text:
Is it unusual for a math department not to have a mail/web server?
I'm a PhD student in a math department at a research university in the US. When I started the program I was given an account on the department server with a website and a nice department email address. Now I've found out that the department (or the university?) is doing away with the server and instructing everyone to instead use the G Suite email and Google services that the general student body of the university uses. So I suppose I'll have to pay to host my website somewhere, or convert it manually into a Google Site as the department is suggesting (which unfortunately, to my knowledge, doesn't support math markup). I'm worried that having a Google Site as opposed to a .edu website will appear unprofessional, and I'm a bit irked that I'll have to take the time to migrate my site elsewhere. Also I think it's peculiar that not even the math faculty will have a .edu domain to host a website.
Should I be upset by this? Is this unusual? Or is this just the trend of the future? Is this more typical than I think it is?

Update regarding my specific scenario to address some questions in the comments: The email through GMail still gets the .edu extension as name@university.edu or some variation. I'm not sure what will happen to my name@math.university.edu email, but it sounds like that will still work? Word is that they're still figuring out specifics. But they're planning on getting rid of the web server though. They haven't been giving new faculty or grad students the @math email address or a math.university.edu/~name website like I received, and they're working with people with larger sites [on the math server] to fit their needs. But it sounds like after the switchover the math.university.edu domain won't be available to redirect to any new website either, which sucks because there's at least one faculty here with a massive website, and the switchover will break tons of links online, and references PDF notes and papers.

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What happens when you switch universities? Do you really wish to transfer all your stuff from place to place or request that your stuff remain active even though you do not work/study there? That's an IT burden so they would rather have you be self-sufficient.

@MonkeyZeus. Yes? As long as the new university has a web server with ssh access, it's as easy as copying all the files over. Then I'd set up a redirect on the website at the old university to the new website, and hope that the old university keeps that old site active until Google re-indexes everything.

What can we expect from the infrastructure of an university, if they cannot run their own IT anymore? I doubt a university can perform free and independent research, if all communication and data is tracked by a cloud provider. I would be highly concerned.

@JonasStein right!? Digging around, I was shown this page about the University of California's agreement with Google. I'm not sure exactly what "Consult" means in the Sensitive Data Guidance section.

There are a fair amount of departments, schools and colleges that don't host individual websites for students or even profs.  In reality, these sites are pretty personal and unofficial.  These institutions prefer to just host official pages where they control the content.  Nothing is stopping you from having your own site, but there's no reason why the school has to host it for you.

It is becoming less common for individual departments to operate their own IT infrastructure - things are usually being centralised.
It is also becoming more common for parts of that centralised IT infrastructure to be outsourced - which in practice means that email ends up on Gmail or Microsoft's system. I would expect that your email address will still have uniname.edu as its domain - it will just be operated by a cloud provider.
Along with this second tendency, it's becoming less common for universities (or departments) to provide web space to staff or students. This can be annoying. But as others have said, there's nothing unprofessional about setting up your own domain (with a sensible name) and hosting your web content there.

Afaik a johnsmith.io looks much lesser professional than ???u.edu .

I've found out that the department (or the university?) is doing away with the server and instructing everyone to instead use the G Suite email and Google services that the general student body of the university uses.

It sounds like the university is outsourcing IT, which is normal.

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As a math graduate student in the US, current norms make it reasonable for you to expect your department to offer you access to certain IT services, including:

A (free) email address that is credibly affiliated with your university’s recognized domain name, i.e.,

yourname@uniname.edu
yourname@math.uniname.edu

are both good and reasonable, but anything along the lines

yourname@gmail.com
yourname@gsuites.com
yourname.uniname@gmail.com
yourname@uniname-gsuites.com
yourname@uniname.gsuites.com

(etc) doesn’t sound really acceptable to me. I’d be very upset if my department forced such email addresses on everyone (fortunately I’m now the chair of the computer committee, so I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen ;-)).

An easy (and free) web hosting solution for hosting a personal web page.

Ideally, the web host will have a URL associated with the university .edu domain.

Also ideally, any third parties that such services are contracted out to should be ethical companies that offer strong guarantees to respect users’ privacy, and have a reputation for living up to their promises in this area. In an even more ideal situation, these companies will be ones whose profits are positively correlated to how good of a job they do respecting and protecting their users’ privacy.

From the situation you described, it sounds like item 3 above is a legitimate reason for you to be upset, and potentially also item 4. With item 1, by your description it sounds like you’ll still have a campus-domain email address, which is reasonable. As for having to migrate your web page, I think you’d look a bit petty if you were  to try to turn that into an issue.

(2) and (3) offer only short-term benefits, especially for PhD students such as the OP. Longer-term, researchers will change institutions. I advocate avoiding university infrastructure (e.g., web hosting, email, version control, storage, ...)  where possible and using personally controlled cloud infrastructure.

@user2768 I don’t really understand your point. Access to a desk, office space, a xerox machine, and a million other things are also “short term benefits”, but they are still useful. So are a .edu email address and web hosting domain. If you prefer not using them, that is your right, but many graduate students find those services extremely useful.

I don't follow your comparison: Your website, email, version control, storage, ..., are career-long assets. Having such assets controlled by an employer is short-sighted. Your examples aren't assets, I don't see a basis for comparison.

@user2768 I agree about file storage, but as for a website, I know only two academics who went to the trouble of setting up their own web hosting solution, and they did it very late in their careers. I guess that makes me and essentially everyone I know shortsighted according to your definition.

Presumably you and all but two of your colleagues have had the hassle of migrating your websites at every change in institute. I'd consider a single migration to cost more than the trouble of setting up their own web hosting solution. (Buying hosting is a one-off, trivial event.) A long-term website also does better in search engine rankings. (Regarding short-sightedness, that was directed towards the OP, a new researcher. Older researchers couldn't have foreseen the advancement of the Internet.)

@user2768 ok. Thanks for the comments.

Domain name, email and website are three different things.
Your university doesn't have to have any computer equipment at all to own the university.edu domain, all they have to do is pay for it. Having their own domain is indeed the standard so you can be pretty sure they'll keep it.
The e-mail is apparently getting outsourced to G-suite (probably together with calendar / document share). It will not be visible externally: G-suite is specifically designed to support e-mail addresses on a domain their customers own. So, again, you can be pretty sure you'll either keep your old e-mail address or get a new one on a university.edu domain, perhaps something like user@math.university.edu.
The website is a different entity usually hosted on a separate server. If I were you, I'd ask whether your university moves their web services to an external hosting (and which one). It doesn't have to be Google Sites, and if they do it right, you should be able to keep your website the way it is, unless they pick a very cheap hosting which lacks the features your website requires (this may be the reason they are "working with people with larger sites to fit their needs"). What will change if they outsource it is the way you manage your website, that's why you should ask about this better sooner than later. Which name your website will get is also up to them, and there's no relationship between e-mail and web servers other than the name: it's entirely possible to have e.g. an e-mail server with Google and host the website with the same domain name on Amazon AWS.

What can we expect from the infrastructure of an university, if they cannot run their own IT anymore?
An excellent university has excellent IT staff, which is able to develop and enhance software to their needs. They will also conserve and transfer IT skills to students.
I doubt a university can perform free and independent research, if all communication and data is tracked by a cloud provider who runs also one of the most often used search engines. Once the IT is outsourced it is practically impossible to rebuild the own infrastructure when the experts were gone.
Most universities exist since more than 100 years an invested a lot of effort to stay independent.
A university would not outsource their most important infrastructure as long as they are financially secured.
You should be highly concerned.

As @flyto said, there are many universities using google, GitHub, and Microsoft as their cloud provider for mail/storage/web/repo/authentication. AFAIK, both have HIPPA and PII approved products, so those universities are mitigating their risk by transferring them to those providers. I personally know of 8 universities which are using Microsoft and 5 google for mail; that does not mean Microsoft is more popular but my sample size is small.
About domain names, you do the same as you would with every single cloudy web provider out there: edit your DNS to direct queries properly or have them run it (and then you edit your domain as needed). There is nothing stopping bogus university to have office.bogus.edu, which can redirect to a office365 landing page customized using their identity. Their members can also go to the Microsoft default office website and login using their university credentials, which would direct them to the university-specific stuff.
There is nothing stopping you from having a user@math.bogus.edu email address instead of user@bogus.edu; one of them is just the alias to the other.


