text:
Can editor be reference in hiring
I think it is clearly true that an editor of a journal can be a reference for the author of the paper he is managing since he could know the quality of the paper very well. So this question may seem redundant, but I just want to confirm that.

How much contact did you have with the editor you have in mind? Do you have any reason to believe that the editor does indeed remember you? Editors are usually busy people.

Why do you think this is clearly true? Being somebody's reference isn't usually based on only knowing the contents  of one paper.

@Snijderfrey, I mean only if the editor is impressed with the paper. I know normally this won't happen because an editor can handle many papers. But on rare occasions, if an editor is very impressed with a paper, can he recommend it?

In my experience, editors do not know the papers they publish very well, due to handling very many papers in limited time.

I had an experience that one of my submissions impressed the editor who handled it. Normally, an editor of a journal is responsible for prescreening papers submitted in his fields. If he finds no obvious problems and is interested in them, he will find referees for further review.

As the editor of a journal, I'd feel very uncomfortable recommending any author. That's because I don't know them well enough. I could say they have submitted X paper to my journal and the reviews are great (which however is not a very valuable thing to say), or maybe that the paper has received a lot of citations (but anyone with Web of Science or Google Scholar can look that up for themselves). But I can't say more. Even if I'm an expert on their paper and it was a good piece of work, I have no idea what the research process was like, usually won't know which author was responsible for which part of the paper, etc. In the worst case scenario, the author was a gift author, and I have no way to tell.
So no: not a good idea for either the author or the editor.


text:
What happen if the status of a submission is unknown
Nowadays, most journals have good submission websites that assign each submission with an ID. Some even allow you to track the review process.
However, there are exceptions. I find that one journal handles submissions very badly. It does not have a submission website. To submit a paper to it, I need to attach the paper in an email to the managing editor. After the submission, I never received anything from the journal. As the result, I know nothing about the status of the paper, whether it is under review or not. I also sent emails to editors of the journal to check the status but heard nothing from them as well.
I am really upset with the practice of the journal handling submissions. But I do not know what to do in this situation. For example, if I submit it elsewhere, what happen if it is accepted by this journal later?

If you did not get an answer for your emails (wait at least a week though), then it is a bad sign. One option for you is to send an email saying that you withdraw the paper, then just send it to another journal...

why did you submit there in the first place?

It looks like a good fit for my paper

I'm assuming that the journal you submitted to is not predatory.
Handling submissions by email is not uncommon. You should visit the journal's website and check the instructions for authors. Usually, there is an indication on  whether you will receive a confirmation or not. For instance you'll find If we do not confirm that your manuscript was received (within two weeks), please send it again to the same email address. See the instructions to authors for more information.
If this is not the case and the journal has no indication on whether the submitting author will receive a confirmation or not. Then, my advise is that this journal is not worth the effort. Although note that this is August, and usually everyone are still on holidays. So, you could wait two weeks and then if you don't receive anything, you can notify the editor in chief that you are withdrawing your manuscript from their journal.
After that, you are free to submit your manuscript anywhere and the journal has no right to process your manuscript further.

Thanks for this information. I submitted it in May and heard nothing from the journal since then.

@hermes, In this case, I think you should send an email to the editor in chief and withdraw the submission.

Yes, I think they never even consider reviewing it. What upset me most is that they do not even send a rejection notice.

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text:
Does first-time submission need endorsement even if the author is affiliated
On the endorsement page of Arxiv, it says "During the submission process, however, we may require authors who are submitting papers to a subject category for the first time to get an endorsement from an established arXiv author". Does this mean that the first-time submission still needs endorsement even if the author is affiliated with an institution?

Isn't that exactly what that text says? I don't understand what's unclear.

Yes, it was copied exactly from the endorsement page of Arxiv.

The text says "we may require authors who are submitting papers to a subject category for the first time to get an endorsement", so that's what it means. "may" indicates some but not all cases, otherwise they'd write "always" or "never". I don't think they mean to be dodgy or unclear here, this is their official page describing what endorsement means.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4812/whats-arxiv-endorsement-policy?rq=1

It might do, but it also may not. I submitted my first paper to arXiv 2 months ago, and did not need any endorsement, just signed in with my institutional email.

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text:
Gradescope automatic match of pages to problems
I used Gradescope with the Instructor upload setting for a paper-based exam that was scanned in bulk. I included a template of the exam with name, ID, and problem regions specified. The exams scanned correctly and were split by student correctly.
However, the pages were not matched to problems automatically, and I don't see any way even to do that manually.  This has worked fine when I use the Student upload setting.  Am I missing something about how to get pages and problems matched with Instructor upload?

This has worked for me in the past.  Did you set up the template with all the questions and answer boxes defined before uploading the PDFs of the exams?  Do all the exams have the same number of pages with the answer boxes in the same places?

Yes, I had all that set up.  In the end, I copied the assignment, uploaded the exams to the new assignment and went through the process of splitting by name and then matching pages to problems.  After that it worked.  I think the central office that scanned and uploaded the exams originally must have skipped a step or stopped before getting to that step  .


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Do mathematicians look down on interest in logic and philosophy?
Would it hurt graduate admissions chances if I went to a logic REU or took upper-level philosophy courses? I go to a small school that doesn't offer graduate-level mathematics. What if I applied to masters programs first, would that help?

Not sure I understand your last sentence...would a master's program [in what] help [toward what]?

I think the premise in your title is inaccurate...

Depends on what parts of logic and philosophy you are talking about. Just as an example, if you were talking about things that applied to artificial intelligence, you might be opening a lot of doors.

For the various viewpoints expressed, see How much should the average mathematician know about foundations? AND Has philosophy ever clarified mathematics?. Also, this answer to What mathematical questions or areas have philosophical implications outside of mathematics? may be of interest.

I think the only real answer to 'does X demographic do Y?' is 'it depends on the person'.
I've met a lot of pure mathematicians that would look down on applied mathematicians that do NOT have an interest in logic and philosophy, for seeing maths as a simple tool and not seeing the beauty of it.
I've also met a lot of applied mathematicians that think pure mathematicians are wasting their lives on abstract algebraic subjects that are too abstract to be useful.
I'll admit, as a biomedical data scientist, if I were to hire someone, I'd more likely pick the person with an applied statistics course rather than an upper-level philosophy class.

Some years ago I collaborated with a mathematician, an algebraist. At a certain point I mentioned that a certain ideal device could be modelled with a circulant matrix, and he replied: "Wow, I've never thought circulant matrices could have practical applications!" :-)

Quite the opposite, actually, at least for many of us. I have three math degrees and an undergraduate minor in Philosophy. I studied logic formally a couple of times both as an undergraduate and during my masters (IIRC, though it was long, long ago). A course in ethics is good for anyone, but especially so if you want to be an academic.
Formal logic is interesting and needed in math, but even old Aristotelian logic and logic puzzles stimulate the brain in some of the same ways that math does. And even some CS fields depend heavily on logic.
I can't promise that formally studying it would help more than other things, but it won't be a negative.


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Do UK Academic Journals Generally Use Formatting Styles Based on APA, MLA, or Chicago?
I'm working on an online formatting problem with a UK programmer who is not familiar with academic style requirements. The styling problem in one that is frequently encountered in APA and some Chicago-based style guides—both style guides that originated in America (U.S.). I'm wondering if UK journals also use styles based on these two American style guides.

I suspect that this is more a matter of academic discipline, not of country. In my experience (math/CS) a journal is providing the bibtex style file they want authors to use, and then you just use that. I only know of APA/Chicago due to questions by confused undergrads.

My formatting problem is for an online journal that published the lay theological research of a PhD who was a bacteriologist and biochemist, so the formatting doubtless reflected his academic writing. It contains what APA and Chicago call run-in headings (levels 4 or 5), which are difficult to style online with W3C styling tools. I was curious if this was a problem in the UK as well as the US.

Arno is right; country and citation style are not related.

I've published in a mix of journals including some based in the UK.
I don't think I've encountered one yet that uses APA or Chicago or any other specific style guide; they all come up with their own, which may be loosely or closely based on some other guide (if one of them has used APA or Chicago it must not have been very notable at the time, though). I don't think it's possible to say "generally" for anything regarding citation format styles, particularly across fields.

Thank you. Good answer, and I appreciate that you are speaking from experience. The programmer is thinking about writing an article about the issue we are working on, and I got to thinking that maybe it's not an issue in the UK. But since, as you say, every journal has it's own rules (as is also true with most US-based journals), I suspect his article would be useful in at least some circumstances on his side of the Atlantic. And it would also be useful for UK academics who write for US-based journals.


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How do I ensure that the colormap shows well in black and white?
One referee comment says that "Not sure the colormap shows up well in black and white". Two figures in my manuscript are shown below. Do I have to change the colormap settings? If I do, how do I ensure that the colormap shows well in black and white?

These figures are drawn from https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.11964

To be honest, I am not even sure that it does show well in color. But in any case, the only real proof of the pudding is in the eating. So what I would always suggest is to print it on the oldest, least well maintained b/w-printer you can find. Or in absence of a bad printer, try to print it and then photocopy it once or twice...

