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How to choose a good grading curve for yes/no exams?
I teach a certain course where I think the best way to test knowledge is using yes/no questions. However, with a simple yes/no exam, a student can just answer randomly to  all questions and get, in expectation, a score of 50%, which is not very fair. I thought of several solutions, but each of them has a disadvantage:

Give a negative score to a wrong answer, such that the expected value of a student who answers randomly is 0. However, this rule made some students highly anxious, and I realized that this anxiety could unjustly harm their performance .
Ask the students to explain each answer. Award points only to correct answers with correct explanations. The problem is that it takes much more time to write and to grade, negating one of the main advantages of a multi-choice exam.
Give a grade of 0 to any student with less than 50% correct answers, and give twice the points for each answer above 50% (e.g, a student with 90% correct answers will receive 2·(90−50) = 80% score). However, I fear this might not be accepted by the university, which encourages additive scoring. E.g, students with 60% correct answers will complain that it is unfair to give them only 20% grade.

What is a good way to write an exam based on yes/no questions?

The conversation on the pros and cons of multiple choice has been moved to chat. Please use comments only to suggest improvements to the question and similar.

No grade scheme will improve the situation that yes/no questions suffer from not much useful signal range (if you account for the occasional error) above background (50%).

Did you consider extending the number of possible answers to a question from (1:yes; 2:no) to (1:yes, because XYZ; 2:yes, because ABC; 3:no, because PQR; 4:it may be true depending on IJL), so that the expected mark of a random guesser will be 100%*1/n? Does distinguishing the right reasoning(beyond answer) shows deeper knowledge in your course?

Mathematically, 0 for wrong, 1 for right (and 0.5 for blank) is entirely equivalent to -1 for wrong, 1 for right (and 0 for blank). So the exact points you give for each option doesn't really matter. With that in mind, giving students the additional worry that they feel penalized for giving a wrong answer isn't a good idea in my opinion. Thus a wrong answer should give 0, not negative.

What about 'Confident Yes (3 / -2)'. 'Unconfident Yes (1 / 0) ', Unconfident No (1 / 0)', 'Confident No (3 / -2)'

@FourOhFour students with exam anxiety told me that, in such a case, they will always select only the "unconfident" options, since they are afraid to lose points. So, their maximum possible score will be quite low.

For this situation, I provide three answer options:

Yes.
No.
I don't know.

The grading rubric is:

Correct answer: +1
Incorrect answer: 0
I don't know: +0.5

That way, if the student really doesn't know, they are guaranteed the expectation of a random guess and you get feedback on holes in student knowledge, which can be used to take remedial action. If your aim is more effective student learning, this can be a good strategy.
I've tried to avoid negative marks for a couple of reasons:

Imagine two candidates who achieve the same final score in a negatively marked exam. One candidate answers only part of the paper, losing a few marks for wrong answers. The other answers almost all of the paper, getting far more correct but also getting several wrong and having marks deducted. Which one knows more?
The second problem is that the use of negative marking extends the theoretical range of marks for the exam. For example, if one mark is awarded for every correct answer and one deducted for each wrong answer, the theoretical range of the exam is - 100 to +100 per cent.

—
From the comments moved to chat: someone asked about a slightly different value for the “I don’t know” option. This is my response:
I tend not to use Yes/No questions, but multiple choice for some assessment. In those cases, I make the "I don't know" option worth 1/(N-1) where N is the number of other options. That way, if there are 3 other options, a random guess would expect to get 1/3 but the I don't know option gains 1/2 --- the expected value if the student can knock out one of the three options..

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

Students who don't answer at all (check neither option) are treated the same as "I don't know"?

@Bergi In this case, I'm partial to saying that checking no option is a 0. If you don't know the answer, then you don't know the answer, and should be able to own up to that fact. Incentivising students to actively give an answer (and therefore at least to some degree actually consider the question) would be a good thing, I think.

A true academic should admit when they don't know. There's a lot more that I don't know than I do know.

You are, essentially, evaluating a binary predictor.
The usual score is known as accuracy (i.e., probability of giving the correct answer). For a random (coin toss) predictor you will get 50% (if the correct answers are evenly distributed between yes and no).
Note that the condition that the correct answers are distributed %50:%50 between yes and no is itself a huge hint to the students if they know that in advance.
I suggest that you consider two alternative metrics:
Matthews correlation coefficient
Same as Phi
  coefficient, Pearson correlation coefficient.

Range: from -1 to 1
All correct: 1
All wrong: -1
Random: 0

Proficiency
Measures the share of information (percentage of bits) contained in the true answers which is captured by the submitted answers (information here means entropy of the distribution).

Range: from 0 to 1
All correct: 1
All wrong: 1 (sic!)
Random: 0

Note that the scores of "all correct" and "all opposite" are the same. This is a feature, not a bug: the person who got all answers wrong has probably confused the labels ("yes" and "no") but knows the subject.
It also gives a lower score to "close to random" results than MCC.
IOW, it discriminates good results better.
Caveats
Missing Answers
If an answer is missing, it should be replace with a random yes/no answer.
This is correct statistically, but wrong pedagogically because the honest "I don't know" answer shows second order knowledge that should be encouraged.
Correct answer distribution
The metrics behave the same regardless of the distribution of the correct answers, except when all the correct answers are the same (in which case neither metric is defined). This is addressed by the Bernoulli shuffle (step 2 in the protocol).
These are statistical metrics
These metrics make little sense when there are very few questions.
Specifically, a mistake in one question may have a very different cost depending on the question (this can be addressed by repeating the Bernoulli shuffle many times and taking the average score - see protocol step 2 below).
Additivity
These metrics are not additive: you cannot score two halves of the test separately and somehow combine them to get the total test score (let alone add the scores for the two halves).
This can make these metrics a very hard sell to both students and administrators.
Protocol
Given the above, the correct protocol for these metrics is:

Prepare hundreds of questions (it is okay for all questions to have the same correct answer).
Using a Bernoulli rng with p=1/2, for each question, map yes/no to A/B (i.e., for about 50% questions, yes will be A and for 50% it will be B, and for half of questions the correct answer is A) - this is done completely behind the screen. Neither the students nor the professor need to be aware what the actual map is.
Score the resulting binary predictors (now both the true base rate and the predicted base rates are the same - 50%).

The dependency on the Bernoulli rng does introduce some noise (order 1/N where N is the number of test questions). I.e., the standard deviation of mcc and proficiency on a test with 100 questions will be under 1%. Since the steps 2 & 3 are automatic, they can be repeated many times and the mean or median score used.

As a stats nerd, I love this answer, but I suspect some students might not understand it and conclude you are grading unfairly.

Looks good. I wonder if I can convince the university to accept such a scale.

How would leaving an answer blank be handled with these systems?

@JohnK: I would treat blank as submitting a random answer.

The Matthews coefficient has some (presumably) undesired behaviour in not treating questions equally. For example, if the test has five statements, three of which are actually true, then a student who gets only one wrong will score 0.61 if the mistake was thinking a false statement was true, but will score 0.67 if the mistake was thinking a true statement was false.

@EspeciallyLime: yes, see edits.

Arguably, someone who gets everything wrong has displayed one bit fewer of information.

Sure, a student recording random guesses on a yes/no or true/false exam will have an expected score of 50%. So? Under most grading schemes, this is a solid F.
A more pertinent question to ask is "What is the probability that a randomly guessing student will receive a passing grade / a B or higher / an A?"
For this problem, exam length is your friend! Let's assume that each question is an independent trial and that correct and incorrect answers are equally likely (p=0.5). This places us in the context of the Binomial Distribution. I'll consider a passing grade to be a score of 70% or higher and an A to be a 90% or higher, with a correct answer getting 1pt and an incorrect answer getting 0pts on each question (which meets your institution's preference for additive grading).

For a short 10 question exam, a random guesser has a 17.2% chance of passing and a 1.07% chance of getting an A.
For a 20 question exam, a random guesser has a 5.77% chance of passing and a 0.0201% chance of getting an A.
For a 50 question exam, a random guesser has only a 0.330% chance of passing and a 0.000000210% chance of getting an A.
For a 100 question exam, a random guesser has only a 0.00393% chance of passing and a 1.52*10^{-15}% chance of getting an A.

While there are many caveats to this rough analysis, this should highlight that random guessing is not a viable strategy for an exam of reasonable length. Keep in mind that the probability of passing is also the same probability that they get less than a 30% on the exam! Along the lines of this statistical analysis, there are many similar takeaways: a student who can make an educated guess (say p=0.7) at each question will almost always outperform a random guesser; a student who knows the answer to the first n-1 questions and then randomly guesses on the last question will do even better. Another takeaway would be that a multiple choice exam has a better likelihood of punishing a random guesser than a yes/no exam.
Personally, I don't find a multiple choice or yes/no exam all that great at evaluating student learning, as it generally hews towards regurgitation of facts and technicalities of wording, as opposed to demonstrating critical analysis and synthesis. If you do persist with grading yes/no or multiple choice, here's a few personal opinions:

Use a random (or pseudo-random) process to determine the answers. Exams where every correct answer is choice (B) are cute, but are not a good evaluation tool. Students will also pick up on patterns in the order of correct answers, leading to meta-gaming.
Use a simple metric (0pts incorrect/ 1pt correct or similar) and be sure to explain whether or not they will be penalized for guessing---exams are stressful enough without needing to consider game theory when recording each answer.
Make the exam sufficiently long. This will help even out the noise from random guessing and make each individual question less stressful. Consider the extreme case of what it would feel like to take an exam with a single T/F question.
On the flip side, make sure that there is enough time to give a reasoned response to each question.

