text:
Can I slack off and get a PhD?
I am not a genius but I am a good test taker and a very practical person. I went through undergraduate school without studying much (skipping classes, doing homework, reading the books and doing some exercises the day before the test) with a 3.6 GPA in Computer Engineering from a decent school (CWRU).
I know I might get angry answers from people saying that it simply cannot be done. I am interested to hear from the people in the other side of the spectrum. Can it be done? Have you done it?
I want to become a college professor so a PhD is a requirement I need to fulfil.
slack off = not put much effort and work in, like when you didn't bother to google that word!

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You have to put in more time than that. Did you score 800 on reading for SAT? If you did you can read once for each class session and absorb the material. Then work any problems.

Can I slack and get a PhD?

Yes, definitely. I have known PhD students that graduated, which I can only describe as lazy.
Now the more important question is Why the heck do you want to? If your goal is to stay in research, slacking off during your PhD time is career suicide. If you do not want to stay in research, and you are not particularly interested in the research contents, then a PhD degree will not be much more than a piece of paper to put on your office wall. A piece of paper for which you have accepted 3+ years of lousy pay.
Edit:

I want to become a college professor so a PhD is a requirement I need to fulfill.

I correct my point from above: "If your goal is to stay in academia, slacking off during your PhD time is career suicide". Let me put it this way - faculty positions, including those at liberal arts colleges, are typically competitive to get into. Having a PhD that shows that you are less than enthusiastic about your field will likely not land you such a job. If this is your career goal, you need to ask yourself not "What is the minimum amount of work I need to put in to get a PhD?" but rather "What is the minimum amount of work I need to put in to have a real shot at scoring a position afterwards?" (where the second effort is substantially larger than the first effort).

"I want to become a college professor so a PhD is a requirement I need to fulfill."

In today's job market, slacking your way through a PhD will leave you with 5+ years wasted and no faculty position. It's concerning that you (OP) are thinking of the PhD as a requirement to be fulfilled, rather than a critical opportunity for learning to do independent research. This suggests you may not have the greatest understanding of what being a college professor is actually like.

@xLeitix: Are there no non-academic positions where the "prestige" of having a STEM PhD, or perhaps the "general intelligence" indicated by having one, would significantly help get a job? In other words, mightn't a PhD be more than a piece of paper, at least for some jobs?

@Sparr The OP has added this after I wrote the answer.

@Sal There certainly are places where a PhD may help you just for formal reasons (some state positions, for instance - at least here in Europe), but it is my impression that those are getting less and less (and there where not many such places to begin with). Banking on that does not seem like a wise career move.

@Sal: yes, a little (but some people will think you are overqualified). But not nearly enough to be worth the time investment.

@Sal At least in CS, if you're not going to go into research (which doesn't mean academia, there's tons of private R&D as well), a PhD is worth rather little (I've heard from friends in other fields where a PhD with no real world experience would even be considered detrimental) - from a money and career perspective spending the 3+ years working would be immensely more useful.

@Sal, Yes, there are positions outside academia where a PhD can be useful. My father had a CS PhD which helped him get a position at Texas Instruments (before his department was bought up and he transferred over to Raytheon). The positions he had were still research, though (or later in his career, management over people doing research).

If OP is staying in academia, it'd be difficult, because letters of recommendation are the norm, and nobody would recommend you.  Also it would be difficult to get your work done and graduate.  At a certain point they just start asking why you are still there and when you will graduate, or maybe you don't belong there at all.  Anyway it's not for the lazy.

@Sal Again it comes back to what you want to do. I intentionally left PhD because I know the kind of jobs I want, I will be overqualified by the time I finish PhD. And, in some cases the time spent for PhD could be better used to gain work experiences. I suggest browsing career postings and see what you are interested in doing in the future, and see if they do require PhD degrees. Otherwise it is money and time wasted.

Can I slack and get a PhD?