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Are unpaid postdoc positions common?
I contacted a group leader, and he strongly liked my CV. He encouraged me to join his group as a postdoc fellow, but he mentioned that the position he may offer is unpaid (so, I must cover my living expenses).
He mentioned that I can publish good papers in his group following my previous works. Then, I can get a good paid job. So, it is worth of accepting an unpaid job.
I'm wondering if it is common for postdoc fellows to accept unpaid positions?

This is definitely not common.

Can you please say what country you are in?

Note that the question is about the frequency of unpaid post docs and not the ethics of them.

In the UK and, I believe, the USA, this would violate minimum wage law. So, in those two countries, it should be very uncommon.

Nearly impossible to answer reliably: there can be no consistent tracking of "volunteers". Can be hard to track any non-tenured position because the legal situations can vary so much, even within a country. Italy: ~126k "precarious" positions vs. 58k tenured https://coordinamentoprecariuniversita.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/che-fare/ , research is not a job http://www.roars.it/online/la-ricerca-e-un-lavoro-la-battaglia-dei-ricercatori-per-lammortizzatore-sociale/ USA: "homeless profs" (NYT); 77 % precarious http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/the-adjunct-professor-crisis/361336/

Also, what field is this?  Maybe if you're doing piano performance, you go and live near your role model so you can attend his master classes.  But you do not expect to be paid while you do it.

I did some work for two different people to get preliminary data for grants. Once paid, once promised to be paid, but unpaid. So my personal experience says 50% of the time. Regarding the lack of pay in the UK, one is not an employee, but an external consultant of sorts pro bono, which is legal.

Here is an article from the 1980s despite attempts at unionizing, i am not sure things have gotten better.

This survey if ever conducted should have the number for NSF type people.

As far as I know PhDs can be paid either by institution or a professor or stipends or grants or by a company. For a postdoc to be entirely unfinanced seems uncommon, but it is not necessarily the institution they are located at who pays for them.

I thought this had been abolished in the US after the civil war.

What the group leader should have said is that s/he has no money, but you can join the lab if you have your own funding (i.e., a fellowship). For them to dangle papers in exchange for free work is unethical and potentially illegal, depending on where they are.
Edit: What follows is entirely my personal opinion. I am no lawyer so no idea about legality; feel free to let me know if you think my opinion is too harsh/wrong.
Any kind of free labour in a lab is unfair and discriminatory. It locks out those in society who aren't lucky enough to be able to give their time away for free. This includes undergraduate internships. If you're working for someone, then you should be paid for your time. Even if you are receiving training.

Are you saying that it is illegal to have volunteers in your lab?

@StrongBad, I would say that about the US labor market, absolutely. They have to at least get course credit or something of demonstrable value if not money.

@StrongBad, I think that having unpaid volunteers work for you is unfair and discriminatory. I have no idea as to the legality of these things as this will vary quite a bit from country to country and state to state, and I am no lawyer.

@stjep unfair, most definitely. Discriminatory, is more of a stretch.

@StrongBad, just my opinion, but discriminatory in that it shuts out lower SES who can't afford to work for free.

@StrongBad it depends on the jurisdiction, but yes, in many places having volunteers work in your institution would be illegal unless some specific circumstances are met (e.g. registered charities, internship trainee conditions, part of a study course program, etc) that wouldn't apply for a postdoc working at a university. In your lab it might be legal, but in other places you'd have to pay at least the legal minimum salary or, e.g. with some collective bargaining rules, a standard postdoc salary but maybe as half-time or quarter-time position so that they're hired for a low number of hours.

I +1ed for the Postdoc case, but I think it can be perfectly fine to have unpaid undergrad internships: if you end up doing uninteresting chore work which teaches you nothing, that would not be ok ethically in my eyes; but if you're taught stuff while not being able to contribute much in the short 4-8 weeks, it seems perfectly fine.

@gnometorule: If what you do helps advance the project/endevor you're interning at, then you're contributing, not just training. Perhaps your compensation would be lower, but it shouldn't be 0. H-o-w-e-v-e-r... a lot of NLRB judges agree with your position rather than mine (in even wider contexts than you would think, unfortunately).

That would be illegal (for the supervisor/university) in the US.
Edited by popular request to say that like an unpaid internship the US Department of Labor has some pretty strict rules for when an "employer" is allowed to not pay someone who works for them. At my university, postdocing is work, so I think that role should comply with the same rules. At my university a postdoc wouldn't fit either, so in my experience, unpaid postdocs are extremely uncommon.

Are you saying that unpaid visiting positions (e.g., sabbaticals) are illegal?

Aren't people on sabbaticals usually still paid by their home university? If they are truly unpaid, then yes, I'm saying they're illegal just like the DoL is starting to crack down on unpaid internships.

@StrongBad: One difference is that sabbatical visitors typically are not required to do any work by the host institution.  If they ask you to teach or work in someone's lab under their direction, then yes, they should pay you.  But if they just give you an office and let you do whatever you want, then they aren't making you work for them.

@AnonymousMathematician in my field sitting in an office and doing whatever you want is essentially what a postdoc does (especially one who is not funded by a grant).

@BillBarth: Please elaborate. Do you mean illegal as in criminal law? Illegal as in making you liable for a civil suit? Labor relations suit? Also - what level legislation? University bylaws? State laws? Federal laws?  ... Finally, you did not actually say whether this is common, as opposed to legal :-(

@einpoklum If it is illegal, one could imagine that as a generality people (and institutions) are not breaking the law; thus, it is uncommon.

@ChrisCirefice Online piracy is illegal, but almost half of Americans and Germans admitted that they were breaking these laws

@ChrisCirefice: In Israel, the ministry of the economy estimates that over 90% of all employers break at least one of the labor protection articles of the law.

It's US federal admin law illegal (PDF warning), though the second circuit has rejected this test. As a result, I believe but do not know that it's uncommon in US practice.

@MarchHo I personally don't think it's a good idea to compare labor laws with software piracy. And I'm a software developer. A few thousand of millions of users is a profit loss for businesses, obviously. But a life-impacting decision made by an institution that violates labor laws is a different problem entirely. I don't think it's fair to compare the two, or frankly even possible.

@einpoklum That is really unfortunate, and obviously I can't say much because I'm not an Israeli citizen. Perhaps it may be of use for the Israeli people to focus more on governmental issues pertaining to employment laws. However, it is not my place to discuss the matter further if one talks about implementation of said laws.

@BillBarth: Can you put that in the answer please?...

In the United States, the Supreme Court has stated criteria for when unpaid training or internships are acceptable (quoted from that site):

The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to that which would be given in a vocational school;
The training is for the benefit of the trainee;
The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under close observation;
The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually be impeded;
The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the completion of the training period; and
The employer and the trainee understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

In particular, someone can let you do unpaid work for them only when it is for your benefit, not for theirs.  I don't know offhand of precedents involving postdoctoral positions, but these criteria seem to me to rule out most forms of unpaid postdocs in the U.S.  (Of course, the legal situation could be completely different in other countries.)

My read of the rules is the opposite. I think everything but point 4 is covered by the fact that the NIH F32/T32 postdoc fellowships are considered a "training" position. As for point 4, the immediate advantage a PI gets is co-authored publications, but since gift authorship is unethical, the co-authorship must be a result of the work the PI put into the research.

I would say this is mostly a political/class-struggle question.. The US has seen doctoral researchers try to unionize, and conflicting NLRB rulings based on the composition of judges, in 2000 (more progressive) then in 2004 (more conservative). Cf.  NLRB 332-111 NYU vs UAW and NLRB 342-42 Brown U vs UAW. Sorry, I don't have links for those.