Edit
I was unaware of the different correlations between raw percentage score and typical grades, as pointed out in the comments. My thanks to @curiousdanii and @cfr for pointing this out to me and my sincere apologies for the ethnocentrism! I greatly appreciate the information from academia.stackexchange that can help us peer beyond our institutional bubbles.
Having only graded within the American system, I don't have a good qualitative feel for the various grades in other systems. However, I feel that a central theme of my answer is still worth considering: random guessing is almost always an inferior strategy to studying and answering questions correctly. As such, I would give serious thought to whether it is truly a problem that you need to control for when designing a rubric.
If pressed, I think the most natural way to account for an unacceptably high expected value (relative to a given grade scheme) would be to switch to a multiple choice format. As with a good T/F question, strive to make all the answers outwardly plausible. Having a "joke" response that can immediately be ruled out accomplishes little.

In Australia 50% is a pass. An individual lecturer wouldn't be allowed to change this. Is there any way to adapt your strategy for such a situation?

In the UK, 40% is a pass; 50% is a 2.2.

Where is 70% passing? Genuinely curious

@AzorAhai a 70% would be in the range of a C/C- under most US grading scales, which would be a passing grade.  Required classes for your major in US Universities generally have a C- or higher minimum threshold to get credit for the class.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_the_United_States#Numerical_and_letter_grades

@kuhl Yes, I know, I went to school in the US. I should have been clearer. Where is 70% the minimum passing grade? The way erfink has phrased their answer, they are considering a 69% a failing grade.

I think this answer missing the point a bit.  If a student only knows half the answers, and guesses on the other half, they'd get a 75% (instead of a 50% like they would for a fill-in-the-blank style test.)  The problem isn't "Guessing on everything is a valid strategy" - it's "Guessing on everything you don't know" is, and will give you a much higher percent than you deserve.

@Kevin I'll agree that my answer is a bit of a devil's advocate approach, but earnestly so (not trying to troll anyone here!). I guess my question would be whether your hypothetical student (knows half the answers, guesses on the rest) deserves a higher or lower grade than a student who knows 3/4 of the answers and is absolutely convinced of the veracity of their incorrect answers on the remain 1/4. Given the confines of additive grading and only getting a T/F answer sheet back to grade, is there even any way to distinguish between two such students?

@erfink - On just a T/F sheet?  Yeah, there's not really any way of distinguishing which one had wrong answers they were certain about, and which ones that it was just a guess (and on the flip side, no way of determining a right answer that's just a guess vs know-for-a-fact.)  My personal opinion is that I like "Full points for correct, subtract some portion of points for a wrong answer."  Because I think "Knowing What You Know And Don't Know" is an underappreciated ability.  I'm a programmer, and I hate programmers that don't know stuff but aren't self aware enough to realize it.

One possibility that solves all of the listed problems: Grading on a curve.
Granted, Curve Grading is something that gets a lot of peoples' hackles up (either for or against) but this is a situation that it's practically built for: you have a range of results that don't line up with fair letter grades but that are sorted/ranked by degree of knowledge.
Before, a student's 75% would be a 'C', even though they only actually knew the answers to half the questions (and guessed the other half.)  On a curve, though, that student's 75% would likely give them a low or failing grade since most other people in the class would hopefully have a higher success rate.
Edit: For clarification, when I say "Grading on a Curve," I mean that X% of the class will get an 'A', Y% will get a 'B', etc.  Heck, to be honest, if you explained up front, "I'll be grading this on a curve because, well, if I didn't, people could get 50% for just guessing everything randomly!" and made the curve semi-generous, then you would engender very little ill-will amongst the students.

Similarly -- you can accomplish the same and avoid the controversial curve  by assigning pre-determined letter grades: 94% will be an A, 85% a B, etc. These are pretty high standards (unusual in STEM classes), but the students will be familiar with such a scheme, and it's appropriate since 50% is random chance.  The only disadvantage is that since your worst students should get 60-70% and the best should get 90-100%, you need to make sure these relatively small differences will propagate to the final grade (rather than being drowned out by homework, etc., where the variation might be greater)

@cag51 I agree with you but would like to point out that such a scheme amplifies small variations in grades making people with similar levels of knowledge in a subject more likely to have different letter grades. I don't think that problem is easily solvable.

Doesn't this lead to hostility among the students? Since a student doing well on the exam, makes the scores of the others lower...

Nope, you will always engender ill-will for grading on a curve as it is inherently unfair, and IMO, unethical.

@curiousdannii But if you don't grade on a curve what you end up evaluating is the professors ability to write a fair test which is drowning out the actual students abilities.

Eh, if I was a student and you told me, "For this next quiz, we'll be grading on a curve.  On average, my tests have 15% A's, 50% B's, and 35% C's - but for this test, I'll be curving it so that 30% are A's, 60% are B's, and only 10% are C's" - I'd be ecstatic.  Students typically hate the curve when it's harsh or when they perceive that they're getting a lower letter grade than they'd get ordinarily.  That's why I suggest making the curve semi-generous - make it clear up front that the students are getting a higher grade than they'd likely get without it.

There are a number of papers published on the over the years. A table of options is shown below from Bandaranayake, et. al., Using Multiple Response True-False Multiple Choice Questions, Royal Australian College of Surgeons, 1999. Some of these consider the construction of "multiple true/false" questions, that is, questions that have one "stem" and several (weakly or strongly) linked true-false statements:

Another option is suggested by Frank Reid, An Alternative Scoring Formula for Multiple-Choice and True False Tests, Journal of Educational Research, 2001:

Some other papers I found include the following:

Multiple True-False Questions; Hill, G. C.; Woods, G. T. Education in Chemistry, 11, 3, 86-87, May 74
Scoring Multiple True/False Tests: Some Considerations; Gross, Leon J., Evaluation and the Health Professions, v5 n4 p459-68 Dec 1982
Burton, Multiple choice and true/false tests: reliability measures and some implications of negative marking, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 2004.
Burton R. Misinformation, partial knowledge and guessing in true/false tests. Medical Education [serial online], 2002.
Tsai F, Suen H. A brief report on a comparison of six scoring methods for multiple true-false items. Educational & Psychological Measurement, 1993.
Muijtjens, Mameren H, Hoogenboom, Evers, Vleuten C, Muijtjens. The effect of a ‘don't know’ option on test scores: number-right and formula scoring compared. Medical Education, 1999.

Interesting. I am also interested to know how such questions are graded.

Very cool! Thanks for all the nice references.

Another way to help lower the guessable score while still rewarding the students who have prepared themselves for the exams is to group like questions into one, where answering all the questions about one topic is showing mastery of that topic and earns full credit, whereas only knowing some of the answers is worth less credit.
This is easier to explain with an example. Let's say I'm preparing an exam for a US History class for the unit on the events leading up to the revolutionary war. Some of the events that I might want to be sure my students have studied and understood could be The Establishment of Jamestown, Virginia as the first permanent English settlement, Bacon's Rebellion, The Boston Massacre, The Boston Tea Party, and some others.
When preparing the question on Bacon's Rebellion, I might want to check that the students know when and where it was. So I could set up the question like this:
Bacon's Rebellion (4 points. Possible scores: 4, 1, 0):

A) Bacon's Rebellion was in 1676.   T  F
B) Nathaniel Bacon led the rebellion in Jackson, Mississippi.    T  F

(Answers: A) True, B) False, it was in Jamestown, Virginia)
If the student gets both questions right, they get all 4 points. If they get only one right, they still get one point. If they get both questions wrong, they get 0 points.
This scoring system would have to be thoroughly explained to the students before hand and written at the top of the test, but to give you an idea of how this distributes the exam scores, if the exam is made up of questions each with two parts like this and a student simply guesses on every question, they have an expected average score of 1.5 points per question, or 37.5% on the whole exam. Yet for a student that knows most of the material and knows 95% of the answers is expected to get about a 92% on the exam.
By awarding one point instead of 0 for the partially correct answer, this helps mitigate the students complaints of "But I knew that the rebellion was in 1676, I just forgot where it was!" because they are still getting partial credit, just not as much as they would get if they showed a mastery of the material by being able to answer both questions.
By never giving any negative points either, this helps with the anxiety you were mentioning your students face with that prospect.
Two tips if you decide to implement this idea:

Stick to the same format for the whole exam, and make sure to explain to the students what they are going to see. Either make them all questions with two parts, or do something else, but don't mix them up. Students may become caught up in trying to figure out how the questions are scored, and will lose valuable time that should be used showing their knowledge of the material.
Don't try to group more than two questions together in this way. The math might look nice how the expected score of the person guessing drops greatly with each question you add about Bacon's Rebellion, but from the student perspective, if he or she has studied and knows most of the material but just can't remember one little detail that happens to be something you ask, that student immediately loses the majority of the credit for a question that they might know a lot about.

