have settled on the journal you want to try, simply look at its website for the instructions to authors and follow them. Some journals will already want you to use the journal style for submissions, other's don't care. You'll then either upload the pdf of your article on an online submission system, or sometimes email it to the relevant editor. To be clear, the pdf you are submitting should be created with LaTeX and follow standard formatting conventions whether or not the journal specifies a particular style.

I have already submitted my paper to a top combinatorics journal ( my result is a bit  combinatorial) . After review, it got rejected and referee asked me to rewrite and submit in a algebra Journal

If you want I can share the arxiv link.

Another aspect worth considering when trying to publish a paper "by yourself" are the (often high) article processing charges. If you don't want to spend money, you need to look for journals without those.

@Gmath So you do have some idea how the process works.

@Sursula-they- My impression is that in math, APC's are a very rare thing.

@Arno Nice, I did not know that. Is this because in math, it is more common for unaffiliated researchers to publish on their own? (and APCs would keep them from being able to do so?)

@Sursula-they- My guess is that due to the arXiv, green open access is straight-forward, which means that there is not that much to gain from gold OA. Also, since we typeset our papers using LaTeX, it is relatively easy to set up Diamond OA journals.

@Sursula: Regarding Arno's last comment, publication fees for mathematics papers have been essentially non-existent for pretty much forever -- certainly throughout the 20th century -- and not just since the early 1990s when LaTeX was becoming widespread in use and when arXiv began. I think the main reason is that funding for math researchers is not as widespread (and certainly not nearly universal) as it is in many science fields, and I imagine math publishers knew that few people would submit manuscripts if there were publication fees. (continued)

Here I'm speaking about before, say, 1990 -- with the exception of late 1950s to 1970 when, at least in the U.S., there was an outlier-bubble created by the huge (temporary) upswing in mathematicians needed for teaching and for the emergent industrial/computer developments in the 1960s. FYI, I was led here (9 months after the previous comments) by a link at the end of this answer.


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Does fellowship replace PhD salary?
I'm currently applying to PhD positions, and was also advised to apply for a fellowship, but don't I need a PhD supervisor first? Even if I do get it, does that mean it replaces the salary given by the lab/company?
Edit: Sorry for the lack of info, the country is Belgium, fellowship is FWO, though I'm also looking in other European countries, therefore there are also EMBO and Marie Curie fellowships, though I'm still enquiring about them.

What country? What field? These things vary widely.

We definitely need more information here :-)

It will be different from university to university, country to country. It may even be different in different departments in the same university. Check with the school you are applying to. Be very nice to the support staff such as the secretary of the department head. They can be very much help to you. And they will know the correct things for what to do about funding.

Yes, for a PhD fellowship with FWO you first need to find a supervisor (called promoter here). Formally the supervisor needs to endorse your application, in practice it is recommend to develop the application in discussion with your prospective supervisor.
The amount of the fellowship will be the same as the net salary for a PhD student employed by the university on an assistant position, so indeed the fellowship is meant to replace any salary. When receiving the fellowship, you are also committing to basically full-time work on the research project (some time for teaching support is admitted).
For details check here:
https://www.fwo.be/en/fellowships-funding/phd-fellowships/

So that means I need to find a PhD first before applying, I understand, thank you


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An imposed project. How to handle this situation?
So we are working on a sponsored project. My adviser has assigned two fellows to the project, taking the funding of two people from the organisation. However internally, only I will work on the project and the adviser will let the other fellow work on his proposed project. I am disturbed by this fact as I will have all the project load and the other fellow gets to work on his own proposals. This seems unfair and biased. What should I do in this case?

The situation is complex and probably can't be resolved without more information. You, of course, have some of that information. All I can propose is a framework and some options.
An extreme option is that you refuse. The likely outcome is that you need a different advisor and you need to come up with a different project or depend on the new advisor to give you one. You may also need different funding. The new project may be more to your liking or not. Beware of the not.
Consider that the "load" may not be so different between the two people. The other project may be less defined and more risky, also, but I can't say, of course.
Judge for yourself how successful completion of the project will work to meet your goals (or not). If it is a good project, even if hard, but has a clear set of goals and a framework then it may actually be easier to complete than one less well defined.
You don't say whether you proposed your own project to your advisor or not. And if so, what s/he thought of it and its likelihood of success. Perhaps, and I can't say, you are being given a gift, not a burden. But you need to judge that.
The other extreme from rejection is acceptance of the project, but in this case you will need to find something in it to make you enthused, so that it isn't painful to work on it. Maybe there is something interesting there for you and maybe not.
Whether there is a middle position between the extremes or not depends on what you and your advisor can come up with, but it will require a discussion to achieve anything in the middle. To have a fruitful discussion you need a positive attitude, of course.
So, it is your call, but consider all of the options and think about the likelihood of the consequences of each choice.