You seem to have started early in your laconic/lazy formulation of the question.  Nevertheless, I know what you are asking at least in spirit: can you get a PhD without really trying, i.e., by doing the minimum necessary and having that minimum be significantly less than your peak activity.
The answer is: while no one is guaranteed to succeed in a PhD program and some people get kicked out of PhD programs (including, more's the pity, some who are "really trying"), the answer is that yes, it is most certainly possible for some, and probably the average PhD student could introduce a non-negligible amount of "slack" and still complete their PhD.
Now please listen carefully:
The old saw But you would only be cheating yourself was made for this situation.  By doing so, you will be cheating yourself out of some very valuable commodities: time, money, future employability, your own happiness and even contentment.
Look, don't do it.  Maybe I can express it like this: how much would someone need to offer me to get me to go back to school and get a PhD in some field I didn't really care about?  I would say that for half a million dollars now under the agreement that I would stay in school until I got it and another half million dollars upon successful completion, I would have to consider it.  If you do not have financial incentives of this order of magnitude, forget it.

This is a really fantastic answer. Why on earth would you cheat yourself out of 3-5 years of work experience and decent pay in order to 'just get by' in a research-oriented degree program? The very nature of the question reveals the original poster's ignorance about what a PhD is and why one should pursue such a degree.

i don't quite agree. saying "why would you cheat yourself out of the learning experience?" implies the asker CARES about the learning experience, which they clearly don't. Also, the asker is not ignorant about the purpose of a PhD-- they know it's a requirement to become professor. Rather than asking them why they want a PhD (which they already stated to become a professor), a better response might be "Why do you want to become a professor?", and "What do you want to teach?"To answer the base question, can you get a PhD without really trying, i believe the answer is "yes, others have done so."

@johny why: May I ask whom you are quoting in the first line of your comment?

@PeteL.Clark: You, and i should not have said "learning experience", i should have said "time, money, future employability, your own happiness and even contentment", and the opposing experience was described here by angarg12.

@johny why: You are not quoting me unless you reproduce what I actually said!  I'm confused about what you meant to write.  Are you suggesting that the OP might not care about any of time, money, future employability, happiness or contentment?  That doesn't seem very reasonable to me.

I also don't understand what you mean when you say angarg12's answer is "opposing" mine.  The question was whether it is possible to do something, and we both said yes.  I also mentioned that a cost-benefit analysis would strongly suggest against trying to phone in a PhD.  The other answerer doesn't say what happened to him after his PhD, but he ends with: "On the other hand, if you want to know if getting a PhD is a good way to slack for a few years, you can probably find better jobs that suit your needs." That's exactly the "moral" of my answer as well!

@PeteL.Clark: you might be right, angarg12's answer may be consistent with your answer, i'm not sure. i'm not sure when you say "don't do it", you mean the same thing as angarg12 means by "you can probably find better jobs that suit your needs." angarg12 doesn't explain what they mean by that, but they don't seem to say anything about "future employability". angarg12's description goes much further than your phrase "introduce a non-negligible amount of 'slack'." angarg12 gives a clearer description than you of slacking while getting a PhD, making their's a more direct answer to the OP.

I think it's possible depending on your definition of "slack". You have to work on your research, but if you find that part fun and therefore not real "work", you can potentially just scrape by on the other required components. The only exception to that might be writing up your results in a timely fashion. I think lots of folks find this latter part at least somewhat tedious, and there's really no way to put it off or not do it if you want to graduate.
That being said, you can get minimum acceptable grades in all your required courses (if your department has any) and do mediocre on your qualifying exams and dissertation proposal (if your department requires either) and still get a PhD. As long as you're engaged with your research, getting a PhD might not be all that much like work.
Now, if you research is mediocre, too, you might still get the PhD but then find yourself with mediocre grades, mediocre research, and a supervisor and other faculty with mediocre opinions of you. That might lead to mediocre, at best, and, at worst, no letters of recommendation for future jobs. It might also mean that any papers you try to write from your dissertation work are also mediocre and unpublishable, and it's not like you will have published anything along the way if you were trying to maximize your slack. That won't likely be good for your career, but at least you'll have gotten the PhD, right?

I'm expecting a lot of people to answer "No" to the OP, but I agree with this entirely. I think the answer is actually a resounding yes, but with the caveat that you will be screwing yourself in the long run. In grad school, grades are near meaningless, the (major) tests you have to take can usually be retaken several times, the time schedule is very flexible to the point that you can abuse it, and most advisors won't actually fire you for doing little/bad work. But, there is a good chance that you'll be unhappy and you'll certainly have no prospects when you're finished.

