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If studying in groups is more effective, why don't academics also research in groups?
Research shows that studying in groups help students learn more effectively.
If this is the case, why don't academics also conduct research in groups? There are already research groups, but in all the cases I've seen, each individual member of the research group works on a separate research question. If the current question is "reproduce the results of this paper", usually one individual member works through the paper alone (i.e. conducts research alone) and reports the results to the others.
It seems likely to me that the benefits of studying in groups should also happen when conducting research in groups. With someone else that's intimately familiar with what you're doing, you can understand papers better, catch coding bugs quicker, and so on. The sum is greater than the parts, and one can achieve more in less time. Nonetheless, I don't think I've ever seen a single PhD project with two assigned PhD students.
What is the rationale for not conducting research in groups?
Edit: I'm referring to the kind of group work that undergraduates might do when working together: one is next to each other when working, and frequently bounces questions off each other. Computer programs are written together such that both partners know exactly what each line is doing, experiments are conducted with two pairs of hands (or more), and so on.
My experience is that at research level, this doesn't happen. Computer programs can be written by many people, but usually each person is responsible for an individual section. Others know what the program is doing on a high level, but are not familiar with the nitty-gritty of other parts of the code such as what each line is doing. Expressions of the "I see what the code is doing, but I would not have written it like that" are common. Similarly, the dirty work of experiments (e.g. aligning mirrors in an optics experiment) is carried out by one person. Others might know what the experiment is trying to do, but don't get personally involved unless the main experimenter gets stuck (or if there is some kind of spectacular discovery).

But they do. Most paper are co-authored in my field, and enourmously large collaborations exist notably in physics. In maths, look up "Erdős-number". And then, of course, workshops etc. are a thing in most fields.

@henning right, most papers are co-authored, but there's usually a single lead author. Papers which say "these authors contributed equally" are rare. That - contributing equally - is what I had in mind when I wrote the example of a single PhD project with two assigned PhD students.

We do research in groups, especially in experimental fields. About the statement "these authors contributed equally", for instance, in my field author contribution statements are quite unusual.

Students doing group work ie projects for assessment often allow the "good" ones do all the work. Seen this with some students in a "good" group who then don't do so well in the final exam. Also, is this for all subjects?

And this article seems to be based on the results for one group of 4 students - any control? statistical significance?

@MassimoOrtolano how much of a group effort is it? For example, I've coauthored a paper with someone where both our programs produced the same results; however I have never examined his program and he has never examined mine. We coauthored the same paper, but we effectively worked alone.

@SolarMike I don't think a random control trial would be ethical for this unfortunately. Searching via Google, I find articles such as this that isn't conclusive but are relevant; the benefits they give should also apply to research. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042811030205

@Allure can you imagine locking students into closed cells so they had no contact for the control... :) Still it seems a lot of assumptions based on 1 group of 4...

@Allure It is indeed a group effort: we build experiments together, we discuss the issues together almost daily and we constantly check the results together to avoid any possible error.

@MassimoOrtolano hmm, that varies from my experience: yes one can discuss issues with others in the research group, but when it comes to actually performing the experiment or writing the program, one typically works alone.

Computer programs are usually written by one person. — Ha ha ha ha! Pull the other one.

@JeffE more accurately, the entire program can be written by more than one person, but each person is responsible for a different section. Will edit.

So you're essentially wondering why activities like pair programming aren't more commonplace?

@Allure Not even close.  Large software projects are never that nicely partitioned, even if you're lucky enough to have exactly the same set of programmers from start to finish.

As the comments indicate it is quite common for researchers to cooperate, but the extent to which that happens differs a lot between sub-disciplines.
However, I would argue that your analogy is false. Studying is all about acquiring existing knowledge or skills, while research is all about creating new information. What works well for one type of task does not necessary also work well for another type of task. So maybe there is value in cooperation in research or maybe not, but the study you quote does not help us answer it.

Reaction to Edit of question
When I collaborate I like to find someone that complements my abilities. This way collaboration in research tends to favor specialization. There can be some value to let two persons do the same task in terms of quality control, but that is also very expensive. In my case the expected benefit has always been nowhere near the cost, so I have never done that.

I've no idea what field you're in but most research in most areas of STEM subjects is done by groups of researchers so, in the generality that it's stated, the question is based on a completely false premise.

The benefit of teamwork derives from division of labor, knowledge, and viewpoint. Unlike a team of draft horses, an academic or work team should not be evenly matched.  Adam Smith told us 300 years ago that specialization would make the process of pin-making fifty times more efficient.  A team should divide the work into daytime and nighttime data collection, writing the database code, writing the front-end code, and a specialist to write the grant, create the figures, and edit the report.  They should gather together to help each other over problem hurdles and suggest better approaches.
The most innovative of teams may well be pairs: Hewlett and Packard, Page and Brin, and Jobs and Wozniak. But a team of two can't do everything in a finite period of time.  So you need to add people. Those people are each experts in their own field; that gives economies of scale. Empirical evidence shows that economies stop rising after team size reaches 250.  Best to put the next set of people under a new roof.  It's tough to recognize more than 250 faces.  Getting cc'ed by more than 250 takes more time than it's worth.
As to the practice of dividing a class into teams of four, I suspect that it reduces the effort a prof needs to grade the projects. Speaking as a hiring manager and behavioral interviewer, I found questions about group work rich ground.  I was instructed to listen for certain evidence in the response to those questions.  Lots of time I heard that Billy Bob didn't participate in the group but to eat the pizza and get the grade. Fine. But if from the interviewee grousing was all I heard, or that she took up the slack, a black mark went on the paper. Taking up the slack is not what team work is all about.
As to studying in groups, I think it fills the same purpose as recitations -- understanding that your classmates are encountering the same stumbling block you are.  The group allows communication in terms common to the group, even if the prof doesn't use the same analogies and examples. If the group dynamic is such that subject material is divvied up, with an expert on each, that's brilliant. There is no better way to learn something than to have to explain it to another.

"A team should divide the into daytime and nighttime data collection" Remember that not everyone is an experimental scientist. And not every experimental scientist has long-running experiments that need 24/7 data collection. Indeed, such people are probably quite a small minority within academia as a whole.

Yeah, this is quite field specific.  daytime and nighttime data collection, writing the database code, writing the front-end code, and a specialist to write the grant, create the figures, and edit the report: Here in pure math, none of my research projects have involved data, collection, databases, code, or grants.  I think one of my papers had a figure, but it was a while ago.  And we don't call our papers "reports".

Please check the author list of this paper, which runs over nearly 3 journal pages towards the end of the paper, as an illustrative and representative example that people do work in groups. Certainly not everyone duplicates the work of others - this is inefficient and would require unimaginable training to get the proper expertise to get everyone to be proficient on every detail of such an experiment - but the LIGO collaboration can achieve outstanding results only by leveraging the expertise of hundreds of different persons.


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Previous postdoc supervisor removed my name in the published article
In my previous postdoc, I had completed work with my supervisor. The idea was provided to me and I did all the mathematical derivation and generating all the results. We published two conference papers, one with me as the first author, and the second one in which he was the first author. We also submitted the work to a journal but it was rejected. Then, I moved out and took another academic job. I did not have time to work on the rejected journal paper and incorporate all his suggestions. Therefore, we stopped discussing it. Very recently I found that this paper is accepted in a journal paper, and he is the sole author of this paper.
The published paper is 80-90% the same as the rejected paper that was submitted to the journal, and 60% the same to the conference paper that he is the first author (in IEEE they allow the same work to be published in conference and journal). This is completely unethical, to remove my name from the article. In this case, can I complain against him to the editor of the journal, and IEEE? What action can they take, retraction?

It could be that your co-author attempted to reach out to you in order to get your permission to use your name but never got a response, i.e. old email/ not known address, ran out of time and had to publish without your name.
I would advise getting in touch with your colleague first in order to establish what happened before using the nuclear option.  It may be your colleague will assist in amending the published article.

In this case, if you truly cannot get hold of someone, their contribution should be very clearly indicated in the acknowledgements. - Not ideal, but better than nothing. (And may be potentially justified by the inability to reach a former collaborator and potential university ownership of the work carried out.)

I also like to give the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes people are just mistaken and do the wrong thing for what they perceive to be the right reason. However, in this case, it is difficult to credit the supervisor with an unintentional faux-pas. To be kind you could contact the person with a mild and veiled threat, e.g. "I've noticed that you forgot to mention me in ... Would you care to contact the XXX journal to correct this, or would you prefer me to?"  This may give them a sufficient jolt to get them to mend their ways without causing complete disgrace. It depends how charitable you are.