@einpoklum If you're going to use the term "class struggle" for the interaction between one group of people with PhDs and another group of people with PhDs, you obviously understand the concept of "class" in a very different way to me.

@DavidRicherby: The struggle is typically between junior/untenured academic staff unions and university managements (as in those cases). And the PhD's are not the point, it's a question of the position within the industrial relations. The question could have been about some kind of internship program which doesn't pay and the issue would be mostly similar.

In the Netherlands, postdoctoral researchers are considered employees, plain and simple. Such a PI is unlikely to be able to sneak this under the radar, and even if he did - the position is paid, regardless of whether he would like it to be - he's just not making the payments.
It would not be unheard of (although maybe not in the Netherlands) for you do accept this postdoc then sue the guy or the research institute for back-pay - with a good chance of winning... Of course, I wouldn't recommend this strategy if you have a less, shall we say, adventurous opportunity.
From an ethical/moral perspective, I'd also say that PI is acting reprehensibely. Research is important and hard work; true, it benefits the researcher himself as well - but so does almost any professional position where you build a reputation, whether you're a carpenter, or a plumber, or what-not. What's more, the lab or research group benefits from your achievements just as well - you're are fulfilling its goals directly; and your PI benefits also, since his direction of interest in research is being taken further (and that's not to mention partial credit for your work, authorship on papers etc.)  ... honestly, if he really "doesn't have the money" - then let all the lab workers, him first, chip in from their own salary so that you all have the same missing fraction of your pay overall.

I disagree with the other answers. In my field, PIs offer postdocs space in their labs even when they have no money for salary. In my field staff is the biggest cost so providing space and consumables and access to equipment is not a problem. During this time, the PI and postdoc might work on grant applications together, but this depends on the situation.
My research is fairly interdisciplinary (probably best described as cognitive neuroscience) and I have seen unpaid post docs in every department I have been affiliated with, including Electrical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Psychology (both in the US and UK). I also have colleagues who have been unpaid postdocs in Neuroscience and Physics departments. My wife is in the humanities and from her colleagues I am aware of unpaid post docs in Art History, English, and History departments (again US and UK).
From the comments, maybe I am overstating what a post doc is. None of the unpaid positions I am aware of had any teaching or supervisory requirements. Nor did they have any binding contracts. What they did is provide the individual with access to an office/lab, library, and internet. In the sciences they often provided access to consumables, IRB/ethics review and approval, and money to run human subjects (when needed). The positions were all "supervised" since someone needed to sign off on them but the postdoc was basically free to do what they wanted.
I do not know of anyone who stayed in the unpaid post for more than 6 months (they usually either got a grant to stay or a paid position someplace else). Most of the people were straight out of their PhD and were in the process of applying for funding. They tended to have strong ties to the city of the post doc.
There seems to be variation in policies regarding unpaid postdocs. Yale explicitly says that unpaid and volunteer researchers are not allowed and from what I can find, they do not allow any unpaid visiting researchers. UPENN does not allow unpaid post docs, but they do allow unpaid visiting scholars which appear to be very similar to postdocs. MIT also does not allow unpaid postdocs, but does allow unpaid visiting positions. Harvard SEAS is the only university in my quick search that allows unpaid "postdocs".

How do these people eat and where do they sleep?

@BillBarth presumably they eat the same thing and sleep in the same place as they would if they were not volunteering.

The question of legality is not field-dependent, but probably country-dependent.

@StrongBad, of course I meant, how do they fund their eating and sleeping?

@StrongBad: If they weren't working the post-doc, they would find another job and get a salary. It could well be an engineering or a teaching position somewhere - which may not be much less rewarding experience-wise, but would pay a decent salary. Hopefully anyway.

I am surprised by the down votes. While unpaid post docs may not be ethical, they are used extensively (maybe 5% of total post docs) in my field.

@StrongBad, please state your field and country.

I think the links are a bit misleading.  First of all the link to Penn is to one program within Penn (one center within the Annenberg School of Communication), for a class of visiting scholars that also includes graduate students and allows them to take class for credit.  As it happens, I was a Visiting Scholar in the math department at UPenn (immediately after getting my PhD): there was no pay but also no work whatsoever.

Moreover, the Harvard SEAS link describes this kind of postdoc as "Includes postdoctoral fellows with fellowships that are paid directly to the fellow and postdoctoral fellows on the payroll of another institution."  So what they mean is that the salary does not come from Harvard.  That's not the same thing at all as being "unpaid"!  I also agree with other commenters that saying "in my field" rather than listing the field makes a potentially useful answer of very little use to anyone.

It seems to me that the downvoters live in some kind of fantasyland where salary is independent of performance. No worries though: the wake-up call will come, sooner or later in life.

This is not uncommon on academia.stackexchange. Unpopular truths are downvoted, whilst popular myths are upvoted. People use the voting system like they would a Facebook post with both a like and a dislike button.

@PeteL.Clark how was your experience at Penn not an unpaid postdoc?

@StrongBad: How is Philadelphia not in Georgia?  These things can be hard to answer, but I'll try: (i) I had no faculty advisor, nor did I collaborate with or work for any Penn faculty member.  (ii) In fact I did not do any work for Penn in any way: I taught no classes, worked with no students, did no laboratory work... (iii) I signed no employment contract...And so forth.  I mean, whenever I visit a math department for a few days they give me a key to an office.  If I stay more than a week I'll get library access and some privileges with the facilities.  Does that make me an unpaid postdoc?

Ah, also the fact that it only took place during the summer seems relevant.  Sorry for not mentioning that sooner.  While I was there, my institutional affiliation was described as Harvard/McGill.  Here the word "visiting" is not in the sense of "Visiting Assistant Professor" at a liberal arts college (a kind of postdoc); it literally means visiting from somewhere else.

By the way: I've answered your question.  Would you care to answer mine?

@PeteL.Clark add the info.

@PeteL.Clark: I still think your case is borderline. I mean, you were busy promoting the math department's goals by doing research.

@StrongBad: Your response is much appreciated.  I now find your answer quite helpful.  einpoklum: by that logic, I am promoting every math department's goals.  I actually do list this visiting position on my CV; it would be highly misleading to call it a postdoc.  Though "unpaid postdoc" may be a thing in other fields (not a great thing, but a thing...), it would sound like doubletalk in mine.

Indeed, I think a part of the discrepancy between this answer and some of the others is in the definition of "postdoc" (which is not a very well-defined term to start with). The situation described in this answer is not one I would have called a postdoc, but as always, this is something that will vary a lot between fields. To me, these sound essentially like a "visiting scholar" who just happens to not really be visiting from anywhere else (as weird as that may sound, but it fits quite well with the description by @PeteL.Clark as well as my own experience as such, though tat was during my PhD)

I'm in physics in the UK and I have never ever seen an unpaid postdoc.

I did an unpaid postdoc in Japan, as my wife was staying there anyway, and I was both young and desperate. I knew of 3 or 4 other people like me, also motivated by a desire to stay in Tokyo at "all cost". I wouldn't say they were common, but they weren't unheard of either.
The rationale was that I would get to publish and given the prestige of the university and the lab I was with, it would be beneficial for my career in the long run, even if I wasn't paid. I signed on as an unpaid postdoc and I made ends meet by teaching English, French and translating technical papers and documents.
My experience was overall negative. Despite being reassured otherwise - I was told I would be treated just like any junior faculty/researcher - people just don't take you seriously if they know you are not paid, and it will be very hard to keep it a secret. The psychological effect became very difficult after a while. I expected most people to admire my perseverance and dedication to my research, by willing to work for free. Instead most people were looking at me as some sort of charity case - "he's working here for free because he can't get a real job". There were several conflicts between my research (what I wanted to be doing), and the part time jobs I was doing. It was very hard to focus on my research, when I was constantly being pulled into some task or event because of my other jobs.
If you are a foreign national in the host country you want to do a postdoc in, you will most likely run into visa issues if you are not paid, and you will run into employment authorization issues for whatever part-time work you want to do to make ends meet. In my case I had to switch from a visiting scholar visa to a dependent visa, then wait a long time to get a part-time work authorization. I've seen foreign researchers in the US (where I live now) face similar problems.
In the US, some states don't allow unpaid post-docs for labor law reasons, and even when it is allowed by local laws, the university itself might have rules against it for security, insurance and liability reasons. The 3 places I am familiar with in the US, Georgia Tech, Emory,  and MIT, don't allow unpaid post docs.
Back to my experience in Japan, none of the unpaid post-docs I knew of materialized into real academic positions. They all eventually gave up, and either went back to their hometowns/countries and got low-level teaching positions there or they left academia for the industry - and when you join the industry you find yourself having lost 3 or 4 years compared to other people with your age and skill set.
Conclusion: Don't go for an unpaid post-doc, it's very taxing and it's not worth it at all. There's a world beyond academia.