I have seen a few publications on this issue over the years, not particularly on colormaps though. For instance, this might help you: https://www.nature.com/articles/nmeth.1618

See also https://matplotlib.org/3.5.0/tutorials/colors/colormaps.html and the section within about grayscale conversion.

With a limited number of discrete values being shown, you may consider a non-continuous scale to reduce the burden of mapping colors, as well as using different line styles (dashed, dotted, etc.) in addition to color (although that also doesn't do well when there are many lines or overlapping lines like the bottom plot).

Related or possible duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/34327/20058

Would it make any sense to make the colour into a third dimension and plot it as 3-d data?

@Wang Yun which software do you się?

@Adam I use matplotlib

I wonder how important this is after all. I do not think that many people still use printed versions of a paper.

@JFabianMeier I agree with you

Personally I'd use a "monochromatic "  intensity scale in the first place for a graph like this.  That is, black--dark red -- light red -- almost whitish , for example.  Going rainbow-ish doesn't add to the story you're telling.

This might be a better question for [Graphicdesign.se];  in particular, they have an accessibility tag.

Another option to printing in black and white would be testing your figure using a website such as Coblis —
Color Blindness Simulator.
This way you can upload your figure and see what it would look like in a monochromatic view to see if someone who is colourblind can understand it. If you need to use a different colourblind friendly palette that works well in black and white you can check out a few of these links:

Coloring for Colorblindness
Cookbook for R — Colors (ggplot2)

Hope this helps!

+1 Saw the title and my first thought was Coblis as well; I was showing it to someone just yesterday. A third link I can recommend is Viridis, which I see showing up more and more frequently across a variety of journals

One potential problem with this is that different methods of converting to black-and-white yield different results, so a figure might look fine when viewed using these websites, but then look worse when the journal actually converts it for printing.

@TannerSwett comparisons between widely-used computational methods of conversion may not maintain perceived linearity, and may suffer at the extremes, but if a colour map is monotonic in one as it generally should be you can trust it to be monotonic in another.  There are other issues that can creep in, e.g. you choose 100% blue to contrast to yellow, and different processes to reach greyscale can put them closer together than you might expect, losing contrast

I believe these colormaps are already hard to interpret, even with full color perception. Ranges of values are usually represented by colors going from "cold" (blue or green) to "hot" (yellow or red). In the plots you presented, I would intuitively expect that yellow and green curves represent values which are close to each other, but in fact they are opposite!
With black and white printing, you are essentially limited to shades of grey. You usually don't want to use very light shades as your curves will be almost invisible, so the usable range is somewhere between (25% .. 50%) light grey and (near 100%) black.
There are colormaps with monotonous brightness, which map well to black and white. One example is colors going from dark blue via green to yellow. Another intuitive option is to go from black via red to yellow, which is sometimes known as "heat colors":

I tend to use "heat" as well, because I know it goes to B&W well. The opposite "cold" or "ice" (black-blue-cyan) also works, and can be reverse and used in combination with heat to map values -1..0..1 with 0 as black, if you can work around losing the sign

If you do not have access to a printer, you can select "Adobe PDF" as your "printer" and then in the printer dialog box change the settings to grayscale or black and white, then save a black and white pdf version of the document and see how it looks.

For scientific visualistion one can use perceptually uniform scientific colormaps

color gradients for partial human colour-vision deficiency ( CVD)
gray gradients for total color blindness ( it is very rare but exist)

Matplotlib has  Perceptually Uniform Sequential color maps, so user has only to choose such map.

I like the cubehelix colour palette

https://jiffyclub.github.io/palettable/cubehelix
https://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~dag/CUBEHELIX

which was designed to degrade gracefully to greyscale without losing information. It was created to vary smoothly in both lightness and hue, so that it looks okay in both colour and greyscale.
The cubehelix has parameters that you can tune to change the exact way it transitions between colours.
In Python you can implement this with: cmap='cubehelix'. Here is an example:

Charlotte Findlay's answer (Coblis) is my usual goto tool, but for those that are interested, GIMP has an easy-to-use desaturate tool that gets the job done as well. For those wanting to go a step further and test their image for different types of colorblindness, GIMP also has some display filters to check that.

I use a tool called ColorOracle. It’s a color blindness simulator that, in addition to grey scale, can also simulate the three most common forms of color blindness. It’s great for checking for accessibility when making presentations or designing figures for publications. Very easy to use, too. I highly recommend it.
And the best part — it’s available on Windows, Mac, and Linux!

"how do I ensure that the colormap shows well in black and white?"
I am not sure that you can have a reliable transferrable method. You can fix this problem for these specific graphs.
Focus on the story the data is showing (here it looks like there are lines that drift lower towards the bottom right). Emphasize that location, de-emphasize the rest of the panel.
Understand you have a fundamentally 3D (vertical, horizontal, color) plot with several line traces.
Here are options that i can see.
#1. recreate the color map from a visible light/medium grey to black. the lines on the plot that appear important to me are on the 'upper' end of the color spectrum, so that should be the blackest end of the spectrum. that will ensure emphasis on the 'deviant' track lines (both shown lower on the vertical axis). The overlapping lines will be assisted by reducing opacity (i.e. 'alpha'). You will need to tune both the color spectrum and the opacity to fit the needs. All color mappings should be as consistent as possible between different graphs. This option would also require replacing the broken 'global' line with 'x' or 'o' or some other distinguishing marker shape.
#1 continued. This grey/black option might further be assisted by accentuating the log nature of the color spectrum. Currently, it looks like log base 10, you could push that log base in either direction and see how that accentuates the point in the plots you want to emphasize. You will need a bit of expertise to do that effectively. I personally would not worry about the numerical nature of the plot as much as i would the narrative surrounding it, but its not my paper.
OR
#2 abandon color as the representation of the 3rd dimension. Replace color with height using a 3D surface plot with line tracks. This might or might not work well, depending on your comfort level, as it is fundamentally a visual illusion of representing a 3D plot on a 2D piece of virtual paper. This is a viable option here specifically because the highest 'peak' will not meaningfully obscure lower peaks when oriented correctly, meaning the graph could remain static (i.e. simple printed static image).
OR
#2 continued. keep color and use the 3D surface height in combination. The two representations indicate the same data, but its redundant.
OR
#3 leave the color plot as is and add an interactive element... either on this visualization or an additional visualization. For example, Plotly creates .html with hover capabilities. This way, the user can mouse hover over individual points and get a full text breakdown of whatever string you want.
OR
#4 just say no and leave it as is. being perfectly honest, these are not the most beautiful graphs, but its not an art contest, the data is effectively represented in its current form, assuming the emphasis is on the lower right deviant tracks. if the emphasis is elsewhere, you need more than a color reimagining.
either/both #1 and #2 are likely your best bets, but both would require some amount of skill, design sense, and expertise to render effectively.
Happy plotting! gl


text:
How long does it take for a manuscript to be given a reference number?
I have submitted my manuscript to a journal over 37 days and the status remains "Manuscript Submitted". The email says "Your manuscript will be given a reference number once an Editor has been assigned". May I know how long normally it takes for a manuscript to be assigned to editors? Thank you!

It depends on the journal (area and type)!
For example, some colleagues waiting for 3 years for an answer from editors.

Thanks, Bruna for your reply. Three years for an answer!!! That's torture!


text:
What are the reasons that keep manuscript status as 'manuscript submitted' over five months?
I submitted a manuscript to a journal five months ago. And the status has remained 'manuscript submitted' since then. I wrote two letters to politely ask EIC about my manuscript but there's no response. I'm quite worried about the situation here because I don't know if it is worth withdrawing it right now. Could you please share some of your views about what kind of reseasons can cause such delay? I know pretty well about how journal flow works, but five months with unassigned status, that's frustrating.
Thank you!

You've structured this as a "workflow" question, hence a duplicate. But you could send the EIC a note that you will withdraw your paper on (future date certain) unless they respond to your enquiry.

This answer offers some possible reasons for a delay of 2 months. Also related questions: Is it okay to inquire about the status of a paper when the online submission system shows no update three months after submission?, Article awaiting reviewer invitation 6 months after submission.

By far the most common reason for this is that the editors are inactive, so yeah: ask for a status update.


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Maternity Pay for postdoc on Professor's ESRC grant in the UK
How does maternity pay work if you are a postdoc on a professor's ESRC grant in the UK? Does it depend on the university policy, or is it defined by the ESRC? I understand generally how the university policies work, but for fixed-term contracts there is usually some clause stating "talk to your department manager," and as I am currently negotiating the job terms I was wondering if anyone had experience with maternity pay as a post-doc in this capacity.

If you are still negotiating the offer I would suggest asking this as part of that discussion.

Thanks yes, I of course plan to. However I was curious to understand what might be common/expected in these contexts as I am new to the UK, and therefor was hoping to hear from anyone with experience of pregnancy during an ESRC grant funded postdoc.