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Sending students for conference presentation with no additional funding
Me with my two students got a paper accepted at a high-ranked CS conference. We have to register for the conference along with travel for presentation and other formalities.
I instructed my students to finish the formalities such as register, book for air tickets etc.
However, I find that I don't have fund presently to book for air tickets and do the registration. Although, they agreed for the process, I am not feeling relaxed on this situation.
Did I do justice for this situation?
However, I told them that we can look for some travel grants after the tickets are booked.

I'm not quite sure I understand your situation.  Did you tell your students that you don't have funding for them?  You certainly need to. If you did, did you discuss whether they are able and willing to cover the costs themselves if necessary?  You certainly need to.  Also, how did you get into this situation?  What was your plan for the funding when you submitted the paper?

@PeteL.Clark I was expecting some funding by the time we receive the decision. But, bad! Yes, I did discuss with my students about it and they agreed to do arrange those themselves.

How are you paying for yourself to go to the conference?

It might be worth only one of you going, so that the paper gets published.  This should save on costs. If your student is willing to go alone that might be best. Does your school have any funding sources for this?

@RichardKavanagh Yes there is some funding from the school almost 50℅

I don't have enough to justify a full answer, but you should probably stop thinking about the administrative stuff (travel, registration, etc.) as a "formality". Your students are now in a position where they have been asked to attend a conference that you can't fund. Does it feel like a formality to them?

It may be possible to make some of the conference cheaper overall. To give an example some IEEE conferences registration fees are very expensive, this can't be avoided. The last one I attended was also in an expensive hotel. It may be possible to get other accommodation further away and travel in. They may ask for student helpers as well, which could add extra discounts. Early booking may give early bird registration fees as well. The flights, which I assume are required equally might be cheaper in advance.

Also, some conferences offer a reduced rate to students, or to authors from economically disadvantaged countries.


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Journal won't allow PhD student to be corresponding author
I've submitted a publication to an ACS Journal where I performed all the experiments myself, most of the editorial work, and all the coordination. Other authors agreed to let me be the corresponding author.
ACS spontaneously changed the corresponding author to the last author (which doesn't even have a position a our institution) and send following e-mail to him:

Thank you for your recent submission. ACS Policy requires that the role of corresponding author be assigned to a senior editor who has the equivalent degree to Ph.D. If John Doe has the necessary requirement, and you agree, we would be happy to update the manuscript records. Thank you for the confirmation.

Beeing in Academia since many years, I am pretty aware of what a corresponding author is as I am aware of the questions Is it okay to list a PhD student as corresponding author? and Should student or supervisor be corresponding author for publications based on student research?, I'm a bit upset and asking myself on what base one can make such discrimination.
Since I couldn't find this ACS policy on their website: is this a kind of unofficial policy? What is the point of making someone corresponding author who doesn't have as much insights as I have?
I already have published in the past in ACS journals. My highest concern is that these only write to the corresponding author during the review and editorial process and the other authors are familiar with overfull e-mail boxes and "skipping e-mails"...

Senior personnel usually have "stable" e-mail addresses, suitable for being the corresponding author. Between phd, postdocs, etc, I had 6 different e-mails in the last 10 years....

@FábioDias: I could understand this explanation, but this is not what is stated. And having a PhD doesn't mean you have a stable position.

Can there be multiple corresponding authors? This usually solves the problem of not all authors paying attention.

It is a super weird policy. Refer to https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/nn301566x for an editorial called "Who Are Corresponding Authors?" by ACS Nano Editor-in-Chief. Nothing about having a diploma is written. I never heard of such a practice, and find it weird.

@FábioDias Anyone can get a stable email address not tied to their current institution.