I like your grading scheme but I think you would have less of a fight with students if you awarded points on a logarithmic-like scale rather than exponential-like scale. In other words, if there are 10 problems in a set, the gap in points awarded between 9 correct and 10 correct is smaller than 5 correct and 6 correct.

Very interesting. In effect, if a group has $n$ questions, then a student with $k$ correct answers receives $k^2/n$ points on that group (e.g. if $n=2$ then $k=2$ gives a score of $2$ and $k=1$ gives a score of $1/2$).

One easy scheme that has been used by some mathematical olympiads is to make every question's answer to be an integer from 1 to 999. If you are careful in setting the question, you usually can make the probability of guessing the correct answer (even after some common sense elimination) to be no bigger than 10%. For example, if the question asks to find the length of some line segment in some geometric construction, engineer the construction so that there are no obvious inequalities that can bound the length to less than 100.
The advantages of this scheme is that the exam is easy to grade and yet difficult for students to get undeserved credit. I am strongly of the opinion that mathematics students should be graded based on proofs, but if you are considering multiple choice questions at least this scheme is a far better option.

a student can just answer randomly to all questions and get, in expectation, a score of 50%, which is not very fair

Not really, unless your grading scheme also gives a high grade to scores above 50%. If you assume the scores follow a normal-like distribution (they almost always will) then the mean will come out somewhere well above 50% and the guessers who got 50% will end up with a pretty negative z-score, and thus a low grade (possibly F, depending on how you set it up).
I think the real issue with true/false questions is that you actually have pretty good odds of winning the lottery, and getting a good grade without knowing the material. Because of this, at least multiple choice or fill in the blank questions are much better. Essay questions, as you mention, are of course the best but much more laborious to actually grade.
Note that you can always convert T/F questions to multiple choice, by using "which of the three above statements are true?". This way it is impossible to guess independently, so the expected score can drop from 50% down to 12% (but in reality will be 20% or 25% because of the number of choices).

After reviewing all of the previously posted answers, I can't see any way in which the inherent problems of a yes-no exam can be overcome. It is simply not a good exam format. You can't extract a useful quantification of your students' knowledge and skill from it.
You can't, but your students can. So if you want to set yes-no exams, do so with the purpose of giving your students a regular purpose for reviewing what they have learnt. Give these exams a nominal 1-2% contribution to the final grade, with a max of 10% for all the yes-no exams combined, and then set one or two more involved assessments to make up the rest of the final grade.

Each yes or no question can be answered in three ways:  yes, no, (blank).
State at the start that each correct answer has a +1 score, each blank has a 0 score, and each incorrect answer has, say, a -0.5 score.  This discourages guessing but has a lesser penalty than a -1 score.  The range of possible grades would then be from -50% to 100%.

I quite like this scheme in theory, but in practice it is likely to be gender biased since there is evidence that women are less likely to guess than men if there is a penalty for guessing and less likely to fill in answers they are unsure of: e.g. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/39987/1/MPRA_paper_39987.pdf

I think that one of the papers in my answer suggested upping the incorrect penalty to deal with that general issue.

You can also make a combination of a linear and a non-linear scales. Say, you give 5 problems with 4 yes/no questions in each one. To determine the problem score from, say, 0 to 20 you can use any reasonable (=monotone and explicable to the students) function on ${0,1}^4$ you wish (you can even assign different values to different questions) but then you just add the scores for the problems. This eliminates the threshold effect that is the main disadvantage of any "cutoff amplification" of just one final score but preserves the general idea that correct random guessing isn't worth much.
As to the common smooth amplification techniques, the ones I've seen in action are $x^2/100$ (so the lucky random guy with nominal 60% gets only 36) and $10\sqrt x$ (if everyone has really low score, this stretches the bottom part and boosts the morale a bit).

I see three main issues:

Someone without any domain knowledge can still get points. You say this is unfair, but unfair to whom? People without any knowledge are getting points, but those with knowledge are getting more points. And the grade thresholds tend to take this into account; the thresholds tend to run from about 50% (F) to 90% (A), so when you take the free points into account, that's effectively 0% knowledge is an F, while 80% knowledge is an A.
Negative points make people feel bad. The importance you should give this depends on the level. For elementary school, psychological issues are prominent, but by college, it should be less of an issue (although not entirely eliminated). This can be reduced by presenting students will mathematically equivalent situations with different formulations. For instance, with a 100 point test, you could tell students that they start the test with -50 points, but they get .5 points back every time they skip a question.
People who guess do better than those who leave questions they don't know blank. This does create a certain sort of "busy work" for students, having them choose between randomly filling in answers they don't know, or missing out on "free points". Note that this isn't addressed by including a "don't know" option, since they'll still have the busy work of marking "don't know" for all those questions, instead of just skipping them. There is, however, an advantage here where you're basically asking students "Okay, you don't know what the answer is here. But which do you think is more likely?"

There's no way you can fully address all three of these issues, so you're going to have to choose at least one to ignore. You can give half a point to each question left blank, which completely takes care of (3) and mostly takes care of (2) (students aren't getting negative points for getting questions wrong, but they are missing out on the points they could have gotten if they left them blank). You can leave things as they are, which fully addresses (2), but doesn't address (1) or (3). Or you can give negative points, which addresses (1) and (3), but not (2).

If there is a reason why you are considering 50% to be of some benefit, you could restructure the course's grading structure to not be based on the Score (percentage), but instead be based on the Grade (A-F), using the same scale as for GPA calculation (A=4,F=0).
This would mean that scoring 0-59% on any test or assignment would result in 0 points contributing to the final course Grade.
This will make simply guessing on a True/False or Yes/No test to be statistically useless.
I will state that I believe that worrying over a student improperly "gaming" the system to score a failing grade that might be higher than another failing grade he might have received if he had properly taken the test, is stressing yourself out for no useful purpose.

The more I think about it, the more I have a problem with using GPA within a class.   For one, it would be almost impossible to get an A, as that would be a perfect score.
Perhaps Scoring for assignments could be

F=0
D=2
C=4
B=6
A=8

With the final course grade being

'>=7 gives A
'>=5 gives B
'>=3 gives C
'>=1 gives D
'<1  gives F


text:
How can I make my work available to the community, when it is in conference proceedings that are not online and self archiving is not allowed?
I have two articles published in a conference proceeding which are not accessible on the Internet. The publisher published three selected articles in SCI journals, but the rest of the articles are not available online on any kind of platform except for the list of titles, which was published at the time of the conference.
I want to self-archive the article in a public library (Arxiv etc.) but the conference publisher refused and said that the copyrights belong to the publisher and I cannot make it available on any other platform.
In the given situation, how can I make my work available to the research community?

This is really weird. They keep the copyright to a bunch of articles that they simply discard?

You may want to check if there were any clauses in the copyright transfer about them actually publishing the paper (I don't recall if this is something that is commonly found in such agreements).

This is not unusual in certain fields (like applied math).  However, it is also common to flaunt the rules by posting a preprint on the arXiv (preferably before publishing it in the conference proceedings) or just posting a preprint on one's personal webpage.  My own approach is to just avoid conference proceedings as they are notoriously difficult to access.

@TobiasKildetoft unfortunately I lost the copy right file.

@MBK Ask the publisher for a copy of the agreement. They are bound to provide it to you.

A note if you are based in EU:  I think under EU laws, the author can not sign over his/her copyright rights.

@valentin Could you try to dig up some reference for this claim? I'd like to read up on this (and had signed over copyrights for many texts within the EU already).

@Dirk: maybe this will help you:  http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/docs/studies/etd1999b53000e28_en.pdf and http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/docs/studies/etd2000b53001e69_en.pdf

@valentin Thanks for the links. As far as I see, both documents gather all kinds of information on moral rights and their relation to copyright within various countries in the EU. My conclusion is that 1) both are not the same in general 2) the situation is diverse within the EU and also I could not find a claim that one can not sign over copyright.

It's from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_European_Union) , but still, there is a limitation to the copyright law for reproduction by libraries, archives, public institutions for non-commercial use. Maybe you can step on it to have your articles available elsewhere. Most of the answers below seem to direct to plagiarism, which is probably not what you want to do...

Also, institutions often have lawyers who can help you with issues on copyright, licencing, and other legal matters. Maybe you should contact them first, as they have the expertise to advice you properly and they can translate the documents you have signed to our common language

@Dirk, from my understanding, in EU, being the author, you hold the copyright and you can grant licenses to use or to enforce you rights.

@valentin: You most certainly can transfer copyrights in the EU. However, depending on which EU country you live in, you may not be able to sign away certain "moral rights", such as the right to be recognized as the author of the work.

This is a challenging situation to be in. If you have signed over the copyright to the publisher, then you cannot legally redistribute the work without the publisher's authorization. I assume you did not realize the publisher's policy was so restrictive when you first submitted the paper; you might want to make a note to self to take a closer look at author rights before submitting, in the future! (And warn friends and colleagues away from that publisher.)
Copyright protects expression of ideas (e.g. the text and images), not the ideas themselves. Even if you have signed away the copyright to your paper, you are free* to write a new paper on the same ideas, using new text and images. So, I suggest:

Write a new version of your paper, without directly copying large parts of the conference paper verbatim. It can be a much shorter version. Include in it a note saying that the version from the conference proceedings is available on request; give your email address so that people can contact you for a copy.
You own the copyright to this new work. Post it on your website, on arXiv, anywhere else you like.

