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How to write a believable CV?
I'm having trouble writing a believable CV. I want to apply for masters degree. I'm a professional in IT industry. I have done dozens of high-tech projects. The problem is my bachelor G.P.A is low(3.2) and when I list my abilities and projects in my CV, most of readers won't believe it. I had this problem with companies when applying for job. Now I'm having this problem with universities. For example my grade in Networking course is very low(C) but I was actually a network designer in my previous jobs.
Another reason why people don't believe it is the diversity of my knowledge. I have done projects in networking, embedded systems and big data which don't relate to each other. This problem yields to rejection from universities either with low or high global rank. Unfortunately I work on very very back end side of projects which means I don't have something to present like designers. Most companies I work for don't want to give me a reference letter because some of them are military or government dependant.
How can I write a CV that is believable?

I have seen letters from the government saying to the effect "We cannot tell you exactly what  did here, but he was amazing, and he demonstrated his skills in blah blah. For that he was awarded by ..., etc" There is no reason that your superiors cannot write a similar letter.

can you give some more context?  Are you working for Iran government contractors applying to Iranian schools, or elsewhere (I have heard a few iranians having problems getting into US schools independent of skill)?  There are many people that didnt do great in school, spent years working in industry, and did will at it.  You may also need to separate technical skills from research capability in your SOP, depending on the program you apply to.

What evidence do you have that your rejections have been because they didn't believe your CV, as opposed to some other reason?

@user1938107 I'm applying from Iran to European universities.

@NateEldredge I'm asking this because I had this problem with my employers. I'm just sceptical that may be I'm facing trouble again. Because none of the universities I have applied until now didn't answered my question about the reason of rejection.

As a matter of policy, most universities never inform applicants of the reason for rejection.

In all the European universities I know, the only thing that matters when applying to a Master degree is whether your Bachelor is in the right domain and from a recognized university. All the rest is irrelevant. I have never heard of a Master program asking for employer's references since the vast majority of applicants rarely have professional experience. Your application strategy might be the issue.

You need to focus your CV on the specific department and specialty you are interested in.
First, look at some programs of study.  Look at the research interests.  Look at some of the published papers.  Think about which of your many areas within IT you would like to delve into more deeply; think about which areas interest you the most for working in when you are done with this next degree.
Once you've identified some programs that YOU are excited about, pick and choose which items in your full CV you'd like to emphasize in your application.
Try to get some feedback from a couple people whose opinion you trust, about your draft CV and application.
You absolutely need at least one strong letter of recommendation -- so figuring out who could write this is going to be important.
I apologize, I don't know the specific differences between the European context and the U.S., but hopefully this answer, written by someone who knows the U.S. system best, will still by helpful.


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Possible to leave a contract academic position shortly after signing new contract?
I am an assistant professor on a year-to-year contract in academic med (I'm a PhD biostatistician). I just signed a new contract in July. I have been 'head hunted' to join a private company, and I am seriously considering it. What do I 'owe' in terms of my contact? I get the feeling the contact is more to protect the faculty member from the university and not the other way around, right? I would not be leaving until the spring, so 4-5 months notice. I dont have any teaching duties. Can I just give notice?

You should read and follow the contract.  The people writing the answers below have not read it, so they cannot know what it says.  Only accept legal advice from your lawyer.

The only real recourse that they would have is to sue you for breaking the contract.  Although that's possible, chances are that they wouldn't be able to prove substantial damages and that even if they prevailed you wouldn't have enough assets to make the suit worth while.  This is why academics who break their contracts are seldom sued for breach of contract.
However, depending on how you do this you might end up losing any chance at a positive reference from your former employer.  This is probably the biggest risk that you face.

It usually depends on which country and state you live in.  However in the academic world we are almost always flexible, especially if you give plenty of notice where the department will be able to get someone in to cover for you.  Really what you need to do is talk with HR.  They are very discreet about this sort of thing and will tell you your options.  If you're in a union then you can also talk to your rep who will be discreet.

You can leave your contract. Usually, there will be a notice period that you'll have to comply to, so you should see if you can find that information on the HR website if you have access.
There aren't (or shouldn't be) legal repercussions in leaving a contract, it's (generally) the same as leaving an on-going position. However, this is not a guarantee and will vary from place to place, country to country etc. Get familiar with your HR policies concerning what breaking a contract entails. It could be as simple as just complying to the notice period, which is what mine was.
I had a year contract that I'm leaving in two weeks after only being on it for 6 months, something better came along. My notice period was a month. No biggie.
I've shifted to a one-day a week to see out teaching while I start research at another institute. But I don't have to see out the teaching, I've chosen to do this so as not to leave my school in the lurch, and both employers were happy to accommodate the new arrangements.
The general consensus (at least in my experience in academia) is that you take the opportunities you are offered, even if it means breaking a current contract.

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Increase chance of reply when e-mailing an eminent researcher?
I found this question, but it does not exactly match what I would like to ask. In my case, it's almost surely appropriate to send the e-mail (since my adviser suggested it), I'm just wandering as to what is the best way to formulate such an e-mail.
The situation
The situation is that there is this bigshot researcher in my field, who designed an experimental framework that is very widely used (which I want to use now). In the paper describing the framework (not so recent, ~2005), he compares 5 (then) state-of-the-art methods, and those 5 are still used as comparison references.
The problem is that, even though implementations for the reference methods are provided, I can not find the parameters used to initialize the method.
It is stated in the paper that the parameters suggested by original authors of the methods are used, but, after weeks of digging through the framework paper, papers introducing the method for the first time, and even trying to guess the parameters so they match the ones used, I still can not get the ones used. Since I want to test the method with slight modifications and not just use it as reference, I can not re-use the implementation provided but instead need to run my implementation with parameters I can not find, and introduce modifications to that.
In short
So, to summarize and generalize: After a few weeks of looking for it, I can not find some parameters used in a (seminal framework) work published in 2005. These parameters are not needed to reproduce the work, but are important in extending it. My adviser suggested e-mailing the author of the paper (who is a well known in the community), but since he is so well know and I'm a lowly PhD student I feel kind of uncomfortable sending this e-mail.
The question
I do understand that this is probably the best (and possibly only) approach to getting the information I need, even if it is not very probable that it will work. With that (and my fear of bigshot academics) in mind, my questions are:

How to best write such an email? Besides the basics (be polite and concise) I don't know where to even start.
Do you have any advice on how to increase the chances of getting a reply? Maybe including my adviser in the CC of the e-mail would be a good idea, indicating my relation to a more established academic?

@CharlesMorisset Uh, sorry, I didn't see that one. It is surely related. But the only answer, and especially the question, don't seem to focus on how to as one, specific question (asking for info) but rather on how to initiate a discussion on a research problem. Or so it seems to me, at least.

Be polite, add your adviser in the CC and explain (succinctly) what you want to do and why you need the parameters. He will find some subordinate to send the parameters and get one more citation.

Could the downvoter please explain where the problem is with the question? I always try to follow suggestions and make my questions/answers as good as possible. If this is about the duplicate, please just vote to close/merge the questions. They don't feel like duplicates to me, but I'm good with whatever the community decides.

An alternative way to approach the task (if not the question) would be to ask on Stackoverflow. It may be possible to obtain the parameters from the executable by debugging or reverse engineering.

Your chances of a reply will correlate quite strongly with two factors:

How interesting your problem is.
How long it will take the professor to respond.

Thus, you should:

Make everything as brief as possible, yet still include all necessary information.
Ask yes, no, or short-answer questions that the professor will know off the top of his/her head. Ask for references to a paper, or for whole pieces of code: not the embedded details.
Briefly mention that you're a PhD student at Fake University, supervised by Professor Jones (if the prof you're contacting likes your supervisor's work, that's a good start).

Hey, thanks for your answer. But, for the 1. point you mentioned: my whole research is vast and complex and potentially interesting (to him). But, what I need is a small piece of data, a parameter used in testing (similar would be e.g. environment temperature for chemistry) - not very interesting. And, a "whole piece" is already provided -- there's an executable file (with all the parameters hardcoded) which allows me to reproduce the experiment. However, there's no actual program code (to dig through) or references to parameter values (which would allow me to modify the experiment).

Right, but there must be some source code then if it's a compiled piece of software. I was not aware there was some published software, rather than just a described algorithm (the prof may be unwilling to share the whole source code). What I mean is to make an open-ended question which lets him/her do things however its easiest for them - i.e. do you still have the parameters handy, or a log file where I can find them?

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What should someone who works at a tech company that isn't associated with the work list as affiliation?
I am preparing to submit a paper with a friend who is working at a tech company.  The company that he is working with is in no way associated with our research work.  Is it appropriate to list his employer as his affiliated institution?  Otherwise, I would leave his affiliated institution field blank.  Or, should I list the institution where he graduated from 2 years ago?
Update: Thank you very much for all of your feedback, answers, comments, and suggestions.  We really appreciate it.  I discussed with my collaborator and we will likely be listing him as an "Independent Researcher".  Although, we concluded that it wouldn't be unreasonable to list his employer purely as a personal affiliation (or point of contact) as long as he got approval from their HR department.

