text:
Job portal of US universities: when is the application status updated?
I recently submitted applications for tenure track positions to several US universities via their online job systems (https://jobs.xxx.edu/).
Last week I got a feedback from one of the schools that my application would no longer be considered. However, a week later, the status of my application on the portal is still "under review".
This raises a question for me: after the department has decided to reject the application, how soon is the status in the online system updated?
I want to know that because I have not received a feedback from the other schools I applied, and am wondering if it's possible that the department has already decided to reject but the portal was not updated?

Sometimes you just don't get a reply. Ever. Either a bug in the system or the search committee forgets to close the search on the jobs site.

+1 to @mankoff. Also several univs have their HR set up the web forms for tenure track jobs. There ends up being a disconnect between search committee and HR and the latter ends up not updating information on a regular basis (or ever).

Indeed, I don't think this question has any general answer except "whenever they get around to it".

Academic jobs are a nightmare from the HR perspective. While the posting might be on the jobs portal, the files themselves initially go to the hiring department which comes up with a long and then medium list that they then do some preliminary screening before ending up with a short list for on-site interviews.  This can take several months.
The search committee then comes up with a ranked list with some candidates "above the line" and some "below the line" that the department votes on. This list -- which may have one, two, or three people that the department thinks are hireable (or in some cases, none, if the search fails).  This list then goes to the provost, equal opportunity, and numerous other sundry university committees before getting approved (or not) and sent back down the line. This can take several more months.
So we are now 4-6 (or 6-8) months into the search. The search can have several results:

A single finalist who is contacted. Maybe they
dawdle for a couple of weeks in giving a reply. If they decide not
to take the job, then the search is failed. The department may or
may not be authorized to search again next year and if they are, the
search remains open.
Two finalists. The first accepts (or not). If the first doesn't, the second is given a chance. If both decline, then it's a failed
search.
No finalists. Failed search and the slot goes back to the provost's office. It may or may not be returned to the department.
The provost hates all of the finalists and either cancels the slot or forces the department to re-run the search.

In other words, there are many reasons why a job posting might still remain open even one or two years after the initial posting. Departments are hesitant to finally close files unless they are absolutely positive that they are never, ever getting that slot back again -- or that the person who accepted the offer really is going to show up on August 1st.


text:
If asked to submit both a shorter and longer abstract, is it possible just to send a shorter one that meets both word limits?
I saw the following abstract submission guidelines:

Please submit a 500-word text abstract for technical review purposes that is suitable for publication. Accepted abstracts may be published
  with the printed Technical Program for distribution at the meeting.
Please also submit a 300-word text abstract suitable for early release. If accepted, this abstract text will be published prior to
  the meeting in the online or printed programs promoting the conference

My question is, how close to the prescribed word count do you have to be? Would it be possible to send one abstract for both requirements?

Note: every time I have seen a range given for a word count, it was always + or - 10%. So 450-550 and 270-330 would be a very reasonable range to assume. If you would want to have 1 word count for both targets, 387 gets you 29% off target for both. That does seems a bit much, but I cant make clear and hard judgements here.

@dimpol: That is certainly field-dependant. In my applied-CS-subfield, the indicated word count is sometimes a hard upper limit (automatically enforced by the submission system). Conversely, it's indeed an upper limit, and if, for some reason, 50 words fully convey what the submission is about, that is just as acceptable as using the full maximum of 500 words.

I'm guessing this is not for a math conference.

@DanRomik Am I allowed to post the conference? Nope. It's a remote sensing conference.

Yes, what I meant was that mathematicians would be more precise with their language and not say "please submit a 500-word abstract" unless they meant an abstract of precisely 500 words. Thanks for confirming my guess.

It is possible, but you would not want to do that.
Apparently, these are the guidelines for some sort of conference. Usually, you send in a preliminary abstract, then you get a message back that they will accept your permission within a certain deadline. Now you can write and hand in your article.
If you haven't finished your article in time for the abstract submission deadline, you basically have to write an abstract first. But after you have written your article there are most likely changes that need to be addressed in the abstract, which is why you get more words for the final abstract to amend your early release abstract that will probably be available on the website of the conference.

Didn't think of it that way. Thanks for the insight!

How close to the prescribed word count do you have to be?  Would it be possible to send one abstract for both requirements?

If you write an approximately 300-word abstract you are happy with, and want to use it for the 500-word-max abstract, that is probably okay.  They will let you know if they want something fuller.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Is it legal for a university to post a copy of a copyrighted (pay for access) journal article?
Extensively using Google Scholar, I've realized that most of the articles belonging to  publishers that limit access to material (i.e. ACM, IEEE, Elsevier) also have PDF versions available for free, and these files usually are hosted by universities or other aggregators like ResearchGate.
Is it legal for the university/organization to host a copy of an article, if this has been published on a conference or journal with paid access? Does it matter if the authors of the article belong to that university/organization?

you've never heard of Aaron Swartz then?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Aaron_Swartz

Note: this depends heavily on the country you live in. For example, you may sign over most rights of a work you produced in the US, but you can never do so in Germany (you always keep "copyright").

To answer the (original version of the) question in the title:

Are scientific articles of public domain?

the answer is absolutely not, unless the relevant copyright holders declared it so or that its copyright has expired. Note that public domain is emphatically different from open access.
To answer the question in the body:

Is it legal for the university/organization to host a copy of an article, if this has been published on a conference or journal with paid access? Does it matter if the authors of the article belong to that university/organization?

the answer is it depends.
What does it depend on? Very simply, the publication agreement or the copyright transfer agreement or the licensing agreement signed by the author when the article has been accepted for publishing. For example:

Here's the version for Science
Here's the one for IEEE
Elsevier compiled a handy table for their journals.

As David Ketcheson points out below, a great resource for checking the self-archiving and open access policies of is Sherpa/Romeo.

The question in the title is ambiguous but a bit more phylosophical: if articles are meant to expand human knowledge, and if universities (therefore everyone) pay for the research, shouldn't the outcomes be available to everyone?

@clabacchio, there's a lot of debate about this at the moment - "open access" (as Willie Wong mentions) may be the phrase you are looking for rather than "public domain" which has a rather specific meaning in the sense of licensing.  It's worth having a read of what's out there at the moment.

@ChrisH you're right, it's my mistake, I'm not really fond of these technicalities

@clabacchio: I would guess that the only people fond of these technicalities are those who stand to profit from them.

@clabacchio: if you're asking if something should be X, then it's a completely different question than asking if something is X, and I'm not really sure if  such questions are related. It's not ambiguous, it's very clear - one is about the legal status of such articles and your legal rights regarding them; the other is a 'what would best achieve our goals' type decision relating to values, morality and the ethical duties of various organizations and groups of people.

A general, extensive resource for what publishers allow is Sherpa/Romeo.

To answer the question in the title: free access to an article depends largely on the version. It's almost always fine to post versions on your institutional page. Some journals do have embargo periods, during which you must refrain from doing so.
Depending on the field and journal, authors may post one of the following on their institutional website:

published version: article as it appears in the journal
accepted version: manuscript after peer review but prior to journal editting/typesetting; typically allowed after the article is published (ex: Nature, Science, The Lancet)
preprint: manuscript before peer review (this is almost always allowed)

Many journals encourage disseminating accepted versions, including posting them to repositories like PubMedCentral.
Additionally, some fields make heavy use of preprint servers like arXiv to get work out to the public as soon as possible. This is particularly relevant for fields with long review times (maths, physics, ...).

Many universities now have institutional open access policies.  Most of those policies assert a non-exclusive license to distribute research authored by university employees.
Does the university's pre-existing non-exclusive license remain in effect when a restrictive copyright transfer agreement is later signed?
This has been considered in great detail by Eric Priest in a study published in the Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, Vol. 10, p. 377, 2012.  This seems to be the most authoritative work available on the matter.  His conclusion is that the non-exclusive license granted by Harvard-style open access policies will remain in effect in such cases, at least under US law.  This is based on a careful analysis of section 205(e) of the US Copyright Act, which reads:

(e) Priority Between Conflicting Transfer of Ownership and Nonexclusive License.— A nonexclusive license, whether recorded or not, prevails over a conflicting transfer of copyright ownership if the license is evidenced by a written instrument signed by the owner of the rights licensed or such owner’s duly authorized agent, and if—
(1) the license was taken before execution of the transfer; or
(2) the license was taken in good faith before recordation of the transfer and without notice of it.