I was on maternity leave while being a postdoc on an EPSRC grant last year.
In short: when on an EPSRC grant, the EPSRC will effectively pay for your maternity leave (for the percentage of time that you are contracted on the grant).
Technically: your PI pays the maternity leave so that the grant will look overspent. Then when they submit the final claim, they claim for the statutory maternity leave. The relevant section of the UKRI* policy is (source):

RGC 8.3.1 At the end of the Grant Period We will reimburse costs
incurred by You to cover any additional net parental leave costs that
cannot be met within the announced grant cash limit including
Statutory Maternity, Paternity and Adoption Pay for staff, within the
Directly Incurred and Exceptions fund headings. This will be payable
only for the percentage of time that the staff are contracted on the
Grant

You can also check other UKRI documents, e.g. here, RGC 8.3, or information on specific university pages, e.g. here for UCL, UKRI section. Good luck!
*UKRI (AHRC, BBSRC, ESRC, EPSRC, MRC, NERC, STFC) = UK Research and Innovation

Thanks very much!  This is extremely helpful, and I really appreciate your sharing the experience.


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Can I change my affiliation after re-submitting the manuscript before acceptance?
One manuscript has been submitted after the 1st revision, and I am the 4th author. I didn't contribute to the work initially, so my name was not there on the first submission. Whereas during addressing comments from reviewer, I contributed and hence my name added as 4th author during re-submission. However, there is a mistake about my affiliation in the re-submitted manuscript. The manuscript is yet to be accepted. If it will accept, then can I change my affiliation? If so, in which stage I can do that? Is it possible during proof-reading? I am afraid if we inform the editor about this before acceptance, he won't take it well and reject the manuscript due to this silly mistake. As this particular query is not available in the 'Guide for Authors' or anywhere in the journal, I can't understand what should I do.

Yes, you can. Affiliations change, sometimes in the middle of submission. The "author information" side does not affect the "accept on the merits" side.

Yes, you can usually change your affiliation after acceptance, during the proofs stage.
There's no need to inform the editor that there is an error in your affiliation, but you should inform them that there is another author. If they're paying attention, they should notice themselves, and investigate (because extra authors is a potentially fraught thing that need to be clarified). If you inform the editor, then you can head off the editor's request for clarification if/when they discover it.

Yes, you can definitely change it later on. Most important thing is that you will need to be on top of this with the main (first/last) author who is taking care of the submission and proofreading. It's rare that the middle authors concern themselves with the final stages of getting the manuscript ready for publication, so make sure you see a next version of the manuscript where it is correct or send them this information ASAP and then again when you hear the manuscript is accepted for publication etc.


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What to do if a conference rebuttal is closed before the specified deadline?
My paper was submitted to a conference, and they sent me a rebuttal email specifying the deadline in UTC-12 time zone.
However, when I prepared my rebuttal and tried to submit it into the system, I found that the system was closed. The time was over in my time zone but more than 12 hours were still remaining in UTC-12 time zone.
Although my paper seemed to be accepted(maybe somewhat marginally), yet I did not want to demonstrate a naive attitude.
What is the best thing to do in such a situation?

Wait and see if they fix it on their own.

There's always a person, and they're usually reasonable. Just contact the conference chair or program committee chair and ask them to let you know how to send in your rebuttal.
In short, talk to people.

Yep, it worked. The link was opened after my email, and I was able to submit my rebuttal into the system 10 hours before the specified deadline.


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Can a tweet be added to graduate research proposal?
Can I add a tweet by someone famous in the field into my research proposal to show why is it important?
I am asking this because I have not seen anything like this but people do use quotes by famous people in their thesis.
If the answer is yes, then how will I be citing it?

You can quote any source, including Twitter. Cite it in the same way you'd cite any web source and be aware that it might disappear.

I agree with @user2768 here, but want to add that it is possible to archive tweets using archive.org, so if they are important for your research you can make sure to archive them for future reference.


text:
Can I present a conference paper if I am not a researcher?
My graduate program is a non-research based. However, I am interested in writing and presenting a conference paper. Is it possible for me to do this even as I am not into research work?

What is it you intend to present?

If you write a conference paper, by definition you are a researcher!

Yes!! The main requirements for presenting a conference paper are that you have had one accepted and that you have paid the registration fees.

If I'm already a researcher, can I simply skip altogether my thesis defense? I wanted to do a PhD to be a researcher, not the other way around... WRT the original question, sure you can, anyone can, you have to worry about two things: reviewers should accept your paper and you should be able to pay the expenses to go to the conference and attend it (your institution/supervisor should probably cover that). In any case, nobody is going to ask for your research license :P

I would note that there's a real risk that you'll present good research in the wrong way. Reviewers are very sensitive to small details and can make a subconscious decision not to accept because you didn't follow a certain convention. In a research program, your supervisor will help you learn these conventions. So it helps to have someone with experience who can do a quick proofread and help you get this right. It's also a good idea to start small, and work your way up to more prestigious  (and expensive) conferences.

Of course you can submit any paper you want. There are a lot of people, for example in the industry field, that submit papers to conferences.
But as they have stated in one comment, as soon as you start preparing a paper, that per se converts you into a researcher.
Good luck!

Yes - I've attended several research presentations by people who are not "academic" researchers, and who just wanted to present the results of an interesting project.  Several companies encourage workers to submit papers as this
1) Increases the prestige of the company
2) Even if you do not patent, by publishing you have made your idea un-patentable by creating prior art.  So you've also protected your IP.  (NOTE: I'm not a lawyer)

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text:
How to list a poster on my CV?
A poster for the project I worked on was accepted at a conference. I am listed as a coauthor on the poster. I did not attend the conference, present the poster or actually help in making the poster as I had already left the lab/school when the abstract was submitted. Since I am officially listed on the submission I want to include this on my CV. I I think I should not write this under "Conference Presentations" as I did not present the work myself. How should I list this in my CV?

Personally, I list "conference presentations" on my CV and distinguish "as a speaker" and "as a contributer". Additionally, I distinguish "poster presentations" and "talks".

First, I would distinguish between paper presentations and poster presentations in your CV in general, if you don't do this already.
I suggest you list it as you normally would under "Poster Presentations". As long as you make sure that the other coauthors are listed appropriately, there is no reason why this would be an issue.
Unless you are the first author (which I assume you aren't), most people would probably assume that you're not the presenter, though this isn't too crucial. If you really want, you can specify who was the presenting author, but I think this is probably unnecessary in this case.

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text:
Do research laboratories hire international students with a Bachelor's Degree?
I intend to increase my research experience in a field not very closely related to mine (I am a chemical engineer and want to pursue Tissue Engineering). I a currently a 4th year undergraduate. I have some research experience in the field. Do I have a shot a securing a research job in a european or american research Lab or a University?

I am not sure you can call it a job, but if somehow you put it nicely as a internship, or unpaid internship, you might be lucky enough to find someone that would like to invest some time on you.
Keep in mind that apart from your will, there must be some supervisor that would be willing to guide you along the process. For that to happen, either there must a be an open position, or you have to convince them that you are worth it.
One thing you could do is not to as for income, since you mention your main goal is to upgrade research experience. If you need income at any case, then you can as for student-job positions which are common in Europe (especially in Germany). But, still the Professor will need to spend some of his funds on you.
Prepare a good motivation letter to convince the Professor, get quality recommendation letters, show some proof that you have the potential to conduct research "independently" (if you have some publications in the field that would help you), make sure you find a research group that fits you (more precisely you fit them, in the sense that you know the field they are working on, you know the tools they use for the specific research)
But since you are a Bachelor student, and I assume you don't have much to offer you should keep your demands as low as possible. Alternately, check if your university has cooperation with other universities, maybe you can go to a university that could fit you as an exchange student?!


text:
Do I publish a paper independently or ask a professor to mentor me?
I am an undergraduate studentcurrently in my 3rd year. I have worked on a project for the last year. I was thinking of writing a review paper about the topic. It was a graded project in my curriculum and I had a mentor to guide me(for one semester, after that I have worked on it independently), except that my mentor was not interested at all in my work. (I got similar opinions about the said mentor from my classmates who were working with her) Should I go to her and ask for guidance related to writing the paper or should I go ahead and try to publish it independently?

First, you should assure yourself, and then again, that the work is correct by the standards of your field. It is this point that requires insight into your topic. You know best by yourself whether you need a mentor or not.
Second, you need to 'sell' your work. This point does not require expertise in your particular niche, but it can benefit from knowledge of people in your discipline. This includes aspects such as Academic English, Writing an Abstract, Writing an Introduction, and so on. Maybe there are some trustworthy (!) persons in your discipline that could proofread it for you?

All of that is correct, but please don't go to the person that had no interest in your work the first time around. What will likely happen is that her name appears on your paper and you still don't get valuable advise.


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Getting a recommendation letter from a professor at the same university
What do graduate programs think of positive and strong recommendation letters from a professor at the same university? Are they valued more than letters from other universities?