I don't know what you mean by "slack", but if you want a living proof of somebody "lazy" getting a PhD, here I am.
I remember tales from my colleagues speaking about entire summers spent working on their PhD, even working on it every Saturday at home.
I never did such a thing.
I never worked in my PhD outside my working hours: I can even think a couple of really dry periods where I got really distracted and worked on personal projects instead of in my research.
The whole process got 4 years (6 years including Master Thesis), although I completed all my work 1 year before obtaining the title, and I spent all that time in bureaucracy.
Just by looking at the highest voted answers to this question, you can feel the general vibe of this community. My vision however is somewhat different: you don´t need to slave yourself over getting a PhD, and certainly, it is not worth sacrificing holidays and weekends for it.
Also keep in mind that research is a very intellectual activity, so logically you will go through less productive periods influenced by your own mental state.
As a caveat, I have to point out that I got away with it because my research group was quite lousy. I did almost all the work by myself with little supervising, and indeed this may very well be the cause that my motivation to work was so low.
My takeaway message is: if you want to get a PhD and are afraid that it will be too hard on you, don't be. On the other hand, if you want to know if getting a PhD is a good way to slack for a few years, you can probably find better jobs that suit your needs.

Refreshing answer

"My vision however is somewhat different: you don´t need to slave yourself over getting a PhD, and certainly, it is not worth sacrificing holidays and weekends for it." Could you point to a specific answer that advocates slaving over anything, sacrificing weekends or holidays?  I find it quite disturbing that certain answerers here are construing "slacking" as "not working more than full-time".  Especially, if we are only counting time spent on one's research -- rather than teaching or grading -- then 40 hours per week would be unsustainably high for most students I know.

@PeteL.Clark: For me slacking is a state of mind. Do you put your heart and soul into the PhD (while hopefully maintaining good work-life balance) or do you punch a clock and disinterestedly do the bare minimum to leave with a degree? The former is not slacking, even at 30 hours a week; the latter is slacking, even at 50.

@Corvus: I become increasingly annoyed at the OP for not clarifying his meaning, but for me slacking means toeing the line on the minimum you can do to get by.  I can't speak for all parts of academia, but in mathematics the idea of a slacker working more than 40 hours a week is basically contradictory because it's significantly more than is necessary to get the degree.

@PeteL.Clark: Agreed about the 40 hours. Though I never cease to be amazed at the number of low-productivity hours that students (and some faculty) manage to put in. It's all too common for people to think that spending 10 hours a day switching between facebook half the time and an academic paper the other half constitutes a good work ethic. /he says while answering SE questions on lunch break/.

@angarg12 An excellent, honest answer, based on personal experience, which directly addresses the OP's question, without a bunch of high-and-mighty moralizing like the more upvoted answers here.

And were you able to continue your career and become professor somewhere? Because other answers imply that you can be lazy and get a PhD, but then your PhD won't be good enough to get a tenure track position with.

This more-or-less mirrors my situation - although one of my personal projects actually found its way into my thesis. And on the question of whether you can get a tenure track position, I had a couple of post-doc offers when I graduated, but turned them down.

There is a basic misunderstanding in your question. You are thinking of a PhD as similar to a Bachelor's or MS degree. (i.e. a simple badge that you have acquire to "level up" in your career.)
It's not. People will actually at least read the abstract of your PhD dissertation and your future career prospects ( in academia at least ) will depend greatly on the perceived quality of the research you do while getting a PhD. The people deciding whether you get any academic position will actually read it and a slacker's PhD is very obvious.
Your PhD research is the equivalent of the "masterpiece" required of craftsman in medieval guilds. It shows how well you've learned the guild arts and will be judged to decide if you are really a master or not. If it's not good enough, you may have the sheepskin, but you will never be admitted into the guild (i.e. tenure track).
Even at "teaching colleges" the competition for professorship positions is pretty fierce. Computers won't be quite as cut throat as say English Lit, but your chances of getting a tenure track position with a "slacker's PhD" are minimal.
I'm quite sure it's possible to get a slacker's PhD, but expecting to get a tenure track position with one is wishful thinking. One the other hand, you could likely get a lecturer's position, but those generally only require a MS degree and are a dead end jobs. Pay is terrible and there are no prospects for career advancement. They do allow lot's of time for slacking between marathon grading sessions though...
Even if you got lucky enough to get a tenure track position, that is only the start of race. You are expected to keep publishing to rise through the ranks to achieve tenure. If you don't publish enough, you'll be asked to leave and make space for somebody that does. It's a lot like grad school, except the teaching load is higher, you have no advisor and all the weak competitors are long gone. But you are getting paid almost as much as an assistant plumber.