But journals require you to assert that you have the authority to assign the rights... don't they?

@BenVoigt I'm not sure of the exact legal situation, but note that everybody profits if a) high-quality research is published in high-profile journals and b) made publically available anyway. Who would sue?

... and that is why sometimes publishers will require authors to get waivers from the University when they think there may be a potential conflict between the copyright transfer and the open access policies.

@BenVoigt You do have that authority.  A non-exclusive license does not prevent transfer of copyright, and transfer of copyright does not overrirde a non-exclusive license.

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


text:
How to write a rebuttal for a conference
What are good practices (does and don'ts) when writing a rebuttal for a conference?
For example, for a journal rebuttal letter you can make changes to your paper, and resubmit it for another revision. However, for conferences (and for the tough ones) you cannot make changes to your paper (as far as I know). So you can only address the reviewers comments', don't you? In that case, what are good things to do and what things you should avoid to get a good rebuttal.

"... you cannot make changes to your paper ..." I assume this depends on conferences. After all, nobody was ever interested in the author's opinion as far as the conferences I submitted to were concerned, so no rebuttals were asked since the decision was always final.

It does. In some machine learning conferences, you can now submit an updated version of your paper after a first round of reviews, and this paper goes to a third reviewer who has NOT seen the original reviews.

Even for conference papers you can still perform (relatively small) changes after the notification. When trying to rebuttal, it makes much sense to address the main issues raised by the reviewer (and not to pick on the minor changes they suggest). Some good practices include:

Acknowledge good suggestions made by the reviewer. If those suggestions are easy to fix, say they are fixable and will be fixed in the final-version.
If the reviewers suggestion makes no sense or is not valid - explain why their review is invalid. However, you should acknowledge the fact that if the reviewers did not get it right, there might be a problem in your paper. Promise to clarify those issues for the final version.
If the review raise up a valid point that makes your result significantly weaker than you claim, I don't think there is a reason to rebuttal, but other might think differently (trying to justify why it is still a strong result).
Don't claim that the reviewer has no idea what s/he is talking about (even if that is indeed the case..)

Bottomline, you should be respectful and polite to the reviewers. Thank them for their suggestions and suggest to fix whatever is fixable even if you think nothing is wrong.

In particular: No matter how idiotic the review, do not write your rebuttal while you're angry.

@JeffE: great piece of advice.

For Computer Science conferences, I found this article by three AI researchers/profs very helpful: https://medium.com/@deviparikh/how-we-write-rebuttals-dc84742fece1

Hi and welcome to Academia SE. We prefer to have self-contained answers, in case the link gets broken (most links break one day or another). Could you please shortly summarize the key points of the article into your answer?

Also, are you one of the authors of that article? If yes, please disclose it.

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


text:
How to define author order of a collaborative paper where all authors have contributed equally?
I am finishing writing a manuscript in collaboration with a dozen of colleagues. The paper is mainly theoretical, does not involved experimentation of any kind and is born from numerous discussions between all the collaborators (it is actually hard to tell when the project started). No one really took the lead in the project, at least not during the whole time (for meeting setup and so someone had to take the lead, but only temporary). In addition, the ten collaborators are coming from 6-7 different research groups and universities.
In such case, when everyone as more or less the exact same contribution, what is the best way to determine the author order on the paper, without making any diplomacy misstep?
PS: in my field , alphabetical order is really not common.
PS2: we do not have time for a 25 games croquet tournament...

If you are actually writing the manuscript with all the attendant hassles (sending versions out to collaborators, keeping track of edits, merging them all together), this sound like you have as good a claim as any for a senior position. For everything else, talk to the senior people whether they could agree that the more junior people could get a slightly more prominent position. Apart from that, roll dice.

I know a duo who solved it by writing two papers, Jones and James and James and Jones, but with N authors you'd need to write N! papers, which may be impractical.

The title is slightly misleading here - it's not really about who should be listed as author, just in what order.

@Mangara you are right. I changed the title...

croquet

Since your field does not normally do standard alphabetical ordering, then its use here might signify that something unusual is going on. So you could in principle list everybody in alphabetical order, identify the corresponding author, and then insert a note in the acknowledgments that everyone contributed more or less equally to the paper.
Alternatively, in some fields, papers can be authored by "teams" instead of individuals—although all the individuals participating in the team are cited somewhere. This is more typical when the collaborations run to the hundreds of authors rather than a few to a dozen. If the journal you submit to allows this, it would probably be the fairest option of all.

Recently I have seen a paper draft that had a footnote at the author list (which contained more than the two persons named below) stating that

A. Uthor and C. Ollaborator contributed to the present work in equal parts and share first authorship.

Maybe this would be an option in your case as well? By this you have made clear which persons did the main part of the work and give the first position in the name list to the one who managed all the submission process.


text:
How should a researcher manage the fact that Impact factors change over time?
Impact factors of journals are one the most commonly use indicator of their quality. As a consequence when someone is looking for a journal in which publish his results, the highest the impact factor, the better. However, over the years journal's impact factors change depending on the quality of their article.
My question, that is more theoretical then practical, is twofold:

Should I care about the future impact factor of the journals I publish in (similarly as when buying stock market).
Would it be advisable to keep track of the impact factor at the time of publication in a list of paper (a bit like saying "I know to impact factor of the journal I published in five years ago is bad, but it was better then").

This question is somehow related to the fact that I hear once or twice about examining boards considering only the papers published in journals above a certain impact factor when assessing the quality of a candidate. In other words, papers published in low impact factor journal are not even worth noticing.

Maybe I did not get the question well, but once your paper is accepted and will be printed, you can not do anything. If your article is be good it will be cited regardless if the impact factor of the journal will be high or low. Or you are thinking about publishing in the only one journal in the future?

@MasterPJ The question is motivated by the fact that, when assessing the quality of your research (for a grant, a new position) the impact factor of the journals in which you publish is an easy way to do so.

@William: No, it isn't.  The impact factor of a journal says nothing whatsoever about the quality of a single paper in that journal.

@JeffE I totally agree, but it is an indicator (good or bad) of the quality of the journal in itself. My question is somehow related to the fact that I hear once or twice about examining boards that considered only the papers published in journal above a certain impact factor when assessing the quality of a candidate.

Related to your last comment:

boards that considered only the papers published in journal above a certain impact factor when assessing the quality of a candidate

I think that such borders are not doing well. As you said, the IF (Impact Factor) varies in time (regardless if we consider it as a relevant measure).
According to me, there are 2 points of view by which the IF which should be considered in your question:

The point that you tried (and succeeded) to publish a paper in a journal with high IF. What  would that fact say to me (if I would be in a committee)? That you were confident about your results and you trusted your work to be published in a good journal. (BUT(!) it does not meat that the journal or the paper is good, it just reflects you, the candidate). In this case relevant is the IF by the time your article was accepted.
The point that the IF of the journal you published rises in the next 2-3 years after the time your paper was accepted. Why? Lets take a look how the IF is calculated:
A = the number of times articles published in 2006 and 2007 were cited by indexed journals during 2008.
B = the total number of "citable items" published by that journal in 2006 and 2007.
2008 impact factor = A/B.

However, can we say that articles published in 2006 and 2007 will be cited in 2008? Just very small amount of them. Someone reads your article (month 1), then does the part of research related to your article (2-3 months?), approved by co-authors (another month) and goes through the acceptance procedure (12-14 months). It takes about a year and a half to print the citation of your article. So, if the editors decide that they will accept just good articles the resulting rising of IF will be visible in 2-3 years in the future. So if I would be a committee member I would like to know how was the IF 2-3 years after the article of the candidate was printed. That can tell me that by the time the article was printed, also a considerable amount of good articles were printed as well. But keep in mind that IF consider citation just within 2 years back, and that is just too short. I think it should be 3 years at least.
So, to answer your questions:
add 1.: YES, for the next 2-3 years as it is effectiveness time of IF.
add 2.: YES, because it reflect the actual state of the author by the time he decided to publish.