A letter from a professor at the same institution can be extremely valuable.  I would not necessarily say that they are more valuable than equally on point letters from outside.  However, if a professor is writing a letter to a graduate admissions committee at the same institution, the letter-writer is almost certainly going to have a very good idea what the program may be looking for and how to emphasize the student's suitability for the program.  The reference writer can tailor the letter to make the best possible case, in a way that might be more difficulty for an outside writer.
Moreover, the letter-writer's influence may not end with the written letter.  I have written letters for undergraduate students at my university (some applying to graduate programs in my department, some others applying to programs in other departments).  In some cases (mostly when the students were applying to programs in my own department), I have been contacted by the other faculty members reading the applications, to get a better idea of the students' strengths and potential weaknesses.  (In my reference letters, I always invite the addressees to contact my if they have further questions about a candidate, but it is very rare to get such follow-up inquiries from departments at other institutions.)

I would add that in the case of very small research groups, this may not work out. I'm applying for a PhD in my current (Master's) supervisor's group and he is the one reviewing the applications and conducting the interviews, so it was pointless for him to write me a reference, as he would be the one reading it. Instead, I asked someone else, effectively meaning I had three referees (current supervisor + 2 letters).

@NatalieHogg:  Definitely, if you are applying for a further graduate position specifically with the letter writer (as you might under the UK system), things can be trickier.  However, in those instances, the formal application process probably isn't the most important part of landing the position.


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Is writing to prospective PIs during admissions season a good idea?
I have already submitted all my PhD applications (to US universities) and I did not write to professors before applying. Turns out this was not a good idea as in case of a couple of schools, I found out later that one of the professors I mentioned in my SoP have left the school. (I understand this makes me look careless and out of touch but their webpages were still up on the older schools' website and updated to list very recent publications)
Firstly,  I was thinking of writing to the other professors in the schools who's work I am interested in but didn't mention in the statement in order to avoid crowding it with names. Will this help mitigate the damage caused?
Secondly, I was also thinking of writing to professors at other universities I applied to to ask whether they are accepting any students? I did not do this previously because some schools discourage writing to professors directly and the professors, who are very busy don't always reply (understandably)
Thirdly, since I'm thinking of doing this in mid-january, the professors will possibly be even busier with admissions work in addition to their research and teaching duties. Would writing this late be annoying? I don't want this to have any negative effect on my application.

It's usually better to contact a potential PI than to not contact them... but you're timing is a little awkward.  The thing about contacting them is that you want to be pointed in what you're communicating.  Although asking if they are accepting students is relevant, it seems a little late for that because you've already applied.
In other words, you can't just send the typical email because it doesn't seem as relevant, even so here a couple of ways of reworking the typical approach:

Briefly discuss your interests and why you're a good fit for the lab. Then simply state that you want to alert them to your application. ...If they are interested, they will look up your application.
The other thing that comes to mind is for if you are offered an interview, which should be happening around now. You can email the professors you are interested in at that point in time and briefly discuss your interests and why you're a good fit for the lab, then say that you're excited about interviews and you hope you have a chance to meet with them at that time.

Yes, professors are busy, and you may not get a response, but I don't think writing an email could lead someone to throw out your application which they otherwise would have considered. In other words, if your email is polite and nothing weird, then I don't see how it could have a negative impact.
Hope this helps and best of luck.

Good answer. You touch upon something that has always irked me about academia (and I spent my career on the professor's side of the table, so it's not sour grapes or anything). "If I flag down a bus at a bus stop, will the driver be annoyed?" Answer: "Maybe, but it is their job to stop and deal with you." Only in academia do we worry about the fragile and irascible ego of the prof. Why? Because: just imagine that somehow the bus drivers's mood could determine whether you are allowed to get onto your connecting train.


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How would I go about doing a PhD after an M.Eng in Biomedical Engineering?
I have been accepted into Cornell for M.Eng in Biomedical Engineering. I had originally applied for an MS but since they've stopped enrolling students for MS I got into M.Eng which is an industry oriented course. I would like to get a PhD eventually in the field. Will going for an industry oriented course (M.Eng) over a research course end my hopes of getting a good PhD admit?

You don't need a master's degree to be admitted to a US PhD program.

When they told you that the MS was no longer an option, did you ask about getting admitted directly into the PhD program?

I did.... they didn't reply to that

Generally speaking, the main difference between an M.Eng and an M.S. is in research. An M.Eng is usually a course-based degree and usually does not involve any research. There is often some sort of "project" course which students will be required to take for credit, but that is still far from research.
An M.S would usually involve a research project and thesis, and it would give you exposure to the type of work a PhD student would be doing. That being said, many schools also offer course-based M.S. programs, so the name of the degree does not really mean much.
I would not recommend enrolling in an M.Eng program if you wish to study for PhD. In the U.S. in many schools having a master's degree is not a requirement for getting into a PhD program. I would advise you to inquire whether it's possible to be admitted to the PhD program at Cornell instead of the M.Eng.
For schools, the advantage of admitting students without master's degrees to PhD programs is that they will be around longer and probably have more time to do good work. In the case that the student doesn't quite meet up to their expectations, the can arrange for the student to leave with a M.S. halfway through the program. This to some extent compensates for the risk involved in admitting an undergrad (since they will likely not have much research experience).
M.S. students on the other hand have research experience. They have also written a thesis and possibly some papers. This gives the admission committee better insight into the applicants capabilities. Furthermore, a student with an M.S. degree will likely need less time to get started on their research and will not need to take as many courses, so they will probably hit the ground running once they enter the graduate program.
A student with an M.Eng degree will have a shorter PhD than the students coming in with B.S. degrees but will not have the experience the students with M.S. degrees have. So they will be at a disadvantage compared to both groups. Because of this admission to a "top 10" school would be a bit more difficult with an M.Eng degree.
Another thing to consider is that if your goal is a top 10 school, many of them give priority for PhD admission to students already pursuing M.S. degrees at their school. These are typically the schools which require master's degrees for PhD admission (such as Stanford and MIT).

Assuming I have the same research experience as an undergrad after completing the 1 year long program will I be preferred over undergraduate students applying directly for PhD?

I think this would be more of a matter of personal opinion and preference for the admission committee members. I applied directly for PhD programs as an undergrad with little research experience and I got good results in general. I ended up getting a M. Eng from a decently ranked but not top notch school and applied again and got results worse than my first time. Some of the prospective advisers I spoke to at the schools that rejected me said that my M. Eng was a disadvantage in their eyes.

That being said I still was able to get admission from a good school (quite a bit better than the place I got my M.Eng from). Not as good as Cornell though.

In the United States, the distinction between MS and M.Eng is not terribly large.  An MS is typically a somewhat more "heavy" course than an M.Eng, but the distinction is unlikely to matter to any significant degree for US Ph.D. admissions.


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Potential downside of joining a rapidly growing department
I'm considering joining an engineering department as a graduate student at a US university which has been rapidly expanding over the last few years. They don't have a lot of name recognition at this point but have a few other things going for them. They are ideally located and have excellent labs and collaborations. Over the last 6-7 years the department has jumped up ~50 spots in rankings and the college of engineering has gone from ~50 - 150+ faculty. Since most of the PhD candidates who joined after this expansion started are still in school, there is very little record to show which careers PhD graduates go into and how they do over a time of few years.
What could be the potential downsides of joining such a department?

I think you did a pretty good job of realizing the biggest problem: no idea of where any of this will actually go and how it will pan out.  A sufficiently excellent and driven student/researcher can go far on fairly little, but those not at the extreme end of ability tend to need the benefits of the connections their advisor provides and the reputation their university bestows.  Another off the top of my head: the department may lack a cohesive identity and may be subject to volatile internal politics a more stabilized department would not.

The danger of rapid expansion is that the bubble might burst.  And it might be a poorly organized bubble.

My impression is that you are looking at the wrong factors here. For PhD training, department-level name recognition, or where in the usual rankings the department is placed, is both fairly irrelevant. The same can also be said about where students of the department usually go afterwards.
During your PhD, you will work first and foremost with exactly one advisor. You need to evaluate whether your advisor is strong and a good fit, and what her or his students usually do afterwards. The rest of the department is not irrelevant, but ultimately not nearly as important as your advisor.
Consequently, look at the professors in your field in the department who would likely end up your advisors. Would you think it would great for you to work with them? If yes, go there and don't mind whether the department is a few places down in some ranking, If no, don't go there even if they are "up and coming".


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Is the minimum GPA required for Graduate school a cut-off criteria or a general guideline?
I am a senior year undergrad student from a prestigious institute in India. I intend to pursue a PhD after graduating. While researching universities, I stumbled upon the fact that many of the top schools have a minimum GPA requirement. For example UCSD has 3.4/4 as its minimum requirement.
My GPA is 7.2 on a scale of 10. It is quite above average in my school, but it translates to a 2.9 on a scale of 4 which looks pretty bad. DOes this mean that my application is likely to be rejected outright?
Also, I heard that most universities don't consider converted scores (by WES, for example) in a good light. I have research experience in my undergraduate years to offset the GPA. I really hope that the universities have a look at that.
Should I not apply to schools with such a requirement?

There's no absolute here—it really depends on the program in question. Some departments are stricter about cutoffs than others. It depends a lot on the number of applications they receive, and how selective they need to be. However, I know that many good departments don't screen on GPA alone.
However, even if you're GPA is not "elite," that's not the end of the world, so long as you have the research experience and the letters of recommendation to support you. (A student from our department was recently admitted to a top-10 engineering program in the US on the basis of his research experience—his GPA was pedestrian at best.)