The co-author of my recently accepted paper works at Microsoft. The paper has absolutely nothing to do with her job, so we specified her affiliation as "Independent Researcher".

Thank you.  I really appreciate your response too.  The problem now is that I have two seemingly valid, but different solutions.  Feel free to comment if you think one is better than the other.

Just ask the company whether they'd prefer to be listed as your affiliated institution or not. The real answer is probably "it depends" anyway and will vary from company to company and how the research field relates to the company.

@MichaelWehar This answer has been my experience as well.  The worst case i have come across is an employee having a difficult time with evaluations as they put their company in affiliation when the company did not expect his time to be spent on that.  Another issue is the company may claim ownership of any work related activities, and listing his affiliation makes it work related.

@user1938107 Thank you for the reply.  Well, we basically completed the work months ago before he began his employment.  Does that mean we would be avoiding the issue that you mentioned?

@Sumyrda Thank you for your reply too.  I think what you suggested may be the optimal thing to do.  :)

@MichaelWehar If any work was done while he was employed there (including writing the paper or helping put together a presentation), then IP clauses in his employment contract may apply.

Speaking as a scientist who works and publishes frequently from my position at a tech company: his affiliated institution is his company, and it is entirely normal and appropriate to list it as such.  It would be incorrect to list his affiliated institution as his alma mater, since he is no longer employed by them.
Note: My answer assumes there is no objection from the company to being listed.  If there is, then the answer from Sergey Dymchenko applies.

Thank you very much for the answer.  I really appreciate it.  One point to add though, does it change anything if his position is focused on software and programming (non-research based)?

@MichaelWehar JakeBeal is right. His affiliation is his present company. And his job description (software and programming and non-research based) there, has nothing to do with it.

I agree with this answer. Listing an affiliation is useful in tracking down an author, so I would say listing their employer is more useful than listing "independent researcher".

Absolutely, do not use his alma mater.  But -- what if the employer, for some reason, does not wish to be associated with the publication? I would request permission from the appropriate authorities at the company first, and respect their decision. If they refuse, the 'Independent Researcher' idea from @Sergey-Dymchenko seems a better idea. Many good contrasting thoughts in other answers here.

I'm an undergrad, so I'm not well-versed in academic research culture (yet!), so take this question with a grain of salt.  Wouldn't listing the person's employer as their "affiliated institution" imply that the employer was affiliated with the research?  Taken to an extreme, if someone is a burger-flipper at McDonald's, but their research has nothing to do with McDonald's as a company (or, worse, harms McDonald's; e.g. a paper linking all fast food hamburgers to cancer), why should McDonald's be listed on the paper, even if just as an affiliated institution?

@anorton Many tech companies have clauses in their employment agreement that say they have at least some claim to any intellectual property created by their employees, whether in the normal course of their duties or otherwise.  If this is the case, then the company must be involved and listed.  If the company does not want to be affiliated with the research, then Sergey Dymchenko's answer applies.  Otherwise, it is a grey area and can be handled in either way.  I have clarified my answer accordingly.

"It would be incorrect to list his affiliated institution as his alma mater, since he is no longer employed by them." - upon revisiting this answer, I am now doubting this line of reasoning. If a researcher X is employed by a company for something unrelated to research, but after work regularly travels to their alma mater to work on research projects with their former colleagues, why would it matter whether or not X was formally employed by their alma mater? In any reasonable sense of the phrase, X conducted their research at the alma mater, as a part of the team at the alma mater.

@O.R.Mapper You don't get to decide you're affiliated with an institution, the institution gets to decide if you're affiliated with it.  The colleagues can probably arrange something like a "visiting researcher" position if they want, but I don't get to say I'm a UniversityX researcher just because I hang out at UniversityX.

In that case, I must agree with @apnorton's comment above - if there is no way for an author to decide who they are affiliated with (in a relevant way for the paper), McDonald's needs to be listed as an author's affiliation as soon as they work there for a few hours a week. I somehow suspect this is not what readers of the paper are really interested in, though it's not the author's fault, but the fault of whoever decided to call the organization indicated below the author name "affiliation".

@jakebeal: Brief tangential supplement: I have encountered quite some "visiting researchers" (based upon what they were introduced to me as). Their integration into the place they were visiting varied significantly. The "most primtive" form of that status consisted in hanging out at the university (and doing research).

On the legal side, the answer to this question is linked to an issue that I do not see mentioned in any of the answers yet. It depends on your friend's contract (and possibly your local legislation)

to what extent your friend's employer allows your friend to perform other "work-like" public activities outside of their paid working time (often, only directly competing activities are forbidden, and from the question I understand that the company is not related to the research activity, which implies that the research was entirely done in your friend's private spare time), and
to what extent your friend's employer is legally allowed to indirectly take ownership of something they did not contribute to.

On the ethical side, the answer hinges on the intended purpose of listing the affiliation:

Does the affiliation say "This organization made the research possible."? In that case, listing an employer who had nothing to do with the research (and just happened to be your friend's employer at the time the research was done) would be deeply unethical, comparable to adding an author who did not contribute to the paper. (Note that especially in this case, the solution of asking the employer for their preference might be counterproductive, as from a business perspective, the employer will not care about research ethics and go for the opportunity of placing an "ad for free".)
Does the affiliation say "This organization might be interested in building upon the presented work."? In this case, listing your friend's current employer might seem entirely appropriate if they might become associated with (future parts) of your research work (even though they didn't have any part in the current paper).
Does the affiliation say "This is where you, future reader, can contact author X."? In this case, the most appropriate "affiliation" might be either a personal affiliation (e.g. a personal website), or indeed the last affiliation that was actually involved in the research. We routinely do this, for example, for students who support us in writing a paper that involves topics from their graduation thesis (and thereby become co-authors) - who, due to their graduation, have already started working at some unrelated company at the time of writing the paper.

Thank you for your answer! One thing to mention is that his work on the paper began (and basically finished) prior to starting his position at the company. So I would say that his employer did not have anything to do with the research. I would just be listing his employer so that people know where this author is now.  I'm not sure if that changes anything or not.

@MichaelWehar I agree with ORMapper: if the affilition is meant as a point of contact, you should list one that actually makes sense such as a personal contact point or an institution that is at least tangentially related to the research. There are plenty of other ways of finding out where someone is working but given your description your co-author's employment is of no relevance to your actual research.

Thank you very much.  I appreciate your comment and your insight helps.  :)

@MichaelWehar  When it comes to intellectual property, or  a non-compete clause, or worklike activites, I hope you see that when you say "basically finished" the word "basically" is an issue.

@ColinMcLarty Thank you for your concern and for pointing that out.  I appreciate it.  I used the word basically because I didn't feel it necessary to go into further detail here.


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Tips on organising the survey of a large body of literature
For a paper I am currently writing, I am doing an extensive literature review on a subject which is much more vast than I had anticipated. Are there any specific tricks and tips for organizing ones reading when the body of literature is so large? I tend to get carried away with interesting references and lose the overview a little. If I read everything linearly from A-Z, I would not have the time to finish my review. My goal is thus instead to have a non-exhaustive, but ideally representative impression of the structure of the literature (that is, different strands of research, who 'responded' to whom, etc.).
I would very much appreciate any hints from an experienced academic.

I assume you are already using a reference manager (Mendeley, EndNote etc.)  This seems to be a problem for a lot of my fellow grad students as well as faculty.  I would love to see some good discussion / answers in this thread.  Unfortunately I don't have it solved yet.. :)

I'm doing my bibliography management using BiBTeX, which I am very happy with.

I seem to understand that the focus of your question is not tools (which programs to use to organize citations and references) but methods (which papers to read, how to understand which references are important and which are not). Am I correct?

While both types of advice are welcome, you understood correctly that I am looking for methods, rather than just software.

If my opinion, a good survey is not a snapshot of what is out there in the literature, but rather is a presentation of the current state of knowledge on a subject (which will necessarily involve some snapshots of what is out there).  This model of knowledge is the novel contribution of the survey.  Your goal, then, is to develop enough expertise in the "lay of the land" to be able to see a pattern that may have never been explicitly enunciated in the literature before.
As such, I recommend the following iterative approach, which has been useful for me in preparing surveys:

Begin with a hypothesis of the structure of knowledge on your topic.
With keyword searching, find lots of articles related to the topic.
Do not read the articles: read just enough to make sure they are actually relevant, and download and organize them into categories based on your hypothesis.
When you've got a big enough pile, skim them to see how your hypothesis is holding up, and adjust it to fit the reality of what you've found.
Repeat from 2, with your adjusted hypothesis, gathering more references, until you find your hypothesis is beginning to stabilize.  Once you've got a stable hypothesis, you are ready to write, and your final organization will reflect the discovery enunciated in your final hypothesis.