I have never heard of an unpaid postdoc position, unless you're talking about having some external funding so that no money is going out of your supervisor's pockets.
But maybe you need to provide more information. I think that depending on your country and your area of expertise, it may not be as uncommon as people here think.
I advise strongly against such positions, for multiple reasons.

By now, you are old enough to have to fend for yourself. The fact that your supervisor knows this, and still encourages to join his/her lab without any pay seems extremely unethical on the supervisor's part (unless the lab is world-famous, and a couple years there is enough to guarantee fantastic prospects). I think it seems likely that there are other unethical practices going on in that lab, based on this information.
Being a postdoc allows you to build your CV so that you can try for a professorship soon after you finish your position. Many of these CV components come from the lab, but you can also get some of the experience through the university, possibly from teaching, or other services to the department. Will you be treated as a member of the university, or are you expected to just show up to the lab, without getting access to any of these other components?
Do you have any plans on how you are going to take care of other benefits that come with being employed with the university? Health care and pension are important benefits that you probably will not have access to. Even trivial things like journal access might become irritating unless you get a regular position through the university.

I am a Principal Investigator at a Swiss University.
In my view, postdocs are experienced scientists who should know how to write a passable project description and application for funding. Therefore I expect all my postdocs to help contributing to the expenses of the lab, e.g. by acquiring competitive fellowships (e.g. HFSP, EMBO, DFG, Marie-Curie).
You may, however, try all of the above - and still fail, for reasons that are out of your control. In that case, I will give you a "safety net" by paying your salary through my core funding. But if you feel that the financial health of my lab is none of your business, and you are not even prepared to try and get some funds, then please do not apply to my lab.

It's a deal. I will not apply to your lab.

That's more than fair! It may be worth saying, however, that 11 of my former postdocs (over the past 20 years) have attained a tenured full professorship in the meantime. Evidently, my deal was not such a bad one for them.

I have a feeling more people are voting on your answer as a form of moral judgement rather than whether or not it answers the question. ... and in fact, you do not directly address OP's question. Consider editing please.

This doesn't seem to answer the question.

not directly, but it does (at least that's what I think), by providing a possible explanation for the scenario described by OP. Principal Investigator (PI) is impressed by OP and wants to hire him/her, but has no funds for the salary. Hence PI asks OP to come up with his own salary (which is not exactly the same as an unpaid position, but may be perceived by OP as such). For highly productive labs which have lots of applicants, I'd say that this is a common situation. And from a moral viewpoint, frankly I do not see anything wrong with it.

@aag I'm inclined to agree with the others in that you aren't quite on point with the applicability of your answer. While scenario seems likely, it is also the case that in some countries this wouldn't be legal by the local employment laws and something that it would be reasonable to assume that the PI would directly disclose.

@rjzii: impossible to disagree with you! Laws differ in different countries, as do expectations. But even laws intended to protect postdocs can have unintended consequences.  In many EU countries (not Switzerland) if you are employed for >5 years you become essentially unfireable. As a result, shortly before the cutoff, the PI may tell you that you have to work pro bono or leave. My advice is: if you enjoy science do a postdoc by all means, or even two. But if you haven't gotten an assistant professorship by age 40, call it a day and do something else.

btw, I do not quite understand how the scoring system works. It seems that I got some 150 brownie points although everybody hates what I write - go figure!

@aag Indeed! My field is a bit different (sustainability modeling) so there really isn't much in the way of post-docs because it is so new. At the end of the day, for some questions like this, the best answer is to ask what their field is. :D For points, you get ten for every up-vote and minute two for every down, so enough up-votes will put you ahead in terms of reputation.

That's the arrangement in my wife's lab, so it's probably not so uncommon. Maybe I'm reading your answer wrongly, but I hence find the somewhat belligerent tone of the answer unnecessary - what you do is reasonable, and will see your postdocs funded one way or another. ;)

I apologize for any perceived belligerence which is unintended. I do feel strongly about career development of young scientists (I am also the director of the local MD-PhD program). I thought it useful for postdocs to hear from the PI's side. Unpaid work is immoral, but sometimes applicants have a sense of entitlement which is equally out of place. Guys, you spend most of your time following your curiosity, you have no fixed working hours, you have a degree of independence (very early on!) which people in other jobs can only dream of. There's just no free lunch: something's gotta give (sigh).

I don't know other countries, and I only know the situations in the U.S.
If you are a postdoc, then you are considered an employee, and the university has to pay you; otherwise, this is a serious violation of labor law, and I bet no regular universities would do this. If you are a visiting scholar to an American university to conduct research, then the university may not have to pay you, but you have to show you have enough funding to support your living expenses in the U.S. These funding could be from your home country, from a research institution, or even just from yourself.

In contrast to the answers here, it's very common and many people here do this everyday. There's a term for it:
Visiting scientist or visiting scholar

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visiting_scholar)
Labs that don't have money can offer a visiting position to a post doc. Many people take the job, do it full-time for free.
Everyone who works as a visiting scientist is a free labour. By definition, the number of free post docs in the world is at least the total number of visiting scholar title holders.
Visiting scholar == free work == free post doc

It's legal in all countries. All academic institution like that. Thus, all other answers in this post are simply wrong.
Anyone with a visiting non-paid title is a free post-doc. Simple and plain. Please don't deny it.
Re: Most of the time, salary is contined by the home department, often through sabbatical.
Let's say university is paying you for your job. You get a new job at Mcdonald, but work for free as a "visitor". Are you going to say "I am not making burgers for free because my salary is contined by my home department."?

Most of the time, salary is contined by the home department, often through sabbatical.

@ScottSeidman So you agree it's still a free job? Taking up a new title without being paid doesn't mean it's not free.

@ScottSeidman Let's say university is paying you for your job. You get a new job at Mcdonald, but work for free as "visitor". Are you going to say "I am not making burgers for free because my salary is contined by my home department."?????

I disagree with calling visiting researchers on sabbatical leave "postdocs". It's true that there is no clear definition of the term 'postdoc' so in a very broad sense you could say that anyone who has a PhD is a 'postdoc', but afaik the commonly accepted definition is somebody who has a junior non-permanent research position. That definition doesn't include visiting researchers paid by their home university, since they usually need to have a permanent position in order to take a sabbatical.

In my experience, most "visiting researcher"-type positions have nothing to do with free labor. Instead, they are just a way to "put somebody in the system" in order to simplify the logistics of hosting a collaborator. Once you've dubbed somebody a "visiting researcher" then you can get them on the WiFi, give them a keycard to get in the building, snag a slot in the office space set aside for visitors, etc.

What about Visiting Professors? They're paid (in the US).

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How can I assist other graduate students who may feel increasingly "unwelcome" due to their countries of origin?
I work in a research group with a large number of international graduate students. Recent news in my country (the United States) has been deeply unsettling for some of these students, especially the ones who hail from "unwelcome" countries (see here).
As a U.S. citizen, I (personally) feel guilty and embarrassed over the current goings-on (nor do I agree with them), though I certainly do not expect other Americans to necessarily feel that way too. Many of these students in my lab know my personal feelings on the matter. But at the end of the day, there isn't much I can do right now to affect national policy, so I'm trying to think more locally.
What, if anything, can I do here in my lab/department/university to help my fellow students/peers/friends?