Fundamentally, graduate schools are looking for evidence that you can successfully complete the program and graduate. So to get in, you have to make a convincing argument that this is the case.
Your GPA is unimpressive, but there are a few things that can make up for it. Two of them are test scores and faculty recommendations. What you need to do in both cases to rank much higher on these metrics than the typical "2.9" student. Then the fact that "my GPA ... is quite above average in my school," will start to count for something. Specifically, it may get your graduate school thinking, "This "2.9" GPA is at least a 3.2 or 3.3 on our scale, maybe more."
You're still not home free, but this is where your research comes into play. If you can convince the school that you have exceptional research potential, they may think, well, this guy is a "doer" who will "ace" the thesis, and get 3.2-3.3 in his courses, just enough to get the 3.4 average. Or it could be that the required 3.4 represents "insurance" against a graduating requirement of 3.2 or 3.3.
You'll probably want to get more and better advice from a faculty adviser. But if you do apply to the school of your choice, the above represent things to keep in mind.


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Possibly fraudulent journal: cite or not to cite?
When I was doing literature review, I came across a paper published in a journal Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology.
Now, I can't find this paper anywhere else, no citations, or anything. Just the pdf that I linked above. Also, the journal website looks shady as links don't work and it just does not have the make or look of an academic journal. Additionally, I couldn't even find anything about the authors.
What should be done in such cases? Should the paper be completely ignored or put in the review section?

While following up on the journal, I found a list [http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/] that lists this entire group as predatory. In light of the same, shall I close the question or leave it open for similar cases when it might not be sure if the journal is predatory or not? Moderators? @ff524

the ] is breaking the link in your comment.
That list is very useful anyway.

The link again:
http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/

The reasons these journals are called predatory is because they prey on unwary researchers looking for places to publish their work, tricking them into publishing with them rather than in legitimate places.  So just because a paper is in a predatory journal does not mean that it is necessarily bad work.
However, this paper still needs to be treated with greatly heightened suspicion: it should be assumed that it has not had any peer review, and that the authors are unfamiliar enough with the area and with the normal practices of science that they could be tricked by a predatory journal.  Alternately, they may have sent the work to the journal intentionally because they needed another line on their CV and knew the paper was not going to survive real peer review.
Thus, although such a paper might be legitimate, it is also very likely to be of low quality and may well even be fraudulent or simply nonsense.  It can also cause trouble for you if you cite it, as readers may think that you are not informed enough to tell the difference between real research and predatory crap.
I would thus suggest treating the paper like a random PDF found on the web: it might be usable as a primary source (e.g., like a newspaper opinion piece or a personal essay), or to point you for looking for similar information elsewhere.  If this information has only ever been published in this one paper in a fake journal, however, it should be considered to effectively not be published at all: the context in which it has been found casts so much doubt on its likelihood of being legitimate, and anything substantive will likely develop multiple real publications over time.

If this information has only ever been published in this one paper in a fake journal, however, it should be considered to effectively not be published at all — While I agree completely, but the choice to cite or not should be based entirely on the content of the paper.  Garbage does sometimes get published in otherwise respectable journals, and seminal results do sometimes circulate only as unpublished manuscripts. Trusting the editors is no substitute for actually reading the paper.

@JeffE Who said you can't cite unpublished work?

You did. "Anything substantive will develop multiple real publications over time."

@JeffE I stand by both of my statements: you can cite something unpublished if you find that you can believe it and find it to be significant.  And if it is significant, then within a couple of years there will probably be something better to cite...

...except when there isn't. One of my recent journal papers cites an otherise unpublished one-paragraph usenet post (to sci.math) as a primary source, because it's the primary source. Sure, there was published followup work by other authors, which I also cited, but I still had to cite the usenet post.

@JeffE That sounds like an astoundingly unusual case to me... is this typical in your area of work?

I changed the last sentence to include "likely". Is that better?

@AkkaDemic Yes, much better.

The question of whether to cite should be based on whether the work provides relevant context, whether you have been informed by the work, or if you have built off of the work.
The question of whether the work appears in a fraudulent journal is a red herring.
Was the work useful to you? If yes, cite it.
Did you build off of this work? If yes, cite it.
Does it provide useful context related to the problem that you're trying to solve? If yes, cite it.


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Is it acceptable to write reports in the IEEE standard paper format?
I am an undergrad engineering student working on some project with my colleagues , and we are asked to submit a report by the end of it.
So is it a good thing to write the report in the IEEE standard paper format.
http://www.ieee.org/documents/MSW_A4_format.doc
If not, what are some other standards forms that we may use?
This might not be the most suitable place for this question but I figured out that there could be a lot of professors and instructors here.

As an EE student, I used to submit reports in IEEE format (if none was specified by the instructor). So yes, it's perfectly acceptable in my experience.
However, some professors prefer more whitespace so they can write comments while grading student reports. I therefore switched to the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science format, which has much larger margins.


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Citing terse works, or wordy comprehensible works?
I am in a position where I am writing both more professional articles, and
supplementary articles to undergraduates. The supplementary works is meant to prepare the students for the graduate courses. This is in mathematics, and analysis in particular. I want the notes to be self contained, and therefore I cite, or refer to proofs and further discussions on the lemmas and corollaries that are used. This should also be used for further references, "if you want to know more about metric spaces, please look at Kreyszig [4]".
I have a wide variety of books I can cite, I can pick any of the big books used in Calculus. Calculus by Adams etc Calculus: Early Transcendentals by James Stewart. On the other hand I could refer to the more classical works by Apostol or Rudin (Principles of mathematical analysis)
Choosing the more classical works is good for preping the stundents, but for a first touch these can be a bit terse. Also the proofs in for an example Rudin are a bit on the short side, whilst Adams is very wordy
Would citing both, for every lemma and theorem, make the citations too daunting?
Long story short:
When should one cite the terse material, and when to choose the lengthier comprehensible works. How does one choose the appropriate level to cite from when writing an article, paper or notes ?

I'd give both, explaining briefly what is to be expected of which reference, something along the lines:

A brief introduction can be found in [1] while [2] gives a terse summary and [3] develops proof 42 in detail.

(substitute whatever citation style you use for [1] etc.)

Ouch. What are these words "[]" and "[]"? How do I read this?

Those brackets are just meant to be placeholders for citations. Just substitute the style you want/have to use (e.g., AuthorA and AuthorB 1842)

@MichaelMauderer: thanks - yes that is what I meant.

No, @MichaelMauderer, those brackets are typographical shorthand for footnote markers, not nouns! "Mertens [15] provides a brief introduction; see Gunter, Günter, Gunther, and Petrikov [8] and Abadeer [1,2] for detailed proofs."

@JeffE yes they are now, after the answer has been edited. My comment was about a previous version (see edit history)


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Do's and don'ts when writing an academic book
I am currently writing a book in mathematics. I have written a few pages and often stumble upon the question "is this good pedagogy" or is this "good typography". The chances of my work getting published is slim, but I am using it for a personal collection of notes and ideas in addition to learning writing a longer text. Below is an excerpt from my notes

An older version of my notes can be found here.As now the notes are dividied into a somewhat strict pattern with lemmas, propositions, corollary with theorems reserved for the main purpose of each section.  I have a ton of questions about layout, design how formal to be in my writing, and how spiced up I should make the text. I see modern calculus books like to divide the text into blocks (a different color for theorems, proofs etc) while published articles tend to keep a much more minimalistic presence. I just do not know if I am on a good path, or if I need to do some fundamental changes.
To summarize

What are the do's and dont when writing longer notes (mainly aimed at undergrads).
Are there any books or literature on writing longer academic texts?

My first thought was "why does he spell those Danish words incorrectly?" :) My next (more serious) thought was that using \mapsto felt odd given the wording (I felt that it ought to be an = given the word sette). But this might be overly specific to the example.

From a quick glance at your file, you seem to be doing a lot of things right -- I would be pleased reading a book written like that about algebraic combinatorics :) A random observation on design: "figur (2.3)" should be "figur 2.3", as parenthesized reference numbers usually are understood to refer to formulas and nothing else. My pet peeve with mathematical writing is the failure to separate the introduction-for-readers from the introduction-for-reviewers (the former being high-faluting and obscure, the latter elementary and readable), but seeing that you don't yet have an introduction...

Your first question is too broad and also too opinion-based for this platform in my opinion. Your second question is fine and I strongly suggest to restrict your question to this.

There are many books and online resources on mathematical writing.  These range from style guides that deal with issues from type setting to copy editing to books that talk about mathematical writing at a somewhat higher level.   Here are a few of my favorite sources:
Nicholas J. Higham.  Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences.  SIAM 1998.  http://www.worldcat.org/title/handbook-of-writing-for-the-mathematical-sciences/oclc/697886419
Steven G. Krantz.  A primer of mathematical writing : being a disquisition on having your ideas recorded, typeset, published, read, and appreciated.  American Mathematical Society, 1997.   http://www.worldcat.org/title/primer-of-mathematical-writing-being-a-disquisition-on-having-your-ideas-recorded-typeset-published-read-and-appreciated/oclc/797735421
SIAM Style Manual for Journals and Books.  http://www.siam.org/journals/pdf/stylemanual.pdf

In general, my advice would be

look at other books or lecture notes and copy the things you like, change the things you don't;
get feedback from your target audience;
don't overthink it for your first draft: you can (and likely will have to) edit it multiple times anyway.