I recently did some work with two others and the thrust of the work changed.  The third author has asked to be removed as a consequence.  It may be the supervisor had an experience where people objected to being included on a paper!

@SeanJ In this case you want to hear explicitly from the author that he/she wants to be removed. However if they have made a major contribution (and is happy for you to publish it) you may nevertheless want to include them in the acknowledgements as otherwise you (as a single or group of authors) would otherwise be passing off the work of others as your own. - Still, it requires the explicit request to be removed. When in doubt, assume all contributors want to be named.

A major advantage of assuming good faith (by e.g. “I assume you forgot my name…” or “I presume you were unable to contact me to confirm I was happy to be listed on the revised version…”) is that it gives the advisor a clear way to accept your side without losing face by admitting that they behaved unethically.  This, hopefully, will make them more likely to accept your requested change, and less likely to get defensive and fight back.

You're putting the cart before the horse here.  Step 0 is to contact your previous supervisor and ask for clarifications.  You may or may not get an answer, and if you get one it may very well disappoint you, but I'm willing to bet no journal editor or university administrator will want to proceed unless you first tried to resolve the issue with your old supervisor.
If the situation is as you describe, then indeed there is a case for a correction to the paper (or at least some editorial action).  Although you have left your previous institution, they would not be enchanted to hear that one of their employee is accused of this form of plagiarism, so if you have a case they are stakeholders in this story.
You might want to be quite careful when giving percentages as you did in your OP.  The published paper might differ only in some small but crucial aspect from the rejected one even if the texts show significant overlap, and one can easily imagine that this is what your old supervisor will use in defending his position.  Also from a strictly semantic perspective, your supervisor did not "remove your name from a published article": he did not properly include your name as co-author when he resubmitted a rejected manuscript to a new journal.  That's not quite the same, although of course the outcome is the same: you're not a co-author.
This is why contacting your former supervisor to clearly understand the rationale behind his actions is essential.  The last thing you want is for you to loose this case as it could impact your reputation at your new institution and with journal editors.

Crystal-clear line of reasoning. Appreciation for the attention to the strictly semantic perspective

The editor of a journal should not care what a university or anybody else thinks. They are technically only beholden to the integrity of their journal. Imagine a university that decided it did not care about plagiarism - should editors then ignore it too for example? Editors and universities may also come to different conclusions depending on the exact circumstances and how rigorous the expected standards of academic conduct are applied. - Having said that, it will always help to be able to provide justified evidence in such cases.

@DetlevCM yes the editor will have different concerns as the University; the concerns might meet or run parallel.

I fully agree with this answer. You should first contact your supervisor and seek reasons for his actions. Failing which you have every right to take this up with the university and the journal. You could use plagiarism softwares to show the similarity between the papers.

Yes, you can complain to the editor.  If you complain to IEEE, the publisher, they will probably refer you to the editor.
You can request retraction or request a correction adding your name as an author.  A correction would require the agreement of all authors.
You can also complain to the university, but the university can only punish the supervisor.  They cannot cause the journal to do anything.
These are options.  They are not necessarily useful options.

I can not approach to the university since he joined another university. I should probably contact the editor in that case.

You can both file a complaint of academic misconduct with the former university, and notify the current university's office of research ethics. If you want to engage in brinkspersonship you can contact the professor and encourage them to contact the journal to make the correction, or else you will resort to the complaint of academic misconduct.

why can you not approach the university, even if you have moved on? Do you not think they have a stake in the outcome, especially if it eventually involves a retraction?  Granted, the odds are slim they will do much, but you should at least consider this option.

Wouldn't publishing this also be a copyright violation and you could use DMCA?

@stackoverblown Why is "not useful" a useful statement? I agree with the actions suggested here, but it can save somebody else who remains at academia the heartbreak to work with such an dodgy person. Very useful, and comparatively little cost, unless OP still depends on their previous postdoc supervisor.

@CaptainEmacs The best way to minimize the heartbreak is to go do something more important.

-1: first, "These are options. They are not necessarily useful options." should be expanded or it can cause confusion. I really do not understand what exactly you are trying to say; that it is fine that people steal other's work? Finally, -1 for not even mentioning reaching out for the colleague first... If any action, that should be action number one.

@JorgeLeitao We don't know the asker's goals.  Contacting the colleague is off-topic for this question.  If the goal is to punish misconduct, these might be useful options.  If the goal is to advance your own career, these options might not help.  I don't think there's enough information in the question to make the changes you suggest.

Wow, yes that is completely unethical. I recently stopped working at an academic institution, but I still collaborate with my former colleagues and we continue to publish old projects that I was involved in, with me being an author still.
I think you have two options:

Contacting the university you did you postdoc at. Email the head of faculty, or if necessary higher up, and explain what this person has done. It may prompt them to retract the paper and take disciplinary measures against him, which would hopefully stop him repeat offending.
Contact the journal, as you suggested. When someone publishes a article, they usually have to agree to an authorship contribution statement. If he has claimed 100% authorship, this is a pretty serious offence, and any journal worth their salt would take an accusation of false misrepresentation seriously. The hard part for you might be proving your contribution. Do you still have the copy that was rejected from the previous attempt to publish, and the rejection email? This would be valuable evidence.

Good luck with you endeavour.

@eru-cs I don't see how such an assumption on his part could be honest. He should at the very least have asked that question directly: "Do you want to still be an author on this? Or are you happy if I take all the credit and publish it without you?" The fact he didn't (as far as we know) reeks of dishonesty. I've had projects which I stopped working on for > 16 months, left the university, ceased communication for months, and my co-authors still contacted me regarding old work.

I can not contact the University because he also moved out of the university and joined a new university. Yes, I have the rejection email.

There would also always be the option of acknowledgements if you had no way of contacting a past collaborator, though people with significant contributions belong into the authors list.

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I am in fourth year and didn't get to know any of my professors really well. Is it too late to ask for letters of recommendation for graduate school?
I am a fourth-year student who graduates in May and I only realised mid last year that I was interested in graduate school. Unfortunately due to my shyness, I didn't get to know most of my professors very well. This is exacerbated by the fact that all my classes are online which makes it even more difficult to connect with professors.  I also cannot find any research opportunities related to the field I am interested in on the university career website.
Is it too late for me to get recommendation letters from professors?

If you have good grades you should be able to get letters.  However, gaining research experience requires many months of advanced preparation.

Your country???

No it's not too late, but you're going to be disadvantaged - mainly because your letter writers probably cannot say much about you that your transcript doesn't already say. They might be able to comment on your coursework performance, but cannot say anything about your research ability, which is going to have a negative impact.
If you're interested in graduate school and can still do some research project, you should take the opportunity.

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How should a high-school student approach professors in research institutions about research opportunities?
I am a high schooler who lives in the vicinity of many premier research institutions and am very interested in going into STEM. I know that I will have to ask a lot of professors to let me work under them before one agrees, so I was wondering how I could go about asking several professors.
I know that I will need to write a proper email for each one, not a mass email that I can just copy-paste. Another issue I thought about is if by some chance two professors agree to have me. What do I do then? How can I avoid that situation?

Does this answer your question? How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?

If two of them say yes, just say no to one.

But I asked them, so wouldn't it look bad if I turned them down?

@a43nigam people apply for multiple degree courses and jobs at once. Get used to saying no to offers now, as it won't be the first time you'll have to. Professors know you'll be shopping around and won't mind, if you phrase it politely of course.

@a43nigam Just say, "Gee, professor, I'd love to work with you.  Sadly, I've already told Professor Brown I'd join his lab.  I'm really sorry."

@a43nigam So what if it did? You aren't working for them.

Is this a situation where the professors are advertising projects? Or are you just emailing professors out of the blue? Are you planning on working under them as a high schooler, or are you looking to have something lined up if you matriculate?

It might be better, if you can arrange it, to have one of your teachers help you with this. It may well be that one of your STEM teachers went to one of these universities, or has some contact there. If so, they can help you make contact, vouch for your seriousness, and ease the way.
This is much harder now in the pandemic, but perhaps it can be arranged in virtual space. A phone call from a teacher to a professor before you make contact will make all the difference. Even if none of your teachers have any contacts, a mail from them, introducing an "interesting student" will make your contact much more likely to bear fruit. Make sure that your teacher can say some interesting things about you and your interests and skills.
This should avoid the "bulk" problem and you can approach it one step at a time.