Love this! Pretty funny about the assistant plumber. It really makes me glad I didn't pursue a PhD. When I finally realized I would never want to teach, that was the clincher. Teaching would be a living nightmare for me.

You mentioned that you got a decent GPA with not much work. This possibly indicates that you are quite capable, and not motivated unless pressured with a deadline.
There are many reasons the lack of motivation can show up during in college; from things being too easy, to not having an ownership over the work you are doing. As others pointed out, research is a different animal all together, and you might find yourself thriving doing research.
If your goal is to get the degree with the least amount of work, that attitude won't get you far. However, if you are considering PhD, but you are concerned about your lack of motivation as an undergrad, then you stand a chance. Think of the reasons you lacked motivation, and how you can overcome them. And, please, don't think of yourself as a slacker, because you lacked intrinsic motivation to go above and beyond in classes that had little to do with what you are passionate about.

There is no "amount of work" or "trying hard" requirement for a PhD.
Instead, typical programs require you to do a few things:

Pass qualifying exams
Pass a certain number of required and elective course (usually this happens in the first year or two)
Maintain a minimum GPA (usually 3.0 or so)
The big one - complete original research that advances your field.

Notice that none of these requirements has anything to do with the amount of effort you spend. If you are exceptionally smart or talented at taking tests, you could probably "slack" and make it through the first three requirements. In my program there were definitely people who put in more effort than others, sometimes they needed to, and sometimes they didn't. In the end though, all that matters is that you meet the requirements, not that you spent X amount of time or effort on them.
The first three requirements are easy to measure, and the bar is about the same for everyone. However, the last requirement is tricky. This is why some of the other answers are saying it's not a good idea to go in with the idea that you could slack off and get by.
The reason is that judging your success at #4 comes down to the personal opinions of your adviser and your dissertation committee.
Partly it is based on the number and quality of papers you publish, partly it depends on the perceived quality of your thesis, and partly it depends on your adviser's perception of your ability to conduct original research.
A lot of other answers are saying that if you don't excel, then you won't get good recommendations, won't publish much, and won't get a job after graduating. It is true that there are more PhD recipients than there are PhD jobs, and so you definitely need to be on the "really good" end of the spectrum if you want to do well after school.
On the other hand, even though the original research requirement is highly subjective, and can depend a lot on what your adviser's perception of your work ethic is, I think it is only fair to point out that there is no built-in requirement that you work all the time.
As an example, if you took two students, one who worked 40 hours per week and produced 4 or 5 highly respected papers in a field that brought in a lot of research funding, and one who worked 60 hours per week but only produced 1 or 2 papers that weren't considered ground-breaking, I think it would be unrealistic to think that the first student (who some might say was slacking) would have a hard time getting a job.
I think what the other answers are trying to get you to see is that as a general statement, "hard work" is correlated with success in research. Note that I said correlated - in the end, the research is what matters, and hard work doesn't guarantee anything, nor is it necessarily required. Luck and talent play big parts as well. In my experience, breakthroughs in research actually happen when you take time off to think. You need to put the work in to design the experiments, generate the data, and process it. But the real insights come from stepping back and thinking about things differently. You can't force that, and I have a hard time thinking of that part as "work."
I think what really matters is your ability to overcome challenges. Sometimes people equate that with work, in the sense that you have to keep going even when the going gets tough.
If you are considering going into a PhD program, you should accept the fact that for most people, it takes a lot of effort to succeed, and even more to excel. As a general statement, your adviser will expect you to put in as much time as you can and will not like it if you "slack off." However, in the end, all that matters is the quality of your research and the opinions of your adviser, colleagues, and committee. If you can work less and still do groundbreaking, original research, while maintaining the respect of your colleagues, then it can be done.
Don't tell the admissions committee that you want to slack off, though. They won't like that.