But mostly I want to recommend Paul Halmos classical essay, How to write mathematics, L’Enseignement Mathématique, Vol.16 (1970).

On a similar note, Serre had a talk on "how to write mathematics badly" (google for the video). And here are lecture notes by Knuth and others: http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematical_writing.pdf

@darijgrinberg thanks for pointing out Serre's delightful lecture (here's the link for the sake of posterity)!

Also, on tangentially related note (and in the spirit of the season), there's Tom Lehrer's performance (the relevant bit starts at 4m50).


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How to deal with multiple affiliations as an author?
From the upcoming autumn on, I will be a tenured full-time professor at a regional university. In addition, I will have a 10% side job at an extramural research institution. And on top of that, I'll be an adjunct professor (only title and right to teach and act as thesis supervisor, no contract nor money) at another university.
My question is: What is the correct way to deal with these affiliations on potential publications?
The options I see are the following:

On each and every publication, I list all three affiliations. I am not completely comfortable with that, though, as the main draw of being a professor is independence - and in the 10% side job, I am of course not independent. Also, it's possibly questionable whether the other university should receive credit for having me as unpaid adjunct lecturer.
I always list my main affiliation (i.e. the university which pays my main salary), and add the other affiliations when this really applies (i.e. if a work is clearly the result of being affiliated with the respective organization).

Is there other options? Or anything in between? For my academic image, the combination of all three affiliations is certainly not a bad thing, but I feel putting something on my homepage, in my CV or in a public bio is probably different to assigning work outputs to organizations that pay or don't pay salaries.

Who is funding your research on your papers? Unlikely to be the one where you adjunct.

That's what I tried to say: The adjunct organization doesn't pay anything, but is a prestigious school. The university that provides me with tenure pays my research - and so does the external research institute - but only with respect to some clearly defined projects I contribute to.

Does this answer your question? Academic affiliation: which to choose?

you would be paid if you taught right?

Also, what are the downsides of listing institution #2? I don't see any

Some editors want to know all of your affiliations because it affects what peer reviewers they send your paper to.  It's especially important for grant review panels to make sure there isn't a bias (or a perception of bias)

@Buffy: Some papers will be funded by university #1, some by the external institute. None by university #2.

@AzorAhai: As an adjunct teaching professor in Germany, you don't get paid for teaching. And the downside of listing institution #2 (the external institute) is that publications have to be approved by the institute director, whereas as a university professor you can publish whatever you want without asking for anybody's permission.

@Michael If you're an adjunct teaching professor, what do you get paid to do? As for that, well that makes sense. But I imagine if they have strict rules on that sort of thing, they also do on whether or not you must list them.

I'm professor at a university, which pays my bills, and I'm also affiliated with another institution, without any money involved. I do as in 2: I put always first my university affiliation and second the other affiliation for papers in collaboration.
It should be noted that in the recent past I had to fight with a journal because the copy editor arbitrarily changed the order of affiliations just to compact the list of affiliations.

Thanks for this asnwer. If I understand you correctly, you only put the other/second affiliation for those papers created in collaboration. For the other papers, it's just your main affiliation, right?

@Michael Yes, exactly. Note also that in my university the Department should approve any secondary affiliation, and messing up with the order of affiliations would not be seen favourably when asking permission for renewal.


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What's a realistic workload per blackboard hour for teachers during the semester?
There is this excellent thread about teaching workloads across the world on Academia SE: Is 100 hours per year of teaching a heavy load for a lecturer?
I would now like to continue this discussion with respect to the actual workload teaching staff face. I know that teaching is not only blackboard/classroom hours, but of hours of preparation, grading, examinations etc. Since exams and grading usually happen during the semester break at universities, I am more interested in the workload teaching staff face during the semester. Of course, creating a new class from scratch consumes an enormous amount of work, so this is not what I would like to use as baseline. I'd much rather go for your typical class of well-established contents, maybe undergrad stuff, for which only occasionally a minor update of materials is required - and not a complete makeover every year. To formulate the question precisely: What is your actual workload during the semester per blackboard hour in classes that belong to your established portfolio?

Do you mean "teaching staff" as in staff on teaching-only contracts? Or perhaps academic staff, whose responsibilities include research, teaching and admin?

Since exams and grading usually happen during the semester break at universities ---  FYI, this is rare in the U.S., in which many short quizzes, homework assignments, various longer homework projects, "major" tests (3 to 5 per class per semester), and final exams are all created and graded prior to semester breaks. The amount of time this involves will vary greatly, depending on how familiar one is with the assessment aspects of the course (e.g. from having taught it before, from being part of a team teaching several sections, etc.) and how much T.A./grader help is available (if any).

I mention this because for me it seemed that well over 25% of my time in some positions (not all) was spent with grading student assignments. This was for mathematics. The amount of time is much higher for the people I've known who teach writing intensive courses (e.g. literature, philosophy, history, etc.). They often had several large stacks of student essays/papers on/around their desks in various stages of grading, no matter when I came by their office.

@Dmitry Savostyanov: Does that really matter for my question?

In my opinion this is hugely course-dependent, and standards vary a lot between universities and disciplines.
If your task in the class is really almost only lecturing (e.g., you have assistants that run any class projects etc., and who answer most of the "standard" student questions), and you already have everything prepared, your actual effort for the course may be close to the "blackboard time" - but even in such cases, you probably want to count in at least half an hour before each class to refresh your memory on what material you plan to cover in a specific unit.
If you have any other tasks at all in the course, "blackboard time" quickly becomes a very bad proxy for your actual effort. In my experience, course planning, answering student questions, office hours, organizing and/or holding supervision sessions, giving feedback on in-class exercises, dealing with exceptions, preparing and grading exams, or dealing with teaching infrastructure can take a large, and highly variable, amount of time. These factors are also virtually independent of how often you actually speak in front of the class. Not all classes have all of those activities, but most classes have at least a few of the above elements.
In the course I recently wrapped up, I would estimate that a maximum of 1/5 of my actual work was done "in class", while 4/5 was preparing, grading/giving feedback, and organizing. However, in other classes I have spent close to 70% or 80% of my course work time "in class". It really depends on the course, your role in it, and how effective you personally are. Unless you have good reasons to believe this will not be the case I would assume that your workload outside of class will at least be as high as in-class (i.e., assume that if you are teaching one full day a week you will spend at least another day dealing with the various paraphernalia of teaching, even if you have everything set up and prepared - if this is not the case, I personally calculate that I will spend at the minimum one full day to prepare a two-hour session from scratch).

Already gave you thumbs up. But you could add something about the seniority and prestige of the lecturer/prof. A fresh-caught junior-assistant-associate type is going to be expected to teach a lot of classes. A senior-already-tenured-many-awards-and-grants type is going to get special treatment and be allowed to pick and choose the classes she teaches. I recall one guy in particular, wound up teaching three grad classes during his research associate term because he wanted to. And nearly the entire department wound up attending. And his homework assignments shut down the department.

A fresh-caught junior-assistant-associate type is going to be expected to teach a lot of classes — @puppetsock That really depends on your department.  In some departments, assistant professors are deliberately given lighter teaching loads, with only small grad-level classes, so that they can better develop their research programs.

@JeffE In my department, the highest teaching load tends to land on mid-career Associate Profs. Assistant Professors are shielded for the reasons you outline, and Full Profs often have enough gravitas (and high-profile other obligations) to get out of some of the more annoying teaching duties if they choose so. But the system is also different to the US, in that there typically are more Associate than Full Profs.