Write an email to each professor like this:
Subject: High school student looking to intern in your lab.
Body:
Dear Prof .....
My name is ..... I am a highschool student at ......
I am really interested in your work on (Clear specific details about the work taken from their college website)
I have read your papers ...... (Pick one or two open access papers that you can download for free).
I have the following questions .... (Ask some good questions)
I would really like to do a short intern project in your lab working on .... (topic from papers) possibly doing experiments ...... (Suggest some experiments similar to the ones in the papers).
Thank you for your time, and I hope to hear back from you.
Best Regards
.....
It's a high bar, but it's your best shot. Remember quality is better than quantity. Five Good emails like this will do better than 100 boilerplate emails.
Also don't get disheartened if the professors don't reply, they are very busy and probably didn't open your email, or possibly don't have the space to take on a high school student.
Also remember that it's not required for high school students to have work experience in labs. You have to demonstrate that youre really good to get an intern project as a high school student. Most people who go on to do STEM degrees and PhDs didn't get work experience in a lab as a high school student.

Especially in a pandemic. I know multiple professors who said explicitly "I cant keep working with high schoolers right now."

I guess you should not ask everyone simultaneously. Ask sequentially/serially, waiting for a response (or, after some waiting period, a non-response) from one before you email another.
As you already speculate, you should absolutely customize your communication with each person. After all, not such a huge cost for what you hope! :)
I should say that I myself tend not to respond positively to emails that are apparently boilerplate, or bulk emails (using bcc), or ...
We can all understand the apparent economy of "bulk emails", but it will also, correctly, be perceived as spam. So, self-defeating if/when you are dealing with serious people.


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How to contact professors for a Ph.D position in France, when I don't have a research question?
I completed Master's in Netherlands in Aerodynamics and I am looking for Ph.D in the field of aerospace in France. In Netherlands & Germany, I can see the available Ph.D offers in University website but I don't know how to search in France? I really want to stay there!
I see some people in this forum answered to contact professor directly (for example, in What is the process for PhD applications and contacting professors in France?) but I don't have an Ph.D research question. So, don't know how to contact them. Can someone tell me how to contact a professor and whom to contact for funding?

You can find specific professors and what is the subject they are working on. In that case, you can propose that you like the subject and would be interested in a PhD position to work with them. Although, universities usually advertise the positions on their website and/or other academic job portals.

I think it is easiest to just google and email the prospective supervisors directly (many of them would have a "now hiring" section on their webapge).

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What to tell professors to persuade them to let a pre-college student work with them
This is a follow up to the question Is it possible take take part in a research project if I'm not a part of a university?
I'm a student who has not yet entered college (though I am planning to as soon as I graduate highschool; that's a little ways away now though) located in the United States. I am old enough to legally work (just to clarify) and I'm interested in doing research. I've been teaching myself various subjects in math, physics, and programming/computer science (I've learned how to program in Python, the basics of calculus and linear algebra, and I'm reading about quantum computing, for example). Reading the question linked above, the advice seemed to be to contact a professor, whether through family, at conferences, or by emailing, and that it was certainly possible. I don't have any family that is in academia, and I can't exactly attend conferences (though I might try to attend some open talks that the nearest university gives, though that's a bit of a long shot) so the best option seems to be to email them.
What information do I need to give the professor? I've read about a CV, but my educational record is, you know, Kindergarden through 8th grade (with straight A's, but, you know, plenty of people get that) and the electives I've taken haven't yet differentiated much, and they won't until around 10th grade. I have taught myself a decent amount, but I don't know how to convey that information. I've found several professors at a university near me that I'd be interested in working with, and I'm working through some of their papers, so I can talk semi-educatedly about their research (hopefully, anyway). I also have an idea for a research topic that I've been working on for a bit in the field of quantum computing.
Should I try to compose some version of a CV? Should I  explain that I'm teaching myself various subjects, and am interested in their research, perhaps referencing some question I have about one of their papers and/or stuff I'm working on? I assume you're not really supposed to say, "Dear Professor so-and-so, Can I work with you?" I also assume they're not going to take reputation on stack exchange as any sign of intelligence. =)
Tl;dr, how can I a. get a professor to take me seriously and b. have a shot at getting accepted as a volunteer or assistant or summer intern or whatever for the professor/lab/group? Or should I not be emailing them (instead calling them, setting up an appointment, whatever)?

I'm not familiar with your country (US?) but probably your best bet would be that of passing through your high school professors: maybe some of them have contacts in a nearby university.

@MassimoOrtolano, yes, i'm in the US - thank you for the advice.

Look up for a few professors you'd like to work with. Find out when is their office ours. Go talk to them!

I was in your situation last year. I'm a high school student and have interned in some pretty prestigious labs; I've almost never been turned down as most labs dont mind having a talented high schooler to work on something of use. Send your target professor an extremely well written email in which you sound intelligent, very informed about the subject and demonstrate your ability to think about it, i.e. your ideas. I wouldn't say you need a CV. Chances are you'll be successful. But you won't know if you don't try. If you want to talk more, email me at aclscientist[at]gmail[dot]com

@theideasmith - This is helpful.  Please write an answer (but maybe don't include the address in the answer).  You could flesh it out a bit and explain a bit more about the content and tone of the email.

"I might try to attend some open talks that the nearest university gives, though that's a bit of a long shot" -- Can you help me understand why that's a long shot?  I have known a high schooler with math precocity and strong interest, similar to what you've described.  He audited a university class, attended some seminars, and attended a Johns Hopkins summer program; through these activities, he was able to build up his credibility to where he would be taken seriously.  Also, these activities enabled him to find mentors.

Oh a piece of advice that I wish I had been told earlier was to be very particular about developing a rigorous as opposed to an intuitive understanding of the math you learn autodidactically. It will help to sharpen your mind and enable you to actually formulate ideas rigorously as opposed to only thinking about them from an intuitive standpoint in your independent research.

@aparente001, what does it mean to "audit" a university class (is it paying for just one class...)? And do you have to sign up to sit in on seminars? (Thanks for the comment, by the way.)

There are a couple different ways of auditing a class: official: for this you pay a fraction of the normal tuition (this approach is probably outlined somewhere on the university website); informal: you just ask permission of the instructor to sit in on the class.  You don't need to sign up to attend most seminars.  If you are comfortable giving us the name of the college or university near you, we can provide some more specific guidance.

There are always options available for smart, passionate, hard-working people. When I was at Fermilab in Illinois they had a summer program for high-school kids - I am pretty sure they still have it. And they actually did research! I have been mentoring myself a sophomore year student for a summer, and she was able to do real, and interesting, work.

@aparente001, sure, the university nearest me is Iowa State University.

I looked at the listing of math courses: http://catalog.iastate.edu/collegeofliberalartsandsciences/mathematics/#courseinventory, and the schedule of classes: http://classes.iastate.edu/.  There is something called "Seminar" with two sections, one on Monday afternoons and one on Thursday afternoons.  If I were you I would recruit a family member or supportive adult to attend with you the first time, since I have occasionally seen mathematicians behave in a less then welcoming way to unknown women showing up to seminars.  (That was a long time ago and hopefully things have changed by now.)...

Typically one need not attend every session of something described as "Seminar." // The department seems to have a strong focus on mathematics education.  That is not necessarily a bad thing.  // There's a very nice class offered next fall that you might enjoy, MATH 557: Ordinary Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems, MWF 3:10 pm.  If you haven't covered this material on your own yet, this would be a great class in which to get your feet wet in a university setting.  I have seen high school students have a good experience taking this class in a college where I live.  It's a...

classic course, very well designed, pretty much impossible to screw up.  (Nevertheless, I would still check what ratemyprofessor.com has to say about the instructor -- although of course one needs to take the ratings and comments with a grain of salt.) // Is there a math club at your school?  If not, perhaps you could start one.  You could write to the Iowa State math department and ask if any folks in that department would be interested in getting involved.  That can be a good way of starting to make connections.  // Also you could attend a math conference.

You sound a little too smart to be benefiting from being in daycare (e.g. the American public school system).  Have you considered taking college classes?  If your parents are refusing to let you skip grades (seems unfortunately common), local community colleges still have night classes, plus there're summer class opportunities at universities.  For being an actual researcher, you're going to be a bit disadvantaged due to your lack of education.  To make the most of your potential, it'd seem that getting an education would be your top priority.

@Nat, yeah, my parents won't be letting me drop out of school anytime soon, and skipping grades isn't really an option (I also do have friends in my grade, so that makes things even more interesting). I'd love to do university classes; I'm planning on asking my parents about auditing some of the math and physics classes at Iowa State. But yeah, school's kind of boring.