A good survey is probably going to be in the 50 - 200 reference range.  If you are finding that you are gathering many more than that, consider whether your subject is too broad and you need to narrow its focus.  It may also be that you have an appropriate focus, but that you are thinking about too many details, and you need to go into less depth in your investigation.

Define useful subcategories within the field you are examining. When you are not familiar enough with subject to define applicable categories, then first read a few papers that have been cited a lot.
Now assign each paper to one or more categories, just by reading the abstract and conclusions, and glancing over the rest. Also keep track of how many citations each paper received (you can use Google scholar or Scopus for this).
Within each category you can build a tree by assigning the highly cited papers to knots, and the less cited papers to leaves. Connect them according to how they cite each other. Preferably, connect each leaf to only one knot. Keep in mind that since older papers can never cite the newer ones, it is most efficient to start with the older papers.
Now you have a pretty structured overview, and you can spend some time to read the most important knots in more detail. Finally, write down for each category the most important differences with the other categories, and how the knots and branches are structured.

First: Use a modern reference manager. Mendeley, Zotero or Endnote are all fine. BibTex is wonderful for formatting the citations, and all the previous mentioned exports to BibTex. What BibTex lacks is search functions, storage of the original publications, networking, annotations, easy import and so on. The reference manager can save you significant amounts of work.
Second: Start with the existing literature reviews in the field. If you are publishing the review you will need to position yourself against them in the related work anyway.
Third: The trick to a good literature review is the focus. You want to include all the papers that are important considering the scope of your review, and nothing else. A review which covers "the 200 most cited papers in this broad field" is pretty much useless. If you feel you are getting overwhelmed it's time to start pruning ruthlessly.

What bibtex lacks is search functions: Bibtex databases are plain-text files; there is plenty of tools for searching in them.

@FedericoPoloni: Which is fine, until you want to find the papers published in Network Communications on MIMO somewhere between 2001 and 2009... In a bibtex database containing several thousands of papers. Sure, you can solve it with grep, regexps and so on, but in my experience features such as full-text search in the original publications and the ability to easily filter search result on different fields makes your life a lot easier. But, as always, YMMV.


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How do I deal with sending low GPA to a potential supervisor?
A professor offered to meet with me later this week to discuss some potential projects, and asked for my transcripts to see what courses I have taken and how well I am at them.
I have done decently in my mathematics courses, however, one semester last year was exceptionally bad for me and I ended up getting a C-, C+ and a D- (in discrete math, Introduction to C, and a biology course respectively). The only course that has some sort of relation to the research I'm interested in doing is the intro to C course.
I honestly don't know how to proceed with this. I don't want to keep making excuses for myself because I'm not doing incredibly well in my professor's class, but I know I can get better at the software being used (MATLAB), as I've used it before for maths classes and haven't had much trouble with it. I know he thinks I'm not the best programmer and I don't know how to deal with that idea and this situation.
How do professors deal with this? I don't want to waste his time, and more importantly, I don't want to become disinterested in the project and end up giving up halfway.

Be honest, and try to have some sort of (real) reason for the poor performance (sickness, family issues, having to work to support yourself).

You say "low GPA", but don't tell us the GPA overall.  How's your overall GPA?  What degree (both grad and undergrad)?

I think you're right. I'm going to hate myself if I don't try at least, and I've become okay with the prospect that he says no. I am doing my undergrad (this is like a research project for a course), and I'm majoring in math. My overall cGPA is 3.4 and the GPA from my math courses only is about 3.6...(not including computer science type courses, which brings things down to 3.4 again).

This sounds like unpaid research right?  When I was an undergrad, I was required to do research for at least one semester.  Someone was going to have to advise me whether they wanted to or not.  If this is unpaid and for coursework, the professor probably won't refuse you.  They might just want to know your background and where to help you out.

My overall cGPA is 3.4 -- That is not a "low GPA".

One of the reasons I didn't think my GPA was relevant to mention was primarily because the prof I'm asking does work in Computer Science, and my main concern was due to the overwhelming nature of the semester I actually took CS courses, I did very poorly in them. I still do decently in mathematics, science, and other elective courses, so my GPA isn't entirely reflective of what my prof is looking for or what he'd care about the most.

I wish I had a better answer for you, but the only thing that can fix a semester like that is more recent semesters with better grades, and the more of them the better.
Irrespective of the current situation, I think what you need is to focus on getting several solid semesters between you and this rough one.  Then when someone who is interested in your academic performance asks, you can show them that, yes, you had a rough semester, but you've gotten back on track.  In my experience, recent good performance will very quickly outweigh more distant struggles.  This is true regardless of the reason - you could have the best excuse in the world, but if you haven't shown you're past it and doing better now, who's to say you won't continue to struggle with whatever you're being considered for?
Given that your rough term was just last year, however, the only recourse you have right now is to be open and upfront about it; explain why you struggled and what happened to address the cause.  If you have no excuse, then just say that too.  It was a rough term, but you're back on track.  This is totally reasonable and far from uncommon in undergrad.  Unfortunately it may be a hard sell if you're currently struggling in this professor's class too.  Do you know why the professor made this offer to you in spite of this?  That might offer some insight into what they're looking for.
In short, send the transcripts, point out that you struggled but mention what you did to address the cause, and then the ball is in their court.  Be prepared for the possibility that the professor is alarmed by what they see, and know that it may take time for you to build up this kind of credibility again.  Then focus on your grades.
Good luck!

Thanks for the response! I don't really know why he's still interested in supervising me, because he's seen my grades. I asked him about the project long before any assessments, and therefore before my performance was bad. Nonetheless, I'll be sending my transcript over and see what he says.


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Why do graduate student contracts state "RAs shall work no more than 20 hours per week?"
I recently signed a graduate student contract.  I had outside funding for some time but recently became a normal research assistant (RA) again, so must have missed a contradictory clause when I signed a similar contract a few years ago.
I am a US citizen at a US university.
In the contract it explicitly states that graduate students "shall not work more than 20 hours per week on duties given by the advisor."
I have found similar language in other graduate student contracts at other universities, an example is here (scroll down to Duties and Time Commitments).  This example, however, states that RAs "shall not work on duties unrelated to research for more than 20 hours per week."  My contract seems to imply the opposite.
This certainly applies in the first 2-3 years of a Ph.D., since class loads typically require enough effort that RA's will not have enough time to work more than 20 hours per week on research.
But, after a graduate student has completed all class requirements, why is this clause still included?
It is clearly contradictory, as I'm expected to work 40-50 hours per week on my research, especially when I have no more classes to take.  I have signed a legal document explicitly promising that I will not work the hours needed to finish my dissertation in a timely fashion.

I'd presume that "duties given by the advisor" refers to the extra duties given by the advisor but not directly related to your own work on your dissertation.

@Peteris, good point.  But that is even worse for us, part of the social contract here is that I'm trading money for mentorship and learning and research, but legally I can be asked to do any task?  Also, what happens when the work and the research coincide?

Is this for a position in the United States as a foreign student? Because if so, it's a a constraint imposed by the F-1 visa

@Peteris in some fields/programs (at least mine), there is no such distinction - duties given by the advisor are often identical to those required to produce the dissertation.

@daaxix welcome to the inadequate system of US Phd programs :-) and how a 3-4 year degree turns into a 5-8 year program.

If you are working at a US University, they often do this in order to ensure that you are ineligible for benefits under the family and medical  leave act (fmla).  If you work over 1250 hours they have to provide you with additional benefits, which cost more than they are willing to pay for your labor.
http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/workhours/fmla.htm

I'm accepting this answer for now, but I think it is really a combination of this answer, @BrianDHall's answer and Kenny LJ's answer.

I think this is just an issue of definition of "what you must do to succeed in your academic program" vs "job duties". A research assistant is a job, and as such it does not always pay you to be doing what you'd be doing anyway. Sometimes you have to do work or help your adviser in a way that does not directly relate to your own program or research whatsoever - and that's what you are being hired to do.
When you get paid to be a research assistant and you end up working on your program and own actual research? This is awesome, and it's totally a bonus - but it's not what the agreement is designed to address.
In the USA a research assistant is paid (often by hour or in a flat stipend), tuition remittance/assistance is sometimes provided, insurance might be paid for the student-worker, perks and opportunities can abound or be completely absent (sometimes you get paid to go to conferences or do your own home work, and sometimes it's basically your field's equivalent of cleaning out monkey cages), etc. In short, there is a compensation package that makes it worth your acceptance, and losing it would be unpleasant.
However, on the other extreme if you work too much time on your RA/TA job you will not have enough time in the day to spend on classes or your own personal research. When you have no classes, then that means more time for your research work - not more time to work for the University.
So, in conclusion your agreement does not limit your collaboration with your adviser or on your research - it limits your legally employed position's hourly requirements. Talk with your adviser, take his advice, work on research with them until the cows come home (though I suggest you get home before the cows because life's too short) - but if you are doing more than 20 hours of work a week to fulfill your RA/TA duties, something is wrong it needs to be addressed right away.