Here's an imperfect guideline
Professor Workload

Lecture, Discussion

1 office hour per class
1 hour per credit per class for preparation
1 hour per credit (per section if not multi-section lecture hall) per class for lecture, or discussion
1 hour per credit per section per class for grading
a section maximum of 24 students, minimum of 8 or the section gets closed

sections may overload to 32 students, or higher during a recession

Laboratory (Sciences), Studio (Arts), Seminar (Humanities and Research)

1 office hour per class
1 hour per credit per class for preparation
2 hours per credit per section per class for laboratory, studio, or seminar
1 hour per credit per section per class for grading
a section maximum of 18 students, minimum of 6 or the section gets closed

Fieldwork, Physical Education

1 office hour per class
1 hour per credit per class for preparation
3 (4 at graduate level) hours per section per credit per class for fieldwork
1 hour per credit per section per class for grading
a section is how many a single person could supervise

your preparation is frontloaded in creating a syllabus
grading could be offload to teaching assistants
max 1 teaching assistant per section

The position Department Chair counts as a load for each term
A published research counts as one load for a school year
A Department requires at least 5 actively researching professors

active researching is defined as a published research within the last 3 years
this is an accreditation maintenance requirement

At most Universities (before the Great Recession) with 3/3

3 office hours
9 hours preparation
9 hours lecture/discussion
total 21 hours per week before research and service
270 hours in class out of 630 hours teaching
TAs does grading
TAs leads Laboratory, Studio, and Seminar

At most Colleges (before the Great Recession) with 4/4

a typical lecture/discussion class is 3 credits
4 office hours
12 hours preparation
12 hours lecture/discussion
12 hours grading
total 30 hours per week before research and service
360 hours in class out of 900 hours teaching

At most Colleges (before the Great Recession) with 3/2 = 4.5/3 weighted load

a typical laboratory/studio/seminar class is 2 credits laboratory/studio/seminar and 1 credit discussion
3/2 office hours
9/6 hours preparation
3/2 hours discussion
12/8 hours laboratory/studio/seminar
9/6 hours grading
total 36/24 hours per week before research and service
300 hours in class out of 900 hours teaching

Teaching Light Hybrid Classes 3/2 = 4.5/3 weighted load

a light hybrid class is 3 credits lecture and 1 credit laboratory
3/2 office hours
12/8 hours preparation
9/6 hours lecture
6/4 hours laboratory
12/8 hours grading
total 42/28 per week before research and service
375 hours in class out of 1050 hours teaching

Teaching Medium Hybrid Classes 2/2 = 4/4 weighted load

a medium hybrid class is 3 credits lecture, 1 credit laboratory, and 1 credit discussion
2 office hours
10 hours preparation
6 hours lecture
4 hours laboratory
2 hours discussion
10 hours grading
total 34 per week before research and service
360 hours in class out of 1020 hours teaching

Teaching Heavy Hybrid Classes 2/2 = 4/4 weighted load

a heavy hybrid class is 3 credits lecture and 2 credits laboratory
2 office hours
10 hours preparation
6 hours lecture
8 hours laboratory
10 hours grading
total 36 per week before research and service
420 hours in class out of 1080 hours teaching


text:
Should I tell my advisor that I have an autism spectrum disorder?
I am a graduate student and as the title says, I have an autism spectrum disorder. My advisor is a very nice person, at least, that is the impression I have gotten. The last few months however, I worry that I have made myself misunderstood many times because of my failure of communicating or not following certain social codes. I have not done anything that is inappropriate at all, I just might have come off at times a tiny, tiny bit rude, which I did not mean to be! In social situations I often get nervous and I think it might have shown in some situations. I am considering whether I should tell him about my autism spectrum disorder or not - I don't want to have it as an excuse for any behaviour, just more of an explanation and maybe better understanding in the future.
Are there any general guidelines on what to do in cases like these?

(The linked question is not exclusively about advisor, but some of the answers address it.)

If you don't want to have it as an excuse, just tell him that you don't expect him to excuse your behavior, just want him to understand it in case he finds it perplexing.

As you propose, this has an obvious helpful component.
What's a possible down-side? Well, medical/personal issues are protected information (thinking about the U.S., at least), and in most situations anyone else in whom you've confided is not allowed to disclose anything about it to anyone else. We can see the sense in this. However, it does sometimes create a burden and/or awkwardness, insofar as the people in whom you've confided are prohibited from using what they know to explain any questionable actions on your part to anyone else...
The operational point, then, is to pay attention to any close interactions with people outside your immediate group, in whom you've confided, that might generate a need for explanation.

You raise a valid point, good sir!

Are there legal statutes prohibiting anyone from disclosing anyone else's medical information? Or does it depend on the specific company, field, etc?

In the US, there is a body of policy "HIPAA" (Health Information Privacy...) that approximately prohibits such disclosure... I'm not a lawyer...

@paulgarrett I'm not a lawyer either but my understanding is that the HIPAA privacy rule only applies to health care and related organizations. If your institution provides your healthcare then this might apply to them, but you can't assume that all medical info is always protected, at least not by HIPAA.

@Robert, I agree, HIPAA applies primarily to health care people, but that and related university policies and (varying) state privacy laws seem (in my anecdotal experience) to say that information offered/obtained "in confidence" is protected. At the very least, people can and have filed grievances about such things, rightly or wrongly.

I see no reason not to tell him, or anyone else you work closely with.  telling your co-workers about this condition will eliminate these concerns about coming off as rude.

A disability is something you can take pride in overcoming.  The Deaf people in my office certainly do.  Others, such as amputees and the learning disabled, can choose to conceal their disability or they can freely admit to it.  You get different benefits either way.
I've chosen to trust that people will regard my dyslexia and ADD the way I do: as just two of thousands of challenges I deal with every day.  You should watch me try to finger spell.  It's pathetic.  :) Still I try.  If you worked with me I'd rather know what your deal is then wonder.


text:
Can I be admitted into a grad school program at a different university if I quit my current program?
I have completed the first year of my grad school program, but did very poorly during my second semester. I received low grades in two of my courses and failed the third due to health issues and an accompanying bout with depression. The problem is I no longer want to continue this MS program; I chose to enroll at this university because of the opportunity (it is #1 for my field of study), reduced tuition etc. Instead I want to apply for a five year Doctor in Psychology program elsewhere. What are my chances of getting into a competitive program if I dropped out of my masters? Should I complete my degree in order to avoid having the blemish of dropping out of grad school on my record? It seems like a waste of time and counteractive to pursuing my passions. I'm also concerned about the low GPA. What is my best course of action?

It doesn't hurt to apply.

With poor grades, it will be very difficult to get accepted at another program unless they are in in different fields (i.e., you could argue that during the course of the MS in psych, that you discovered that you have no talent for psych and that you want to go into a PhD for architecture or astrophysics). But that isn't the case for you.
However, you should know that you do not have to withdraw from your MS in order to apply to PhD programs. You can stay in your MS and apply to PhDs. You should note this in your application and state your intention to withdraw from the MS if you get into the PhD.
It will help your application TREMENDOUSLY if you can get a faculty member at your current institution to speak to why your performance was poor but that you have a latent talent that isn't reflected in your grades.
I should note that the likelihood that PhD programs will accept you given the poor grades will be pretty slight so I would not get your hopes up too much (or spend too much time and money applying to other programs).
Most "transfer" type students that we accept at the PhD level tend to want to transfer because of: 1) their original program is dissolving; 2) their adviser has left (either physically or mentally); 3) other issues about the original program that was not apparent when they applied.


text:
When should you move on from a postdoc position?
Suppose that in your sub-field there are half a dozen research groups on your continent that are acknowledged to be "world class". You have had the good fortune to do your MSc research in one, and your PhD in another. You are now a postdoc in a third. Your current group is large and well-funded, and your position there is secure for the foreseeable future. You realistically hope to get a faculty position in a good research university within the next 3-5 years.
One day, you are offered a postdoc position in a second-tier research group. Should you consider taking it, in order to broaden your academic horizons? Does the answer change depending on how long you've spent in your current postdoc? Are there other relevant considerations? Assume that you cannot expect to get a better offer within the next year.
Bonus discussion points:
What if you're instead offered

a faculty position at the second-tier institution?
a postdoc position at one of the first-tier institutions you've already had an association with?
a postdoc position at a first-tier institution that you haven't already had an association with?

I have some views on these questions that I'm happy to share, but I'd like to see what other people think first.

I'm a little confused by the question, as you seem to be asking "Should I give up a better position of type X for a distinctly worse position of type X for the sake of variety?"  To me the answer is a clear no, and it doesn't even make much sense to me that you would be offered the second position in these circumstances (did you apply for it?).  Given how clear-thinking you've shown yourself to be on this site recently, I strongly suspect that I'm missing some nuance of your question.  As a side note: I thought that postdocs were almost by definition not "secure for the foreseeable future".

(Being offered a tenure-track faculty position at the second-tier institution is of course a totally different kettle of fish.  The short answer is that in the current job market, any tenure-track position that is broadly acceptable to you -- though not what you are shooting for -- should be given very serious consideration.  You should talk this out with a lot of people, including all your academic mentors.)

The recieved wisdom - or at least, my impression of it - amongst my peers is that it's best to move around as a postdoc, and indeed that there's a stigma/career damage attached to staying in one place too long. I'm therefore interested in exploring the extent to which people think this is true, and what weight people give to the competing considerations for career decisions at this level. Of course, the situation is somewhat hypothetical, to remove a couple of the most obvious "forcing terms" in the equation.

Maybe it would help to specify your field.  At least in mathematics, the opposite is true: the more prestigious the postdoc, the longer it lasts, and the more likely that you can do just one postdoc position and then get a tenure-track job.  Most people don't want to accept long strings of temporary jobs, so if you do too many postdocs / spend more than a certain number of years in a postdoc, employers think you had trouble finding a tenure-track job.  Also the quality of your postdoctoral institution is related to the quality of your tenure track job, so trading down on that is dangerous.

Physics. So there are two common flavours of postdoc: independent postdoctoral fellowships, and tied projects where you are paid from a PI's grants. The former are more prestigious; the latter can be quite long-lived if your PI is rich and likes you. ;-) If it makes a difference, I'm thinking largely about the second sort when posing this question.