Maybe someone somewhere would describe working 40 hours a week and producing at least one highly respected paper per year as "slacking"...but I don't think it is very useful to do so.

@Pete L. Clark - that's my point - it's about the results, not the time put in. There were definitely PI's at my school who expected more than 40 hours per week, but in the end, the results are what matters.

Perhaps being a college professor is different in computer science than in the humanities, but I think that the OP is not very clear on what being a professor involves. Fundamentally it is about doing research and discovering new things. The emphasis on teaching varies by institution but even in places that are heavy on teaching will still expect you to do research. While you don't have to kill yourself to produce acceptable work, you can't slack off completely.
Academia has changed a lot in the past 20 years or so. It's extremely competitive, not very well paid, and tenure track positions are not as numerous as they were. Even badly paid adjunct jobs are hard to get. Try searching the Chronicle of Higher Education for articles about the job market, for example. Having a PhD is absolutely not a guarantee that you will get a job.
Can you slack off and get a PhD? It's certainly possible -- I was a bit of a slacker and I still managed to finish mine. But because I didn't put in enough extra work beyond my actual research project (publishing papers, teaching undergraduates, organizing other professional events, starting a second research project, etc. etc.) there is pretty much no chance that I will ever get an academic job.

Another side of it is that you  will need the respect of the academics you work with, also postdocs etc if you're to get a job at the end.  They're the people best placed to spot real slacking, and one bad word from them can ruin your chances of getting the next step in your career.  Depending on the group/field you may well need to be a team player which mean volunteering to take stuff on if it fits your expertise.  To progress in academia you'll also need a publication record, and writing papers that are accepted isn't much like turning in undergrad work done to the best of your night-before ability.
I'm not saying that every day has to be a grind, but some will.  Also there will always be non-productive days or months. You need good bits in between when something you enjoy working on is going well.  But it won't work out well going at it the way you think.
Finally - how do you expect to write up on that basis - it's probably the most serious piece of self-motivated work you'll have seen to date.
I'm not saying don't go for it, quite the opposite, do go for it. but only when you've found something you really want to be working on.  After all, if all goes well you'll be working on it for a few years afterwards as well.

The question you are technically asking may be unanswerable.  I do not know if you (personally or the more general  you) can slack and get a PhD.  The only way to know is to try. I'll game it out a bit based on the assumption that slacking is a higher priority for you than accomplishment and that you will do what it takes to be accepted into a PhD program.  I mean no judgement here.  I am interpreting this from your question.
If you slack and you do not get a PhD (kicked out or you exit for whatever reason), what do you have to show for your time and whatever effort you put in?  Would this be the best way to spend your time and effort?
If you slack and you do get a PhD, will you be able to put that to good use? (See answer from Bill Barth) Will you be happy with the time you spent? Will it really help you do better work/earn more money/have a more meaningful career.  If the answer to any of these questions is yes, a PhD may be worthwhile for you.
More specifically, you have described yourself as a practical person.  Even in computer engineering, a PhD is rarely pursued because of how practical it is. Even if it's practical to have, it's extrordinarly impractical to attain.
If there are masters programs you are interested in, that may suit you better.  I gather that you are a good test taker (your description), can absorb material quickly, and are willing to do what needs to be done(homework, reading, exercises).
If there are any PhD programs that let you leave with a Masters if you have completed a certain amount of coursework, that may let you 'have it all.'  With that said, I would be surprised if this is considered an acceptable motivation/approach for applying to and matriculating in a PhD program.