I understand your answer with respect to TA duties.  TAs have specific duties.  My advisor is good about my work, however this could be abused.  I don't believe most graduate students entered a program for "a job" (caveat : not relevant to dissertation or career development for academia, part of the program is supposed to be training for academia, and sometimes that includes tasks irrelevant to specific research).  Your answer is likely correct, but I would like to point out that this is not how RAs were sold to us during the admissions and recruiting process...

Cows actually often have a pretty short commute by modern standards, and don't get home all that late ;-)

The basic answer is that as an RA or TA, you are still supposed to be a full-time student. Thus, the work contract for either specifically limits you to part-time work.
What seems to be confusing you about your RAship is that your RAship is actually just a funding method in the case of your department. An RAship can include assisting a professor with her research in which case, such responsibility is capped at 20 hours a week so that you have the remainder of the week to work on your own research.
The same applies with a TAship whether that includes sole teaching responsibility or not. The point is that the TAship is secondary from the university's perspective to you working on your own research and coursework and finishing the program.
They care about completion rates and in most programs, you are no longer a fraction of a percentage point on that front but rather a single student failing to complete because of TAship or RAship will lower the numbers non-marginally.

I'm not really confused about the intent or the expectations of the RA.  My point is that I just signed a contract, stating that I promise to not work more than 20 hours per week.  I ensure you, that since my funding is actually for research which I am undertaking, that I will be working far more than 20 hours per week on this specific work, which is at odds with what I just legally agreed to.

@daaxix in that case, your contract is bizarre. You're saying that you signed on to be your own research assistant. I've never heard of that. What's more likely is that you are technically your advisor's RA, but he doesn't care what you do during the time and just sees it as a way of enabling your graduate school.

no the work I'm doing cannot be separated from the work benefiting the funding agency. It is the same work, but my advisor obtained the funding...not me. I.e., funding agency wants a specific area of publishable research, I do that research (have been for awhile), it is publishable, will be published, will be in my dissertation, and I'm definitely working more than 20 hours per week on it...I agree with you to some degree, my advisor wants me to finish and wants this work done for his grant agency, he doesn't care about the contract...

@daaxix in that case, I would suggest that while it seems legally bizarre, what it means is that the "work" covered by the contract is limited to the 20 hours / week -- probably for legal reasons, but your research for your own reasons is unlimited.

In principle, an RA appointment is a job, in which you could be required to do what the phrase "research assistant" literally indicates --- assist a professor with his or her research. In the experimental sciences, that could include, for instance, maintenance work needed to keep the lab running properly.  In pure mathematics (my field), what it means in practice is that you do your own research.  So, officially, my Ph.D. students with RA appointments are assisting my research for up to 20 hours per week, even though in practice, what they're doing may have very little to do with my research and will mostly coincide with their thesis research.


text:
May I reuse my own figure without coauthor's permission?
I'm writing an editorial and would like to use a figure that I published with a coauthor a few years ago.
The copyright agreement (see #4) with the publisher allows the authors of the paper to reuse any of the work in any derivative work, as long as proper attribution is given, including a DOI.
Given the above, I would have permission from the publisher to include this figure in the editorial with proper attribution.
The coauthor and I, however, have had a falling out, and if I did ask permission he would almost certainly say no. He did not make the figure for the paper, I did, and I am first author.
Given that I produced the figure, and the publisher would allow me to use my work in any derivative work, am I required (even ethically) to ask permission of my coauthor to publish this figure in an editorial that I'm writing?
More generally, when copyright terms from the publisher are such that the author(s) may use their work in derivative works (with proper attribution), as is common in my field, must authors always obtain permission from all coauthors to republish orginal or derivative works?

You -- and your co-author -- have, most likely, assigned your copyright in the paper to the publisher.
Without knowing all the details of your copyright agreement, your copyright agreement seems to allow you, and your co-author, the right to re-use the work, and that right applies to each of you separately. The right to re-use the work requires you to reference the original paper and all its authors.
I see no reason why you shouldn't use the figure, even without the permission of your co-author, as your copyright agreement with the original journal appears to allow this. I see no ethical argument against re-using the figure, either.
P.S. I have a qualification in intellectual property law, but I am not a lawyer.

This is the crux I think, the statement doesn't specifically state if the right to use the work applies separately or jointly, and logically separately would make more sense, I'll send an email to the copyright person at the publisher...

I included a link to the actual agreement.

@daaxix Since the copyright agreement doesn't appear to distinguish between a single author and multiple, legally it would probably be up to precedent and argument if anybody really cared.  Ethically, however, it seems quite reasonable for you, the person who drew the figure, to reuse it elsewhere with appropriate attribution.

My understanding is that in general US copyright law gives independent rights to each co-creater. Thus there is no need for the journal's copyright statement to specify whether the right to use work applies separately or jointly, and even if they were to state this they would have no standing to dictate the terms. That said, I am not a lawyer etc. etc., these are complicated issues, and so I could easily be mistaken.

@Corvus: I think Nicholas refers, though, to the assumption that copyright was assigned to the publisher. Therefore the questioner's legal standing to use the figure doesn't come because of individual rights as the creator, it comes because the publisher has, as part of the copyright transfer agreement, returned a license back to the author(s). They have standing to dictate the terms of that license, don't they? And AFAIK the author has the right to transfer/sell away their creator's right to use the work, or to restrict it in funny ways, if that's what the contract says.

@SteveJessop I see--thank you for the explanation.

I don't think that it matters who created that figure or any particular internal to the paper artifact. The copyright AFAIK applies to the paper as a whole (would it be a data set, things might be a bit different). Since the paper is a joint work (legal term), even though you're a first author (academic term), from a legal standpoint, you are a co-author and, thus, IMHO your association to the specific artifact is irrelevant. Ethically, I think it would be OK to use a part, solely created by you, without the co-author's permission (not sure how helpful is that, considering the legal aspect).
Having said that, perhaps, you can use the figure in question in an editorial, based on the fair use legal doctrine. I would recommend to consult with your institution's legal department in regard to assessing the interpretation and applicability of the fair use doctrine in/to your particular case.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer and this answer does not represent a legal advice.

I am not a lawyer either, so maybe someone can correct me, but my understanding is that all authors have an independent copyright claim to any joint work. That said, if the OP created the figure in the original manuscript, why not re-create a new figure that serves the same purpose and sidesteps all of these issues?

@Corvus: Perhaps, you're right. In that case, your idea about re-creating the figure seems feasible to me, but I personally would consult legal department, just in case (on both re-creating and fair use assessment).

A single figure in the paper would have its own copyright as a pictoral or graphical work. Copyright vests in the image independently of any text surrounding it.

The doctrine of fair use as a defence against copyright infringement requires a consideration of how the work is  re-used, and in what context. Republishing the work in another commercial, for-profit, journal is probably not going to be covered by the fair use doctrine.

@Nicholas: I agree about the need of consideration, hence my advice to consult with a legal department. As for the journal, for some reason (perhaps, incorrectly), I assumed that the editorial is targeting a non-commercial publication.


text:
Feeling stressed and incapable at the beginning of my MSc, how can I handle that?
I just admitted and enrolled in a thesis-based master of applied science program in electrical engineering a month ago.
My supervisor sends me different papers sometime to read and I also schedule some meetings with him to talk about my research interests bi-weekly.
The thing is that I am so stressed about the situation going, sometimes I don't understand different terminologies in a paper or even cannot grasp the main idea of the papers that my professor sends me.
I cannot even come up with new research ideas at all. During the meetings sometime I ask some basic questions and my supervisor explain it to me but I can feel that these questions are dumb! One time I asked him a basic question and he explained 2-3 times, at the end he said "Is it something hard to understand?"
Overall, I am really stressful that I may cannot satisfy his expectations and disappoint him. Although this is my first semester and he acknowledged that my main focus should be on coursework, but I ask him personally to do some warm-up for research. I even talked to him about the terminologies that I don't understand and he said that it's Ok and I should just grasp the main idea of the paper, but how can I get the main ideas of the paper when I've never seen the basic terminologies used in a paper before?
At this point, I just try to keep my contact with my supervisor, scheduling bi-weekly meetings to ask him my questions, but I feel that the more we talk to each other, he becomes more disappointed of me because of dump questions that I ask.
My supervisor research group has three other MSc students who submitted one conference paper in the late of their first year of study, and I think that I should do that as well to keep my supervisor satisfied, but I really can not see the potential inside me to write a conference paper at the end of my first year in MSc, I roughly have 6 months time left to the submission deadline in the next upcoming conferences that my supervisor usually submits to them.
It seems he has not disappointed yet, or at least doesn't express it, but I need to catch up with his other students as soon as possible I think.
So I wanted to ask that how can I control this situation and do something before things get worse than this.