Hmm.  In my field a "postdoc" is a certain kind of temporary faculty position, at least partially funded by the university and with some teaching obligations.  It sounds like the "postdoc" you're describing is rather different.  I don't specifically see why what I would say to a math postdoc wouldn't also be applicable here, but I don't want to leave an advice-type answer when I am not confident that it applies to your situation.

@PeteL.Clark postdocs of the kind the OP describes are the common one in CS as well, for example. A university-funded postdoc is much less common.

@Suresh: Come to think of it, we have NSF postdocs in math.  They are shorter (2 years) and have no teaching.  There are not many of these, and they are quite prestigious.  However, it is fairly common for them to be combined with a university postdoc to extend the duration and give some teaching opportunities.  It is always interesting to learn how other fields do things.  (Question: if physics postdocs have no teaching, doesn't that mean that tenure track physics professors begin with almost no teaching experience?)

Often people get some teaching experience assisting with classes during their PhD. And few professors will turn down free offers of help with their teaching load. But yes. Noone claimed it was a sensible system...

@PeteL.Clark Math postdocs typically aren't postdoctoral fellowships in the typical sense of the word. Rather, the titles are things like instructor, lecturer or visiting assistant professor.

@Zach H: It's complicated.  (I sort of spaced out on the complications in some previous comments, though they are certainly well known to me as a former postdoc and current hirer of postdocs.  In fact, I was a foreign postdoc in Montreal working at two different institutions, and the vexing details of that are now flooding back to me.)  What we call a "postdoc" in math is often a shorthand for a hybrid position.  For instance at UGA "postdoc" is an abbreviation for "Postdoctoral Teaching and Research Associate", and this really does mean two different positions rolled into one.

@PeteL.Clark I don't know about physics, but yes it's quite common for entering CS tenure-track faculty to have zero teaching experience (apart from TAships and the occasional fill-in lecture) even if they've done a postdoc.

"Discussion" isn't really how SE is supposed to work. However, I think the answer to your questions are relatively clear-cut (at least to me):

you are offered a postdoc position in a second-tier research group. Should you consider taking it, in order to broaden your academic horizons?

Why? You have a broad horizon, you have seen three top institutions before even becoming a faculty member. Go if the new position offers you something you are currently missing (such as a nicer place to live), but I would certainly not move just for the sake of it.

[you are offered a ] a faculty position at the second-tier institution?

If I like the place, I'll take this offer without a second thought. Expecting to become faculty directly at one of the five top institutions seems too much to ask for.

a postdoc position at one of the first-tier institutions you've already had an association with?

Did you like it there better than in your current job? If yes, take the offer. If no, stay.

a postdoc position at a first-tier institution that you haven't already had an association with?

More or less same answer as for the first bullet. You have seen a lot of places already, you do not need to change jobs just for the sake of it. If there is something you think the new institution will do better, then go for it. If not, stay. There is no life achievement for visiting each top institution in your field.

One might go as far as to say that the whole point of a postdoc is to transition into some kind of permanent job, whether it be a faculty position or a non-academic position (although it's typically the former). Moving to another postdoc doesn't make sense unless your hand is being forced in some way, given the base conditions you've described.

As promised, I'll attempt to answer my own question. I'm pleasantly surprised that to date, comments and answers amount to "why would you move (unless you want to)?". This is clearly a very sensible answer, yet it doesn't accord with my own experience of academic career advice (hence the original question). It would be interesting to know whether other people have also gained the impression that "it's important to move around as a postdoc" - perhaps this is field- or region-dependent?
It seems (@PeteL.Clark) that the implied meaning of "postdoc" is also not necessarily uniform across all fields. I'm focussing here on postdocs who are supported by funds secured by their PI, and who are therefore expected to work (predominantly) on a given research project. To my knowledge, this is the most common form of "postdoc" in (at least) the sciences.
As @suresh observed, "the whole point of a postdoc is to transition into some kind of permanent job". So, why would you quit one postdoc for another? For completeness, let's start with the most obvious reasons, which I deliberately tried to exclude when constructing this question:

The funding for your current position has been exhausted;
You are offered a position that is clearly a 'step up', academically, from your current position;
You are offered a position that offers something that is sufficiently attractive to you personally to justify the move (e.g. closer to family, nicer living environment, better pay, etc etc).

What are the other potential benefits associated with moving? Possibilities include

Exposure to new people, new ideas, new ways of doing things - not everyone approaches research in the same way, and not every department is organised along the same lines: it's good to see some different perspectives;
Experience of different research questions - the research focus of the new postdoc is unlikely to be identical to that of your current position;
"A change is as good as a rest" - a move can provide practical and intellectual stimulation, and may lead to a boost in productivity (particularly if it allows you to shake off additional responsibilities for a time);
It raises your profile in the wider academic community - humans are conditioned to pay more attention to changes than to continuity;
You get to remind a range of influential people (your referees; research groups that you apply to) that you exist, have attractive qualities, and are in the job market.

Potential downsides might include

Lost time - the process of winding down your research in one place, transporting your entire life to a different city/country, and getting set up for research in the new place will probably severely reduce your output over several months;
Dealing with all the hassles (and, potentially, the expense) of relocation;
You effectively remove yourself from the job market for a time - realistically, you are not going to be able to move again for a while, even if a better position comes along;
Signalling of limited ambition - people may question why you are taking another postdoc and not concentrating on obtaining a personal research grant/a faculty position;
Reduced opportunity to benefit from the work you've already done - if, say, your research group has spent the last decade getting to the point of sending a rover to Mars, it is probably not a sensible career move to leave a month before it lands.

There are also various factors which may be either positive or negative, depending upon the precise circumstances in which you find yourself: the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two research groups in question; the personalities involved; and so forth.
Given that the single biggest factor against moving is the time cost, it seems plausible to argue that there is a "minimum length" for a postdoc to be truly profitable. I suggest this is of the order of 2-3 years. Thus, all else being equal, there is limited benefit to moving until you've spent at least 3 years in your present position. There is also little benefit to moving if you can reasonably expect to secure a clear "promotion" (e.g. a personal research grant or faculty position) within the next 2 years.
On this analysis, there is perhaps a short window in the middle of one's "postdoc years" where a sideways move can make sense. This is where the different classes of institution come into play. If, during this window, you can move to an entirely new first-class institution, then you should do so: the benefits are likely to outweigh the losses. However, moving to an institution you have already had an association with is less valuable, as you have already gained most of the "new experiences" that such a move might otherwise provide. A move from a first-tier to a second-tier institution is unlikely to be sensible, unless you can identify specific exceptional circumstances.

When should you move on from a postdoc position?

If and when you feel you'll be able to further your research better elsewhere, or get inspired/motivated to do other work elsewhere.
If and when you feel mistreated, abused, burned out etc.
Perhaps - to follow your significant other to wherever they're going, or to move with them someplace where both of you can lead a fulfilling life, or to someplace better to raise children etc.
When your contract expires...


text:
One page PhD research proposal in marine biology - Denmark
I am applying for a marine biology orientated PhD in Denmark and they ask for the following:
A research proposal/description of your approach to the above project (max one page excluding references)
The project already has a defined topic although it is quite vague. I am unsure what is expected in terms on content and format for the research proposal.
Has anyone successfully applied for a DK PhD and has submitted this type of documents? Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.

In general (I have no knowledge of DK procedures), when assessing such proposals it is normal to look for:
A title that captures the main theme.
A description of the main theme and its wider context (existing knowledge, why the theme matters).
How your proposal will fill gaps in knowledge.
The methods you hope to use or develop.
The difficulties and risks you foresee, and how you think you might overcome them or change your work to avoid them.
Evidence that the work timetable is suitable for the time needed for a PhD.
Your present expertise and qualification, and the sort of collaboration and help you need from supervisors.
It is possible to do this in one page if you discipline yourself to be concise and not to get carried away with descriptive prose.

Thank you! So helpful!

@Karl Thanks. I add a personal opinion based on my own experience as an employer of marine scientists of all sorts. Too many marine biologists lack numerical skills, for various reasons, If you have any competence with numbers or mathematics, be sure in application or interview to let people know you are able to tackle some numerical/quantitative/statistical/mathematical work, no matter how small. It will put you at an advantage in research and in jobs.

yes, I have been through this process myself and recently finished a PhD at a Danish university. The already defined topic is purposefully vague -- a PhD is not about following someone else's ideas, but learning how to cultivate and carry through your own ideas. The requested short research proposal is meant to give the evaluation committee an idea of what direction you would like to take, research-wise, but more importantly, it is for them to get a glimpse of your critical thinking skills and baseline knowledge of the topic area. Perhaps specify methods you think are suitable, or highlight gaps in knowledge that could be filled by your research during the time frame of your PhD? Good luck.

It is clear to me that whatever you will write, it will be part of your application evaluation.
Follow guidelines to write scientific proposals, and compress whatever you write in one page, then you are done.
Please avoid survivorship bias: let's say that this proposal compose 20 points over 100 of the applicants rating system. A succesful applicant, who obtained only 1 point of the 20 available may provide you their proposal, and you may find yourself getting 1 point by "getting inspired" by their proposal, rather than 5 points for "finding your inner creativity" for the proposal...