There are some interesting responses to this question, but I think the most important ones highlight the lack of understanding of what a PhD is about. A PhD isn't going to get you a better job in the long-run, a PhD is about becoming immersed in your research topic and gaining the necessary tools to conduct good research.
You also don't 'study' for a PhD, you research and you write. Unlike undergraduate school where you might get away with hashing out a half-decent paper the night before it's due and get a good grade, that's not going to fly when you try to get your work published, which is one of the major things you'll need to be doing if you want to be a professor. Publications are blind reviewed, usually by other subject experts in the field. They will pick apart everything that your lecturer will skip in your 2nd year essay.
Your success will be dependent on a heap of factors, including your supervisors mentorship and your examination outcome. Common PhD results tend to be Revise and Resubmits or Passes with Major Revisions.
Professors don't just teach, in fact, teaching is a very small component of what they do. You need to advance your research, and while you can potentially get a PhD by slacking (depending on what you perceive as slacking) the work only gets harder when you attempt to advance your career. You won't be offered a cushy professorship upon completion, there are hundreds of PhDs out there who have heaps of publications, grants, conferences etc under their belt and can barely get their foot in the tenure-track door.
You need to critically think about why you want to be a professor, and if you are ready to put the hard work into research, conferences, teaching, seminars, publications and so on, go for it. But if you want a PhD for this rather vague idea of being a professor without a clear understanding of what that actually means, you need to seriously reconsider.
However, a PhD can also give you the training to enter into research in the industry/not-for-profit/government as opposed to academia (but again, this is about research, not teaching). If you want to be a professor to teach and have no interest in research, I would suggest you look into something like a trades/vocation teacher training.

My interpretation of the original poster's question is:
If I were to do a PhD without putting in much effort into my PhD,
would it be possible for me to get a PhD and become a college professor?
Short answer
Yes, it is possible;
but if you work hard,
it is much more likely that attain a PhD
and your career goal of becoming a college professor.
Long answer
As others have noted,
it is getting more and more difficult to obtain a job in academia
because there are fewer positions available,
and more smart people trying to attain those positions.
Unless you have been gifted with an exceptionally brilliant mind
(e.g. Terrence Tao),
there is no guarantee that you will be able to attain a college professor job
even if you were to put in your best effort.
In view of this situation,
my advice to you if you are serious about attaining this job is:
Be a conscientous researcher and put in your best effort,
so that if you still don't attain this job,
you aren't going to regret that you didn't try hard enough.
What does "best effort" mean?
I don't mean that you need to work 90+ hours a week
and sacrifice your social life
as well as physical and emotional well-being
on the altar of academic achievement.
I would argue that being focused and diligent
and working regular office hours (roughly 9 am to 5 pm)
should allow you to achieve >80% of your theoretical maximum output.
This may not hold true in certain experimental fields like chemistry
where my friends tell me they work 12 hours a day
and half day on Sunday.

Most of the answers so far seem to assume that the OP wants to continue as a researcher after graduating. I think that if the OP is comfortable with getting a teaching post at a low-ranked institution, then a lot of the criticisms do not apply. A professor in such a place might well "slack" their way to a comfortable, tenured career by continuing to do a decent but not exceptional set of research and solid teaching.
Those places, however, do tend to pay more attention to one's teaching, both before hiring and on the way to tenure, so that aspect would still need to be quite solid, which might or might not fit with the OP's definition of slack.

No, I assume only that the OP is willing to be rational about the way he is spending 4-6 (or more) years of his life.  Teaching jobs are quite competitive these days, and slackers make poor teachers as much as or more than they make poor researchers.  If someone is willing to work quite hard in their future teaching but is not invested in a PhD program, they should get a master's degree and teach at a two-year or regional college rather than plan in advance on being a "slacker PhD".

It depends where you work. If you have a lot of original creative thinking you can meet research requirements easily if you don't work for a lab. Labs have routine grunt work that has to get done.


text:
Motivations for PhD students to present at a conference session for work in progress
I am currently helping to run a doctoral colloquium (DC) for a conference that's going to happen remotely.
For this DC, we are accepting work-in-progress papers whose first or sole author is a doctoral student or candidate. Also, this DC will give the opportunity for them to briefly speak about their research or proposed research in a three-minute thesis (3MT) format/style, supported by a single slide or other visual aid, before engaging in a moderated discussion with one another and with the audience.
As part of that planning, I'm trying to understand more the side of the students to present at the DC, as would like to have them interested in joining the conference and also being engaged. What are potential motivations for a student to present their work in progress in such a format?

Thank you for your clarifications. I narrowed down your question a bit further (“what makes up a good DC?” includes stuff such as audio quality, which is probably no news to you) and reopened.

My opinion on 3MT conferences, especially online is a big MEH.