This way, people can still learn about the contents of the conference paper, and can contact you if they want you to email the full version, which you can't redistribute online.

* Free, in the sense that no copyright restrictions apply. However, in terms of ethical standards on duplicate publication, if you want to publish a new paper based on the same ideas in another conference or journal, make sure the new venue permits it.

Copyright protects expression of ideas (e.g. the text and images), not the ideas themselves. Is this universal in academic publishing?

@Orion This is universal in copyright law.

@Orion remember (and this is a common confusion on this site) that copyright law and academic convention are almost entirely unrelated.

If you are still working on the topic, I would suggest to wait a little until you have an improved version of your results (if this is possible -- probably easier in applied than in pure sciences). Then it is easier to write a new paper in which you essentially repeat the results of the old paper (not verbatim, but in a different, maybe also improved presentation), cite the old paper and show your new results.
In this way you avoid to have a "double publication", but can show your results to the world.

How can we cite something which does not exist no where (online)?

@Coder You should avoid to cite unpublished sources, but it is common to cite sources which only exist in print. They are often available to academics by inter-library loan.

@Coder: I find your comment pretty strange.  You are aware that the practice of citing academic articles predates the internet by a few hundred years and that even today the majority of the world's academic articles are not available online?

What you do right now, is to write a blog post about the article. You may quote the title and give the full bibliographic data of the conference submission to help search engines to find it and you should not copy the article verbatim but rewrite the story in new words. The latter is a good idea anyway since people expect different texts on a blog than in a scientific article.

In computer science it is common to make preprints of papers available online. This is essentially the same paper, but in the version before reviewers' comments were incorporated (if any) and without the publishers styling.
I have also seen this in cognitive science. Sometimes a paragraph in legalese is added to the effect that the current version is a preprint, that it may differ from the published version and that only the published version should be cited.
See for example: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/7021/1/7021_2.pdf
See also the wikipedia entry for 'Preprint'.

If you've signed over the copyright to the work, then self-archiving preprints is allowed only if the publisher permits it; in this case, the publisher seems to have a restrictive approach to author rights.

Jaywalking isn't "allowed" either.  Just post the paper already.

I agree with @JeffE's comment.  While it is helpful to know what is legal, it could also be a mistake to take these rules too seriously.  In practice, try to doing something that is not obviously flagrant and see what happens.  If the publisher contacts you and tells you to take it down, you can go from there.  Academic publishers have not gotten rich by suing academics, as they well know.  Not trying to put some version of the paper online could do much more damage to you and the rest of the academic world.

Technically, it sounds like you can't because it is not your work anymore.
I would suggest you go back and read what ever it was you signed very, very carefully, and then bring it to the legal department of the institution who funded your work. They usually retain an ownership interest in work they fund and if you are very lucky, it might well turn out that it was never your work in the first place and that you did not have the right to sign away all publishing rights. That might render the publishers contract void (or parts of it anyway) allowing the work to be republished elsewhere.
Failing that, walk away fingers burnt and lessons learnt.

"They usually retain an ownership interest in work they fund and if you are very lucky, it might well turn out that it was never your work in the first place and that you did not have the right to sign away all publishing rights." Finding out that my published paper "was never [my] work in the first place" would not be lucky; it would be a nightmare scenario.

Technically the OP can put a draft version of the work on his/her webpage.  It just could happen that the publishing company might object to it later.  That a publishing company would do anything more severe than tell the OP that they don't want to do further business together seems so improbable to me that claiming this without specific evidence to the contrary seems like bad advice.

On the other hand, republishing elsewhere seems out of the question by academic ethical standards: the paper already got published in one venue.  Some people retain the copyrights to their own papers upon publication; that certainly does not make double publication academically legitimate.

@PeteL.Clark - The OP's nightmare is worse then you have imagined.  They don't own it, they can't tell anyone about it and they can't reproduce it. However, if the OP didn't 'own' it outright, (ie their funder retained an interest) then the OP could not legally have lost all control over the papers as they currently have. This means that the funder may still have the right to publish the work so others can benefit from it instead of it being locked in a black hole.

"[T]hey can't tell anyone about it."  I have no idea what you're talking about.  You didn't respond to "That a publishing company would do anything more severe than tell the OP that they don't want to do further business together seems so improbable to me that claiming this without specific evidence to the contrary seems like bad advice."  Also the OP retains the intellectual rights to the work since those rights cannot be transferred.

If the OP wanted to write a different document describing the same work, place that on her webpage and explain the situation, it seems nuts to think that the publisher can or will object.  That's what academia does: we use prior published work, in textbooks, papers, classrooms, etc., often in great detail.  I am most certainly free to post lecture notes in which I give X's proof of X's published theorem, and I do so all the time.  I wonder what part of academia you're in if you think this is not routine.

@PeteL.Clark - I am not sure where or how you work, but there is a big difference between quoting (with accreditation) someone elses published work, and reproducing someone elses unpublished work. The work in question is not the OP's anymore. They do not get to chose how or where it becomes available. If the OP followed your advise, they would be in breach of copyright and could be legitimately accused of plagiarism.

I work in the department of mathematics at the University of Georgia. "The work in question is not the OP's anymore." The article may not be, but the ideas contained in the article are certainly the OP's.  "If the OP followed your advise, they would be in breach of copyright and could be legitimately accused of plagiarism." I disagree with both parts, but vehemently with the last part: talking about other people's work with correct attribution is not plagiarism.  Talking about your own work with correct attribution is certainly not plagiarism.

Two questions: (i) Once again, if you think that an academic would get in trouble for doing this, please provide some evidence of that.  (ii) Are you actually in academia yourself?  Because you are not making a clear distinction between copyright and intellectual property, and for academics this is a vital distinction.

@PeteL.Clark - Sorry but you are missing the fundamental point. This work stopped being the OP's when (s)he handed over publication rights to the article describing it. If the new owner publishes it somewhere, then the OP can quote it and/or build on it, just as you could. Until then, it would be the same as you quoting or building on my unpublished solution to the P vs NP problem. No matter what you know about my solution, it is not yours to work on.

"Sorry but you are missing the fundamental point. This work stopped being the OP's when (s)he handed over publication rights to the article describing it."  No, I vehemently disagree.  My work is still my work irrespective of its stage of publication by someone else.  " If the new owner publishes it somewhere, then the OP can quote it and/or build on it, just as you could." Please read the question more carefully: the first sentence says that the articles have been published; they are just not available online.

"Until then, it would be the same as you quoting or building on my unpublished solution to the P vs NP problem.  No matter what you know about my solution, it is not yours to work on." That is an absolutely ridiculous claim.  First of all: of course I can build on your unpublished work if you make it available to me.  If you care to go to http://alpha.math.uga.edu/~pete/papers.html, you'll see that each of my last eight preprints ([40] - [47]) cites unpublished preprints.  I can show you thousands of similar citations in published papers....

..Second of all, you are conflating an academic and an academic publisher with two different academics. In particular you seem to be saying An author cannot build on their own unpublished work. That sounds crazy to me. If by some chance you are actually an academic and this position is anywhere close to standard in your academic field, please specify. Otherwise I am forced to conclude that you are giving an answer that has no connection or relevance to academia.

I apologize for the somewhat insulting part of my last comment, and I rewrote it.  However, it is you who are not engaging with the facts of the situation.  You suggest that things are impossible in academia, I explain that they are not only possible but common and give specific examples, and then (because I know academia is vast) I ask if there is any academi context in which what you say is correct.  I don't understand why you would respond to my comments but not to this.

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text:
Acknowledgment and authors in article based on PhD thesis
A friend of mine finished his PhD and joined our group, on a project closely related to his PhD work. After three months, we submitted an article which includes significant  amount of work from his thesis and also the work done the last three months in our group.
But his PhD supervisor got angry and said he can not add any other author except himself and he demanded that the acknowledgment should only be based on funding information which he will provide.
The article includes some experimental work which was conducted by my friend after joining our group. We offered the professor to add his and our both funding acknowledgment, but he did not agree.
Is he right in his demands?
Moreover, my friend said his supervisor rejected the publication draft by saying it’s not worthy to be published.

"the acknowledgment should only be based on funding information which he will provide."  I don't understand what you mean by this, particularly the "only".  But if your friend's work was partly supported by a grant awarded to the supervisor, it's quite common that the funding agency requires that it be acknowledged in any papers reporting on the supported work.  So that part could be something reasonable.

@nate we understand that point but as I mentioned the article includes some experimental work which he conducted after joining our group. We offered the professor to add his and our both funding acknowledgment but he is not agreed.

Could you clarify what you mean by "he can not add any other author except himself"? Do you mean that the PhD supervisor only wants the paper to contain his name and his student's name?

@Antonio yes exactly. Authorship as well as acknowledgment should be of his choice.