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

The best thing you can do in my opinion is to be the change you wish to see in the world. Namely, be as friendly and welcoming to the international students as you can be. This will show them that negative views towards people who hail from the countries they come from are not shared by the entire US population, but are simply the opinions of certain people who happen to hold political office these days. It will also make you a role model for other Americans in your lab and department who may be inspired by your positive example to act in similar ways.

+1, inviting them into your life is going to be far more effective than anything else you can do.

+1 it's almost certain they'll be feeling the same way about their own governments, so you'll be in the same boat. I would also suggest explicitly letting them know that you support them and not what your government is doing, if you still think they may have any doubts.

This is utopia, in a nice world this is how we should all be. But what about the real world when these students are not on campus, and they're looking for accommodation or part-time work?.

@Mari-LouA I have no idea what you're referring to about students not being on campus (OP describes them as students in his research group, so it seems safe to assume he sees them on campus), but feel free to write your own less utopian answer.

As I said in my comment" "Talk to them". At the very least, this way you will show them that you care, dispel the notion (not completely unfounded) that "americans do not care about what happens outside of their own country". Talk to them about life in the country they left, how did they manage to get away, how are they adapting to the new country (and the new, post-election, realities). This will be an interesting learning experience for both you (since you never left the US) and them. This might force you to think about difficult questions to which there are no easy answers, such as:

How does one live in a dictatorship and retain (some level of) integrity?
How do you politely reject an offer to work for a secret police?
What do you do if you find out that your brother is informing (the secret police) on your grandfather?
What do you do if a policeman asks for a bribe?
What do you do when your best friend kills his sister because his father told him to do so?

.....

I appreciate the sentiment here, but I'm giving a -1 for the implications. I agree that there are hard questions that I've never faced, but I think this response is a bit extreme -- the U.S. is still a democracy, regardless of my political views, and I have to respect the opinions of my countrymen if I want them to respect my own.

This answer kinda depicts the amount of ignorance in some of Amiricans. Dude, do you really think that these are the main issues in their country?? You should actually try to talk to them yourself! And watch less movies

@Toadfish: I should say that I downvoted because I got the sense that MoisheCohen was saying "these are things that might happen in the U.S. someday soon". I don't want to ignore that these atrocities do happen around the world, and I'm more than happy to listen and (try to) learn from others who have these experiences. I may have interpreted this answer wrong.

@tonysdg that's actually why I said it's not perfect — to say that any of the examples given are immanent in the US is hyperbole; I feel that in a sense, listening to people with different experiences could actually moderate the panic experienced by some Americans at this point in time: there are those who have experienced far worse, and people find ways to live, to fight, to leave if they have to. America may no longer be the shining light on the hill, but it's not Somalia.

I feel that this is the right answer. Simply by talking and being nice, you show them that what's being reported on the news and maybe being experienced from some unpleasant individuals, is not universal. A student may also feel isolated due to poor English, which you are helping by taking time to talk, or cultural differences, which you may be able to help by explaining.

Thankfully, there is no secret police in the U.S. (yet). What on Earth does the last question have to do with any political situation, ever?

This starts off like good advice. And then the bullet points seem to be a list of stereotypes about "other places"... It also seems to assume that everybody in question is a refugee. If we're talking grad students, the most likely answer to" how did you get away? " is going to be " I was offered a position here, so I got on a plane "

You could reassure them with the truth.  The USA goes through political swings in one direction, then the other.  People on either side are not nearly as bad as people in the other political party make them out to be.  You could tell them that although there are changes in actions and behaviors of the goverment and people, for the most part, the talk is usually of a much greater magnitude than the actions that take place.

Some of these students may be from countries that have just been banned from entry to the country, even for those who have gone through the considerable trouble to obtain a visa. I'm not sure that reassuring them that it's mostly all talk and people aren't so bad is going to help.

If individual students are experiencing personal distress due to this matter, they should seek counselling or therapy; the university should provide these services. Moreover, if you see international students (or, more generally, if you see anyone) be kind and respectful to them. This is a general rule which you can never go wrong with. In this sense, your question is quite trivial; be nice, problem solved.
At a more fundamental level, though, I believe that this question has a political overtone. Implicit is that this policy decision is bad and something Americans ought to apologize for. The decision made by the Trump administration is a temporary ban on refugees from a handful of Muslim-majority countries. Its purpose is not racist or meant to demonize people based on their ethnic or national origin; it is a national security measure. We can debate its merits, but this notion that the policy constitutes a personal attack on all Muslim students is absurd.
When the university "helps" these students systemically, they are taking the normative stance that the policy is wrong and that the students' feeling of "unwelcomeness" is justified. It is not within the university's purview to take an active position on these matters.

WRT the political overtone: I won't deny that I don't support and in fact disagree with this policy decision. That does influence my state of mind. I also understand that some (many?) of my fellow countrymen do support and agree with it. And I respect those beliefs -- they believe that this is the best way to keep themselves and their children safe. FWIW, my focus here isn't on my own feelings -- yes, I feel embarrassed, but that's my problem, not anyone else's -- but rather on my colleagues who do feel personally attacked. You can call it absurd if you wish, but that's how they feel.

I think there's a valid question here, regardless of politics. Even if you believe that the ban is justified by national security concerns, surely you can understand that people from those countries who are in the U.S. are likely to feel unwelcome.

The premise of this answer seems to be that it is the policies of the Trump administration that are causing international students to feel unwelcome in the US, and that such feelings are unjustified in view of the supposedly rational and unracist nature of these policies. I'm sorry but I find this laughably false. You ignore the fact that certain politicians have consistently employed very toxic and inflammatory rhetoric against those groups that is strongly suggestive of a real animus they hold. The policy may or may not have merit but that's totally not the cause of the problem here.

@DanRomik The rhetoric has been going on for over a year. The question implies that certain international students are "[unsettled]" due to current events, namely the policy change. This is what my answer addresses.

-1 "It is not within the university's purview to take an active position on these matters." -- Definitely not a consensus view in academia. For example, here is my college's official statement on "Our Commitment to a Safe and Welcoming Place", dated 11/30/2016, that one could use  as a model: http://www.kbcc.cuny.edu/sub-administration/PresOffice/Documents/CommitmentLetter.pdf

personal attack on all Muslim students is absurd - thoroughly disagree, given Trump's call on a blanket ban against all Muslims

Considering that the Muslims countries that have been banned are not the ones responsible for the worst attacks on the US, but the one country that is responsible provides the US with tonnes of money and isn't banned does seem to suggest that the policy is motivated by something other than fact. Perhaps alternative facts.

@Nobilis "Trump's call on a blanket ban against all Muslims"  Source?

@NPSF3000 Wow, are you seriously asking me this? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/07/donald-trump-ban-all-muslims-entering-us-san-bernardino-shooting

@Nobilis Thanks for the article.  I did not read where Donald Trump actually called for a 'ban against all Muslims'.  Can you demonstrate what raises this concern?  (It's also worth noting this article is over a year old... if Trump wants a ban wouldn't there be more recent evidence?)

Being a male foreign student, with dark skin, and dark hair if I experience racist attacks or comments toward me, I do not need to seek therapy or counselling. That is such a dismissive, and belittling piece of advice I've come across in a long time. The problem  does not lie with the foreign student's perceptions. The problem lies with those  very people who abuse foreigners, because now they feel protected, and supported by the American government. This is also happening in the UK post Brexit. And it will, eventually, spread across entire Europe.

Its purpose is not racist or meant to demonize people based on their ethnic or national origin and
this notion that the policy constitutes a personal attack on all Muslim students is absurd : Sorry, where does the Q say or imply any of these two things ? Personally I see a clear political overtone in your answer because of this.