But please, all this can help as a indicator but is should be taking into account with caution. I should also say that IF is very tricky and it can be easily misinterpreted (self-citation, how many review articles the Journal publishes,...). If you want to take a look at other evaluating tools, you can visit:
Eigenfactor or
Journal Ranking
and:
What really matters is how much your article is cited(!)

Thanks for the elaborate answer. I totally agree that what really matters is how much your article is cited, but I am not sure this is often considered by evaluating committee...

No, even the number of citations isn't what really matters.  Citation counts are (at best) only loosely correlated with impact; moreover, impact is only loosely correlated with quality.  An evaluation committee that relies only on numerical citation data is not doing its job.

I would be wary of going with Impact Factors as a good metric.
There has been recently a couple of Journals that got into trouble for artificially blowing their IFs, they basically asked any submitter to cite at least 3 articles of the same Journal.
However, it is true that good Journals like Nature, IEEE Transactions, Elsevier, etc will give your paper a lot more credibility than unknown Journals.
In my experience, all of that was good for a pre-Internet era, where Universities had to pick and choose their subscriptions, but now, with all the plethora of information available that is probably less the norm than ever.

Ahem. First, Elsevier is a publisher, not a journal, and does publish a lot of unknown journal (not to use worse, impolite adjectives). Second, Universities need to pick and choose their subscriptions at least as much than before: that subscriptions have mostly become electronic did not change that fact.


text:
How to measure entropy of exam results
In this answer to a quora question, the answerer mentions how the 'entropy' of a set of exam results can be used to measure how well the exam differentiates between students.
Should I be computing the entropy of my students' exam results? How do I do it? How should I interpret the entropy information?
Edit: How is entropy related to standard deviation?

A standard way to measure how well an exam differentiates between is to use
Item Response Theory, not entropy (and I am speaking as a great fan of entropy). See a tutorial for mirt R package for a practical introduction to this method.

Entropy measures how much information you learn on average about each student from the exam results.  For example, imagine an exam on which everyone gets a perfect score.  In that case, you would learn nothing, so the entropy is zero.  If half the students get one score and half get another, then you learn one bit of information about each of them.  If you want to assign meaningful grades on the usual U.S. scale, you'll need at least several bits of entropy, and the 3.5 or 4 bits mentioned in the quora answer sounds reasonable to me.
The idea behind the answer you link to is perfectly reasonable: if your exam results have low entropy, then that basically means they are clumped together on too few possible scores, and you don't have enough ability to distinguish between students.  On the other hand, I don't see much point to actually computing a mathematical measure of entropy (e.g., Shannon entropy), except perhaps for fun if you enjoy that sort of thing.  Instead, you can just look at the range of scores and judge how well they distinguish between students.  Think about how you might assign grades, and you'll rapidly see whether you run into problems, without any need for mathematical computations.
Furthermore, doing it by entropy is a little subtle anyway.  Strictly speaking, Shannon entropy pays no attention to the distance between scores, just to whether they are exactly equal.  I.e., you can have high entropy if every student gets a slightly different score, even if the scores are all very near to each other and thus not useful for distinguishing students.  The quora answer obliquely refers to that (in the discussion of bins), but still this means you can't just compute a single number without thinking.
So I'd view entropy more as a metaphor than a number most professors should compute.

The practicalities first. Take your list of exam scores and count for each possible value of the score how many of the exams got that score. In Excel the FREQUENCY function is useful for automating this step. To give some names call p_i the number of exams which have score i. From there you just add up -(p_i)log(p_i) over all the scores that actually happened. The base of the logarithm is not particularly important abstractly but what it does is scale your final "entropy" values so be consistent and only compare different classes when you are using the same base.
So far this is just a computation to perform so what does it tell you? It tells you how much information the scores encode. A test that really differentiates between the levels of knowledge that students have will have values that are take more information to predict. That information might be that your students really know/do not know the material. Or it could be 15 of the questions are easy and 5 very hard so scores in the low-80's are going to be more common than they otherwise might be.
What entropy will tell you is a quantified notion for how much more information is in your exam results than just randomly assigning numbers between 0 and 100. Like any attempt to summarize an entire packet of exams and the attached students with a single number, be careful to not push your data too far. The person in your link that was "surprised how few professors compute and report entropy (or even know what it is)" is a person who is in electrical engineering and computer sciences. Both of those fields use the notion of entropy regularly so his surprise maybe not be that surprising.


text:
To what extent should I follow "style rules" in academic writing?
Some journals request that authors follow a specific style manual (e.g., APA or Chicago manuals of style).
One style rule is to avoid starting a sentence with an abbreviation (with some exceptions).
However, I found it unnecessary to spell out abbreviations like ANOVA (analysis of variance) or FMM (finite mixture models) every time I start sentences with them.
Should I strictly follow such rules in academic writing?
Edit: My field is biohealth sciences.

@mobileink - could you turn that into an answer?  (Maybe without the last two sentences.)

@mobileink If we're going to be pedantic about it, ANOVA is in fact both an abbreviation and an acronym. I think you meant "ANOVA is not an initialism". See e.g. http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/abbreviations-acronyms-and-initialisms .

I agree that it's pretty easy to avoid starting the sentence with an abbreviation. Then it has to be clarified that although ANOVA might fall in that group (as it is both abbrev. and acronym), does FMM fall in that group for the style restrictions? On the other hand, as it has been nicely put, you can easily modify the sentence... "Using ANOVA we could understand..." etc.

In which case would you start a sentence with "ANOVA", even if the style guide didn't advise against it?

@CapeCode Here are some examples for ANOVA and FMM, but you can also search for others.

Your writing should strive for maximal clarity in conveying your intended meaning to the reader -- that is the ultimate goal that overrides all other considerations. Style manuals are simply sets of rules that people came up with that aid writers to achieve that ultimate goal. To the extent that I would perceive a particular style rule on a particular occasion to be in conflict with the goal of conveying meaning effectively and concisely, I would see myself as free to ignore the rule.
The upshot is that as long as it doesn't happen too frequently, ignoring style rules is fine if you do it not out of laziness but out of a sincere desire to make the writing as clear as possible. If you do find yourself wanting to break the rules very frequently, you may want to consider the possibility that your intuition about what makes for clear writing is not yet sufficiently well-developed for you to make the best judgment calls on such things. In that case I would try to stick with the rules until you gain more experience.

As for the abbreviations rule you mentioned (which was not the official subject of the question so I'm addressing it in a comment), I think it makes a lot of sense so in general I would try following it whenever possible. It should be easy to do by making a small adjustment to your sentence structure. A related rule that I find equally useful is not to start a sentence with a mathematical symbol.

I don't know about your field, but in mine you get a rocket if you deviate too much/too often.  So I'd suggest you follow it pretty strictly, except for (as you note) terms such as ANOVA that, by the readership you're writing for, are better-known in that form than in the spelt-out form.

What is your field?  (And less important: what does "you get a rocket" mean?  I searched for this and found only https://memegenerator.net/instance/56214003)

@PeteL.Clark the OED has "Rocket 7. Brit. slang (orig. Mil.). A severe reprimand. Freq. in to give (or get) a rocket." Definitely not a common usage, though.

Still, the question is not about using in general an acronym (which in most cases has to be spelled out once at the first encounter), but rather about starting - or indeed not starting - a sentence with an abbreviation.

@BioGeo actually the question is about whether style rules in general should be followed. The abbreviations at the beiginning of a sentence business was only used as a motivating example.

@DanRomik That's true, but it refers to "such" style rules, so either the question needs clarification what other rules are requested or we should concentrate to such rules. As I reread the answer though, I agree that it's not so much off the point of the question (but just a little).