Sometimes funding agencies require that papers that are listed in the final or intermediate report as the results of a project do not acknowledge any other funding source (i.e. that the project its not funded from other sources). If that is the case the position of the professor can be explained: he needs to include the paper in the report filed to the funding agency, which funded the ts' friend while he was a student, and the emerging collaboration prevents him from doing so (one may surmise that ts' friend had to have published his results, while working with his prof, but failed to do so)

I can't parse "We offered the professor to add his and our both funding acknowledgment."  Could you please rephrase?

@PeteL.Clark this means to add both funding information in acknowledgment section.

My understanding of the current situation:
Your friend is attempting to publish what sounds like a significant portion of results from their dissertation, along with some new results obtained after a few months in a new research group (your group). Further, your friend's former PhD advisor does not approve of the new collaboration with your group, is not satisfied with whatever compromise you've proposed thus far, and does not want your group to submit the manuscript in question.

Is [the former advisor] right in his demands?

Unfortunately, there is no universally correct answer. Why? Simply put, the "correct" answer to this question depends on the norms in your field, the agreed-upon publication policies in your friend's former research group, and so on. (One of the key things I've learned on this site is just how much academia varies, and I strongly encourage you / your friend to reflect on this point as well; see, e.g., Academia varies more than you think it does).
Further, getting into philosophical debates about the "correct" way a former advisor should proceed in this situation is, in my view, pointless; before getting on to your question, let me explain why I say this.
On this site, we see, time and time again, plenty of questions which are very closely related to the situation that your friend is currently in. Here are four such questions among many, and I strongly encourage you / your friend to take a look at these, too:

Authorship for paper based on my thesis
When should a supervisor be an author?
Co-authorship for not very involved supervisor
My advisor wants to co-author a paper on my thesis work, but drags out the submission, claiming it isn't ready. Should I submit without him?

As far as the "correct" course of action in the above / other related questions is concerned, the key takeaway (for me, at least) that all of these questions have in common is: it depends.
Now, on to your question. For simplicity, I see your friend's situation as belonging to one of the following two categories (below, since it is not clear in your question, when I write "norms," this will refer to the norms that exist for your friend, whatever that might entail):

If the "norms" are such that your friend is free to do whatever he wants with his research results, whether or not the results were obtained during his PhD, then your friend's former advisor has no grounds to halt publication, so long as the funding for the portion of the manuscript related to your friend's PhD results are acknowledged.
On the other hand, if the "norms" are such that your friend is required to consult with former PhD advisor on any collaborations, publications, etc. stemming from the research conducted while a PhD student, then your friend needs to sort this out with the former advisor ASAP.

In an ideal world, if this second case applies to your friend, then your friend should have already had a discussion with the former advisor. In fact, what this question and the many other related ones help to underscore is how extremely important it is to have authorship discussions with your advisor early on. (This may seem obvious now, but I write this for future visitors to A.SE who are on the verge of finding themselves in similar situations.)

The former adviser's position is unreasonable. It is unreasonable because he's holding his former student's career hostage.
But that is not a pragmatic position because insisting on it being unreasonable doesn't get the paper published. Since the former adviser, simply by virtue of advising, did a significant fraction of the intellectual work, the work cannot be published without him. So if he refuses to have other authors on the paper, then the only solution is to publish only that part of the work that was done during the PhD time. In that case, it is clear who should be author and what funding should be acknowledged. In return, you have freedom to publish everything that was done after the PhD work with whomever you like, and acknowledging any funding you think is appropriate.
The reasonable way forward is to discuss these options with him. In practice, few scientists will forego a publication they will be an author on and that someone else is doing most of the work for. That's true at least if they thing the publication has any chance of getting published. In other words, what the situation calls for is a frank conversation about (i) whether the work is good enough to be published, (ii) which parts exactly should be published, and (iii) who is going to be on the paper. You can't publish/the paper is not going to be good if you don't have agreement among all authors on these points, and you can only get agreement by having an honest and open discussion about it.

"Since the former adviser, simply by virtue of advising, did a significant fraction of the intellectual work, the work cannot be published without him." It may well be that the student's former advisor did a significant fraction of the intellectual work, but I disagree that this necessarily holds "simply by virtue of advising."  You seem to imply that PhD thesis work is inherently joint work with the advisor.  But that is certainly not the case.  As I'm sure you know, most of the time thesis work in (e.g.) pure math does not appear with the advisor as a coauthor.

@PeteL.Clark the advisor don't have intellectual contribution except he was his advisor on paper.

@PeteL.Clark -- I consider the fact that advisers in pure math typically don't appear as authors on papers of their students as mostly convention. We will probably both agree that few students have the technical and intellectual maturity to write good papers by themselves. The adviser mentors the student, points in promising directions, and corrects (foreseeable) dead ends. In most other disciplines this qualifies as "significant fraction of the intellectual work", which entitles to co-authorship.

In fact, I would claim that if an adviser does not share a significant fraction of the intellectual work, then either (i) the student is exceptionally talented, or (ii) the adviser is not doing their job. I have, of course, seen the latter many times in my career; the former not so much.

"We will probably both agree that few students have the technical and intellectual maturity to write good papers by themselves." Not really; I have known many graduate students who write good papers largely or completely independently of their advisors.  Yes, these students are very strong, but this is not "exceptional" in the sense of "it almost never happens".  For instance, I look at hundreds of postdoc applications a year, and perhaps a quarter describe work that was done independently of the advisor (so much so that the advisor doesn't comment much on it, often enough).

The basic point here is that a math PhD thesis is by default the student's work; unless otherwise specified, it is not joint work with the advisor.  It is far from unheard of for students to publish theses that are not in the precise area(s) in which the advisor publishes.  On the other hand, I agree that it is hard to arrive at an objective definition of "significant fraction of the intellectual work"; conventions are going to play a large role here.  But I really do disagree with the idea that the advisor has some kind of automatic ownership or veto power over the student's work.

Anyway, the following seems more to the point: I will happily stipulate that in the vast majority of cases, a good advisor should have a key role in the intellectual development of the student's thesis work.  But I said "should"; from my experience on this site, I've encountered dozens (or hundreds?) of students who feel that their advisor contributed little or nothing.  So it does not seem fair or appropriate to assume that a thesis advisor contributed enough to a student's work to merit automatic coauthorship or veto power over publication decisions.

@PeteL.Clark I think we can agree on this :-)

Edit 2: I find the question very interesting but not well presented. As long as it doesn't become clearer, here's how I understand the issue:
The OP's friend did his PhD with his PhD advisor. At least part of his work was not eventually published as the PhD advisor considered it inadequate for publication. The PhD student finished his PhD and went to work in another group in the same subject. He added a few more data, bringing the work to what he and his new group considered at publishable level. So, they wrote the manuscript (or planned to) adding the work from the PhD, plus the extra 3 months of work from the new group and offered co-authorship to PhD advisor. The PhD advisor was not aware that his ex-student was continuing working on the same subject and had not agreed in advance on this collaboration.
The acknowledgement is a detail in the issue. The actual issue is the authorship and the "collaboration". (That's how I understand it).
Also, the contribution of the PhD advisor was zero for the post doc, but was present in the PhD period.
If things are like that, then this is my "answer" below. If not, my answer is at the bottom.
Just to clarify, I don't answer in respect to how reasonable reaction it is for the career of the ex-PhD student. I answer if it is reasonable in the context of research collaboration and supervision and try to identify where mistakes were done. It's quite obvious that this behaviour obstructs the career of the student, but there are obvious or subtle rules in research (as in every workplace) that, if not followed, can lead to problems like this. End of edit 2.
I think that his PhD supervisor has valid reasons to be angry (provided some missing information are true).
Fist of all, most of the work was done during your friend's PhD, so as part of his PhD, it seems like his supervisor has the last word of what should be published and how.
Also, I assume that the continuation of the work was not agreed nor approved by the supervisor of the PhD, thus he's angry realising that the work has been continued without his approval.
So, in a way I can feel for him. It's his project (and your friend's) and he should decide if he wants to include your lab (in the work and) in the publication and not vice versa.
Edit: In this case, your friend would have to convince his PhD advisor of the importance of the new collaboration (as he should have done the moment he started his new post). If that doesn't work, he can discuss with his PhD advisor what he thinks is needed to make the work publishable and how this could be achieved from this point on. At the same time, work with the new team and/to submit a manuscript without the PhD work involved. End of edit.
In the case that it was agreed with the PhD advisor to continue the work on a project in the new lab, and now he backs off, then it's him on the wrong side and that's something the PIs have to sort out.

This answer makes no sense. A former supervisor has no right to "approve" any work a former employer does in a new job. It also makes no sense to claim that the supervisor "has the last word" on what gets published or not -- that must clearly be a joint decision by all authors. The only thing a former supervisor can do is refuse to be an author on a paper; if he did a significant part of the intellectual work, that of course makes this work unpublishable.

I'm not sure we have all the information. The (former) PhD student wants to publish his PhD work with people from a different lab, with which he worked 3 months after his PhD. I agree that he's holding his former career hostage, but the PhD advisor has the right (and responsibility) to know who is involved in the PhD thesis he supervises and a strong (if not the only) say in which collaborations are to be approved.