@heather If you get a job as a researcher, they'd probably stick you on some fairly menial task.  You'd still get exposure to the research world that way which would make it better than other part-time jobs you might pursue, but it won't be quite the same thing an older student would be doing.  The education system wasn't constructed for people like you, so it's going to take longer to get through it than you'd probably like in an ideal world.  Still, 'til you get through it, the lack of background'll prevent you from fully engaging.

Hi @heather, it's impressive that a student so young (I'm guessing you're... 14?) would be so driven to work on quantum computing! I'm just curious, did you manage to find a professor to work with?

@MaxisJaisi while I don't want to say my exact age, yeah, I'm around there. I've contacted a professor with a question about their paper, and they've replied, and I'm also doing a lot of work on my own, but I haven't found a professor to work with yet, unfortunately.

You might want to try aiming a bit lower, such as those schools that don't have graduate programs.
At these types of places, where it is difficult for professors to even get any students (let alone the top undergraduates) involved in their research program, some professors may actually want to bring on board a high school / junior high student, if for no other reason than to impress some administrative type (dean, department head, etc.) that this particular professor is engaging in some form of outreach (you know, to help spread the word about the program to get students excited about going to school there).
Just send an email to someone involved in the area you are interested in, attach a CV *, and briefly explain your aims. If the school is close by to you, you could also arrange an in-person visit. For the in-person visit route, if you are indeed interested in attending the school for your undergraduate degree, I suggest you indicate this fact when you attempt to setup the meeting.
Good luck.

* In your CV, you can briefly summarize your self-study progress and plans, your research interests, any projects you've undertaken on your own, and the like, if you don't have any formal educational training in the research area of interest, any papers published, etc.

Thank you, this is a great answer! Would you mind elaborating a bit though on what to include in a CV when you don't have much educational background and no publications?

@heather Yes, I have updated my answer to address your concern.

I guess with this type of places as an alternative, one should be careful it is an actually engaging program and not a 'dead' or boring project where the professor isn't simply trying to satisfy unrelated demographic requirements?

@Pysis Yes, indeed. As with anything in life, it's a good idea to make sure that what you are getting yourself into is actually worth getting into in the first place.

I think the biggest obstacle you face is convincing a professor that you are a good investment of his/her time. Quantum computing is a tough subject even for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, so I think the default response for any professor to an 8th grader would be one of skepticism that you have the basic skills to be an asset to his/her research. In other words, will you be able to contribute enough to a project to justify the time and effort the professor will invest in you?
One slightly unconventional approach would be to try lower on the academic totem pole. Do the professors you identified have any graduate or undergraduate students? Do they work in a department that has an academic coordinator? These people may be more responsive to emails, more willing to talk with you, or better abled to point you to other people (key word is may). If you can impress a professor's graduate student with your initiative, skills, etc., this could be a way to get your foot in the door.

I actually did roughly what you're after back when I was in high school. I ended up working in a chemistry lab at the local university from my sophomore year through the summer after my senior year---and got paid pretty well to boot! While not the same field as what you're after, hopefully you can learn from some of my experiences. As most of the other answers are from a professor's perspective, I'll try to give my recollections from the high school point of view (rather than my thoughts as a current PhD candidate).

I found this job via networking with a family friend that was working as a post-doc in a different lab (same department). The "hiring process" consisted of meeting with the professor for a 45 minute talk before being welcomed aboard and given a tour of the lab. As with many jobs, networking beats cold-calling almost every time. Even if it's not your "dream research group," see if you can't get your foot in the door by seeing if anyone is hiring for "Research Assistants" or "Laboratory Technicians." Large research groups will sometimes even have listings for such things.
Try to strike a balance and not oversell your abilities. As you mention, you have a large number of accomplishments, especially compared to your peers. Keep in mind, though, that you are looking to join a research group that will have people with years of formal schooling and research experience. As an analogy, you have probably figured out that (some) of your teachers don't take it kindly when you prove them wrong in front of the class; a similar level of tact is useful here as well. You're asking to join their research group!
When you reach out to professors and hopefully meet with them, try to sell why you would be beneficial to their group. In my case, the first year or so I spent in the lab was very much laboratory tech / assistant work---cleaning glassware, updating MSDS sheets, organizing the stockroom, updating the website, etc. However, I was proving myself to be a known and helpful quantity and learning everything I could about all of the ongoing research projects. This slowly transitioned into helping perform experiments and eventually designing and running experiments that were helpful for the research that others had going on. In comparison, don't necessarily be expected to be "handed to keys" to whatever multi-million dollar machines are around on the first day.
Learn everything you can. There's an amazing amount of information you can pick up by attending lab meetings or asking different researchers about what they're working on (and especially where to learn more). Even if you're doing "grunt work," make the most of it!

The professor in charge of the research group ended up writing me an awesome letter of recommendation when I was applying for university as well as writing letters of introduction to several people at the university I chose. This helped me start working in a lab on the first day of my freshman year in a new city on the opposite side of the country, rather than being just another face in a large lecture hall. In addition to keeping on top of my own coursework, the experience of working in a research lab was probably the most productive thing I did with my time in high school.

Universities often have outreach programs specifically aimed at high school students like you, who are ready to dip a toe in the waters of college-level research and coursework.  You're probably going to have better luck going through one of those programs than contacting professors directly.  Professors are very, very busy as a rule, and notorious for not responding to email from their own students in a timely fashion, let alone from people they've never heard of before.
This google search brings up several such programs at Iowa State that might be relevant to you.
There are also a number of summer "camps" for high school students in the sciences that you might consider applying to.  I can personally recommend SSP.

What information do I need to give the professor?
It certainly wouldn't hurt to have a resume of some sort on hand to give to a university professor. If you have entered in Robotics competitions, math competitions, science bowls, etc. it wouldn't hurt to include those as well. Really anything to prove that you are serious and really interested in the topic.
However, in all reality, it would be difficult for a professor to focus his/her time on giving you an internship or research opportunity when you are competing against many other University students who probably are more knowledgeable and have more experience than you. (I tried doing that in high school - emailing professors and such to try and improve my chances of getting accepted to college and none of them responded.) In addition, the University probably would be more favorable towards their own students rather than someone in high school. I think that your best bet would be to start joining summer camps and such offered by your local university. Research how to be involved in such activities. When I was in high school, I was part of my Robotics team and there were competitions at my state university. This gave me a good chance to meet with the college students there who were present and get an idea for what the topic is really about. Even though I never met a college professor at these events it definitely provided opportunities to really experience "research" without being so formal.

Check out the 3rd author of this top-quality conference research paper: https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast17/technical-sessions/presentation/chen
I was pretty floored when I realized a high school student was involved in a university research project.  This is another example that proves it can happen; if you contact a university and they tell you what a bad idea it is, point them at this!

For a more extreme example, Arthur L. Rubin published a paper in Fundamenta Mathematicae (a well respected mathematics journal) at age 13.

OK, forget Nelson, point them at this one :)

In the US, the easy option is for you to walk into the department at your university of interest and speak to the department secretary. Tell her who you are, and what your goals are. Be friendly.
He/She might know which member of faculty you should speak with, and might even be able to help you set up a meeting.

First of all congratulations for your will to set high targets. Based on your question I suspect that you are more advanced than typical for your age.
Maybe you could try to contact institutions which support high IQ persons. (e.g. https://www.mensa.org/, or http://www.triplenine.org/). They might help you with contacts to universities. Like in every job search, personal connections can be very helpfull.

Thank you for your response; I'm not currently in Mensa or any such institution, but I'll try to contact them.

@heather Don't set your expectations too high for Mensa.  They're a society that accepts most of the top 10% of the population (their 2% claim is bogus) that's pretentious enough to want to be identified by a metric like IQ, making them a boring lot.  People who're actually doing intellectual things, e.g. researchers and innovators, are far more interesting company.  'course, nothing beats checking something out for yourself, so joining and talking to them can be an interesting life experience.

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


text:
Advisor professor asking me for the source code of my dissertation in order to be used by another student
I finished my master's degree (Computer Science) a short time ago, and I don't currently plan to continue my academic studies.
My adviser asked me for the source code of the application I developed for my final paper (and for which I received a perfect score) in order for one of students they currently advise to continue my work as part of their bachelor's final project.
This question is similar to this one Advisor professor asks for my dissertation research source code. The difference is that my work will be used (continued?) by another student as part of their final paper.
Should I do this or is there any reason for me to be concerned about this?
Update
To provide some clarification. I was not paid for the work that I did for my paper. (however I also did not pay for my master studies in case this matters). I put a significant amount of time into this (by my standards at least) around 5 months. Also, my paper was not submitted in an article, journal etc. It was only submitted to the university (without the code), and then I defended my work in front of a committee. This paper/project is the work based on which the diploma is given. The mark received for this is noted on the diploma.
In the end decided to make the repository public (with a license).
Thanks for all the answers, they made me realize that learning is based on sharing.