What is your question?

@user438383 I wanted to ask that how can I control this situation and do something before things get worse than this. It seems he has not disappointed yet, or at least doesn't express it, but I need to catch up with his other students as soon as possible I think.

I think that your expectations of self are (far) too high. What you describe in the first paragraphs are entirely normal. You aren't yet a trained professional. In particular your statement that "I cannot even come up with new research ideas at all" worries me. That is actually one of the harder things for researchers to do, even for your professor.
You can't predict, after a month, what will be the case after a year, much less later.
OTOH, your interactions with your professor seem correct and their advice also seems correct. Relax a bit. Take it as it comes. The technical stuff that you don't yet understand will almost certainly become clearer as you read and think more. And also as you discuss the ideas with the professor and others.
It reads to me like a panic attack, not incompetence. Take a deep breath. Have culturally appropriate beverage. And, yes, focus on the course work and ask a lot of questions.

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text:
Will every PhD student from a reputed institute land a postdoc position?
I have completed my master’s in pure mathematics in India.
Though I am passionate about mathematics and would really want to do a PhD in pure mathematics, one thing I am uncertain about is how would my life turn out after getting a PhD in pure mathematics.
I checked the departmental homepage of some reputed institutes and universities in our country to gather knowledge about their past PhD students.
I found that only a handful of them go to postdocs and a very few get recruited as assistant professors in other institutes.
There is no  information about the other students and I can't get any information about what they are doing.
My questions are:

Is there no guarantee to get a job after doing a PhD in pure mathematics?
Or it is that everyone will get a postdoc after getting a PhD in some institute?
Is a postdoc absolutely necessary after doing a PhD in mathematics?
Will I get a job after a postdoc in mathematics?

I am concerned because I don’t want to be among those who are without any work after doing a PhD.

There is no guarantee in any field that you'll get a job after getting a degree. There are very few faculty positions in comparison to the number of PhDs generated.

Of course not.  Not every PhD student from a reputed institute wants a postdoc!  Some prefer to take up jobs in the software industry, or in finance, or in secondary education, or in government, or playing poker, or writing for television.

Are you asking about the situation in India? Or somewhere else?

@TomChurch;I am asking about the situation in general because I will have to complete for a post-doc position with students all over the world

@JeffE; Who will give me a job in industry after doing a PhD in Pure Mathematics

@New_User You might be surprised.  A Ph.D. in mathematics says more than just "I know the stuff in my dissertation really well."  It also says "I can perform well with poorly defined goals, can process complicated information efficiently, and can still push myself to succeed in the face of setbacks and failures, all with limited support and guidance".  Research is riddled with failed efforts on things nobody else knows, and a significant fraction of your research time is probably spent frustrated and spinning your wheels.

There is a filter, surely.
Actually, at least in German system there are two filters: PhD → postdoc and postdoc → tenure/tenure-track.
But you are missing out one issue. Even if all people doing postdoc probably would like to get a tenure-track position (but do not), not all PhD students would like to get a postdoc. Heck, not all PhD students even finish their PhD! But the major point is: not all PhD holders want and do stay in academia.

Ok, you do want to stay in academia. There are three major issues:

Publications
Teaching experience
Funding acquisition.

The detailed answer is probably too long and too country-dependent, but typically you'd need these three major issues to be covered, if you want to land a tenure-track position.

I don't understand why would people do a PhD in Pure Mathematics to land a job outside academia as you say,is there any point of doing a PhD in Differential Geometry if you want a job in Industry

@New_User First, there are some job-relevant skills attached to doing a PhD per se. Second, people don't only optimise their lives for employability. Pursuing a significant intellectual challenge before facing the more mundane needs and perks of industry is a legitimate life goal.

There are other aspects of a PhD that are relevant besides the scientific content. An important aspect is that you managed to plan, organize and finish a large project. As an example, you learned to estimate which amount of work you can plan, when the task is only loosely defined. An extreme case would be: You apply for a job offer that requires a PhD, and the PhD is never mentioned during the interview and application, there is the title of it in your CV, that's all. That makes sense, because it is about getting it done - having a PhD implies various competences - that is the point.

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text:
Review-only supplemental material
I am at a difficult position. I work in a major software/telecommunications company, and pursue a doctoral degree at the same time. The company has strict policies against competing behavior. I have implemented a lot of core Internet component code at my free time, but the company would consider releasing those under an open source license as competing behavior. I won't consider changing the employer, as the salary is acceptable, the job is extremely interesting and I frequently get good extra payments for all of the inventions I have made.
However, I have managed to obtain publication permission for several articles given that main algorithms are only explained as pseudocode. Because my core Internet component is over 20 000 lines of code, I of course cannot explain all as pseudocode.
I would like to submit articles related to this to major IEEE computer society and communications society journals. I would like the reviewers have ability to assess that all experiments have been performed correctly, and thus see the source code for the experiments made in the articles. But I cannot according to the company policy publish the source code to all readers.
Now, what I would like to have is review-only supplemental material. Supplemental material that only the reviewers can assess, and that the journal can store for their private use (e.g. for verification of results if there's a suspicion of scientific misconduct), but not available publicly for all readers.
Is this kind of review-only supplemental material in general possible? I wouldn't be surprised to find if the answer was "no", as it makes it impossible for regular readers to work as unsolicited reviewers, publishing their own commentary on the results in the process.
Of course the answer can depend on the circumstances and the journal, so perhaps asking the editor would be a good option. But I believe this question may have more general value, and thus, I am asking it here as well.

Just being curious: For whom did you write that code? Just for fun?

For scientific research. I need to have some research for my doctoral degree. I cannot use my company's code at my private laptop, so I wrote a similar packet processing component; not entirely the same we have at work, but somewhat similar.

From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank you for making this effort. Many people would just submit the paper without even considering releasing the source code (I speak from experience, as I have just spent a year implementing algorithms proposed by others who did not release their source code, not even upon request). You rock for actually trying to figure this out.

I wonder if any reviewer will have the time to try to understand 20,000 lines of code. Unless I noticed a problem in your pseudocode, I probably would at most run the code once to confirm it produces the same number as in your graph, and trust that you represented it truthfully.

Technically, there is obviously no problem. In the paper, you provide a link to your server that will be accessible only by reviewers. After review, you block the link. You may explain in the paper, that the code is proprietary and will not be accessible to readers. As soon as this is not a mandatory policy of the journal to provide an open-access code,  I do not think that you violates any journal policy. You will violate for sure the policy if you submit supplementary material, and then refuse to publish it. I suggest that you write to the journal that you plan to submit and suggest such a strategy. But do not explain the whole story - no one will read all these details. Just tell them that you have proprietary code that you can share with reviewers, but cannot make it open to all. Is it OK?


text:
Is it OK to add citations from low impact factor journals?
For example, let us consider that I write a manuscript which is to be submitted to one of the prestigious journals such as PRL, PRB, etc. In this manuscript, is it OK to cite from some journals which are generally considered as not-so-prestigious journals? If I cite more papers from low impact factor journals, does it play a negative role?

How would you imagine it could play a negative role (assuming the paper itself is not irrelevant or low quality)? If people would avoid citing a paper just because it was published in a low-IF journal, that would make the system rigged to a pathological degree (which is not to say that it isn't, from a certain viewpoint).

Yes. It is unfair to cite only from high-IF journals. I raised this question because, in most of the papers from such prestigious journals, I couldn't find any citation of any low-IF (I am also aware there are some prestigious journals with low impact factors also).

@phyphenomenon: that's almost circular -- "high-IF" means that it gets many citations. If you found many citations of low-IF journals, they wouldn't be low-IF.

Note that "prestigious" and "high impact factor" are not strongly correlated. Could you give an example of what you mean by a low-IF journal?
Also note that "prestigious" changes with time. For instance Proc. R. Soc. A used to be really a top journal 50 years ago, nowadays it's less prestigious. Same goes for Philosophical Magazine, where Rayleigh, Taylor, Kelvin, Maxwell etc. used to publish, which has now become a fairly-low-impact solid-state physics journal by the looks of it.

There are plenty of example of extremely important papers that were published in quite obscure journals.

@tomasz: indeed! See also Denouncing the imposter factor.

And the other side is also true: DO NOT cite irrelevant papers just because they are from high impact journals.