I just suspect (and based my answer on that) that the former PhD advisor was not aware of his former student position, nor the continuation of his work. In that sense, he has the right to approve a paper and disagree with the collaboration that was 3 years in his supervision and 3 months out of it. The new lab could be even a competitor. It makes sense to me as long as the assumptions I clearly stated are true. If the OP gives more information, i can adapt it accordingly.

But whether the new lab is in competition makes no difference. The previous adviser may refuse to publish the work, but he can't choose who his former student works with after graduation.

@WolfgangBangerth Exactly! But in this case the former student wants to publish the PhD  work with the people from the new lab (with who he spent only 3 months). For me the PhD advisor still has some say who the PhD work should be published with.

@BioGeo Professor refused to publish same article when my friend was his student; after joining our group we extended the work and added experimental results now it in the position for publication. It was our good will gesture to add him as co-author and offer him to share acknowledgement section with his funding information as well. One more thing supervisor has zero intellectual contribution in this work.

@MBK What I'm trying to say is that as long as he has been supervisor in your friend's PhD work, he should have been involved in the initial decision to add experimental stuff to make his and your friend's work publishable and not after the extra stuff were added. It's really delicate situation when the ex-student decides to include a new lab in a work and the ex-advisor has a right to reject the collaboration. But please, explain what do you mean with zero intellectual contribution. In the 3 month post doc or the 3-year PhD he had no contribution?

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text:
Master’s in computer science or free online classes?
I am currently deciding my next step in life and am pretty confused about my options. I am an English language teacher with an MSEd in TESOL and have a growing interest in both computer science and linguistics. I have been considering getting my PhD in linguistics, possibly with a focus on computational linguistics, but I also am really interested in beginning to develop applications, especially ones related to language and education (i.e. Android apps, python-based language tools, etc.).
I have little math experience, but do have some client-side programming skills (HTML, JavaScript, PHP).
So lately, I have been considering getting an MSCS (online) in order to build the requisite skills and also enhance my job prospects (a language teacher doesn't make much).
I've been looking at online programs that offer courses in AI, MT, NLP, and human-machine interaction. But, I've also been considering skipping the MSCS and doing Coursera, CodeAcademy, and other free tutorials to learn the development skills, then making some GitHub or publishable projects. I have done CodeAcademy for Python and picked it up pretty quickly. The problem with these free education sources, however, is that I lose motivation quickly. However, If I had paid for them, my motivation would be sustained because I spent the money and want to get my money's worth.
So, my vague question is: Do I do a MSCS or focus on what’s freely available, build my skills, and hope I get good enough to not need a real credential?

Moderator’s notice: Please do not take this as a shopping question and suggest specific courses.

What OBu said: This is going to depend on what your goal is.

If you want to work as a programmer, generically, then a MOOC might be a good way to skill yourself up. As far as studying, fundamentals are going to pay off no matter where you work: Algorithms, Software Engineering, Math, etc. The problem with MOOCs is that it's not clear if they are going to get you through the door when job hunting; so be sure to focus on creating work that can demonstrate your skill, and help get you over that barrier.
If you want to create research, write papers etc, then you could always try to create your own research program. Having said that, if you don't have an established history of auto-didacticism then this is going to be difficult to maintain. A real masters program helps guide you down paths, and force you to prune those search trees.
If you want to work as a programmer, in the NLP/MT/AI fields, then you might have to do both: MOOCS and an MSc.

A side note; be warned that there are lots of MSc. programs out there, varying in style and quality. Some are essentially just more courses, while others are intended to produce new research. Be sure that the MSc. program you register for is going to get you what you want. Do your research.

I have recognized that one of my problems is that I do not know what my goal is exactly. I suspect it may be your first point, but more likely your third point. Off-hand, do you know an distance MSc programs that have NLP focuses or courses?

@Acornrevolution Unfortunately I'm really not up to speed on distance MSc programs, so I can't speak to their strength or weaknesses in a particular area.

Having completed my MS in Computer Science in an online program and taken a couple of MOOCs I believe they both have there place in learning and career skill growth.  My online MS was great, but limited in teaching style and format.  It helped me gain a greater foundation in Computer Science, but the greatest benefit was always the just in time learning I received while working full time as a Software Engineer.
I have always found MOOCs to be great for deciding if a Topic is for you and if you want to continue with it.
As an in-between, you should look into the Master's programs that many MOOC providers are now offering.

That's a very difficult question - and a bit opinion-based, too!
Maybe you should step back a bit and try to figure out, what your future job perspectives might be. If you want to be an employee in the CS-field, I would recommend a MSCS. On one hand because wou'll learn new things you would not pick when you can choose your courses freely, on the other hand because you get an official certificate from an established university. Depending on the country you are living in, this might be important.
On the other hand, if you want to stay in linguistics and just improve your skills, you can stick to online courses and tutorials since they allow you to learn what you are currently missing at your pace.
If you want to dig deeper in the field of language processing, I would strongly recomment building some strength in mathematics and theoretical CS as well.

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text:
should one add to the CV papers that appeared in conferences with no proceedings?
Should I put on my CV papers (or "talks") that appeared in (peer-reviewed!) conferences that have no proceedings? Should I avoid duplicates if the same paper also appears in another conference (with proceedings)?
Should I make it clear that the conference has no proceedings, or just list it in the "Conferences" section? If it changes anything, my field is Computer Science.
EDIT:
some conferences are peer-reviewed but have no proceedings. Call it workshops if you wish. You submit a paper, and a committee  selects 30%-40 of the papers - each submission gets a slot in presenting the results during the conference/workshop, however no formal proceedings is issued.
(I'm surprised no one heard of such conferences; maybe I'm using the wrong terms; sorry for that)

What does it mean to say a paper "appeared" in a conference with no proceedings?  The term seems confusing here, since at least to me it suggests publication or distribution of the paper.  If the paper is published elsewhere, then that is how I would list it under publications in your CV, but you could (and should) also indicate somewhere that you spoke about it at this conference.  That would fall under talks or presentations rather than publications.

thanks for the comment; I hope my edit clarifies this issue

Excellent question! I have attended such a conference myself in the past, and wondered if my paper can even be considered a publication because the conference made no official proceedings.

I would not put such a "paper" in the publications section. After all, there is no publication, apart from an abstract.
In my field, conferences usually do not have proceedings, and if they do, proceedings papers have very little value. Also, conference abstracts are not peer-reviewed. I've only heard of a single rejected conference abstract, and this was for political reasons.
If you have a dedicated conferences section, then I would put the "paper" there, as to not suggest that there is a publication.

This is spot-on, in my opinion. You have to be able to find the paper somewhere other than the authors' homepage(s) in order to claim it's published!

I assume that you're in computer science, since otherwise you probably shouldn't list any conference papers as publications.  So I'll answer as a computer scientist.
No, you should not list such papers as publications in your CV, because  those papers are not actually published.  Moreover, there is likely an expectation that the same paper can be published at a different conference. You must not list the "same" paper at more than one conference.*
I know of several conferences/workshops like the one your describe in computational geometry (my home field), including EuroCG, the Fall Workshops, and the Young Researchers Forum at SOCG.  At all three venues, submissions are lightly peer-reviewed, only a subset of submissions are accepted, and a booklet of abstracts is distributed to participants and/or on the web.  But no formal proceedings is issued at these events, because it is expected that accepted papers will later appear in more polished form at a more formally reviewed conference.  (Some early iterations of EuroCG did have formal proceedings, despite the expectation of later publication, but other conferences were unwilling to accept papers that appeared in those proceedings.)
As others have said, it's perfectly fine to list those talks under "Unpublished Workshop Talks", especially early in your career.  You might even include the acceptance rate if you want to emphasize that the venue carries some prestige.  Alternatively, if you did publish the paper elsewhere, you might include the phrase "Also presented at ..." after the publication info.

*...but journals are different.  In most subfields of computer science, conferences papers can be published later in refereed journals, usually in a more expanded/complete form.  Even so, I recommend listing each paper only once in your CV, including all publication venues for each paper, rather than listing the same paper once under "conference papers" and again under "journal papers".

In that case, the text you wrote as part of your submission is not published (except maybe in some cases in a book of abstracts distributed to participants, but it doesn't count). So, in your CV or scientific production listing, you can add an item for your talk in the “conference talks” section, but not the same as a paper.
In the fields familiar to me (physics and chemistry), it is actually very common for early and mid-career scientists to list “conference talks” in their CV. Later in the career, you may list only “invited talks”, though you should still maintain somewhere a complete list of your scientific production, which includes all conference talks.

If the conference has no proceedings, it is indeed unpublished. Usually those kind of conferences do not have any problems with you submitting the same paper to a Journal or other conference that do have proceedings.
Be sure to check with the conference regulations, and if you never did any copyright transfer, there should not be any problem at all.


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What is the purpose of a Dual Degree?
I'm in Germany studying a Master of Computer Science, and the program has options of Dual Degrees with other Universities from outside of Germany (US, Europe, Asia). I'm thinking of applying to the Dual Degree, but i have doubts about the purpose of getting two degrees.
Is there a defined purpose or career profile for such double degree programs? In what case should I apply or in what case I shouldn't?