@AlexeyB. I don't think so. And I still wouldn't qualify according to the policy.

In some field, corresponding author is important for the CV, and the email reason is very silly. This is not answer, but an opinion: I would consider submitting elsewhere

Who did the e-mail come from? Journal publishing staff, or someone on the editorial board (i.e. a scientist)? If the former, I would consider e-mailing the editor-in-chief and asking if the policy could be waived.

@Anonymous e-mail came from the Senior Editor assessing my publication

It is an extremely weird policy, and I never heard of any journal having a policy like this one.
I couldn't find a "general rule governing corresponding authors" that would apply to all the journals of the American Chemical Society.
In 2012, the editor on chief of ACS Nano wrote, in an editorial called "Who Are Corresponding Authors?",

In order to be accessible to those requesting information or materials, the corresponding authors must be stable in their positions and locatable. Unless students or postdocs have long-term positions, it is typically not appropriate for these authors to be corresponding authors, even if they serve the function of submitting the manuscript. (There are occasional exceptions, such as where the senior author has passed away.)

Cf. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/nn301566x
Their policy (that doesn't say anything about having or not a diploma) seems really strict, and, in my opinion, outdated, but it answers your question

What is the point of making someone corresponding author who doesn't have as much insights as I have?

Well, their idea (at least according to this editor) is that it is better to have a correspondent, even not aware of all the details of the publication, that no correspondent, because the "student without long-term position" left without leaving an address.

Another instance of ACS being obnoxious to scientists, after suing Sci-Hub.

So having a stable gmail or outlook or... email address is insufficient to be a corresponding author? Institutions change their email address formats far too often (I've had three or four different email addresses from where I am based, and they have no redirects)

It's almost as if they think there's no way to find the current contact information of an author, given only his name and the publication title.  (Which, I think was true at some point in time.  Maybe as recently as 20 years ago.)

@davidbak It is still true if the author leaves academia for a different profession. The only people who are comparatively easy to find are academics. (And even that is not always true.)

I think you should try to do what Alexey B suggests and request that you be made joint corresponding author with the last author. I did this myself with an ACS journal when I was doing my PhD (around 2010) and the editor did not object.

Is the reason you did this because they would not let you be corresponding author for the same reason?

No, I did not start off by requesting that I be made the sole corresponding author. I made the request that both my supervisor and myself be made corresponding author when I first submitted the article on the grounds that we had both played a large role in the project.

To answer the OP's question, a PhD student should be eligible to be listed as the corresponding author (and, when so many academic jobs are precarious in nature, it makes increasingly less sense to insist upon a 'stable' institutional email address).

Arguably, a PhD student usually has a longer term in their job than most other researchers these days!


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Google Scholar paper losing citations
One of my papers on Google scholar used to have 5 citations. It later went down to 4 and is now on 3. My other papers are monotonically increasing. But I've had this one paper that seems to have lost 2. What might be some reasons for this? Assuming Google Scholar did some checks and found some of them didn't meet certain criteria, just curious what those might be.

This happened a couple of times to me, mostly because of duplicates: GS had the same paper indexed twice, which lead to duplicate citations for some of my papers. The duplicate entry was removed at some point, and with it the duplicate citations.
In another case, a paper published informally online was removed from the website, and then also from GS, which lead to citations to my papers being removed as well.
Both cases could be formulated as a "criterion" that Google validates in some internal "check" (no duplicates, online-only resources have to be permanent).


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Selecting a Thesis - Are there lists of interesting or open questions?
Is there an aggregated pool of potential thesis topics that are available for exploration across universities for different concentrations? Perhaps there would be some that have been pre-vetted by professors.
I'm curious if there's an easier and/or quicker way to discover and select topics when there is not a compelling subject/topic available.

I proposed an edit to the question that (I think) captures what you said in the comment below. You may want to personalize further by specifying your field.

You have two questions here. Addressing the broader one, of how to pick a thesis topic when none is jumping out, Umberto Eco's How to Write a Thesis is a surprisingly practical book. It takes as the premise that you have only six months left to write a thesis (Italian roughly masters-level thesis), with limited scholarly resources at your disposal. It's fairly short and encourages you to work with whatever you have. It does not assume you have much oversight available.
The answers to another question on finding (masters) thesis topics point to conversations with faculty.
The existence of a dissertation database has been addressed in previous questions (e.g. Worldwide Dissertation Database? or French, German, Italian ones?). That thread doesn't list Proquest, which indexes dissertations from many universities. (It's interesting to see the most-accessed Proquest dissertations.)