A low impact may not say a lot about a journal. In my field, one of the lowest ranking journals is in fact the best journal for my work. Because of the extreme narrow scope, it has a low impact,  because its readership is restricted. However, like its readership,  the journal's referee pool consists solely out of dedicated experts in this exact field. In turn, throwing your work in there is like throwing it into a lions den. If it survives, the paper is definitely strong and worth surviving.
In other words, when an important argument in your manuscript all hangs on that one citation from a low-ranking journal, you may want to familiarize yourself with that journal, before labeling it as a “not-so-prestigious journal”. Judge and see if it is a valid paper. Look at the author list. Authors often say more than the journal. Research groups can be prestigious too, universities can be too, single authors can be too.
In general, when it's just a side-note in your MS that needs a reference, I would definitely not leave out work based on IF only, and in fact not even bother with all this.

Interesting! Out of curiosity, what is your field?

@Davidmh - Ophthalmology and otorhinolorayngology (eyes and ears :-)

I disagree with the lowest ranking journals being the best ones in otorhinolaryngology.

@CapeCode - that is not what I have claimed. I claim that it IF may not tell you anyhting about journal quality. It depends on the journal. Of course you can prefer JARO over others. And I was speaking of an example in visual sciences, for that matter. You shouldn't over-interpret my answer.

I see, but I think with an IF of 2.59, JARO is anything but "one of the lowest ranking journals". I guess what you mean is that in our field, the top journals have relatively modest IFs. I always understood IF to be interpreted by field anyways.

@CapeCode - nope, that's not what I meant. What I mean is that judging a journal on low-IF and leaving it out of your paper is not a wise thing to do, because low-tier journals may in fact be excellent.

I'm confused, you consider JARO to be a lower-tier journal?

Of course, you should cite any relevant work.
You can't ignore work just because it is in a journal that someone believes to be lesser. That doesn't mean the work is bad.
As long you do a thorough literature review and avoid predatory journals, there should be no negative impact on your paper.

If the paper is relevant and good, why does predatory matter?  One would hope that good papers don't end up in those, since it offers them legitimacy, but what do you suggest you do if/when they do?

@zibadawatimmy I meant it from the perspective of the reviewers. Seeing predatory venues in the references might make the reviewers think negatively of your paper. I've never had to consider your scenario but I would cite, although I would be highly cautious.

@zibadawatimmy To avoid further confusion, I will remove that addition to my answer unless someone thinks I should add it back.

Thanks to Austin Henley and zibadawa timmy. Please don't delete your answer because after a complete discussion and contradict views only a clear answer could be obtained.

Rolled back. I think avoiding papers from predatory journals altogether is good advice. Then there is no need to cite them.

@CapeCode I don't understand the meaning of predator journals.

@phyphenomenon there exists a set of "journals" that will essentially publish anything in order to extract a fee from the authors; a paper being published in such a venue is some evidence that it's likely to be very low quality.

@Peteris: Still, one just has to hope that a prestigious journal won't reject a paper just because it cites something that's likely to be very low quality. If someone has found a way to build on work that for whatever reason originally appeared in a really bad venue, but which genuinely did originate the ideas being developed, then you can't honestly avoid citing it even if you want to and even if the original paper really wasn't all that good. But of course not all citations are due to this kind of unavoidable reference to other work.

@SteveJessop They might treat those as they might citations to non-peer-reviewed publications, which some do and others do not permit.  If an idea is first shown in an unciteable source, you can still acknowledge it without adding a formal citation.

@gerrit: fair enough, but that becomes a mechanical issue, replacing a citation with some other means of referring to the publication. I suppose taking "cite" literally, one could say that any attempt to cite an unciteable source is not a citation (it's just some garbage that looks a bit like one and is in the wrong section of your paper), and so the question is moot :-) Or taking "journal" in "low IF journals" as a technical term, the question doesn't ask about these sources unless they really are journals as opposed to magazines with the word "journal" on the cover.

+1 for the predatory journal mention. Do you know of Baell's list?

Your own work is not based on the impact factor of your cited work. The quality of your argumentation and thesis you discuss in a paper mainly builds on a coherent discussion of the state of research, independent from where it is published. Only referencing high-impact factor journals indicates that you only did a shallow literature search in the more well-known journals, which is not very professional in my opinion.

It would be unacceptable to not cite a paper merely based on the reputation of the venue published. If it plays a role in your development/understanding of your work it needs to be cited, no matter where it comes from. If it's just bolstering your "recent work" section, then you should make sure the paper is of appropriate quality, as you will not have had such close exposure to it (again, no matter where it comes from). Frankly, some of the most important papers in science were never peer-reviewed, and some did not even appear first in a journal (e.g. Shannon, Perelman).

Academic research is based on citing other relevant work that you used or inspired your work. Omitting those sources is a practise that should be very strongly discouraged, and you could be accused of plagiarism. There may be reasons why that work was published in a less prestigious journal, despite its relevance (or not), for example having been written by a student in a less prestigious institution who is not yet known, or who is publishing work that may be controversial (but not necessarily invalid). As the authour of your article, you should view yourself as the "expert", and be able to ascertain the validity of the papers you are referencing, regardless of where they were published in. If you are using some of their results, or referring to views contained therein, you have an obligation to referencing them.
You need to be confident in your work, which should be evaluated only by its content, and not by the other articles it is referencing.

Omitting sources is in no way related to plagiarism.

That's really a bad remark in academia. Not citing sources is one of the most dishonest thing one can do academically.

My comment didn't imply a relation between omitting sources and academic honesty, but rather the fact that omitting sources and plagiarism are totally different things and, therefore, it would illogical to accuse someone, who were omitting sources (even intentionally) in plagiarism. They could (and should) be accused of academic dishonesty via intentionally - if that's the case - omitting sources, but not plagiarism. My previous comment's wording could be better, though. For example: omitting sources is not equal to plagiarism.

We could argue about the technical differences, which is why I used "could", but I now thing that we agree that it would not be honest to read a paper, get ideas, and then leave it out because it is not in a prestigious enough journal. Whatever we call it does not matter to me, but I do understand your point now. Thanks for the clarification.

Yes, cite it. For sure.
Anyway, you can differ between low impact factor and a low quality paper.
A low impact factor does not imply always a low quality paper (if that was a concern of you).

Impact factor (IF) is a quite debated metric for journal quality. But in no way it addresses the quality of a single paper in that journal, and especially the quality regarding your needs. So you can cite this paper, as long as it effectively contribute to the work your are performing.
Beware though, since some journals tend to increase their IF, some editors may favor papers that cite a lot (or a sufficient quantity) of papers from the same journal, or even from the same society or publisher group. It is unfair un general, yet this exists.
The number of citations received by the paper can sometimes help balancing the IF of the journal it was published in.
Finally, aside from the  IF, which is not relative to the field (some fields tend to have weaker IF than others), the journal search at Scimago provides a ranking of journals in different fields.

See also https://bernardrentier.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/denouncing-the-imposter-factor/ , http://www.ascb.org/dora/ .

SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator is calculated, based on a relatively limited data set (Scopus data only) and, thus, cannot be used as a general indicator (especially, for certain fields of study, underrepresented in or, even, completely lacking from Scopus). For example, see this paper.

@Aleksandr Blekh do you know of reliable bibliometric journal indices and databases that allow a field-relative assessment of performance (have in mind the not-quite-recent Scaling the h-index for different scientific ISI fields)?

I'm not aware of such DBs. However, check the following related papers: this, this, this, this, this & this.

Of course, you can and should cite a paper from a low IF journal if it is relevant to your argumentation! IF changes overtime, the ideas in the paper stay and can be worth using later on.
To base your decision for citing a paper on the impact factor is definitively anti-scientific!


text:
The difference between literature review and background sections of a dissertation
I was assuming these two were the same. What is the difference between them? How does one relate to another? The context here is an MA (Master of Arts) level social science dissertation in UK education system.
Should background talk about relevant research done? If so why does literature review exist? Or should the background chose only a few literature and discuss them throughly?

What did your supervisor say?

I have not received reply yet. I wonder diverse opinions.

I initially thought them to be similar, if not the same. But then I had a feeling literature review is "what everyone has done on this (or similar topic)", while background is "how we pave the way to this work". This means that a dissimilar method doing the same might not appear in the background review. But it should appear in the related work / literature review. However, my feeling is that one should always do a literature review in a scientific paper / dissertation. It just might be called differently, due to different customs of various fields.

I am working in a technical field where very often "solutions" to certain important / interesting "problems" are investigated. Roughly, the background explains what the reader needs to understand the problem, and the related work explains (and critiques) what others have done to (partially) solve or discuss this problem or related problems.

This was how it went for me. Background: "Here's the setup for this problem". Lit Review: "Here's pretty much everything anyone has tried to address it."

Context: I'm in a US PhD program and thus my answer may not be fully appropriate for Masters in UK.
In the US, a Masters thesis is required rather than dissertation, which is required only in PhD programs.  In Social Sciences, a Masters thesis shows that you understand the relevant research in some depth and that you can also apply this research to some specific problems or questions.  In contrast, a PhD dissertation needs to contribute to research in some important way (even if the contribution is narrow or small).