"Being a male foreign student, with dark skin, and dark hair if I experience racist attacks or comments toward me, I do not need to seek therapy or counselling. That is such a dismissive, and belittling piece of advice I've come across in a long time" Sure, but others aren't the same. I referred to people who are suffering personal distress. Counselling isn't anything to be ashamed about, so there's nothing belittling in what I said.

@SantiBailors If students are "unsettled" and feel "unwelcome", then I don't think it's unreasonable to say that they perceive the policy as being a personal attack.

@SantiBailors Yes, of course my answer is partially political because I'm addressing a political assumption the question makes. However, I'm not taking sides on the issue like OP is. I'm merely asserting that the policy is not a personal attack on all Muslim students. The claim that it is a personal attack is nonsense because the motivation for the policy is national security. If a sovereign state does not have an absolute, open borders policy towards refugees, that doesn't imply racism or constitute a "personal attack".

@MathematicsStudent1122 Sorry but you are using rhetoric, logical fallacies and debating techniques, and I don't have time or interest to rebuff them nor is this the right place for that, so I won't embark on that and I concede.

We could not only discuss the merits of the measure, but also its intent.

It does not matter whether the policy is intended as a personal attack. The question refers to people who perceive it as such. Telling them they're wrong is not helpful.

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How to request retraction of a published paper when contacting the editors and publishers doesn't work?
About 18 months ago, I found a published paper which plagiarised my work.
I initially contacted the journal editors, but they did not respond. I then contacted Elsevier, which publishes the journal. After a series of emails over several months I was forwarded a fairly cold response from an editor, which denied the issue with little apparent investigation (even though I had already presented detailed evidence of the plagiarised sections). I eventually contacted one of the authors who readily admitted the problem (the authors had previously attempted to plagiarise my work, but I caught this early because I was invited to peer-review that paper). The authors offered to request that the paper is retracted. However, I suspect that the authors have experienced the same issue I faced when trying to request action from the editors, and the paper is still available in published form online.
How should I proceed to deal with this situation? I have already tried contacting the journal editors and Elsevier via the "Contact us" link (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/contactus), but this has been a waste of time.
This is not a well-respected journal within my field of work, so I could try to ignore it. But, as well as the obvious reasons why the paper should be retracted, it has already received a citation - which potentially could have been attributed to one of my original publications.

Since my usual advice here is "contact the journal and the editors", but you've actually done that already, I've tweaked your title to try and attract a bit more attention. +1 for a good question.

It seems very odd that a journal would refuse or delay retraction if the authors themselves are requesting it. I suspect the author you contacted might not be so keen on retracting that it might seem to you. Maybe the other authors are not enthusiastic either. Also, is the journal pay for publish?

@CapeCode It's possible that the authors did not actually contact the journal editors, but the lead author did delete the entry from their public Google Scholar profile - which I have verified. It is a pay-to-publish journal, so there may be case here for inclusion on the list of predatory publishers.

@sblair It's probably too soon to decide on just one event. But the pay to publish model does create and additional incentive not to retract the paper because the authors paid, possibly a large sum of money, to get it published and retracting now might meant that money is lost.

Can you tell, what happened at the end??? I am facing the same problem with one of my published articles.

@user84130 I went for the approach given in the accepted answer, and this was eventually resolved.

If you have tried the journal/publisher's complaint process without success, and you believe that the journal editors are not handling the matter according to commonly accepted publication ethics standards, you can contact COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics. All Elsevier journals are members of COPE.

If a reader or an author has concerns about a member editor, journal or publisher which they wish to raise to the attention of COPE, they should email  the COPE Membership Assistant and supply the following information:

A summary of the concerns in 500 words—this will be shared with the editor and/or publisher and thus the summary should be as clear as possible and provided in a polite tone.
An outline of the points within the COPE Code of Conduct which are relevant to the concerns.

Source: COPE: Contact Us
This flowchart explains how COPE handles complaints about member journals.

If you work in mathematics, the European Mathematical Society has an Ethics Committee to who you can present your case. They should contact the editor and Elsevier, hopefully with more traction than you had, and can issue public statements if there is no satisfying resolution. This could help you substantiate your claims whenever you need to, and also should harm the offenders.
If you don't work in mathematics, I suggest you look whether any learned society in your field has a similar ethic committee you could appeal to. Note that the EMS ethics committee considers cases from any mathematician, not only European ones.

As others have mentioned, contacting the editors of the journal (and authors of the paper) is the recommended first step. However, since that didn't work ...
You can always take a "name and shame" approach.
One possible step is to write an official "letter to the editor". That is, not just a short unofficial, back-channel email to the editors, but a full on official letter of the form that would be typically published in the front part of the journal. This would indicate to the editors that you're serious about this issue, and are willing to stake your name and reputation on the accusations of plagiarism. -- Keep in mind, though, that the editors may decide not to publish your letter.
If the journal itself is not willing to be an outlet for informing readers about the plagiarism, you can seek alternative venues for it. Other journals are unlikely to be interested, but social media might be a possibility. I don't know about Elsevier, but many companies monitor places like Twitter, and respond in a more timely manner to issues raised there. If you post the information there (with the appropriate "@ mentions" to bring it to the journal's and Elsevier's attention) you may get more traction - particularly if you mention that approaching it through the standard channels didn't work. Again, you will want to do this "officially", from a Twitter account associated with your academic presence, rather than from a recreational, pseudonymous account.
There are also social media accounts and organizations which are interested in misconduct in journal publishing, and they may be interested in helping you pursue this, or at the least serve as a platform to inform people of the issue. Retraction Watch may be an option, particularly if you can demonstrate that the journal in question is stonewalling you and the author(s) in pursuing a retraction. (They can also serve as a neutral third party to let you know if the issue is compelling/serious as you think it is, so this might be a good first choice.)
As final note, I'd caution you to be careful in pursuing a "name and shame" approach. As I alluded to, it works best if you are willing to put your name and academic reputation behind the accusations of plagiarism. Be sure you can adequately demonstrate evidence for all of the accusations (of plagiarism or stonewalling) before making them.
Also keep in mind that there may be a difference of opinion here. The editors are not going to retract the paper just on your say-so. Journal-originated retraction, or retraction when not all the authors agree to it is a serious deal, and the editors will be (rightfully) hesitant to do it. The editors may err on the side of caution, and believe that the evidence of plagiarism is not as compelling as you make it out to be.

Thanks for the very thoughtful answer. I think I'll raise the issue publicly to @ElsevierConnect on Twitter, but obviously with the details discussed privately via DM. I am confident that my claim of plagiarism is appropriate, and I think this is reflected by the authors' very quick agreement for retraction. So if the Twitter route fails, I'll contact Retraction Watch (albeit this being a relatively minor case).

If you are feeling gutsy -- do you know and have the respect of anyone who works on the editorial board of any Elsevier journal? You might consider taking your problem to them, and asking them if they are willing to intervene on your behalf. This could annoy them and not solve your problem, and I can't honestly recommend it. But if you are tenured or can otherwise afford to risk burning a bridge or two, they might be sympathetic and see to it that the offending paper is retracted.
If you decide to give up on taking any practical action towards getting the paper retracted, you might consider joining the Elsevier boycott, if you have not done so already. Joining a boycott would give you a good excuse to no longer deal with a company which has not treated you well. It would also help the scholarly community put pressure on them to be more responsive to our needs and not only their bottom line.

I really don't see how this answers the question...

For the benefit of anyone who skims this question in the future, it might be helpful if you just flipped those two parts around :)

@tonysdg Good suggestion, thanks, done. Yemon Choi: Revised to put the more practical part of my suggestion first.

@Anonymous Thanks - upon rereading, I withdraw my objection

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't know any Elsevier editors who I could contact (which I consider to be a positive thing, as Elsevier does not have a strong presence for my research area).

The Elsevier "boycott" hurts mostly the ones boycotting, especially early career academics. Encouraging it because you're unhappy about a given editor is not only unhelpful but also possibly harmful.