The first thing to know is that while some journals request that authors follow a specific style guide, it's rather rare that they enforce that rule. So you should be fine even if you insist on starting sentences with "ANOVA". I guess the answer to the question in your title is: to the extent that you find acceptable.
Worst case scenario, the editor will asks you to make some changes to the style.
This being said, I would try to follow the guidelines as much as possible. The rules generally have sound bases in terms of legibility, and at any rate it will not make your writing worse.
For example, I agree that starting sentences with "ANOVA is..." is bad style and I would stumble on every instance (is it a Germanism maybe?). But that doesn't mean you have to spell it out each time, actually you shouldn't do that. Just rephrase adding a determinant or changing the object.

In general, before violating a rule (or even following it, ideally), understand why it's there. Many rules help good writing. But others don't, but good style guides tend to avoid those—say, "don't start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction, like and, yet or but" (like in this sentence).
http://www.writingconsultants.com/Guberman%27s%20Grammar%20Myths.pdf
I don't have my usage book with me and Google doesn't want to help me, but I'd think abbreviations, especially obscure, especially hard-to-pronounce ones (unlike ANOVA) make it harder to even start reading a sentence. Papers are hard enough to read otherwise. Imagine reading, dunno,

C18H21NO3 helps patients to overcome syndroms such as...

I made this example up on the spot so it's not great, but hopefully helps.
Indeed, the Chicago Manual of Style is fine with acronyms like ANOVA.
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Abbreviations/faq0032.html


text:
Is there a unified platform that lists conference/journal deadlines?
Is there any unified platform that would list the deadlines (especially the submission deadlines) for conferences/journals? Ideally I would like to select a few conferences/journals I am interested in publishing to, and the website would give me the list of upcoming deadlines.
Right now I have to check out each individual conference/journal website, which is pretty tedious and error-prone (all the more so as it is pretty common for deadline to be extended).
I am mostly interested in the field of computer science > machine learning, and English-speaking venues.

http://www.confsearch.org/

Wikicfp has a nice timeline view

possible duplicate of How to search for upcoming conferences that will be held in a specific subject

@DavidKetcheson Thanks but I think that's two different questions: I'm just interested in deadlines and I am looking for a way to list deadlines for a chosen set of conferences (just like in Wikicfp), which can have different topics.

Okay, I agree and I retracted my close vote.  But you will need to tell the site which conferences you are interested in.  How can that be any faster than just checking the deadlines yourself?

I am looking for a way to list deadlines for a chosen set of conferences (just like in Wikicfp) - what's wrong with wikicfp then?

@DavidKetcheson I am interested in 10 conferences/journals. Each year I have to check their websites, it's a bit tedious, all the more so as you never know when the deadlines are published and when they change, which mean I need to check all websites at least a few times, and make my own calendar.

@ff524 Nothing, your comment was actually a great answer. I knew wikicfp but I missed the timeline view feature.

"confsearch.org" – Now dead, unfortunately.

WikiCFP offers this. To use this feature, you are required to register and sign in to your account.
Once you are logged in, find the Calls for Papers (CFPs) you are interested in and choose "Add to my list". (You can add multiple CFPs at a time if they appear in the same search results or "recent CFPs" list).
Then, from the sidebar, choose "My list" or "Timeline" to see all the deadlines for the conferences you have selected in your preferred format. Timeline view is pretty nice; it shows you the registration, submission, notification, and camera-ready deadlines, as well as the dates of the actual conference. Here is a screenshot:

However, WifiCFP relies on user-submitted content (for both original CFP submissions, and updates e.g., for deadline extensions). So the usefulness of this for you will depend on how active people in your field are on WikiCFP.

I've found WikiCFP to be worse than useless in the past. It often lists incorrect dates, which is worse than listing nothing. So be wary.

@Thomas It does not list incorrect dates. WikiCfp is none other than its users. The date change might occur because the user didn't edit the deadline (dates) of the conference. So, blaming the website as a whole is not a good idea, I guess.

Sure. I think they are trying to do a good thing. I just think people should be warned that the data is not always reliable, so yo should confirm with an official source.

http://allconferencecfpalerts.com/ is a unified platform that lists conference / journal deadlines.
It also provides Open Access Research Sharing System - Share URL
Share-url link in the allconferencecfpalerts.com site is mainly built for researchers to share their academic information category wise. It is an open access platform to help researchers get more visibility and citations. This page is user-friendly so that authors can share information easily.
Authors who wish to post their Research information should register by creating Login id password. Login or registration is not required to view, search and download articles from the portal. All Share URL posts are categorized based on research area. User can search by title of the paper or author's name.

i am building a similar or improved version of wikicfp, you can visit at callforpaper.org

Thanks for sharing


text:
Should student or supervisor be corresponding author for publications based on student research?
Papers published from an academic project (MSc or PhD) usually have two authors; the first author is the student who mainly conducted the research, and the second author is the professor who supervised the projects.
The corresponding author is the one who take the responsibility of a paper, and thus, some believe that students are not yet prepared to take this responsibility.
Ideally, who should be corresponding author for papers published by MSc or PhD projects?
I understand that it mainly depends on personal agreements and preferences, but I want to know which case is more reasonable from academic logic?

If students are not yet prepared, how can they ever prepare unless they're going to be corresponding author?

“Papers published from an academic project usually have two authors” — sometimes, but not usually

@F'x I wanted to define a simplified example.

One more example of a statement with missing quantifier that can create an argument. I can hardly argue with "Some students are not yet prepared" but strongly disagree with "All students are not yet prepared". So which one do you mean?

What's a "corresponding author"?

The one to whom the editors send all requests, galley proofs, etc. and the one in charge of sending everything back on time.

@fedja: So then why are some answers talking about people still being around 5-10 years later?

In math. it would make no sense and the meaning is exactly as I said, but in some other fields, the paper is under discussion and scrutiny way beyond the moment of publication. People in those fields will tell you more.

@jeffE not just the editors. corresponding author is responsible to answer questions of both editors and readers as Jeremy Miles says in below answer. that's the reason his contact address stays on the front page forever!

corresponding author is responsible to answer questions of both editors and readers — Weird.  In my field, that's the responsibility of all authors.

@JeffE how an editor can communicate with all authors? the reports can be virtually sent to all authors, but one should be responsible to response.

My PhD adviser is the corresponding author and here is why: Even if I move on to a "new life" beyond (since I am an international student) after submission of manuscripts and publication, my adviser will still be at the university feels that it would save on "inertia" and back and forth emailing with me. We have a good rapport and consult with each other so I think this works for us.

Since the ordering of authors differs between fields the meaning and usefulness of a corresponding author also varies. In fields I am familiar with, the corresponding author is usually the same as the "first author" (quotes because it may not be literally the first). Many journals therefore do not explicitly identify a first author unless different from the "first". There are then several cases where the corresponding author may need to be identified. One example is when a person lacking a permanent academic address is first author. Then the supervisor may take on the responsibility for the paper and be corresponding author. This can be important since it can be near impossible to track down someone who has left academia and so the supervisor stands for continuity in terms of contact. There are many variants on this and in some cases, a person heading a project or who by legal obligations carries responsibility for a project may be identified as corresponding author. This could be the case with some governmental organisations where communications are funnelled through hierarchies for bureaucratic reasons. I am sure there are lots of examples good and bad but the main purpose of identifying corresponding author, unless first, is so that anyone requiring more information can go directly to the main source for such.
So based on this background and the field you are in you may find a good way to determine corresponding author. In most cases, I would say it is the person who has done the most work, or the one who "owns" the project. It is not clear in some cases whether it is the student or the advisor who should be corresponding author. One also has to weigh in the intellectual work behind the project as a whole and from that perspective the person who has done the work, perhaps a detail in a much bigger perspective, may not be the appropriate person for details although that person has done most of the work for the paper in question. So in some cases the question is definitely harder to answer. Not being corresponding author, does not necessarily detract much from being first author since such details are not visible in literature searches and CVs.

"The corresponding author is the one who take the responsibility of a paper". I've never heard this before. For example: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2010_04_16/caredit.a1000039 says "The corresponding author is the point of contact for editors, readers, and outside researchers who have questions about the contents of the paper. Often, the corresponding author is also the last author, but she or he may be listed first or even in the middle of the author list."
All authors take responsibility for the paper (or should). The point of the corresponding author is who to contact if you want to correspond about the paper. If this were someone who was likely to move institution (because they are finishing, or have finished their study), they are going to be hard to contact, so make it someone who's likely to hang around for a while. I've never seen anyone take any notice of who the corresponding author is.