What is it that worries you?

I guess the possibility that the other student might get their final score based on my work and not on theirs (if they don't really contribute that much to what I already did), as the professors will probably not be aware how much of it is my work and how much will be the other student's.

The prof asked you to make your code available, so I assume (s)he knows that the students expands on it. It is than up to her or him to keep track of how much the students contributes.

That makes sense. I suppose my concern stems from the fact that, in my case, the prof didn't keep track of what I was doing at all (I told him the paper idea when I started and then presented him the finalized application and paper at the end without any intermediary meetings to check on my progress).

I have not a shadow of a doubt or remorse in giving away my academic code. In most cases it's published, so it's a further citation, a possible collaboration, a token of help to a fellow researcher. And, frankly, it's not that good to be jealously guarded. It might be best to start a github, as a young researcher, anyway.

If your university IP rules permits it, why not publish it under your name on github - let the world benefit and you get the acknowledgements. At my uni, this was actively encouraged.

The real question is under what license you would publish your source code. GPL is different of other open source licenses. Read about The simple economics of open source

Is the adviser formally acting on behalf of the school, or are they acting as a middle man between the other student and you? Because if the latter, then it's effectively the same as if the student themselves contacted you (with an appropriate level of privacy inbetween so the student doesn't know your identity).

If you feel the code is yours can't you just upload it to Github, then if anyone wants to use it they have to ask for your permission.

Perhaps my comment is area dependent (I'm a "pure" mathematician). At least in mathematics, the author is the author, period, there is no discussion here. So you don't have to disclose anything to anyone (either publicly or privately) unless you want to (even if it is hard to say no to your professor). I really don't see how a code differs from an unpublished theorem and proof, and often we prefer to keep it to ourselves, just in case, perhaps because it may help (ourselves) at some later time.

Unless you are angling for commercial use of your code, you should post the code publicly, to GitHub, your own website, etc.
To be clear, you are almost definitely under no obligation to provide your code. You have completed your Master's. Absent an express agreement regarding the IP in your source code (you have not mentioned one, so I'm assuming there isn't one), you don't have to provide it to anyone at this point, any more than you would have to provide your research notes if you submitted a thesis on Shakespeare's Hamlet. (See more information on this point below.)
If you are merely concerned that you receive intellectual credit—or, as you indicate, that the undergraduate is able to differentiate between your work and their contribution—the easiest thing to do would be to post the code publicly, for example to a GitHub repo with an open source license, and then just send the professor the link to the repo. As a bonus, posting your code publicly is a good way to show off your work.
Regarding specifically the concern that the undergraduate will rely too much on your code, not enough on their own additions, and the professor won't know the difference, there are three points:

That's not really your concern, it's the concern of the professor supervising the project.
Are you certain that the new student's project is a coding project? Perhaps you wrote some analytical code, and the new student's project is to actually run it against various datasets and analyze the results.
If you post it to GitHub, the new student can fork the repo and the professor (or you!) can then very easily use diff to view the changes.

Mostly, I understand the desire to get credit for one's own small contribution to the growth of knowledge (this is not to belittle your work—most of us, myself included, will only ever get to make small contributions). The best way to do that is to share your code with everyone rather than keep it from one person with an immediate need for it.

Additional notes regarding university IP in student work product:
A commenter has suggested that the university has IP in the student's work. In their field (chemistry) they were required to turn in all notebooks, images produced by electron microscopes, etc.
I reviewed my own university's policies on Inventions and Patents. Graduate students are included in a long list of roles who automatically assign IP rights to the university. Undergraduates are not. Work produced on the person's own time, not using university equipment, is not included.
Does this turn on whether OP was programming on a university computer or a personally-owned laptop? I poked around online, and came up with an interesting FAQ by the World Intellectual Property Organization. (Note, I am not an IP lawyer, just a university social science faculty member, so I can't evaluate the legitimacy of this source. But it does on the face of it seem credible.) The full result can be read at https://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/universities_research/ip_policies/faqs/index.html, but the gist is this:

Who owns IP generated by students?
Most universities recognize as a general principle that students who are not employees of the university own the IP rights in the works they produce purely based on knowledge received from lectures and teaching. However, there may be some circumstances where ownership has to be shared or assigned to the university or a third party. Typically, these include:

Students who are sponsored. […]
Students working on a sponsored research project. […]
Students working on research, theses or publications in collaboration with academic staff. […]
Use of university resources. […]

While it is important to address these issues in the university IP policy, the university would usually need to have an express agreement from the student before he or she embarks on the research. This is because students are not automatically bound by the policies of the university.

My takeaway from this, and thoughts on the current question are:

Unless OP believes there is commercial potential for this code, there is probably no reason not to provide it to the faculty member.
If it is shared, there is no reason not to share it widely (and some reason to share it widely).
It is hard for me to imagine the professor pursuing an IP claim against the student. If the student refuses to share the code, that will probably be the end of it.

If a student was paid for work done during their degree they may still have an obligation to give up their code.

True, but there's no indication that the student was paid.

This is probably incorrect, though I'll allow for differing academic practices at other universities than mine... Every scrap of paper I produced when writing my masters thesis was the universitys property. I got handed a note book for my notes, and told to include if I used other sources. Not only the final version of my thesis, but also every image produced (chemistry - there was a bit of electron microscopy) and every sub-test report included in the thesis was turned over. This isn't stealing, you are supposed to advance the university and science as a whole - this is what the degree means.

@StianYttervik: Just to give a different situation a voice: I did my Diplom (Master) in Germany, and as Daniel correctly pointed out in another comment, in Germany the IP to a Bachelor or Master thesis is owned by the student. There's no leeway here for differing practices of other universities since that follows from legislation.

Why would you refuse?  You might want “negotiate” an explicit acknowledgment at the end of any paper that uses your code as seed for something else (“ We thank Jan Schwarz for permission to use an older version of this code which he developed” or “This code is build on a previous code by Jan Schwarz” or something you think better reflects the situation, like citing your thesis)  but aside from this there is presumably no issue of priority since your thesis is dated.

I'd try to negotiate also for authorship on a paper, if one is published, based on the code.

@einpoklum this would be ideal of course but might not be possible.

The more likely option is to ask for a citation of your work. The student probably needs to cite the work he uses as base for his work anyway and they can and should mention they used the code from this publication. Being a co-author without working on that paper is probably not correct. You are the first author on your thesis for the existing code, you deserve further authorship only for further contributions. On the other hand can the new student not claim credit for anything achieved by the existing code, but only for his extensions. Your prof will probably account for this when grading.

Here's how I'd look at the situation in case OP (or a future reader) is in  Germany.

In Germany, the IP of a Bachelor or Master thesis is almost always owned by the student.
With software, there may be a more complicated situation if the student wasn't the only author of that software - but the exam regulations for the thesis would anyways require that the student's contribution can be unambiguously identified (and that would apply to the next thesis student as well).
The university (or advisor) must not ask for a license/IP rights before the thesis is finished and graded.

More details on this: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/63605/725
With this background, were OP in Germany I'd say that the advisor now after the thesis is finished is an indication that they are a good & nice advisor who follows these rules. So to me, that would be highly reassuring, the contrary of creating concerns.
Unfortunately, I'm emphasizing this because in my experience there are professors/advisors who do not care at all about these rules and (at the very least) create the impression that the student does not own such IP produced during a Bachelor or Master thesis*.
For OP, I'd recommend to use the occasion to learn about software licenses, and talk to the supervisor what license they'd need.

As the code is part of the Master thesis, it likely has scientific merit (as opposed to being a tool that is helpful to the group but does "contain" scientific advance). That means that in publications about the software, OP should be co-author. Publications that use the software should cite OP (the thesis).
There shouldn't be anything to negotiate here as the rules for academic co-authorship (and for the next student being required to cite & report all sources for their thesis) are quite clear. Nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to explicitly talk about this.

* The situation is very different for PhD thesis since many (most?) PhD students are employees of the university, and that employment relationship automatically transfers IP rights to the university.


text:
Are PhD applications confidential in the USA?
I came out on the diversity portion and I am having deep regrets and fears that anybody outside the admissions committee sees it. I doubt anybody on admissions even cares but I need to know that such information will not spread.
I shared this information on a portal that asked for a diversity statement and character traits about me as part of "holistic review", not on the statement of purpose which I assume is for professional goals.