@CapeCode "The Elsevier "boycott" hurts mostly the ones boycotting" This is a rather sweeping statement, is there evidence to support it?

@Did Yes, if the top journals in your field are published by Elsevier and you choose to publish in lesser journals because of some political internet action there is strong evidence that this will hurt your career. Also, Elsevier's revenue and share price have continued to rise for the last 5 years (https://www.google.com/finance?q=AMS%3AREN&sq=relx&sp=1&ei=MjsXWKmtMoKaUoSuhvgJ) Do you have evidence to support the contrary?

@CapeCode I understand you now put conditions on the scientific field of interest, for the statement in your previous comment to hold. This seems more reasonable. What would be some fields where "the top journals ... are published by Elsevier"?

@Did well if these conditions are not met, then there is little interest in "boycotting" a product that you're not using anyways. To your question: many sub-fields of medical research.

@CapeCode "little interest" Not true. Commonly, the pool of top journals of one's field is not exclusively Elsevier, then one can decide to submit one's papers to / referee for / sit in the Editorial board of, only those top journals that are not published by Elsevier (or by another publisher with similar business practices).


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When is a paper said to be refereed?
I have a conference paper that will be published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, by Springer. This question asked if Lecture Notes is a journal, and the general consensus was that it is not.
I received reviews on the paper, does that make it refereed? Or is a paper only said to be refereed if it is published in a journal?

My understanding is that it is a refereed conference.

Unfortunately being refereed is not a binary thing. Conferences vary greatly in the level of rigor of their review procedures, and disciplines vary greatly in the extent to which they consider conference proceedings publications to be peer-reviewed. It also depends on the context of the question: the standards applied in the context of a tenure promotion in certain university departments would depend on university policies and may differ than the standards of the field the tenure candidate is publishing in, etc.... So the answer, as in much else in life, is It Depends.

First, note that there is a difference between refereed in a peer-review journal and refereed in a conference proceedings. It sounds like your case is the latter.
In both cases you are correct in saying it received peer review (if it did), but the moniker of 'refereed', in my mind, suggests the work could be rejected.
You note that you received 'reviews' but it isn't clear whether these are non-binding 'comments' or part of a dialog ending with accept/reject. If they were indeed just comments, and there was no possibility for rejection, I would not say it was 'refereed'.  Like in sports, referees make calls, not suggestions.

I agree that this was conference proceedings. There were four reviewers who provided us with comments, and the message began with saying that the paper was indeed accepted.

The conferences I know that publish their proceedings in LNCS are all refereed -- as in your paper can indeed be rejected for inclusion in the conference (and therefore the proceedings). I cannot be sure this is the case for the OP though.


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Is it normal for a PhD program to retract or delay financial offer for international student?
I am an international student and about a week ago emailed my top-choice PI about the current status of my PhD application (top-50 university in USA). He said, that he is going to offer me a position with full funding via "graduate student researcher" assistantship.
Next day I have received a letter of acceptance. The email says "we are unable to guarantee you financial support at this time", blah - blah, please contact your department. I have contacted dept and PI, they say everything is OK, my program offers funding for everyone, I will get stipend and GSRship with full funding. Ok, I have accepted this offer officially.
But until now they refuse to tell me my exact salary and now i do not have any financial certificate, I do not know my GSR appointment, I do not know anything. I asked them to give me any financial document because I need one to apply for my visa, but instead they tell "you will get about 1,5-2k$ stipend, everything will be ok".
Ok, now I have to apply for I-20 and I can not do this because I do not have financial certificate for my first year in the program. The grad coordinator does not answer my email.
So, is it normal? What should I do? I am just waiting like an idiot because I even can't find housing (because I do not know anything about my funding)? I have rejected another offer (with official TA contract, which was attached to the acceptance letter). As I believe, they can just tell me something like "oops, we don't have funding offer for you" and I will search for another job outside academia.

Contact the International Office or similarly named department at the university in question and tell them your story. They should be able to help.

Thanks, @BillBarth, International office has one answer for all questions: "please, contact your department". So I will just wait, hoping for some news from my department.

When is the deadline for the I-20? Or at least, when do you need it in order to find accomodation etc? Add some extra margin then communicate to them what that deadline is.

They have sent me offer, but it took 2 weeks for them to compose it. In fact, without my inquiry I would not receive anything. Seems like they had no idea about international student' documents and visa stuff.

Many departments guarantee that their students will be funded got a given period of time, although they can't provide specific details on where the money will come from in advance. That's probably what's going on here; they can't issue the letter yet because they don't know what they should write.
If you can't afford to wait to apply for the visa, then you should contact the international office at the school you'll be attending, as Bill Barth suggests in his comment. They should have plenty of experience issuing such documentation, or helping incoming students to get the information they need for their applications.

Thank you, hope everything will be fine. I hate this feeling of distrust of the admission system. Late April is the deadline for offers and so I will wait for answers from grad. coordinator.

I also curious about their answers. Why don't they just say something like "you have to wait, we cannot provide financial statement now, but we will do it next month". Seems like it is a question of university policy.


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When citing a paper with a lot of authors; is it OK to shorten the author list in the references section?
I want to cite a paper that has a lot of authors. The list of authors take up half a page in my reference list, and considering the prospect of paying for extra pages, I would like to shorten it, if possible. Is is okay to shorten the author list? If so, how many authors should be included?

Use a reference manager and let it figure it out for you based on your chosen/required citation style :)

@tonysdg: I'm using the AIP LaTeX class revtex4-1, which includes a bibliography style -- still includes all the authors...

Some citation styles demand full list, some use Smith, J. et.al. for 3 and more authors, some for 5 authors. In some styles you refer a paper just by journal abbreviation, volume, pages and year.

@Arnfinn I'd look for the answer here: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/121625/biblatex-modify-maxcitenames-to-work-in-three-cases

The answers all suggest you should follow some predefined style. But if you had a style guide to follow, why would you be unsure about what to do? In my field, most journals don't bother to follow any widespread format, but just define their own house style. And since they fail to come up with examples for every conceivable possibility, they normally just end up accepting anything more or less corresponding to their proposed format. If your journal of choice doesn't make any explicit stipulations, just do whatever you want. The worst that can happen is that a sub-editor asks you to change it.

Every citation style has some threshold at which it is OK to change a long list into an "et al." citation ("et al." is an abbreviation of the Latin "et alia" meaning "and others").  The particular threshold depends on the citation style, but if you've got half a page of authors it's certainly over any reasonable threshold.
You then simply convert your citation of, e.g.:

A, B, C, E, ... , Z, "Massive Joint Study," Journal of Big Science, 1(4), 2012.

into:

A, et al., "Massive Joint Study," Journal of Big Science, 1(4), 2012.

Tangentially "alia" is the neuter form and it may be considered uncommon in reference to persons,  "alii" and "aliae"  are male and female, respectively. Yet "et al." abbreviates all three,so that's convenient and always right.

As mentioned by @jakebeal, the correct approach is dependent on your citation style. Here is an example of 6th Edition APA Style.
Quoting the following post from the official APA style blog, the following rule applies to articles with more than 7  authors:

The first six
  authors are listed; all subsequent authors except the last are omitted
  and replaced with an ellipsis; and then the name of the last author is
  listed.   Here’s an example of the new reference list style, for a
  study with 87 authors (yes, 87!):
Terracciano, A., Abdel-Khalek, A. M., Adam, N., Adamovova, L., Ahn,
  C.,   Ahn, H., . . . McCrae, R. R. (2005, October 7). National
  character   does not reflect mean personality trait levels in 49
  cultures.   Science, 310, 96–100. doi:10.1126/science.1117199

I am not sure this guideline is adequate here: the given paper lists the authors alphabetically, so being last (or first) author has no special meaning.

This is how it is supposed to go in the reference for APA 6th edition. In the citation, it would just be Terracciano et al. 2005

@dan1111 The first author of an alphabetically ordered paper with lots of authors does actually get quite a bit more recognition. If you're the nth author of the paper that everybody in your field knows as "Aardvark et al.", you don't get nearly as much credit in people's minds as Prof  Aardvark does.