They can give their permanent contact addresses not their current affiliation that they will change soon. That's why some people put their Gmail or yahoo mail addresses in their papers!

I was always the corresponding author; my advisor(s) thought it was good for me, and they had other things to do than to fiddle around with LaTeX...
So, to answer your question, I think it is good for phd students to be the corresponding author; besides, if there is any trouble, you have always your advisor/coauthor to ask.

I think this conflates the author who is doing the actual submission process (almost always the trainee) with the person with email address listed on the paper (in my experience, often the supervisor even if the trainee went through the forms).

It varies widely, not only on your field's customs, but also on individual research groups. In the research groups I have worked in, and worked with, in chemical engineering, the corresponding author is usually the most “perennial” researcher, i.e. usually the PI/professor. The idea is to ensure that the corresponding author is a faculty member, meaning he is the person most likely to still be around in 5 to 10 years' time to answer questions about the work. (In that time, PhD students and post-docs may change field completely, exit academia, etc.)
Also, the PI is usually the one who gets to keep the archives (raw data, lab notebooks, etc.) in the long term, so it makes sense that way.

I think it mostly depends upon the mutual understanding between the supervisor(PI) and the student. I had a similar case with my PhD colleague. She wanted to be a corresponding author but the adviser of the study group (a large scale multidisciplinary study) denied which could be due to the factors mentioned above such as: the PI will be staying there at least for few years however the student might leave the institute or even academia.
In my opinion, it is very helpful for a PhD student be the corresponding author because being a corresponding author will improve some skills: experience in answering critiques from the reviewers, writing, giving reasonable explanations and so on. More importantly, it is the student who did most of the work for the publication and will be able to give answers to most of the queries from the reviewers.

I'm (as the postgrad and lead author) the corresponding author on a paper, rather than my supervisor, which is common here.  I've had a few queries on the experiment and equipment, which realistically, as I did the work, and I'm not so busy as my supervisor I'm better placed to deal with.

When I was working as senior resident,the department head was the first author and also the corresponding author in all the scientific papers written by me. I thought that a senior person is better placed to answer any outside researcher's question easily and be available for years instead of a student who is likely to leave the institution once study period is completed. But once the internet facility has come, the point of being permanent or regular has become irrelevant and anybody can be contacted anywhere over E-mail.I feel that only those with maximum involvement in the scientific work should be the corresponding author as he only knows well about the work and can give reply on his own to any outside researcher's question regarding the contents of the paper.

Most of the time students never know how, what and where to write,they purely depends upon their supervisor,who is directly involved in this exercise.Paying regards is another factor that is also linked and making a segregation in teacher and taught is a good practice.Supervising any task is not easy,it requires complete involvement in form of legal, responsibilities & other issues as well.Therefore CA deserve proper place with dignity in research papers as it also carries a message.


text:
What rate of faculty turnover is healthy?
What is considered a reasonable rate for faculty turnover in a "healthy" department? How much turnover is too much/little? Presumably the rates might depend on seniority. Does departmental turnover tell you anything about your colleagues?

Isn't this question by definition 'opinion-based' ?

@suresh hopefully not. I would hope there is an evidence base for understanding workplace dynamics.

Reasons for faculty turnover are more important than numbers.  For example, in the late 90s, CS professors were leaving their positions to start companies.  I also know of professors who left otherwise ideal positions to solve a two-body problem (move near their spouse).
One important component of faculty turnover is tenure denials.  If you are a serious candidate, you should ask why your opening exists and the outcome of recent tenure cases.
Another component is faculty taking advantage of early retirement offers.  If a school is offering sweet deals for retirement, it may not be at its most financially secure.  (On the other hand, if they're doing a tenure-track search, that's a positive sign.)
If you can contact faculty who have left through your social network (e.g., if one of your committee members knew them socially), you might be able to get the dirt on the department.
It also doesn't hurt to look at the student newspaper, now usually available online.  At one school at which I interviewed, my host stopped me from picking up a copy.  I did so later and read about major problems between the faculty and administration that involved a lawsuit, the AAUP, etc.

When I was actively in the job market, I noticed a small number of schools that seemed to have multiple openings every year. It made me wonder what was going on at these places, but I had no way of knowing. At my current school, we have several retirements coming over the next two to three years. Multiple hires for several years in a row. Now, I know the reason behind the situation, but will prospective hires? Is this a healthy situation? There are various scenarios that could be playing out. Espertus has given you several good ones. My example is another. Try your best to find out what the cause is, but it is likely to be difficult to get a definitive answer. The best advice is to keep your eyes and ears open (which you seem to be doing) and try to read between the lines in conversations. Use what sources you can to get information that will help you.

Not a complete answer, but a possibly instructive example (at least ground for discussion). The math department at Ecole Normale Supérieure has a somewhat radical approach to this question. Two rules for the teachers and researchers there:

No one stays longer than ten years
No one teaches the same class more than three years in a row.

The idea of course is to keep the department members "fresh", on the cutting edge of research and to vary the topics that are represented. Such a strict rule is clearly not practical in any but this very specific environment, but I think the idea that there should be a minimal turnover is a sensible one.


text:
How to alleviate tension when interacting with researchers at a conference from enemy countries?
In academic conferences, I often meet students and professors from enemy countries, whom I could never have met in normal situations. We both know that we are here for research, and we do talk about research, but there is still tension in the air. Maybe even mutual fear. What can I do to alleviate the tension, so that we can focus on the research?

Mutual fear???  I cannot imagine being afraid of any academic based on the country they are from.

One thing to keep in mind: it's possible that they are not afraid of you, but rather of the legal or political consequences they might face back at home from having been in contact with an enemy citizen.  There probably isn't much you can do to alleviate that.

@NateEldredge this is very interesting. Are there countries which officially forbid their citizens from interacting with citizens of enemy countries in such situations?

@ErelSegal-Halevi: I don't know if there are countries where interacting with an enemy citizen is per se illegal.  But you can certainly imagine that it might be seen as evidence of espionage or some other improper interaction.

Frankly I think the term "enemy countries" has no place in academia...

Frankly I think the term "enemy countries" should have no place in human life. I also think that academia is not greater than other parts of life, and as the term anyway seems to keep its place in life, there's no use in trying to deny its existence academia.

@JiK Sadly I couldn't agree more

People in the US with security clearances have to have international  travel approved beforehand, and report contact with foreign nationals when required.

How does your own country expect you to treat citizens of the enemy country, when meeting them on neutral ground?

@EvilSnack I am not aware of any specific regulations in my country regarding this issue

There has long been a link between scientific collaboration and diplomacy between countries.  During some of the deepest parts of the cold war, for example, the United States and the Soviet Union worked together to stamp out polio, and the echoes of "vaccine diplomacy" continue today, uniting people against their common non-human enemies.  Even when there is not an explicit cooperative goal of that sort, contacts in a neutral situation can be valuable for helping to promote peace and understanding between different cultures and countries.
I would thus suggest beginning to approach the question not from a perspective of "Who is my enemy?" but from a question of "What are the areas that we can cooperate, even if we are enemies?" and perhaps to read up on ideas in "science diplomacy."

shouldn't "even if we are enemies" rather read "even if the countries we currently happen to reside in are enemies"?

@TobiasKienzler In principle, I agree with you; I chose the language I did, however, because the OP's question uses language that implies the feeling appears to be extending to the personal level.

Unfortunately it sounds like that. At least posting the question suggests OP also doesn't fully agree with that "concept"


text:
How to get started with submitting first peer reviewed paper based on PhD?
I am not based in academia so unsure what the protocols (and the underlying and unwritten conventions are) in regard to getting my first paper published in a peer reviewed journal.
The paper will come out of my PhD dissertation.
How do I start the ball rolling?

You may want to indicate what area your research is in. I have written some comments as a general answer, but perhaps someone in your field could give some very useful, specific information.