It's quite likely that the information you provided wasn't shared with the admissions committee and was only made available to the office responsible for diversity for use in compling statistics on the pool of applicants and the accepted students. This is similar to the situation with employment applications.

Certainly it isn't considered "public" knowledge to be shared. In particular, other students won't have access to it, nor will it go in any public-facing record.

@BrianBorchers It sounds to me like zim is referring to a personal statement or the like, not filling out a demographics questionnaire. zim, can you clarify?

Also, did you explicitly mention that you are not out to most/any people? Or just mention it in passing? I ask because, if you did not, and are accepted, you might end up on e.g. a listserv for people of your identity without your consent, although on second thought that probably comes from the demographics questionnaire anyway, but I could imagine a well-meaning prof (even someone who shares your identity!) referring you to those lists.

We are missing a lot of detail from the question, but:

assuming "out" means one of LGBTI
you are not seeking a PhD in religion

Then the usual cultural expectation is that someone's LGBTI identity is not shared without their consent.  Occasionally people do things that are unexpected.
In the current climate, at the average university people might be surprised that you have not been out for a long time.  They will not be surprised if you are experiencing discrimination outside the university.
There are certainly universities that are not friendly to LGBTI students in the USA, but most of them do not have doctoral programs.  Usually they can be identified by reading their websites, including mission and diversity statements, carefully.

As a fairly substantial long-term data point(s)... from my being involved-in and observing grad admissions at a big state univ:
At my univ, the central admin people hardly look at applications, to begin with. Documents and info are entered into the system by a certain few people, but those are just data-entry people, and I'd be surprised if they looked at things more than for formatting and completion of application.
At the departmental level, especially for the last 10+ years, all applications are electronic, and the only people with access are the admissions committee people, who are tenured (or occasionally tenure-track) faculty. Each person has roughly 40-50 files to look at, at least, so there's typically no specific connection of names with data, after recommendations have been made.
It's not so much that there's a well-known rule about sharing info, though there probably is such a rule, but just that no one finds any of the info in this ocean of applications interesting enough to gossip about, so, in fact, there is no sharing.
In my univ, the grad admissions cte does pay some attention to the diversity statement, in the sense of hoping that people express concern and interest in such issues, whether or not they themselves have had hardships, etc, related to such matters. Yes, direct personal experience is worth a lot, of course, as with most things. "All other things the same", we'd prefer to admit grad students who understand that "mathematics" is a human activity, and that equitable behavior and appreciation of varying backgrounds and privilege is important, for many reasons.
(No, not everyone agrees with my last sentence...)


text:
A journal is interested in my column proposal, but so is another journal that initially rejected it. What are my obligations?
Earlier this year, I submitted a column proposal (not a peer-reviewed article) to Journal A.  The proposal was rejected, and so I submitted it to Journal B.  Journal B seemed interested in my proposal and asked me to submit a draft as soon as it was completed.  I thought all was well, but now Journal A has come forward and said that they changed their mind and would like to see a draft.
This wasn't a double submission situation, but I'm still concerned about an ethics involved since both journals would now like to see a draft.  Since Journal A initially said no, am I obligated now to go with Journal B?  Or do I have the freedom to chose between either?

If you don't care which journal your column appears in, then you probably, at the very least, owe Journal A a note that says something along the lines of

Since receiving your original rejection on Date X, 2015, I subsequently proposed the column to another journal. They have since also asked me for a draft to review. At this time, please consider my original column proposal withdrawn.

If you strongly prefer publishing with Journal A, then you have more of a quandary on your hands and should probably get in touch with the editor at Journal B handling your proposal to have a frank and open discussion about the situation. If the difference between Journal A and B is substantial in your field, then the editor at B might be understanding and cut you some ethical/personal slack and suggest that you pull your column proposal from Journal B and go back to A.
I think there's a case to be made that Journal B now has priority (dibs) over Journal A in competition for the column. Journal A originally passed on the proposal, and some sort of release from B is warranted before giving A another shot at it. In my opinion, the editor at B is in no way required to give up their priority position. You might be able to talk them into it, but since A had the initial shot at your column and passed, they don't have much room to complain that they should be the first to publish the column.


text:
The difference in writing style between a book chapter and article in a journal
My discipline is educational technology and I have been invited to submit a book chapter about integrating technology in my region. I published many articles in top refereed journals, but not sure whether the focus, style of writing and structure of articles are appropriate for book chapters.
Anyone can highlight the main differences?

I've edited to clarify that this question is about difference in writing style, not reputation (see A book chapter in an edited volume vs an academic article. How do they compare? for the equivalent question about reputation).

Who is the target audience for the book chapter, compared to the target audience of your journal articles (the latter presumeably being "primarily researchers from your field")?

But what about the data analysis and results section, should it be the same as the article?

You would want your chapter to fit into the whole project, whereas a journal article can usually stand alone.
Your chapter should not duplicate material in other chapters, although you may refer to material in another chapter.
You will want your chapter to be generally accessible.  For the specialized journal article, that doesn't matter so much.
The editor (could be more than one) may want to be rather more involved in choosing the content, organization, presentation, etc.,for a book project than for an isolated article.
To get a feel for the style desired, you could ask the editor(s) for one or more examples of the desired style.

Also, importantly that book chapter does not have citation within the text, however, this is crucial in the review paper. In general, the audience of the book are interested but relatively new in the field, where the review paper audience are more specialised usually with previous knowledge and experience, so the writing style should take care of this.

"book chapter does not have citation within the text": There are plenty of books that have citations within the text.


text:
Fine line between "figuring it out on my own" and "asking for help" in research labs?
For some background: I'm very new to graduate school, in fact I just started unofficially doing research a few months ago, my official PhD program starts in the Fall (I moved out there early). Currently, I'm at a big R01 institution, coming from a pretty low ranking obscure undergraduate school, and there is an intimidation factor when I'm surrounded by accomplished postdocs (they pushed out more papers than my professors with tenure in my undergraduate). It's slightly amplified when I consider that, so far, I effectively only have a Bachelor's degree.
Anyway, I was given some code to modify for a specific device. I'm not really pestered or swarmed for deadlines, and I'm trying to figure it out. I honestly think there is an error in the syntax that prevents me from being able to carry out a colleague's request. I have prior coding experience. I'm a traditional "I want the challenge of figuring it out so I can develop and learn" kind of guy, but where do you draw the line between the latter mentality and requesting help? I don't want to come off as stupid or needy, and I want my lab to be able to depend on me. So far I have been pretty reliable (and that's saying a lot considering I'm a big critic of myself), and I don't want to kill the momentum.

Can you ask your colleague (or whoever wrote the code) a quick question to ascertain whether it's a simple error in the code, or some more complex hurdle that you need to work around?
Don't be afraid to ask for help! You'll be a lot more productive if you ask for help when you really are stuck, rather than waiting too long.
A more experienced mind can usually tell quite quickly whether it's an easy or difficult problem to solve. There's no use banging your head against a brick wall for days if your supervisor has a sledgehammer hidden in his cupboard!

This is purely opinion, but in the lab setting I see delivery as more important than determination. Put another way, your colleagues will respect you if you consistently deliver your project components effectively, and on-time.
As a postdoc and PI I would vastly prefer a student asking questions when stuck, rather than having them spin their gears.  And keep context in mind - if you really are troubleshooting a syntax error, no one wants you spending days on this.  Situation might be different if you were radically improving the efficiency of an algorithm, etc.
I don't think there is a fine line between asking questions and asking too many questions.  The students who can't hack it in the lab are pretty obvious - so if you find yourself consistently flummoxed there might be a question of fit.  That said, it doesn't sound like the case here.

You are a RESOURCE in your group, and you need to be managed appropriately.  Let's say you can do this request, but it will take you three days full time to do it.  If you ask for the help of somebody who is experienced with the system, maybe it will take you one day, and it might take two hours of that person's time to help you.  There are also the issues of who is waiting for the job to be done, and what is being held up because it's not done yet, and if there are any important deadlines looming.
These are questions only your group manager can really answer, but we can offer some tips.
Personally, I'd recommend putting a bit of time into defining where you're stuck as accurately as you can, and drafting a short memo describing the problem, just to help you wrap your brain around it a bit differently.  After staring at that doc for an hour or so, if you're still drawing blanks, I'd send that description to the boss man, asking him who the best person to approach for help would be, and  if its OK to do so.
This way you show that you've given it a thorough try, that you're trying not to waste your own time,  and that you don't want to waste anyone else's time on it either.


text:
Can I reduce/change the margins given in the template of a journal?
Recently, my paper has been accepted in a journal(ENDM). They asked to reduce the number of pages. When I used their template, it exceeded the number of pages allowed. I tried my best to reduce the number of pages, but no use.
Can I reduce/change the margins given in the template of a journal to reduce the number of pages. Is it ethical to do so? Will they reject my manuscript?
(manuscript has been accepted after minor changes).