Often a dual-degree serves as a statement of interest to do multi-disciplinary research. A common subject for dual-degree where I study is MEMS or Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems and Physics of Integrated Circuits.

I should point that the other MSc program is Autonomous Systems/Robotics.

I think you should apply if you find both the degrees interesting, and they are complementary. For example, Physics and Computer Science if you aim at writing very good quality physics models (e.g. climate models). Maybe it is hard for you to say what you really want, and therefore it might be hard to judge whether or what dual master (if any) would work for you. On the short term I would try and see if you are drawn towards both masters. If so, you could get a dual degree. Do mind that I suspect two degrees is more work. If you are up to it, and willing to dedicate the time, it could be worth it. On the other hand, I would not recommend just doing it because you feel it might look good on your resume.

I believe the main questions here are:

is the knowledge you will gain from the other degree is of your interest?
does it will help you to become a better researcher?

If the answer is yes for the both then definitely worth to try it and work hardly to make it.
I found this is useful specially in Computer Science (as there are many multi-discipline research areas these days). Some Examples are Computational Biology, Decision Science and of course mathematics.


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How exactly does submitting an interdisciplinary NSF fellowship proposal affect your chances at winning it?
I've received differing answers from many people on this. I'm proposing a planetary atmospheres project and while I'm submitting it to Geosciences - Climate Dynamics, I'll also probably include "Physics and Astronomy - Astronomy" and "Physics and Astronomy - Theoretical Physics" as part of the "% of program for Primary Field of Study". I'm in a geoscience department, but my adviser is a theoretical physicist and I come from an Astrophysics background. I'm slightly hesitant about including panels beyond geoscience though, since the physics/astronomy applicant pool is far stronger than the geoscience applicant pool, and there may be much bigger expectations expected from people in physics/astronomy.
One person told me that they might just average the scores of the reviews from both panels, while someone else told me that it can't hurt at all.

Is your proposed graduate program interdisciplinary?
Note: Interdisciplinary research is defined as a mode of research by
  teams or individuals that integrates information, data, techniques,
  tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more
  disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental
  understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the
  scope of a single discipline or area of research practice. Please
  provide an estimate of the balance among the Fields of Study
  represented.

I read your title, and thought: “100% of those who didn't submit an interdisciplinary proposal don’t win it”

Do you mean a proposal for an NSF fellowship, or a regular grant?

Do not listen to the Impostor Syndrome!

In response to F'x, it's not true that 100% of recipients are interdisciplinary. The NSF is big about "broader impacts" and "intellectual merit," and I suspect that being interdisciplinary lends itself very nicely to having "broader impacts."

@mixedmath what I meant is “100% of those who have an interdisciplinary proposal and don't submit it don't win” :)

Aha - a truer statement has never been said.

According to the NFS

Your application will be assigned to the field of study you list first
  in the Proposed Graduate Program section. ...
  Therefore, you should choose which field you list first carefully,
  with consideration of which panel has the most appropriate component
  fields. ... All interdisciplinary applications are clearly marked as such during
  the review process. Many panelists have interdisciplinary expertise
  and are capable of evaluating interdisciplinary applications.
  Additionally, if necessary, the panel can transfer your application to
  another panel for either a full review or for commentary and feedback.

While in some cases they might average the scores, this does not appear to be a requirement. I would suspect that in most cases they would do the review within a single panel and rate you accordingly and only seek expertise outside the panel if absolutely necessary.


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How to format code in a thesis (Word document)?
I have a couple of code snippets, included in my thesis. What is the most convenient way to format code in a Word document, particularly, in regard to keeping the syntax highlighting, etc.? And the guidelines say that text should use double space. Does this apply to the embedded code as well?

Whatever you do, don't do it by hand. Use an automated tool. Doing things by hand makes you lazy: when you have to change something in the code, you'll be too lazy to reformat and retest it properly, and this will lead to errors.

Why are you using Word for writing your thesis? I'd suggest using TeX, which would make it much more comfortable for you.

Using Latex avoids lots of cumbersome elements while compiling large scripts and documents, however, it requires some familiarity with its packages,  It worths the learning curve though thus I am planning to familiarise myself for the next one.

You should create a paragraph style with the appropriate settings—a monospaced font for one thing, probably some indentation—and use that.
When using Microsoft Word you should resist the temptation to change any properties of the font at all manually. (Ideally remove the font bar from the ribbon altogether.) Instead you should create paragraph and character styles and apply them as you go along. Then they can easily be edited globally later.
If you really need syntax highlighting, the "best" way would probably be to write a macro that tagged the different parts of the code with a different character style for each code element, and then adjust the colours in the character style editor later. Then run the macro on each code block. I suspect such a macro probably exists somewhere.
The "quick" way would be to copy and paste from another program where the text is already coloured.

I'd go for copy/paste from something that does syntax highlighting, then tidying up and applying the right paragraph style. If the snippets are to be in-line with text, rather than in (say) an appendix, then consider whether you want full-on coloured syntax highlighting or whether that would stand out too much compared to the rest of the document. Bold highlighting may be a halfway house, if the highlighting is important, as might greyscales (though be careful with readability).

If you're writing a document of any real size in Microsoft Word, your goal should be to typeset your document, or to have a set of predefined formatting rules for the whole thing. To enable this, you should never, ever set the look and feel of your text via the individual formatting options in the Home ribbon. It becomes really difficult and time consuming to tweak a small detail of a formatting style later if you do.
Microsoft Word has a hidden goldmine -- the Styles panel. Learn it and you'll discover a whole new world of simple productivity. In Word, in the Home ribbon, under the Styles section, you'll find a small "more" button (highlighted):

When you click the button, you'll get the Styles panel:

This is where all of your text formatting needs should live. Two main types of styles exist: paragraph and text. The majority of your styling should be paragraph styles, which means you set formatting for an entire paragraph block (there will be a little paragraph symbol next to these), while the other just changes the look of the text (there will be a little "a" character next to these).
In order to see all of the existing styles, you can click on the Options button at the bottom of the Style panel, and change the settings as follows:

This will show you all of the styles. I recommend generally leaving to show Recommended, or once you learn which styles you like best, to leave it on In Current Document (it'll be a much shorter list and keep your document cleaner).
For code styling specifically, the HTML Preformatted paragraph style works really well. Before:

vs after (with Styles panel filtered to "In Current Document"):

If you don't like something about the way the styled block looks, it's a simple effort to right-click on the style in the Style panel and use the style settings to tweak it how you'd like. This then updates every piece of text in your document that has the same formatting style applied (this is something you want, see typesetting above).
If you don't find a style you like, you can also create your own (the new style button at the bottom of the Style panel). If you get a set of styles set up that you like, you can export them or save them (Styles panel > Manage Styles button > Import/Export, then store the new styles in your default Normal.dotm, or save your styled document as a new dotm that you can import styles from).
If you continue to do academic writing or have reports or things to write for your job eventually, remembering this will make you a superhero of Word productivity (and help you make your documents look incredibly clean and polished).

The most common formatting I have seen is to use Courier (or Courier New) as font, and put keywords (such as int etc.) in bold. I am pretty sure the line spacing does not apply to embedded code (in this sense, the code can be similar to a figure, where you usually would not use double spacing as well).
This is however something you can and should discuss with your administration, who might be able to give you the exact layout and formatting requirements.
You can also you older theses as a baseline for these requirements.

In some situations the code may also benefit with from numbers (for example, if you want to refer to a particular line in the code). That may be tricky to automate in MS Word though (I do not want to suggest to paste a piece of code and add line numbers manually, and then repeat this procedure again after you've modified it!)

_ put keywords (such as int etc.) in bold_ — Oh please no.  Nicklaus Wirth should have his Turing award revoked for starting that execrable typographical practice.  Why on earth would you want to emphasize the syntactic sugar?

@JeffE: agree with you. Using or not the syntax highlight is a matter of taste, and it may be not a good idea to impose it on the reader. OTOH, if the author will make the code also available electronically, then those who wish to study it in more details will have an option to open it with their preferred editor (possibly with syntax highlight, folding and many other nice features).

@JeffE: What do you suggest as an alternative?

@MatthiasDiener Don't put the keywords in bold.

@JeffE: I do not think "no syntax highlighting at all" is a viable alternative.

A couple of points. Firstly, I would suggest you to carefully consider whether you indeed want to retain syntax highlighting in a source code, embedded into a thesis document. While using some color styling is acceptable and, even, recommended (unless it is explicitly prohibited by your thesis/dissertation guide for certain elements or at all), overusing it can be damaging to the impression of your committee members due to potential issues of readability and accessibility.
Secondly, if you would want and be able to generate your thesis Word document from a LaTeX one (I do not recommend it, as it can be quite tricky, unless you have experience in that), then source code formatting transforms into a pretty trivial task, thanks to corresponding LaTeX packages and excellent free and open source pandoc software. Markdown (in combination with pandoc) can also be a feasible alternative to LaTeX, if your thesis is light on mathematics and your formatting needs are relatively modest. There are many detailed guides on the above-mentioned approaches, but, even ignoring some complexities (and, potentially, steep learning curve) reported results are mixed.
Thirdly, to find the optimal Word-only solution, try to review first several pages of more then 3M results of Google search source code highlight word document. I am pretty sure there are some decent methods out there. If you want a simplistic approach, consider using a monospaced font. Some other simple solutions can be found in answers to this popular question on  StackOverflow.