Likewise, the last author has a special meaning in several institutions - it may be the institution's director for example, who perhaps didn't actively participate in the research, but supplied the lab and access to funding.

You should follow a style guide.  If your editor, instructor, etc. didn't tell you what style to use, pick one.  In this case pick one that doesn't insist on full author lists.
When in doubt I use the Physical Review style.  On page 7 of the linked guide you'll find the example for a listing a large collaboration of authors:
J. M. Smith et al. (XYZ Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 46, 1 (1992).
For the paper you link it would be:
B. P. Abbott et al. (The LIGO Scientific Collaboration), Rep. Prog. Phys. 72 (2009).


text:
What is a “service lecture”?
On a form for a job application, I am being asked to list, among others, what “service lectures” I have given. What exactly is meant by that? What does, or does not, count as a service lecture?

I might presume it means a lecture done in service, rather than in employment. For example as part of a public outreach series or in a volunteer capacity at a community school.

Which country and subject area is the job in?

In my experience, service lecture is used to refer to a lecture (course) about your field given to students of another field, usually an introductory course to give those students the basics that they need for their studies.
For example, at my university, there is a course Physics for Chemists, Biologists, and Geologists which is organised by the department of physics and given by a physics professor and which teaches essential concepts of physics to students of the named fields. In contrast to “physics for physicists” lectures, the department of physics does not benefit from the effort put into this lecture as it’s not teaching its own students. Thus giving this lecture is a mere service to the departments of chemistry, biology and geology.
Of course, to be sure about the intended meaning, you would have to ask the issuers of the form.

The equivalent translation is used in Brazil, with the same meaning. Probably France too, but I'm unsure.

In Italy as well, "corsi di servizio".

+1 for "ask the issuers of the form". If this question were asked at the Workplace, we would close it and tell you to ask the recruiter.

My undergrad and graduate department (Aerospace Eng/Engineering Mechanics) taught the Statics and Dynamics courses for all the other engineering departments at UT Austin as a service. They weren't clearly labeled as such, but everyone knew that was how they were structured. So the MEs, ArchEs, CEs, etc, all took them from us. The classes were, appropriately, huge. Physics was/is the same, but taught by the Physics department without a special label. Calculus, Diff. Eq., and Vector Calc. as well, but by the Math department. This might not be clear on a CV if your uni doesn't clearly label them.

As this is for a job application in a presumably academic position, reaching out for more information in a state of ignorance demonstrated you grasp one of the most basic academic principles and virtues. This would do more to improve your reputation with said institution than hurt it.
Even outside that, there does not seem to exist a general consensus as to what the term means. I've seen references mentioning similar definitions to the other answers, but also places where service lectures are described as the mandatory lectures given during a PhD track.


text:
How to undo my paid authorship?
We have a system in which, to get accepted in the program, you have to have a published research because that will add some points to your application and you will have priority.
Anyway, some investigators started to grant authorship on such publications for money, gathering a number of people and write their names on the paper as co-authors in return those people paying them.
I was naïve and I paid for such a thing. Please don’t judge me. Now I know it is academic misconduct, so I want my name to be dropped from that publication. How can I do this?

You probably can't, but you can contact the editor/publisher and inform them about the dodgy practice. They might start something which could result in retraction or even change of authorlist. But don't expect to come out as a good guy.

Leaving those publications off your CV and website will do a lot to disassociate yourself from them, especially if you have a common name.

If you want your name removed, you have to kill the whole paper. If you are sure you want that (your "coauthors" will be totally pissed), write to the editor how your name got on the list, sit back, and observe the following thunderstorm unfold. Which might hit you, if you can't prove you really only got on there by money.

Your name might not vanish, btw. The paper could stay accessible forever, just marked as retracted, with a note about some misconduct by the authors.

Just don't do it again.


text:
Can I add an author after the journal accepted my article but has not yet published it?
Can I add an author after the journal accepted my article but has not yet published it? I’m considering to add a friend later, but I am not sure about it now.

All the journals I know forbid this.  This is because there has been many cases where authors sell authorships

Please [edit] your question to clarify: Why would you want to do this. Why is your friend not already an author?

Why have you only just realised that your friend did some work but you "forgot" to include them.... sounds dodgy...

Essentially, no, you can't reasonably add an author to an accepted paper to your manuscript after it's been accepted. Doing so generally implies, as several commenters have already suggested, that you neglected to acknowledge someone's vital contribution to the paper (which is unethical),  the person didn't want to be acknowledged for some reason (very rare), or you've done something else unethical to add the author (a "quid pro quo"-like arrangement?).
The only way it would be really acceptable to add an author is if you realize there is a significant problem in the manuscript which you correct or modify with the help of the new author. Note that this means further review is probably required.

You got yourself into an awkward spot:

If the friend of yours did significant work on the paper, then she should have been an author of the paper all along. By omitting the friend's name from the list of authors, you were academically dishonest.
If the friend of yours did not do significant work on the paper, then she should not be an author. If you add her as an author, you are being academically dishonest.

The first of these is a situation you can rectify by adding her before publication. The second situation will be with you forever if you do something unethical. Either way, a good editor will want to hear a good explanation for how you got yourself into this situation.

It's journal dependent, and for a respectable journal, you would probably need to present a good case for it.
In any case: Ask the editor! And chances will only be worse the longer you wait.


text:
What to do if Professor offers an internship position
I had been offered a position to work as a intern in one of my professor's lab. He had asked me if I would be interested. But the position was not confirmed. How do I ask him about the confirmation? Would it seem desperate? I really enjoy the course and would love to contribute to the work that is being undertaken.

How long ago was this conversation? What is the time when your potential internship would start?

He asked me two weeks ago. The internship should start in coming summer.

OK, no need to worry about seeming desperate then, and there's no hurry either. Maybe ask for "what would be the next steps" or "what's the procedure for becoming an intern" instead of just for confirmation, that's likely to get you a better understanding of what will happen next.

Then ask him, either when you happen to meet in the corridor or a nice email - he may be waiting on you...
I don't think he will run around looking for you.
But think of the difference between "desperate" and "motivated" - he will be happy / pleased to find someone motivated !


text:
How to introduce terminology in an academic paper?
I am writing an academic paper where I give colloquial or otherwise general words a specific meaning in regards to my research. I have been introducing these terms so far by using quote marks for the first introduction, and then I don’t use quotes for later references, such as:

We convert these subsets into “tokens”, which capture only high-level features. Tokens can have a variety of properties...

This method seems almost amateurish. Is there a better way to do this?

Are you sure you want to put a comma after tokens in your example? What follows seems pretty much like a restrictive relative clause to me (if I understand the context correctly).

In my perception and fields, quotation marks are reserved for lack-of-a-better-word descriptions and the rare verbatim quotation. Newly defined terms are italicised instead, e.g.:

We convert these subsets into tokens, which capture only high-level features. Tokens can have a variety of properties...

Before blindly applying this, you should check other publications to see what is common and the guidelines of your publication venue as to whether they address this.
Even when italicising it is important to phrase defining sentences in such a way that facilitate recognising them as such, which does not necessarily require an explicit definition. To decide whether your example sentence meets this requirement, I would have to know more about the context (and probably your field).
That being said, there is nothing wrong with explicit definitions and there exist dozens of short phrases and similar that can be used for this, for example:

We convert these subsets into entities called tokens that capture only high-level features.

We convert these subsets into entities that capture only high-level features, which we denote as tokens in the following.

We convert these subsets into entities that capture only high-level features. These tokens can have a variety of properties … [not really explicit]

(Replace entities with whatever is appropriate from the context.)

Many people use italics or boldface to set off words that are being defined for the first time in a document. My personal preference is boldface, since I think it helps the reader quickly spot the word on the page. This may also be addressed in the style guidelines of the journal where you submit your paper, and of course their guidelines take precedence over your preference.