You might want to clarify your question.  Do you mean "how do I select a peer-reviewed journal for my first paper?"  Have you submitted a paper to a non-peer reviewed journal?  Have any been published?

@LukeMathieson. Thanks. I am in the Social Sciences, so my contribution can be in the form of methodological advancement, new insights in a particular area and literature review.

@JoelReyesNoche Oops. I am a newbie. I have no formal publication record in the academic sense (peer or non-peer review). I have generated substantial research outputs as part of my employment though.

How do I start the ball rolling? this is the advisor job

I want to echo seteropere's comment, your advisor should be playing their part in this. They should know the venues, styles and little discipline specific tricks.

Congratulations, btw :)

The procedural parts are pretty simple:

Select the journal you're interested in submitting to.
Read their "Instructions for Authors".
Follow those instructions.

It may sound trite putting it that way, but journals are typically pretty good at being clear about what they want, both in terms of content areas and format & typography.
What you also need to do is identify what you want to take from your PhD, and determine what the "narrative" structure of that material is - a paper that's just a bunch of random things with no through-line is not a great paper.
You may also want to take the time to look at the editorial board of the journal you're interested in, find who is knowledgeable in the topic of your paper and be sure to indicate (in the manner proscribed in the instructions for authors) that you'd like them to be the editor in charge of your paper. A good choice here can help ensure that it's reviewed by the right people for the job.

Luke Mathieson covered all the necessary points. I am just adding a few supplementary ones. As a PhD student, I can assure you that opinion of your guide regarding the choice of the journal also matters (I mean, he/she wants to send somewhere and you somewhere else can create conflict and better avoided). If you have followed up works of some earlier works, then you can try in the journals where the those earlier papers were published.
One more point. Sometimes it is important to get a quick publication. For which you need to sacrifice a little and go for a journal with fast publication. You did not write your field. In Mathematics and some Theoretical Computer Science journals take an year or more for publication. TCS conference proceeding are faster and many of them are referred (and something like FOCS publication can change your life). Physics journals (theory) are generally fast. To be in safer side, keep a copy in arxiv.


text:
Should I accept review requests from dubious journals?
I'm a graduate student with, so far, one published article in a peer-reviewed journal.  Since the article came out, I've been receiving increasing amounts of "academic e-mail spam" from people wanting me to attend their conferences, publish in their (usually pay-to-publish) journals or order research supplies from them.  (The latter kind tend to be the easiest to filter out — even though my field is biomathematics, it doesn't mean I have any use for frozen mouse embryos whatsoever.)
Some time ago, an e-mail turned up asking me to review a manuscript, conveniently attached to the message, for a pay-to-publish open access journal in a somewhat related field.  Googling for the name of the publisher, I found them described as e.g. "a borderline vanity press".
At the time, I wasn't really sure how to react.  On one hand, I could think of several reasons to just go ahead and review the manuscript:

The main complaint about the publisher seems to be that their peer review is insufficient — a claim supported by the fact that they seem to be picking random grad students as reviewers.  Still, given that they're at least making some effort at peer review, surely I should encourage them in that?  After all, if nobody agreed to review manuscripts for them, how could they ever improve their review process?
Declining to review the manuscript might deprive the authors — who, if the journal is indeed a "scam", are presumably the victims here — of useful feedback.  Surely they at least deserve that much return for their time, efforts and money?
Also, if the manuscript did get published in a scientific journal, no matter how dubious or marginal, it would enter the body of scientific knowledge, and might be used as a reference by others.  Given that, surely it is my duty as a scientist to try, given the opportunity, to do what I can to ensure that it is at least correct?

Still, despite these arguments, I initially found the idea of willingly responding to spam to be deeply unsettling at a fundamental, almost visceral level.  Also, I felt concerned that, by doing volunteer work for a possibly unethical publisher, I'd be supporting their business model and perhaps lending them an undeserved appearance of legitimacy.
In particular, given that the subject of the manuscript wasn't that close to my own field, I worried that it might have errors that I would not be capable of spotting, and that, even if I made this clear in my review, the publisher might still use the review to support the publication of a possibly flawed article.
(Edit: Just to be clear, I wasn't worried that they'd reveal the names of reviewers, just that, even if I was the only one who sent back a review, they might still use it to claim that "yes, the paper was peer reviewed.")
In the end, the decision was actually rather easy: after a cursory glance at the manuscript, it became clear that there was no way I could support its publication as written, especially given that large fragments of it were clearly plagiarized, and I wrote back to the journal stating as much.
However, if I ever receive a similar request again (and I assume I probably will, sooner or later), what do you think I should do with it?

Why not name and shame the publisher?

@Nate: Based on my Google search, I'd say they've been named and shamed well enough already. I'd rather not mention them by name here, since it's not really that relevant. I'll note that they're listed on Beall's list, though.

Ps. I do realize that a possible answer might be "it depends on the publisher." If so, I'd be very happy to see examples of a range of responses, depending on the degree of "scamminess" of the publisher.

"Also, I felt concerned that, by doing volunteer work for a possibly unethical publisher, I'd be supporting their business model and perhaps lending them an undeserved appearance of legitimacy." I can think of one very large and established publisher which engages in practices that, at the very least, are "possibly unethical".

You have no obligation to accept reviews from any journals.
In the long term, you should of course accept review tasks, since the review system is built on everyone doing their part in return for the reviews you get on your own papers. But if you think the journal is not serious, there is no need to waste your time on a review.
The problem will lie in identifying what is real and what is not. Apart from researching the journal yourself, as you have done, you should also ask more senior scientists of their opinion.

Edit: Following up on the request for additional input on whether reviewing for dubious journals could be harmful in some way:
I think the greatest risk is that you may provide legitimacy to a journal that is not legitimate. It may be harmful to you if the journal in some way represents, let's say, creationism, in that you may become associated with something you really do not support.
I do not see any clear problem for the authors whose paper you review. Their greatest problem, assuming they are common scientists, should be that they submitted it there in the first place.
Personally, I delete all e-mails with requests from journals I do not know of. I know the journals in my field, and the new serious journals that have sprung up have a firm basis in the community, so they are also "known". I do check on some of these unknown journals occasionally, out of curiosity, and I particularly check the sort of papers they publish and the editors of the journal. That usually tells me if the journal is of interest.
Some of these journals may be legitimate, but they end up being extremely narrow regionally in terms of the origin of their authors and editors, and thus probably also their readership. A new journal is a difficult thing to get accepted unless you start with a wide base in the community, so some of these journals may be very legitimate but still have to prove themselves somehow. The problem is how to distinguish good from bad, and that is truly not easy in many cases.

+1, good answer. However, what I'd also really been hoping to get opinions on is whether, assuming that I do indeed have the time and willingness to review the manuscript, there's any chance that I might actually be doing more harm than good (to myself, to the authors, and/or to scientific publishing in general) by agreeing to review a manuscript sent to me by a sufficiently scammy journal. And yes, I do realize that this is kind of a fuzzy question.

@IlmariKaronen I have added some view points in response to your comment. Thanks for reiterating the questions

"common scientists"? Not sure what this means.

I might actually be doing more harm than good (to myself, to the
  authors, and/or to scientific publishing in general) by agreeing to
  review a manuscript sent to me by a sufficiently scammy journal.

Yes, exactly. Don't encourage predatory publishing. Don't encourage the authors, who almost certainly have no interest in your feedback and just want an additional publication, hoping it will help them get that cosy government job/tenure in a university that doesn't care about quality. All of this is a simulacrum of science.

if nobody agreed to review manuscripts for them, how could they ever
  improve their review process

True, but you shouldn't worry about it. Because we don't need more journals, especially not pay-for-publish, low-quality journals.
You probably know very well which are the good journals in your field, and if you publish (or even submit) to these, chances are they will ask you to review eventually. And this is what the scientific community expects you to do, not to give credit to a publisher that has no interest in science whatsoever and just wants to collect as many 'article processing charges' as it can, quickly.

“We don’t need more journals” The fact that it can take papers years to get published due in part to publishing backlogs seems to suggest otherwise to me.