Thank you!  I'll have to read Umberto's book.  I also found this question  posted before I asked (https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/how-to-select-a-masters-thesis-topic-if-your-advisor-wont-suggest-one), but I was really hoping that their might be an aggregated pool of potential thesis topics that are available cross-universities for different concentrations to explore.  Perhaps some that have been pre-vetted by professors.

@vol7ron Ah, I see! Perhaps it would help to edit the question to make it clear that you're looking for a pool of potential topics. In that case, it may also help people answer to specify more about what field you're in, since I imagine that might be organized by a learned society or a few really avid professors.

misspelled "their" grrr.  Yes, edit approved :)

Ha, Eco's book is a classic! :-) Virtually all those of my generation in Italy had read it! However, it comes from an era, before the Bologna process, where in Italy there was no distinction between undergraduate and graduate studies, because the nominal duration of the studies was five years. A six-month thesis at the time was rare, and it was not uncommon for theses to have a duration of 1-2 years, and most people would graduate after around 6 years, sometimes 7 or more. So Eco's book refers more to Master's theses.

@MassimoOrtolano Thank you for the clarification! I don't have the book at hand, which probably explained some of that in the forward to the English translation. :)

Out of curiosity I reopened my copy and I discovered a few interesting things. I bought the book in 2005, some 8 years later having written my master's thesis and 5 years after my PhD thesis. I have no idea why I bought it so late. In the preface of the 1977 edition, Eco says: "At the time of this book’s publication, the reform of the Italian university is being debated, and there is talk of introducing two or three different levels of university degrees". Actually, it took some 30 years to have that kind of reform!

@MassimoOrtolano it's amazing, isn't it?  I suppose big trains take time to stop


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Does the order in which you list committee members in a dissertation matter?
I am currently writing my PhD dissertation and was wondering in what order I should list committee members in my dissertation? What is a good order that does not offend anyone? I know the advisor has to be listed first. For the rest of the members, some of the options I considered were: (a) listing by decreasing order of seniority, (b) alphabetical, (c) list external last. The problem with (a) is that the senior most professor is an external (from a different university) and comes up before Profs from my own department. The problem with (b) and (c) are that the senior most person, who is also quite famous, now comes last. Am I overthinking this?

I think this might be location specific, as its not something I've ever heard of.

If it helps I am in a US university.

"I know the advisor has to be listed first": well, in some places the advisor is not a committee member.

How involved was the external committee member in your dissertation? If the answer is "not very," put them last.

@ElizabethHenning Apart from my advisor, none of the committee members have been involved at all. I will meet them only for the 2nd time during my defense.

Probably you are overthinking it. If they have different roles you can list them with their role and avoid ordering problems. Otherwise I'd consider alphabetical.
I'll admit that in some fields there may be a tradition about how to do it, but I've never heard of that. And note that in some circles the one listed last is considered the most prominent. It is hard to really draw conclusions, hence alphabetical.
And, your advisor might have some good advice about this.

Got it. I am my advisors first student, so I don't have full faith in his judgement when it comes to "soft skills" matters like these.

@Smoke: I don't have full faith in his judgement when it comes --- You could look at some of the recent dissertations written in your department and see if you notice a specific format being used. These dissertations should be shelved somewhere in your university library, and copies might also be in your department library, department reading room, department common room, etc. (if any of these exist).

@DaveLRenfro Good idea. I will do that. Although, my case is a bit less common in that I have an external from a different university, but I should be able to find something.

@DaveLRenfro: Wow. This is a really, really great idea!! Would you mind writing it as an answer?

@user105595: OK, I've made my comment into an answer. I'm surprised at your excitement because this seems rather obvious to me, although in view of the fact that I've posted several similar comments here in the past few years saying essentially the same thing regarding certain theses formatting questions, I suppose it's not obvious to others. When I was in graduate school, this was what most (all?) students did, although in many cases their thesis adviser had bound copies of previous theses on their bookshelves, so students usually didn't have to go to the library. (continued)

Of course, for an unusual formatting question like the OP had, probably a trip to the library would be needed, as well as possibly asking a librarian the question (who would either know the answer or would know who to ask).