The entire point of the template is to make certain that everybody is on the same page (no pun intended) as to what the format is. Changing it defies this purpose and will almost certainly be noticed – if the journal uses this template for production at all.
While nobody except the journal staff knows how exactly they would react to what you intend to do, I would prophesy that at best they directly return the manuscript to you and ask to properly shorten your manuscript.

They asked to reduce the number of pages.

Then do it.
If your article complied with the journal's instructions before peer-review but now breaks them because you added extra content asked by reviewers, you could write a short note to the editor saying the requested edits forced you to write a longer version. If they ask you to comply, then you have no choice but to edit your paper accordingly. Don't fiddle with the template.

Is it ethical to do so?

That's irrelevant. Such rules are practicalities of each journals and ethics have nothing to do with it.
This being said, editing out portions of the article after the final review is generally forbidden. If you make significant changes to the content, I suspect the article will have to be reviewed again.

Margins are important for typesetting
When preparing an actual journal edition, they're not going to use your document as-is, they are going to put it in their typesetting process (whatever that might be) anyway.
The only reason why a journal is asking you to use a particular template is so that you (and they) can see what the layout would be. Altering that template to have reduced margins would mean that in the "preview" version you have the required number of pages, but in the actual end product the number of pages and layout is different than expected - which is not a good thing, because (1) it comes as an unpleasant last minute surprise; (2) it's malicious, caused by a deliberate attempt to circumvent their guidelines. The result may vary, but it certainly won't be viewed positively.


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How can I get the key to my professor's lab?
I am a undergraduate student working with an awesome lab director from whom I've learnt a LOT. He is a very knowledgeable and energetic person, and is generally available for help. The lab atmosphere is full of helpful grad and PhD students.
Even though I have been working for over three years with him, he is unwilling to give me the key. Says that I should contact the other senior lab members, and ask for them to open the door.
An issue that came up today that made me vent off some steam on the Academia StackExchange. Instead of going home, I stayed after my morning class so that I could go to the lab and get some research done. However, no one was in the lab. I called my lab mates, but they either had work, had their key taken from them, wasn't answering, had gone on a trip... You get the idea. I ended up investigating the lab equipment of an adjacent lab.
This isn't the first time either. One time I had arranged with two people to come the next day: neither came nor informed me. This is especially inconvenient when the lab is on a remote section of the campus.
I have explained the situation to him, more than one. Once, he said that he would give me the key, but only if I came to the lab more often. I explained that as a human I do get tired and need rest: as much as I love research, I don't want burnout either. I'll add that several times I wanted to go to university, but since no one answered the phone, I headed off to another university to study. In the evening, I was able to contact him, but he called me lazy and only doing stuff that wanted.
How can I approach my professor about this? And more importantly, what is it that I am doing wrong? I don't need the key per se, but I do want to perform research. And for that, the lab needs to be open. While the lab mates are helpful, I do understand that they have a life. I cannot force them to come at 7 in the morning only to open the door for me, can I?
I'll add that my work has led to two conference proceedings and both me and my professor are optimistic that it will lead to a high-impact article. This wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for my professor's help and guidance.

When he said "come to the lab more often" did he mean more often than you have been trying to get to the lab, or more often than you have been succeeding?

Alas! It all boils down to a high impact article XD

Clearly your supervisor doesn't want you getting hurt or intoxicated or braking stuff in the lab when unsupervised. Maybe that's even something he's obligated to do. Maybe he only has a limited number of keys and chose to give them to his more senior researchers. Anyway, you asked and he said no. What kind of advice do you expect to get here other than to deal with it?

Probably depends on what sort of lab this is ...

@CapeCode he has left me on my own to perform experiments, then returned after office hours. He had asked a student to clone the key: in fact it was myself who gave it to him.

Are there any other undergraduate students with a key? The fact that he asked a student to make a copy rather than get an "official" copy from the uni facilities department implies that he may be restricted in who he can give a key to. Maybe he can only give a key to a grad student or post-doc who are under employment contracts.

Couldn't your problems be solved -- or at least, manifestly made your lab director's responsibility -- just with some planning in advance?
You wrote:

An issue that came up today that made me vent off some steam on the Academia StackExchange. Instead of going home, I stayed after my morning class so that I could go to the lab and get some research done. However, no one was in the lab. I called my lab mates, but they either had work, had their key taken from them, wasn't answering, had gone on a trip... You get the idea. I ended up investigating the lab equipment of an adjacent lab.

(By the way, you had a morning class and then couldn't get into the lab on a Saturday?  That makes me wonder where in the world this question takes place.)
You make it sound like your decision to "get some research done" was made more or less on the spur of the moment.

This isn't the first time either. One time I had arranged with two people to come the next day: neither came nor informed me. This is especially inconvenient when the lab is on a remote section of the campus.

This time you planned it one day in advance.

Once, he said that he would give me the key, but only if I came to the lab more often. I explained that as a human I do get tired and need rest: as much as I love research, I don't want burnout either.

All of these things add up to the following conclusion: you and your advisor don't have a clear understanding of when and how often you'll be working.  So you drop by sometimes, find out that no one's there, and maybe that's your fault because somehow you've implicitly agreed to show up as much as you can but at random times.  That's not professional behavior!
I see a rather easy fix: first, agree with your advisor how much time per week you'll be spending in his lab.  If you hear a "As much as possible if you don't want me to think you're lazy" response, you'll have to move the conversation past that.  You can promise in advance to devote XX hours per week -- i.e., you have to figure out in advance how many hours -- to the lab.  (If you and your advisor can't agree on how much time you'll be spending the lab: sorry, but you don't have a wonderful working relationship, you have an entirely dysfunctional one.  But since you have mostly positive feelings about your advisor, I am optimistic that he will listen to reason here.)  Then you need to make a schedule with your advisor about exactly when you'll be in the lab.  If he doesn't want to give you a key -- okay, but then it's his problem when you get locked out of the lab, not yours.  Every time that happens, you don't call up every other member of the lab, you leave, and then the next day you approach him and say that unfortunately you couldn't get into the lab at the time you had agreed upon, so is there some aspect of the agreement he'd like to adjust?
Bottom line: if you model the behavior of a professional rather than someone who drops by when he's interested, you'll implicitly challenge your advisor to be professional to you in return.  It seems unlikely that someone who cannot rise to the standards of professionalism set by a conscientious undergraduate could be a successful lab director, so I am rather optimistic that this strategy will work for you.

tl, dr: create a schedule.

italic if you model the behavior of a professional rather than someone who drops by when he's interested, you'll implicitly challenge your advisor to be professional to you in return. italic

As an undergraduate, I have classes and office hours to attend. In addition, I have work. While my schedual is thus dependant on external factors, I now understand that it would be a good idea (and should be able) to set a minimum number of hours for my attendence in the lab, with my adviser.

That you have other commitments is an argument in favor of scheduling your time in the lab in advance, not against it.  The students and your lab director are also busy with other commitments similar to yours.  Busy people often find that they need to schedule things in advance in order to be sure to have a common meeting time.....

This is why classes, office hours, jobs and so forth usually meet at a fixed time from week to week -- otherwise chaos would ensue.  Don't your classes office hours and work take place at a fixed time??  If not, how do you avoid conflicts there?

Let's face it, you are the low man on the totem pole.  If you want to work in this group, you will have to adjust to the others' schedules.
Is there a phone in the lab?  If so, call before heading over.
See if you can find out what the pattern is for the other students' lab hours, and pick some that work for you.  Try to get in a rhythm of the same hours every week.
Ask the others to send you a text message or an email to let you know when they've arrived.  If you're free then, grab your chance.
It seems that the professor would gain confidence in you by seeing you in the lab more often.  It might help, then, to hang out in the lab more -- not just for your project.  You might also be able to do some homework, have your lunch, get to know your labmates better, do a little clean-up.
Yes, it's frustrating for you -- but realistically, accentuating the conflict, or even simmering about it, won't speed you up in getting a key -- it will only slow you down.

In addition to the phone in the lab, I have the number of everyone with a key. There is a schedual for attendance, but it is often disrespected. In addition, it takes at least 30 minutes to get there and back: the laboratory complex is on a remote part of campus.

Add the fact that protocols are time consuming and need to be performed sequentially, then waiting for someone to escape the morning commute means that my day is screwed.