@nick012000 the issue is too many papers, not not enough journals.

No!
Simply say "No, I'm too busy at the present time."
No one will be hurt or offended, and it is not like you'll be lying.

well it is lying if you're not too busy at the present time...

I attempted to review for some of these "predatory" journals, thinking: if the papers are genuinely peer reviewed, how bad could it be?  I now consider it a poor decision on my part.

My impression from the outset was that the editor intended for the paper to be published as soon as possible (from when I first saw it to when it was published online took about 3-4 weeks).  I felt like it was going to be published, one way or another.  (Although, I felt the authors took my feedback seriously.)
There was a lot of badgering; I was hounded by emails about deadlines and reviews.  For one paper, the initial review had a deadline of 10 days, and a revision had a deadline of 3 days (I'm not joking).  Prior to even agreeing to review the revision, I started getting hounded about the 3-day deadline passing.  They just expected me to drop everything to immediately review this paper.
Prior to finishing reviewing one paper, the same journal sent me a request for another paper, with another 10-day deadline.  (At this point, I snapped, and sent a fairly rude email back---they still haven't stopped emailing me.)

All in all, it wasn't a good experience, one I would avoid in future.

If the only red flag you got was a 10-day review deadline, I wouldn't be so convinced it was a predatory journal. I know of a couple of fledgling journals (Open Access types published by MDPI) that have similar deadlines (with a disclaimer to ask for more time if needed), claiming they are trying to fast track the typically slow process. They're definitely not top of the field but I did publish some of my PhD work there. And honestly - I found that 10 days is plenty since I usually push the review till the last 3 days anyway and just do it when it's due.

And as an additional note - once as an author I got a request to respond to reviewer's comments in 10 days, but since they turned out to be quite substantial I asked for a months time and they were glad to grant it. Similarly on the subject of "dropping everything off at a moments notice" - when I got a review request for a seemingly interesting paper (or maybe it was a follow-up or 2nd round review) in the middle of my deadlines, I asked for an extra week until my deadlines passed and there was no problem with it. Not a fan of 10-day deadlines either, but I don't consider it a decisive factor

#2 is an unfortunate consequence of authors liking fast peer review and journals attempting to provide it, unfortunately. If it happens again I would suggest declining to review, and cite the 10-day deadline as a reason. The editor could conceivably extend the deadline in that case, or make a case to modify it at the next editorial board meeting.

The reasonabless of 10-day limit on peer review is presumably field-dependent.

This thorny question has no easy answer, and a lot is going to come down to your personal values. I'll emphasize just one thing: there is no universally acknowledged definition of "predatory publisher" (see also this answer). The least controversial characteristic (but even then it's not absolute, see the first link) is that the journal does not conduct peer review, but by approaching you they're clearly conducting peer review, i.e. if this is your definition then the journal is not predatory.
Therefore my first reaction to your question is: what makes you say the journal is dubious? You mention several points; let's examine them one by one:

It is pay-to-publish. More technically this model is called "open access".[*] If you dislike this publishing model you wouldn't be alone (Jeffrey Beall does too), but it would be extremely awkward for you, because an increasingly large number of funders are mandating the papers they fund be published open access.
It is described by someone, presumably Jeffrey Beall, as a "borderline vanity press". See the second link above for analysis of this. There are reasonable people who disagree with Beall. Trusting his judgment saves you from having to do the analysis yourself of course, which is very convenient (same reason why university rankings are so popular), but not necessarily correct.
They spam you. The line between spam and not spam is not obvious (see second link above). They've already reached you when you work in a related field, which is a sign they're doing selection instead of simply mass mailing everyone. Also, I suspect if you call reviewer invitations "spam" you are on the extreme side. Not necessarily wrong (because what's spam and what's not spam is not obvious), but relatively extreme.
You end up doing voluntary work. Isn't that the case for almost all journals & publishers?
You may not spot errors in a flawed paper, which allows the publisher to claim the paper was peer-reviewed. This wouldn't be unique to this publisher or journal. There are countless published papers that were wrong and the reviewer didn't spot the errors. Example. Obviously the publishers of the two journals in question (Annals of Physics and Classical and Quantum Gravity, published by Elsevier and IOP Publishing respectively) are going to say the paper was peer-reviewed, which is also strictly speaking true.

In other words, it is not clear that the review request you received is from a dubious journal. You may think it is, but not every reasonable person will agree with you. If the journal is not dubious, the question you ask becomes really hard to answer.
Given all this, should you review anyway? It's up to you. You're under no obligation to review no matter who is inviting. You could plausibly say you don't have time for this (especially since papers submitted to not-well-known journals are unlikely to be very exciting). You could say you'll review anyway because of the reasons you gave in the three bullet points. It's something only you can decide about.
[*] Even more technically, open access refers only to the article being free to read somehow. It comes in many different flavors, some of which might not require an author to pay to publish.

@TommiBrander there are several different OA models, and the one you refer to is called diamond/platinum. I'm not sure if it's something I want to get into in this answer ... will try editing it.

Given how much of the work that goes into making journals is voluntary, surely there's room for a foundation to set up journals which are free at both ends? Maybe charge for the paper copy.

@TRiG diamond/platinum journals exist, but (as you can see from the link in the answer) they usually require external funding to work. Paper copies are already always charged for, and the number of print subscriptions is declining and will likely continue to decline.

You should decline.  In addition to the detriment of encouraging predatory publishing, you make yourself look bad or at least, like you think value of your time/input is low.
If you want to review, reach out to some editors of good journals (at the subspecialty level) and ask for reviews.  Include what topics you are most capable of reviewing.


text:
Why do open access consortia affiliate themselves with questionable publishers
The open access publishing world has a number of predatory publishers. Many know about Beall's list which identifies publishers and journals that engage in questionable practices. The existence of these questionable publishers and journals makes choosing a quality open access journal difficult. Consortia like the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association and the Directory of Open Access Journals seem to promise a level of scrutiny. For example, members of OASPA include the Royal Society and PLoS and while I cannot find a link confirming it, it seems like the AIP is also a member. To me these are above the board legitimate and well respected publishers. There are also members, like Frontiers, that I am not sure how I feel about. I like that Frontiers is trying to push an innovative model of publishing, but I am not sure that I want them to have a large say in defining "good" open access publishing practices. Finally, there are members like MDPI which Beall classifies as predatory and Hindawi which while it never made Beall's list, did make his "watch list".
I think I have two questions. First, why do these consortia affiliate themselves with questionable publishers? Second, how can the academic community pressure open access consortia to consider their members carefully?

There is something that I don't understand, you say: "Consortia like […] seem to promise a level of scrutiny." However, is this scrutiny about predatory practices, openness or exactly what? Because this might be the single source of misunderstanding.

Maybe you could leave a reply here: http://oaspa.org/conclusions-from-oaspa-membership-committee-investigation-into-mdpi/

As for AIP, why do you say "I cannot find a link confirming it" while you have actually provided a link?

@adipro because predatory OA publishers are known for adding big names to their lists of editors. I was looking for an acknowledgement from the AIP.

Observe that the OASPA "membership page" uses an evasive wording, that the following are "recognized as" OASPA members, rather than "are". A cursory search of Cambridge U. Press gives no hint of a connection to OASPA, for example.

@StrongBad What other "open access consortia" are there? It would seem to me that this question would be more specific and easier to answer if it was re-written to "Why does the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association affiliate themselves with what some consider to be 'questionable publishers' "

@rmounce I think an answer that just focuses on OASPA or DOAJ or one that I do not know about would be fine.

It looks like some of your links are dead and redirect to a Japanese site (which makes sense knowing that Beall's list is dead too).

Why do these consortia affiliate themselves with questionable
  publishers?

Hindawi is a founding member of the OASPA and MDPI, whichever opinion we might have about the quality of its journals, is a major player in the OA business. The OASPA apparently conducted an internal investigation about MDPI and seem to be happy about the results. The question might be more: is the OASPA questionable?

how can the academic community pressure open access consortia to
  consider their members carefully?