There are no widely accepted rules for what is appropriate for Background or Literature Review chapters, or whether your thesis should include either or both.
What follows are my views, based on reading various theses and dissertations.
A Background chapter is best used to present contextual or prerequisite information that is important or essential to understand the main body of your thesis.  Perhaps there were some historical developments that set the stage for your research questions or thesis.  Perhaps there was some debate over key terms or scope of your subfield.  Perhaps you are bringing together several disciplines, and you need to explain which aspects of each discipline you are including and not including.
A Literature Review chapter builds a conceptual structure that ties together all the key ideas from all the relevant literature.  By "conceptual structure" I mean an organized way of linking individual ideas together so that their relative importance and interrelations are clear and obvious to the reader.  What are the main ideas?  What ideas support these main ideas? What are the contradictory ideas?  On what basis to people decide what ideas or positions to support or oppose?
Viewed this way, what becomes clear is that a Literature Review chapter is less about "literature" and instead is mostly about "review".

For what it's worth, in my dissertation I will not have either chapter. Instead, I've decided to have a chapter called "Foundations" to cover both of these needs.

"a Masters thesis is required rather than dissertation" - in your understanding, does that mean any difference in meaning, or are "thesis" and "dissertation" synonymous, with the single difference that it is a convention to call a doctoral thesis "dissertation"?

@O.R.Mapper While I have heard them used interchangeably, I think there is a distinction between the Masters requirement and the PhD requirement, along the lines I described above. Again, this may be different outside the US.

In the UK, common practice seems to be the opposite: One writes an undergraduate dissertation and a PhD thesis. But otherwise I imagine they're pretty similar to the equivalent level in the US.

I agree that there is no absolute way to write the research background and literature review chapter. however, there is a general rule of research background which is "write from general to specific". Meaning that, write your research topic general then go specific to your topic.
I take one example of finance research topic which is education loan, and it is a quantitative study (has dependent variable (DV) and independent variables(IV)). Let say I would like to study about default payment (DV) and attitude towards loan repayment (IV).
In the background of study, paragraph 1-3 i will discuss in general about education loan including the countries that offers the edu loan, the design of loan scheme etc. in the first three of the paragraphs, i didn't touch on my specific topic which is default and its predictors.
in para 4, i will discuss briefly what is wrong with the edu loan nowadays - default (refers to when someone refuses to pay loan). and briefly discussed among the major factors that may contribute to the default.
in the next 4 paragraphs, i will focus on the major factor of default which is is attitude. i explain in detail the research trend about attitude (e.g. attitudes correlated with ignorance, dissatisfaction and misconception about the consequences of not pay loan), why attitude important. why attitude towards loan repayment becomes my major focus of the study. i will cite a few recent research who said that study between attitude and intention to pay loan still limited.
the last four para, i will discuss about the evidence about default rate in my context of research (e.g. the country that you gonna do the research, e.g. UK), put some statistic, or statement from prime minister or anything else as the evidence that default is really a problem in the UK.
While, in the literature review, I will be more specific about the relationship between attitude and intention to pay loan. read as much as you can and better to put in a literature review and synthesis matrix to summarize the past research.
thanks.

I see this as relevant question which many junior researches ponder.
Literature review is usually longer and it can be a whole work/article or a part of a thesis. Background section is usually short and the first part of research article.
For literature review you should thoroughly go through all available studies, assess the important findings in them, discuss them and find some relevance for them. Poor reviews usually list the available studies and their findings. You can hypothesize with some findings especially if controversy exists. For example do the methodological differences explain the possible controversy in the findings. You should not make lengthy or intense speculations since you must stick strictly to the literature available. In the end of literature review you can give some open questions and warrant further research if your review have given examples of controversies or examples of lack of information in the literature.
The background section of a journal article should briefly describe what is reported in the literature so far. Usually you should be able to present some kind absence or need of certain information or a controversy which you will address in your research. You could also describe shortly why this lack of information or controversy should be solved. You should not hypothesize in any way or make assumptions in the background section. All that should come in the discussion section. Finally, you should only scratch the surface of the literature and not try establish reasons for different or controversial findings seen in the previous studies.

Agreed.  Your background section can tell us why you are taking up the specific topic you chose -- it will be the bridge between the literature review and the beginning of your actual study.


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Should I correct a successfully completed Master's dissertation before publishing online?
I  successfully completed my Master's dissertation a while back and I've decided I would like to publish it online to help others and  probably print a copy for myself to up on the bookshelf.
The dissertation was good but it wasn't perfect. Other than the usual typos, there were a few minor mistakes with how I presented the data which my professor pointed out. Should I correct these things before publishing or is that not the done thing?

Is that the first version of the thesis that is online? That is, "I've decided I would like to publish it online to help others" makes me wonder whether your university library has already published the thesis online; some universities do that.

Sure, correct them; just make sure to point out that the version you are posting is the corrected one and not the thesis-as-you-have-submitted-it. Potentially you need to remove some statements from it that claim the opposite, or some university logos that might be misconstrued as signs of an official university publication.

@darijgrinberg Can you please turn your comment into an answer so that I can vote it up?

Thanks everyone! @mapper The dissertation is finished and I was awarded the MA. So it is the version I handed in. As for whether the university published it online for me, I don't know, It never occurred to me that that might happen

At least here in Chile the copyright on theses belongs to the university, not the author. You'd have to check the legal situation. I doubt they'd forbid you to publish it, but better safe than sorry.

You should always correct and polish your work before publishing it. Therefore I would suggest you implement the fixes recommended by your professor, and correct the typos you mentioned. Having done this, you should point out somewhere in the publication that this work was partially adapted from the document you submitted to your institution, stating that you fixed a couple minor things.
As @darijgrinberg suggests here, you should also remove any official logos and statements that might be included in the document, as to avoid it being confused with an official university publication, let alone copyright breaches.

I disagree: I don't think he should implement the typos. ;)

@tomasz Ach. Saw it now. :)


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Is relocation assistance offered to postdocs?
Do universities offer relocation assistance to a newly employed postdoc who comes from another country? Is it appropriate for the postdoc to ask for relocation assistance if it is not already offered?

You can ask; in my experience (UK), the answer will be no.

Are you talking about something financial (which I have not heard of yet), or about help with finding a place to stay and university-internal offers of temporary locations for the newly-arrived before they have found a permanent place to rent (which is pretty much standard in some places)?

@O.R.Mapper, I think your comment can be written as an answer.

@adipro: I'd be wary of that, as on the one hand, I'm asking for clarification of the question, and on the other hand, I cannot provide any more than anecdotal evidence from the few places that I have contact to.

It varies. In my experience some of the more prestigious postdoctoral fellowships sponsored by universities might have some amount of moving expenses built into the budget, and more typical postdoc positions funded out of grants probably won't. But it might be possible to get a professor to help you out, perhaps out of startup or some other funds that aren't earmarked for a particular purpose. You should try to negotiate it with the person who offers you the job before you accept the offer.

You highlighted the word before; does that mean that it is too late to ask after one accepts the offer? For example, how if, after one moves to the country, temporary accommodation turns out to be much more expensive than first estimated?

@adipro: You could certainly ask, but after you have accepted the offer you have no leverage.  They have no real incentive to give it to you, other than just to be nice.

On two occasions my PI started my pay a week or two before I actually arrived to start work, but that was as good as it got.

In disciplines that I'm familiar with, postdoc money comes from a grant obtained by a PI. So the university has little-to-no role in the hiring and compensation process. I imagine the postdoc would have to discuss this issue with the PI.

In the early 90's, when I did a postdoc for a U.S. National Laboratory, full relocation expenses were included, which involved moving my household clear across the country, and staying in a hotel for a bit at the other end while I looked for a new home. I doubt such generous deals are readily available today.

These days, the National Labs still offer good deals to postdocs compared to the universities, but they're more likely to offer to pay airfare/reimburse driving costs, and also supply a fixed sign-on bonus. Depending on distance and living conditions, that may cover part or all of the expenses.

At the US National Lab I work at, we definitely pay relocation for post-docs. It may be capped, but moving, temporary housing, etc. are covered.

In the Netherlands, relocation reimbursement for post-docs, both a lump sum and a refund for transporting your possessions, is mandated by the collective employment agreements. For the non-university research institutes, Chapter 10 of the the 2018 CAO agreement spells this out. The amount is about 2,000 EUR for a fixed-term employment contract.
I have no experience elsewhere, (un?)fortunately.

Almost 30 years ago I bought a plane ticket to Amsterdam from the US, threw what I could carry into my backpack, and headed out. No relocation. Times were different...

@JonCuster: I'm assuming you had no apartment? Almost no clothes? No books? No computer? etc. :-(

The institute arranged a room to rent. But, yes, I took almost nothing with me.