Besides asking your adviser, you could look at some of the recent dissertations written in your department to see whether a specific format tends to be used. Print copies of the dissertations are probably shelved somewhere in your university library (and/or you might have access to digital versions using your university library), and copies might also be in your department library, department reading room, department common room, etc. (if any of these exist).

I suggest checking with the graduate school administration of your university (not just your department). There may be amazingly specific rules about the format of your dissertation, including the list of committee members. For example, in my university, the title page of a doctoral dissertation must say that it's "submitted to The University of Michigan" with a capital "T" in "The". I think the committee members are listed with the adviser first (labeled not as adviser but as chair of the committee) and then the other members in alphabetical order; I don't guarantee that, though, since I never paid much attention to the ordering of the list.


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can't reach book editor
For the last 5 years (delayed partly by teaching, a parent's death and caregiving for another parent), I've been writing a textbook that examines a famous 18th-century political work. The proposal was accepted and a year later, I got very positive feedback on the first half of the manuscript.
I finally submitted the entire manuscript in early December 2018 and felt quite confident about it--despite the fact that my Ph.D. is in English literature and not history or poli sci.  I wrote to the editor back in late January to see if he'd gotten any word; he replied that he hadn't heard anything and to wait until late February. I've been writing to him once a week since then--and twice last week, but with no luck. It's strange because when I was corresponding with him back in August-December, he always answered very promptly.
I've tried writing to the editor who approved the book proposal (he's since moved onto another department) and another who was a supervising editor. No response. I am really stumped: what can I do since I cannot seem to reach anyone at all? I realize there's not much action I can take and that there are any number of scenarios (maybe none of the reviewers liked it and they are sending to others?), but it is really driving me up a wall. I've looked up the "Contact us" section in the publisher's website, but there is no information on the editor of the textbook for the series that I am editing. There are no phone numbers either.  Any advice?

Thanks for your answers. I have no idea what stage it's at: I'm guessing it's still being peer-reviewed since I haven't heard anything yet. The reason why I didn't think it would take as long is because they took a month and a half to read the first half. I'm also assuming that since this is twice as long, it would also take twice as long to read. This is why I've started to have doubts about the quality. If it's good, wouldn't it take them less time--like when I turned in the first half? About the editor: as mentioned, when I was working on it, he used to email me quite frequently.

Obviously I don't know how this particular editor works (and I'm not familiar with textbook edition), but it's quite common for an academic review process to take several months or even more than a year. Another general fact about reviewing: if reviewers don't like it they don't send it to another reviewer, they write a bad review and you will be informed about it.
Unless this editor promised you a fast review process, from the information you provide it looks to me like there's nothing to worry about. At this stage the reviewers have your book but it's possible that some of them haven't even started reading it yet.

I've been writing to him once a week since then--and twice last week, but with no luck.

Are you sure this editor was happy about you emailing him every week? Unless you are in very friendly terms with him, your frequent emails might be a bit annoying to him! And that might explain why he stopped answering.
Obviously I don't know any specifics, but it seems to me that there's absolutely no reason to panic: as you said, the first half was well received and you were feeling confident about it when you submitted. Try to go back to this original state of mind instead of imagining the worst. Delays are frequent in a review process and they are not a sign of negative outcome... just a sign that everybody is busy. Patience and good luck!

Your question is vague about what stage the manuscript is in. I can see two main possibilities:

If your manuscript is currently being peer reviewed, then writing in every week is way too often. The time needed for book reviews varies by discipline, but they're on the order of magnitude as the time taken for journal article reviews, i.e. months. The review will be done when it's done; don't pester the editor.
The other possibility is your manuscript is currently in production. In this case the timeline is more secure (everything is in the publisher's control), but the time taken to get from raw manuscript to first proofs can be quite substantial. First the manuscript has to be copyedited, and then it has to be typeset. Depending on how many pages it is, these two processes combined can easily take 4-6 weeks or even more if the publisher is short on resources.

I suggest waiting for longer before writing in again. The publisher will eventually contact you - they'll need your input e.g. on the book cover.