@salehgeek: If the schedule for the lab is habitually not met and that's causing you to get locked out, you should bring that up very explicitly with the lab director and keep a careful log of when that happens.  If you really can't get a key and the director thinks that not getting in just means you should come back later, and you are too busy for that not to be a serious burden: well, the lab is being run poorly in a way that is to your detriment.  You'll have to decide whether it's worth the headache.  I recommend looking for a better academic opportunity and switching if you find one.

It seems like you have tried everything.
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem optimal but you don't have any power over this. Just work with what you have.
One side note: This seems like a potentially unhealthy relationship based on he called me lazy. Like I said, just try to work with what you have and avoid getting into confrontations!

I am offended when he calls me "lazy", but I understand that it isn't personal.

Your adviser is doing the right thing.
No one, especially not undergraduate students, should work alone at night in a lab.
It is very unsafe to work alone in a lab. I know that this is very common, because students are young and inexperienced and haven't been around long enough to see what can happen. Just like young guys on motorcycles.
Also universities have a can-do atmosphere, where safety is generally seen more as a burden than a requirement.
Of course, advisers often don't mind their students risking their live, because if you do care for the safety of your students, you will not make it in the cutthroat competition we call academia.
Take for example Eric M. Carreira, who pressured his students to work evenings and weekends.
http://www.chemistry-blog.com/2010/06/22/something-deeply-wrong-with-chemistry/
I am an industrial chemist, and I can assure you, that anyone writing such a letter in the private sector would get fired immediately. In our company, it is formally prohibited to work alone.
There have been cases when companies where fined huge amounts by OSHA for such letters, people have actually gone to jail for accidents that happened on their watch.
Unfortunately ETH doesn't care about safety and hired this guy.
Here are two recent cases to remind people why it is not a good idea to work alone

In the early hours of 13 April, undergraduate students working at Yale
  University's Sterling Chemistry Laboratory made a shocking discovery.
  There in the lab's machine shop was the dead body of 22-year-old
  undergraduate student Michele Dufault, her hair tangled in a lathe.
  She had apparently died of asphyxiation

www.nature.com/news/2011/110418/full/472270a.html
I'll bet you a dollar, that when anything happens, the adviser, the same who would have claimed authorship of the work, will call you an independent researcher just happening to work in his lab.
Patrick Harran of UCLA even claimed that his student who died in his lab, was not his employee, but employed by the university, so it wasn't his job to keep her safe.

Sheharbano “Sheri” Sangji, a 23-year-old University of California at
  Los Angeles staff research assistant, died three years ago after
  suffering massive second- and third-degree burns when a chemical she
  was handling caught fire.

www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/03/ucla-faces-criminal-charges-lab-accident
So even though it might be common to work alone, it is unprofessional and dangerous.
Don't be the one who gets burned to death or strangled in a lathe, and don't be the eager beaver who thinks it is ok to take risks in the name of science, and don't push others.
You should thank your adviser that he is keeping you safe. It is great to see that some people actually do care. Please tell him thank you.

if you do care for the safety of your students, you will not make it in the cutthroat competition we call academia. I personally know many counter examples. I think that this sentence is wildly exaggerated.

Even though I have been working for over three years with him seems to be not long to you? He has even be left alone (see the comments), so that is clearly not the problem here. Also, you are right about a certain amount of safety issue, but that's a thing you have everywhere. Even a cook can burn things down if left alone... But to a certain amount, there is trust and expected responsibility. Those two things are especially high in academia (as also seen in his question) and are opposite to your answer...

Understand that the word "Lab" does not always mean a place where chemical or mechanical experiments are done.
For example my lab is a computer lab. Other people work in a electronics lab, where they only work with <5v signals investigating new logic controllers. Further the word lab does not refer exclusively to the part of the area where experiments are done. For example my friend who works in chemistry will say "I am going in to the Lab, to write up my results." He isn't going anywhere near chemicals, but to where his PC is -- in a totally separate room (but attached with 2 locking doors)

You know, there's no real difference (in terms of experience) between a 1st-year graduate student and a 4th-year undergrad student that would justify trusting the former with lab equipment and not the latter...

@Mehrdad: Sure.  In fact, between an undergraduate who has been working in the lab for three years and a first or second year graduate student, only after very careful vetting of backgrounds would it make sense to trust the graduate student as much as the undergrad.  Students do not magically become more responsible upon being conferred a bachelor's degree!


text:
What should I tell schools when my supervisor sent me a recommendation letter and said she has no time to upload it?
I'm applying for Ph.D. programs so I requested a recommendation letter from one of my supervisors in my master's program. She directly sent me a strong recommendation letter in the email but said she has no time to upload it online.
The thing is her daughter just had a premi baby and she needs to take care of them. I worked closely with her and she is well-known in my field. Her recommendation letter will be really helpful. What should I tell the schools I'm applying for? How should I explain my situation?

Does your supervisor have an administrative assistant? (or does the group have one?) Most programs are fine with assistants uploading letters on behalf of the letter writer.

@mmeent I agree. The standard procedure in my experience for cases like this is for the prof to email the letter to the department staff and let them send it confidentially. Confidential letters will have more weight in most cases, so I'd recommend doing whatever it takes to make sure you don't send the letter yourself.

Tell the school(s) exactly that (leaving out the baby and so on) and ask for advice. They may make some exception (or not). Maybe permitting you to submit. Maybe being lenient on deadlines. Maybe contacting the professor themselves (if you provide her email.)
You could also ask her to send the original email directly to them, rather than dealing with the online system.
Apologize for the inconvenience, even though it wasn't you that caused it. Just a polite ritual.

Dear x
I apologize for the inconvenience, but my professor sent me the enclosed recommendation but was unable to find time to upload it due to a family emergency. She can be contacted at y@z.edu for verification if needed.
If this is not acceptable, please advise me on ...
Sincerely X Z

"They may make some exception (or not)." - Some administrative organizations are more reasonable than others. I know of one instance where the explanation for late delivery at the end of a project was "sadly, the lead investigator died in a road accident one week before the end-of-project deadline, and we need more time to sort out the contents of his personal filing system and submit the final reports" - which was rejected as insufficient reason not to impose financial penalties for late completion!

@alephzero I'd rather attend grad school at one of the reasonable organizations.

Thank you for your answer. I will reach out to the schools.


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Why do we write a "threat to validity" section?
I don’t understand this section in research papers. What is its purpose?
I am working on a paper. I see some potential limitations and think that my method may or may not work well on some other platforms. Should I put this in my threat to validity section?

The following book has a detailed description and systematic guidelines: "Claes Wohlin, Per Runeson, Martin Höst, Magnus C. Ohlsson, Björn Regnell:
Experimentation in Software Engineering. Springer 2012"

Please specify the field. E.g. I've never seen such a section.

The my field is software engineering. @lighthousekeeper how is is only applicable to CS and SE?

@MuhammadAshfaq The book is written for SE researchers. Many SE papers actually include a reference to the book (and its chapter on Threats to Validity) in the "threats to validity" section.

As usual, the true (but not very useful) answer is: it depends. I typically come across that section when the article describes an experiment. Experiments typically involve quite an abstraction from the real world, which is why they can keep so much under control. However, this also means that one could question whether what one found in the abstract environment in the lab also applies to the real world. This is called external validity. This is what is discussed in such a section.


text:
The date that the final manuscript is due is in a few weeks. Should I get response now about if my paper was accepted or not?
I submitted my paper on 1 July for the issue with these dates:

deadline for submitting 31/7
final manuscript due 15/11

I got a change in the date at "9/9 under review" then "28/9 with under review" until now.
Should I get notifications about acceptance or rejection during this duration as the final manuscript is due 15/11?
Note: The editors didn't reply to the email I sent before.

Questions about journal acceptance dates cannot be answered without knowing all of the details, and even then only if one were part of the editorial process. As you tried to contact them by email, no one can give you a definite answer.
You do not tell us a lot. If this is a submission to a journal's special edition, then a final submission date is often tentative. I can speculate that the journal had difficulties finding reviewers as it took them more than a month to find some for you. This might explain why they did not yet have reviewed the paper. I can also speculate that the editorial process and the software that lets you track your submission are not synchronized.
At this moment, there is absolutely nothing you can do about this submission, (other than retracting your manuscript if you need a publication by a certain day and have a different outlet in mind that can actually provide an acceptance / rejection decision in time for you).

thanks  for the answer , all the dates i mentioned in the post in addition to publication will be at  Feb 2023 . excuse me , what is the expected time for changing the date or the status please

You will know when you get the acceptance/rejection letter, when it is in your mail box. There is nothing else we can say.