I would recommend not to consider open access consortia as relevant. Then, not submitting papers, not serving on the editorial board, and refusing reviewing tasks for sketchy journals.
On a more general level, one thing we could do is reduce the demand for low-quality, pay-for-publish 'OA' journals by challenging the hiring policies based on publication volume in our local institutions.

The academic publishing world has a number of problems with inadequate or completely absent peer review. These problems are present at both open access and subscription journals. The recent statement from the STM Association also reflects this position that the problems are not just confined to open access journals.
The members of OASPA include a heck of a lot of publishers, from very small, to very large, including SpringerNature and Wiley. Elsevier would probably like to be a member but it doesn't meet the stringent membership criteria for OASPA yet.
Amongst publishers, OASPA membership is seen as a mark of quality. The Think.Check.Submit cross-industry initiative encourages researchers to check that if the journal is open access, if the journal is in DOAJ and if the publisher is an OASPA member -- marks of trust/quality. Both DOAJ and OASPA are selective organisations - they don't allow or list just any and every OA journal or publisher.
As @Aubrey's answer notes, DOAJ have done good work to weed-out questionable journals from DOAJ.
The same is also true of OASPA. After the famous Bohannon sting published in Science OASPA responded by investigating all three of the then (2013) OASPA publisher members that accepted Bohannon's sting article. Those three publishers were Hikari, Dove Medical Press, and SAGE. Incidentally, two Hindawi journals (Chemotherapy Research and Practice and ISRN Oncology) , one MDPI journal (Cancers) and one Frontiers journal (Frontiers in Pharmacology: Pharmacology of Anti-Cancer Drugs) tested in Bohannon's sting ALL rejected the sting article, 'passing' the test.
After these OASPA investigations, OASPA decided to terminate the OASPA memberships of Hikari and Dove Medical Press. Neither publisher have since returned to OASPA membership.
I do not think that DOAJ or OASPA affiliate themselves with questionable publishers, and whenever this has been pointed out to them, they have both taken appropriate, detailed investigations to weed-out questionable journals and publishers.
I guess it all depends on whom one considers a 'questionable publisher or journal'. I certainly do not consider MDPI, Hindawi or Frontiers to be 'predatory publishers' but must admit I would not and have not chosen to publish with Frontiers or Elsevier because of distasteful business practices.
Organisations like DOAJ and OASPA cannot simply bar new members from trying to join - it is not in their spirit (openness!). But they certainly do heavily vet new membership or listing applications. I don't know what else to say. I found the question to be a little leading tbh...

If I understand your question correctly, you're asking about why OASPA and DOAJ associate themselves with MDPI, Frontiers and Hindawi. Only OASPA and DOAJ will know for sure, but I'll venture this reason: MDPI, Frontiers and Hindawi aren't necessarily questionable.
First, something to remember about Beall's list: this started as the work of one person. That means it's easily biased. OA spans from the clearly disreputable on the one end to a very gray area on the other. Beall undoubtedly had good intentions, but if the Who's Afraid of Peer Review? sting meant anything, Beall was only 82% accurate. In the sciences, a theory that predicts the right result 82% of the time is good but not great; in particle physics we even need a 5 sigma result (p-value 1 in 3.5 million) to claim a detection. I'm not saying Beall was wrong about MDPI, Frontiers and Hindawi, but I will say that "because Beall said so" is not a sufficiently good reason to conclude ____ is predatory.
Now about each publisher:
MDPI: See Wikipedia for more information. You can see Beall's criticism of MDPI stems from several aspects, such as how MDPI's articles are lightly-reviewed, how MDPI uses email spam, and how MDPI listed Nobel laureate Mario Capecchi on an editorial board without his knowledge. However:

Many OA journals do indeed review lightly. For example I once attended a talk by a Springer spokesperson who talked about a journal which reviews for correctness, not novelty (can't find the journal now, but PLOS ONE has the same policy). Viewed one way this is laudatory - it makes peer review less random by eliminating one completely subjective facet! Viewed another way, this is terrible - it makes it seem as though the journal will publish old results known for hundreds of years as long as the author is willing to pay. Which is closer to the truth? You'll have to come to your own conclusions.
Email spam. Although everyone finds them annoying, what constitutes email spam isn't universally agreed on. If you receive an email from someone you don't know with "Dear Professor Strongbad, I saw your question on Academia.SE and find it interesting, would you like to write an editorial on predatory publishers for my journal" - would you call that spam? Some people would, others would not. Also, what exactly isn't email spam anyway? If you never emailed people you didn't know personally, you would never be able to expand a journal large enough to be self-sufficient.
Finally the Mario Capecchi case was later shown to be the result of inaccurate communication by Capecchi's assistant.

Frontiers: again, see the Wikipedia article. You'll note that, similar to MDPI, there were established academics who defended Frontiers. Although the volume of allegations against Frontiers in the article is both larger and harder to justify if true, it's also the case that a Frontiers journal rejected John Bohannon's sting paper. OASPA and COPE both investigated Frontiers, and both decided that Frontiers meets their membership criteria.
Hindawi: once again see the Wikipedia article. I don't want to rehash everything I wrote about MDPI and Frontiers since a lot of it also applies to Hindawi, but I'll add a few specific things:

Hindawi was one of the pioneers of OA. In 2007, they converted all their journals to OA - this was both 1) before OA really took off and 2) pioneering, since even today most big publishers don't use a complete OA model.
Hindawi is big. With over 400 journals and tens of thousands of published articles a year, Hindawi is a big fish in the OA pond.
A Hindawi journal also rejected John Bohannon's sting paper.
Some of Beall's criticism of Hindawi apparently focused on how high its profit margins are (apparently higher than Elsevier's). This not only has no relation to the quality of Hindawi's editorial process, it's also the case that Hindawi's article processing charges are lower than average, and they're based in Egypt, which as a developing country has much lower labour costs than the Netherlands-based Elsevier. One could say that Egyptians are bad at publishing relative to the Dutch, but that's borderline racism.

tl; dr: it's not a given that any unbiased observer will conclude that these three publishers are disreputable. Accordingly, it shouldn't be surprising that some OA consortia are willing to count them as one of their members.

+1. Beall's list is a useful tool, not an oracle. Even so, Beall considered MDPI a borderline case ("note: MDPI is very much a hit-and-miss. Some of their journals have a very poor peer-review; some are fine. In the future, I will list MDPI journals separately"). The last version of his list doesn't have MDPI or Hindawi at all. (I personally have seen both publish legit papers.) Frontiers, though, is a different story -- in my opinion it deserves to get kicked out already for their harassment of Beall.

The CoC for OASPA says Members are committed to ensuring the highest standards of conduct among all OA publishers and I am not sure anyone would describe the above publishers as having the highest standards regarding OA publishing.

@StrongBad those standards about the highest standards are just made to sound good imo. Lots of journals claim to only publish the "highest quality" papers (example from Taylor and Francis: http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/pgas/rsrs-cfp), but that doesn't mean we're inundated with journals on the level of Science and Nature.

@Allure it is not the quality of the papers but rather the quality of the review and editorial process as well as archiving and recruiting process.

@StrongBad what makes you say those are subpar?

DOAJ, in the last 2 years, has been seriously trying to cope with the problem of fake and predatory publishers and journals. In 2013, the announced they were tightening the criteria for admission of journals.
Here's the list of journals added and removed in 2014.
They even looked for a network for volunteer Associate Editors to evaluate journals.
In March 2014, they again started receiving new applications, and gave old journals (already indexed) one year to fill in again the new form. In one way or another, there was a big delay, and it seems that just now they are actually ready for reapplications.
A Nature article tells you the story.
For what is worth, I've worked with University of Bologna from 2010 till June 2014, and I managed the OJS platform (basically, a publishing software for open access journals). In that period, I spoke many times to the DOAJ team regarding Unibo's journals, and my personal impression is that they had too much success to cope effectively with all the applications.
They need(ed) more resources, more time, more money.
At the beginning the project was supported by the Lund University, but they probably had to find other ways to finance it. DOAJ asks for membership fees, and is now managed by a new committee, IS4OA.
It's probably fair to wait for the new round of re-applications to evaluate the website again and see if the old issues are solved or not.