These have been part of ACM conferences, such as OOPSLA, for a long time. They give students, especially those nearing completion, a source of feedback on their work. Typically the participants will be not only the students but at least some of their professors and some others interested in what is happening with current doctoral research.
Before I retired we always encouraged our doctoral students to develop an "elevator talk" in which they could explain the essence of their research in the time it takes to ride or wait for an elevator, say about 3 minutes. It is an extreme form of abstraction that is useful for a student to consider.
But the potential for (a) a bit of early visibility and (b) a bit of independent feedback are worth the effort.
Some of the conferences would also have some scholarship/travel money for attendees. And the student could, then, also attend the rest of the conference and build a circle of contacts.
I don't know how a remote version will work, or whether it will have enough of the right elements to make it viable, however. But it was valuable for face-to-face conferences.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How should I include a list of links in my thesis?
In my thesis, I would like to refer to a set of links. These are tools/calculators/etc. related to my subject, included to show that there is an interest in society at large in this topic.
I'm wondering what the best way would be to include them. Options include:

all (15+) in the running text is cumbersome;
a table with only one column looks just plain weird;
as references [1,3-5,76] breaks the flow of reading, and mixes them up with formal, cited literature sources. I would not suggest that these links are quality sources of anything, their simple existence is the point;
as an appendix diminishes their impact.

Welcome to Academia. I edited the title and tags of your question. Please feel free to edit it or roll it back to a previous version.

I noticed, this title is definitely better. Thanks :)

Personally, I am in favour of adding them as references in the bibliography section.
With that said, I am from a CS subfield that is very close to the "real world" in a way that related work is almost always a motley mixture of peer-reviewed publications, books, newspaper articles, technical standard documents (such as those by W3C), and actual innovative software or websites (whose concepts were never formally published in a scientific venue), i.e. sources with a continuously varying degree of reliability. Consequently, trying to find a well-defined rule about what to add as a footnote and what to add as a bibliography reference is certain to give you headaches (and uncertain to lead to a useful and consistent result).
However, I can see a few (maybe a bit subjective) general advantages of using bibliography items rather than footnotes for links (in no particular order):

Bibliography items tend to more or less have a fixed format. Frequently, meta-information such as year of publication or author can be provided for web resources just as it can for anything else. When using a footnote, authors may be tempted to just provide the link and skip the meta-information that would be naturally included in a bibliography item, thereby foregoing both any due attribution and any information required to possibly locate the resource again, should the link die.
I have seen styleguides that generally forbid the use of footnotes (e.g. "Please do not use footnotes at all!"), but I have yet to see a styleguide that generally forbids the use of a bibliography. By not using any footnotes, your manuscript is one step closer to being agnostic of the final formatting used (and thus matches with the ideal of separating content from layout).
If the same web resource is mentioned twice throughout your document, there is absolutely no problem if the link is provided in a bibliography item, which is simply referenced twice in your text, if appropriate (e.g. if the two mentions are sufficiently far apart). If the link is in a footnote, on the other hand, things are not so clear:

The footnote can be added several times in the document. However, this means a waste of space, and it may also confuse readers who expect some new information when reading a new footnote for the first time, or who might wonder whether they are looking at a copy-and-paste error where a previously unmentioned link should be provided. Personally, I consider this "solution" downright bad style.
The same footnote can be pointed to several times. While this may be slightly cumbersome in some typesetting software, it is definitely feasible. However, it significantly increases the effort for finding the footnote (it might be on any page in the document), and the need to switch to another page than the one the reader is currently on kind of defeats the purpose of footnotes, anyway.

As a reader, I find keeping track of references, figure numbers, and table numbers that I still want to look into after finishing or while reading the current paragraph or section hard enough. There is no reason to add yet another independent list for footnote numbers.
Also as a reader, I have a certain expectation what amount of information I will find when following a pointer to additional information. For bibliography references, it is clear that the pointer points to an entire external document. For footnotes, I conversely prefer it to be clear that the pointer points to no more than one or two sentences worth of additional information (for which I do not need to search for and/or open another document).

You could include them as an itemized list. Something like:
There is a lot of intest in topic XYZ, as can be seen from the following example websites:

http://(somepersonalwebsite).xyz
http://(department).(institution).xyz/(applicable-tool)/
etc.

It is basically a variation on the table with 1 column, but it looks less "weird".