Personally, I'd want syntax highlighting in every situation where I read code.

@FedericoPoloni: I certainly understand you. However, it all depends on personal preferences and/or context (i.e., there is a significant difference in context between reading some code snippets in a tutorial on screen and looking at code, embedded into a mostly black and white academic document, such as a thesis).

I think this is going to depend on the purpose. You should ask your thesis advisor(s) / department chairs. I needed to include some code snippets in my thesis. I was told by my chair members to post the code on Github and obtaining a DOI number associated with it.
Take a look at these two links: https://guides.github.com/activities/citable-code/ and http://figshare.org/ as they might help you in your process.
If you must include the code in the body of the thesis, instead of as a citation or link in the appendix, take a look at this stackoverflow response, as it seems like it would serve perfectly: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2653406/4885396

The best solution I found, (that works nicely for me) is coding in the languages' IDE which applies the highlight according to the languages' style. Then, I copy and paste in an embedded object (word document) in Word editor. The nice thing about that is Word treats it as a figure so I can place a caption, and Word won't try to spell-check. This is the link I got the solution that worked for me.

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


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How to be creative in doing research?
Besides hard work, is there anything that one can try to be creative in research? On this site, is there a lot of people who can publish more than 5 or 10 papers per year? I would like ask them, if it is possible to train oneself to do that.
I have been a hardworking student. For four years, I have tried to publish one (first-author) paper per year, and I feel that this is my limit. This rate is enough for me to get a PhD, but it is never enough for survive in academia.
I'm going to start my postdoc in a couple of weeks, and I'm really worried, thinking about my career. I really love research, but I'm afraid I'm just a mediocre scientist, who will end up as a postdoc for 10 years (or forever).

In which field are you? One paper per year is quite a good rate in mathematics (one of my professor - a leader in his subfield - call it a "yearly miracle") for example.

@Taladris I'm working in Software Engineering

I'm confused by the use of the word "creative" in your post. Do you mean "productive" instead? The answer provided by @John below, I think, highlights this point of confusion.

@MadJack, yes, that could change my answer too! Also, just changed my answer slightly to broden the scope. Thanks.

In fact, after reading jakebeal's answer and the article mentioned in the answer I think the question may also be confusing between 'creativity' and 'impactful research'. In the latter case, it wil lead to a whole new series of answers.

@John When I read the post, the main question I come away with is: I've reached my publications-per-year limit, how do I increase it? One can certainly "be creative" to boost that number, but I'm not certain this is what OP means (I could be wrong). Hopefully, OP will clarify.

@MadJack, agreed

I would like to suggest that you read the speech "You and Your Research" by Richard Hamming on how to do great research.  It's one that I revisit every once in a while when my own scientific motivations are becoming unclear and need to be refreshed.
In reading it, it's important to keep in mind that the speech is thirty years old, and it is addressing things that happened even decades before that, so there are some jarring cultural gaps both with regards to science and with regards to the rest of society.  Nevertheless, I find the central ideas to be still very relevant and valuable today.
Importantly, Hamming distinguishes between things that you need to do in order to not fail and things that you need to do in order to have a real impact.  These are very different, and it is important to distinguish between them.  Important research is not the same as any of the "productivity metrics," and the correlation is often a trailing indicator, not a leading indicator.
For example: you say you are concerned that you are publishing only one paper per year.  Step back and ask: why am I concerned about this?  You can publish lots of papers without ever doing anything really creative or important.  You can have a full, tenured, and comfortable career that way.  And honestly, that's an OK choice to make.  Some people go too far the other way, and strike out so deep into their own creative world that they can never publish their ideas, and they also fail to have an impact (indeed, the most extreme of them we label cranks).
In between is the dangerous and subversive world that Hamming describes, where you teeter back and forth on the balance between compliant conformity to metrics and egotistical creative rebellion.  It doesn't guarantee greatness, but it may be a fascinating ride, and it just might get you somewhere really worth going.

Good answer (+1). I think that in science (as in most other aspects of our lives, for that matter) maintaining a balance is of critical importance. Just FYI: you can watch many Richard Hamming's talks via this playlist, including relevant to this question "You and Your Research", "Intro to the Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn" and, perhaps, "Experts".

I think you are conflating productivity and creativity.  The amount of research you produce is not necessarily related to how creative it is.  (Some people produce a huge number of papers, none of which are very novel.)
Different fields have different expectations for how many papers are expected.  For getting a job, what's important is that you are well regarded as a researcher.  But to answer your question about creativity, here are a few ideas:

You need to have a solid background in your area.  As a postdoc, I started working on some very technical problems, and didn't feel like I could be creative for a long time, because I was just following and learning the established techniques.
Ask yourself basic questions, and try to get a deep understanding of the things involved in your area.  This leads to more questions, and lots of ideas.  (Warning: this is not a way to maximize your number of publications.)  Teaching helps force you do this, or maybe running a technical blog.
Talk to people, and discuss ideas with them.
Go to seminars and learn new things.

I will have to differ from the above answers as I don't think creativity is well defined or quantitively measurable concept. 'Originality' is, and is made sure by the journals. If someone publishes 5 or 10 papers a year in respected journals, then that at least would mean that they develope conclude more original ideas more efficiently than many others.


text:
Publicly available extended summary of PhD thesis and manuscript submission
In my country, if a PhD thesis is written in national language, the candidate must also submit an extended summary of the thesis in English, which will be deposited in a national repository and will be uploaded to the appropriate section of the university's website. This English-language document is approximately between eight and ten thousand words long, its structure is pretty similar to that of a scholarly article and can be downloaded by third parties without cost or restrictions.
I have the following two questions:

Can a candidate submit an English-language manuscript based on the extended summary to an international scholarly journal? Should the extended summary fall in a different category with regard to prior publication than theses "published" in ProQuest ?
A few journals publish extended abstracts and extended summaries of PhD theses as they are - these items are not peer-reviewed and the published version is essentially the same as the item submitted by the PhD candidate to the Doctoral School. This is only for increasing visibility of the original thesis and serves purely research dissemination purposes. If the candidate's extended summary is published in a journal, would it be considered a prior publication?

I think it would be helpful to know some more context of what field you are in. For example, I am in mathematics and published a 4 page announcement article of my PhD thesis results in Comptes Rendus Mathematique. Although this was not quite my thesis abstract, it could be seen as such and I later published my PhD thesis as a volume in a Springer book series.

If you submit the summary (or a substantially similar paper), you should ask the relevant people at the journal beforehand. We can't give an authoritative answer for any particular journal, let alone all of them.

To your first query, the candidate can submit the extended summary of his thesis to a scholarly journal. And more likely of it is not to be rejected, basis the fact that it is a summary of thesis, leaving other selection criteria aside. I belong to a finance background and got the extended summary of my PhD Thesis, post submission of my thesis in an international journal of finance. Secondly, it will, in my opinion, fall in the different category with regards to the published thesis.
For your second query, I am quite unsure of whether it will be considered a prior publication. I will check with my supervisor and will get back to you with his suggestion.


text:
What are "executive members" of a conference or journal?
I am working in the Computer Science field and when working on one internal review of our department, I am asked to fill in the following items:

List of important committees of which you were an executive member (these committees typically own A-journals or A-conferences)
e.g., ACM SIGSOFT, ...

May I ask what are executive members? Surely I have served as PC of a number of Rank-A conferences in our field, but to my best understanding, there are no such executive members in anywhere. For instance:
https://sosp19.rcs.uwaterloo.ca/organizers.html
Could anyone shed some lights on this? Thank you very much.

These conferences typically have an Executive Committee, consisting of the Chairs of the various threads in the conference. Some typical examples are the Conference Chair, Program Chair, Tutorials Chair, Posters Chair, Educator's Symposium Chair, etc. It will normally be around ten people and they are responsible for the overall running of the conference with each having primary responsibility for one aspect (other than the conference chair who has overall responsibility).
This Executive Committee will meet several times in preparation for the conference, usually face to face and usually at the Conference Venue at least twice. The meetings are where problems are addressed and, hopefully, solved.
An "area chair" may also have a co-chair to aid with their area. They might attend meetings or not, but are ready to serve if there is some issue with the chair. There may also be a few others with somewhat lesser responsibilities. They are arguably part of the Executive Committee. Doctoral Symposium Chair might fall into this category.
The Program Chair is a special case and there is usually a Program Committee with several members. They may meet separately from the Executive Committee and are responsible for the overall program. They see that the right papers are accepted and that everything in the main program fits together by assigning papers to sessions. Again, they are arguably part of the Executive Committee.

Thank you for your answer. I didn't figure that before but generally speaking, not all the program committee are not Executive Committee, right?

Some of the PC members could also be on the Executive, but they might not all be. But for your purposes, if you just write/say you were a member of the PC, those reading it will give an evaluation.

I think that the term "executive" here is supposed to mean "you actually had to do something". This would exclude honorary members, or in some cases ex-officio members, who are on the committee for other reasons but not generally participate in the actual work beyond, possibly, being on committee phone calls.