Some Australian universities offer very generous relocation packages as a matter of institutional policy.  Most other places do not seem to offer it, but it is definitely okay to ask.


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R1 vs R2 programs in mathematics
I have been looking into several different PhD programs in mathematics, and I am trying to keep my options open. After finishing a doctorate, I am open to working either in academia or industry, although I would prefer a teaching job or similar at a liberal arts college. Additionally, I am currently in the US on a student visa in an undergraduate program.
I would say I have a pretty strong resume, and my GPA is quite good (at around 3.7 on the 4.0 scale). I have research experience in combinatorics and data science, as well as independent reading courses, workshop participation and experience at a summer program for prospective PhD students. I have also given several presentations at student conferences.
I have looked at plenty of different schools in the United States. I am from a small state school, and I believe that applying to Ivy Leagues etc, I would probably not stand a chance. Even some top 50 programs I am quite sure I won't get into, although no risk no reward, so I will definitely try.
After talking to my student advisor, she told me that I should definitely have a few safety schools on my list, and that I will do. I started looking into it, and I noticed there are a few R2 universities with mathematics PhD programs that seemed to have professors interested in similar research as I am.
There was just one main concern: if I want to get a postdoc or similar after finishing PhD studies, would going to a R2 university completely kill my chances of doing this? I have been heavily advised against it by some of my peers.
If it matters at all, I am currently mainly interested in research in discrete mathematics and algebraic topology.

Related, possibly duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/90/university-rank-stature-how-much-does-it-affect-ones-career-post-ph-d

First of all, I don't give individual advice for prospective math PhD students without saying that the job market for permanent positions (including teaching positions) is terrible and likely to stay that way.  There are significantly fewer jobs than highly qualified candidates.
With that out of the way... You can get pretty much as good an education at a program ranked around 60 as at a program ranked around 20.  It's true that, at the lower ranked program, you will likely have to study some more advanced topics independently with your advisor that you might have been able to take a 2nd or 3rd year graduate course for at a higher ranked program.  But, given the job market, the qualifications of the professors are going to be pretty much the same.  You'll be able to get pretty much just as good an advisor who, if you're capable, will help you work on just as good a project, and the advisor will have pretty much just as good a network to help you promote your work and find a postdoc.
Another difference is the expectations of the culture.  At a program around 60, a student who gets a research postdoc is exceptional.  The professors will not generally push you to do that level of coursework and research until you demonstrate that kind of capability, and your peers will not be expected to do that level of research.  Some people are more likely to make an effort beyond what their peers do; others are not.  I don't know you.
However, you should also realize that, if you are capable of earning a PhD with research that will get you a research postdoc, then every program ranked around 20 will be happy to admit you.  Of course it's somewhat hard to judge the potential of an undergraduate student, but if the higher ranked programs all turn you down and you do get a postdoc after your PhD, then those programs have all made a mistake.  Sometimes that mistake is systemic and out of their control; perhaps all your letters of recommendation underestimated your potential.  This means, though, that failing to get admission to a top 25 program is an indication that admissions committees don't think you're likely to succeed to that extent.

I think you're right about 60 vs 20, but it's dubious that admissions committees, even in aggregate, can reliably predict who is and is not likely to have the potential to succeed. It might be true that they are pretty good at identifying who "fits," but that's not the same thing as identifying talent. If there weren't systemic skews in evaluation and opportunity, mathematics wouldn't be as homogeneous as it is.

I've been browsing papers by faculty at universities in different rankings and it does all seem to be about the same. They regularly write papers on topics that interest them and get published in decent journals. I guess that's about as much as anyone can hope for.

Although the reputational rankings may give you a rough idea, a lot depends on very specific individual factors.  It is impossible to predict exactly how things will turn out for you.
I suggest that you should look at how graduates from the programs you are interested in have done after completing their PhD’s.  Have recent graduates been placed into good post docs?  Going back a decade or so, are graduates finding tenure track positions?
An easy way to do this is to use the mathematical genealogy website to look up graduates from a particular year and then see where those graduates are now by googling them. You’ll probably find a wide range of outcomes.  Ask yourself whether you would be happy with all of those outcomes.


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Assistant professor vs lecturer in the UK
I have been looking at various graduate programs in the UK, and noticed a lot of people under the title "lecturer" taking incoming PhD students. I've completed some graduate studies on a master's level in the United States. Would doing a PhD under the supervision of a "lecturer" be different than doing one under the supervision of a professor? I read online that in the UK, "lecturer" is analogous with "assistant professor". Can someone explain this to me?

This question might help you out: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/48977/academic-rank-equivalence-between-the-uk-and-the-us-systems

To address the part of your question that isn't explicit in the linked answer: no, there is no inherent difference between doing a PhD under a 'lecturer' rather than under a 'professor' (except, perhaps, that a UK professor will typically be much further along in their career; see https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/168444/what-are-the-risks-and-benefits-of-being-the-first-phd-of-a-new-supervisor/168570 for some perspectives on this).


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Possible red flags in a PhD interview?
So I've recently had a couple of PhD interviews that I was invited to. In the first one, there were several people present for my brief talk, after which they asked me some questions. Then most people left and I had a one on one interview with the professor. Overall, I was left with a very nice and positive experience. People were curious about my research, gave me constructive feedback and the professor in question was extremely welcoming and friendly.
The second interview caught me off guard in terms of how it was arranged. This was for a school in Central Europe. Only the professor who was my potential supervisor showed up. No one else. We agreed that I would give a brief talk on my master's thesis, which I did. She then presented some projects I could work on, but without informing about it beforehand, started testing my knowledge in odd ways. Like she would ask me questions that she timed that were not at all related to my research, and I felt like she was trying to catch me out by making a mistake. She also said she will get me in contact with one of her PhD students, which she never did, even though I emailed her about it. She never got back to me. She also asked me to come and join a seminar and gave me the wrong date, so I accidentally showed up to the wrong one. After this, she has not answered a single one of my emails. Also, by looking at her website, it looks like three of her PhD students who started their studies in late 2020/early 2021 were just let go. Are these huge red flags or is this something that is relatively normal? Am I overthinking this?

It sounds like you know the answer already. Is this second person somone you would like to work with?

The fact that you only talked to one person is normal. Everything else is not normal.

Don't walk away. Run!
Please remember you are a candidate for the position, you should be the good candidate,  as judged by them, but it is up to you to finally accept their offer to work with them, you are also judging them. So they are doing their best to do a good impression on you and ... "She also asked me to come and join a seminar and gave me the wrong date"? I hope at least they paid you for the trip to join the seminar.

You wrote that you interviewed in central Europe without giving a country name. For matters such as yours, the country makes a substantial difference.
Consider this answer to be one for Germany, which is somewhat centrally located in Europe.
The most common way to perform PhD studies in that country is to get a "scientific employee" position with the university while doing your PhD. The positions are allocated to professors, not to schools. Hence, you didn't actually interview with the school, but with the professor.
This explains why there was only one person. While the style to first give a scientific talk to all members of a research group, followed by a (confidential) interview is somewhat common (for a good reason), going straight to the one-on-one interviews is also not uncommon. Sometimes there are logistical reasons for skipping the talk. Oh, and if the research group only consists of the professor so far, there is nobody else to give a talk to. Whether members of other research groups are invited to such talks depends on local customs.
I would personally not consider the odd knowledge testing a red flag. The reason is that school and university only do a very formal check if you bring in the right degree to start PhD studies with you. It is possible to pass this check but still come from a university where the teaching quality is so bad that you have no chance of successfully completing a PhD program. So it's up to the professor to check this, but this is insanely difficult in a short interview. Doing multiple rounds of interviews, taking hours overall (such as in many tech companies) is unusual, and would probably not be accepted by every candidate. To test the broad understanding of the field of research, the professor may have prepared some questions that can only be answered with this broad knowledge and cannot be answered by knowing some factoids. Secondly, many candidates with a less formal education do not use technical terms and expressions correctly and interpreting whether they mean to say the right answer or just combine some concepts to a sentence is sometimes very difficult. Some questions may sound weird, but at the same time have a good answer that is hard to guess so that traces of the correct solution can already count as a correct answer.
What you describe afterwards is mostly a lack of proper organization. This can be a red flag if it occurs multiple times (such as in your case).
For the students starting in 2020/2021, you unfortunately don't know what happened. They may have let go (but that is unlikely if they were working there for >6 months). Some of them may have decided late that the PhD is not the right path for them. Dropout rates of ~50% are common in Germany, even at the PhD level. The professor may have had back luck with the students, may have hired the wrong ones, or may not be a good advisor. Unfortunately, that's hard to tell. It's also possible that these students only were supposed to start back then, but couldn't obtain a visa, and finally went elsewhere - many embassies closed due to the Corona virus at that time. Normally, PhD students are not added to web pages before they arrive, but this is not uniform.