The first link is not a deep link, the other link is 404, which shows the issue of citable URLs.

I am personally more in favor of using footnotes for that purpose; I used this approach extensively in my theses.
You can use a web link for one of two purposes: to point to the website of something you mentioned, or as a reference to support a statement you make. In the latter case, a citation to a formal reference is preferred (with title, link, authorship date, and the date you last checked the link):

Text: McDonald’s toys are A, B, and C [42].
Reference: [42] “McDonald’s Happy Meal Toy Safety Facts,” McDonald’s Corporation, accessed July 19, 2008, xttp://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html.

But you are asking for the former case, for which I'd opt for something in the lines of:

Text: Social network websites like Facebook¹, Twitter² of LinkedIn³ are... .
Bottom of the page:
¹ http://www.facebook.com
² http://www.twitter.com
³ http://www.linkedin.com

The problem is that this is a "poor" thing. Web is not static and you ought to include the retrieval date to your reference.

That is absolutely true for the case where you cite a web link as a reference. When the web link is just additional information, I'd waive that formality (I guess it's kind of implicit that "this was Facebook's URL as of the date this document was written").

I did it like bibliography using a url shortener, this way the link is usable for those who read it in paper or electronic format and will avoid many issues with the bibliography format.
One thing you should consider is to include the lasta access data to the link (they can remove it).
Just in case, you can consider adding and annex where display the URLs unshortened whit their match, so if anyone can't access any of them can try to search by ieself in the web.

But I do not think using url shortening services to be a good idea. Have you seen this question? Is it OK to present a URL using a link shortening service?

Well, as I said I added both. Shortened in bibliography and unshortened as appendix

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authors: ابراهيم عمران

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text:
Is it a good idea to express my gratitude to a co-author with a gift card?
I am an undergraduate level student planning to put out a research paper for publication. The second author is a PhD student who has helped me to do much editing (including re-writing my entire paper into a concise and expressive form, and also the numerical simulation part). I think he helps me a lot. My friend suggests to me to buy him a gift card at the end to express my gratitude. I am wondering would this be a good idea or not?

Is your question specifically about buying a gift card, or just about buying some sort of gift in general for the person?

You're expressing your gratitude with a publication ;)

Related question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23884/is-it-ethical-to-accept-small-gifts-from-students -- in particular, a box of chocolates (suggested there) seems like a good solution.

Others may differ in opinion, but I personally think that gift cards are a poor choice for expressing personal gratitude.  The problem is that gift cards are effectively cash with spending restrictions.  Your colleague has invested time and energy in helping you, and giving cash would essentially be saying how much per hour you feel their time is worth.
Instead, I would recommend offering something like taking them out for a fancy lunch, which invests your time and gives the two of you a chance to do some informal bonding and building of your professional relationship.  Unless, of course you don't actually want to spend time alone with this colleague (many possible good reasons for that), in which case I would still recommend looking for some way to express gratitude that shows an investment of time and caring beyond just money.

Exactly my thoughts on gifts cards: I don't want to be tacky giving cash, so here's some less useful cash. I like the taking out to lunch idea. Doesn't even have to be fancy. I'd love a trip to the local microbrewery, for example.

Or a nice bottle of wine, or something...

@BobBrown Assuming you know their personal and cultural restrictions... between allergies and prohibitions, gifts of food are tricky if you don't know somebody's tastes.

@jakebeal:  You can usually find out with a casual question or two.  "Do you know what kind of wine someone should serve with chicken salad?" for example.

I would probably kindly reject such a gift, since it is essentially giving money and I do not want to receive money for this type of thing. I would be fine with a bottle of wine or a similar thing. It is not money and the "price" part of it is not that important (I, after all, don't even know the price).
Another choice is to invite the person for whatever you think (or know) they like: sushi, good burger, NHL match, ... Just don't "overshoot it", you're younger and they need not be exactly interested in coming for an NHL match with you, because they may plan to go there with someone else or whatever. Use some sort of common sense for this.
Last but not least (and I consider that the best option), invite them for a beer. In my country (Czechia), you even say "Thanks, I owe you a beer" when someone does something good for you (mostly like in your case: spending their time on your project with no reward expected), and quite often the people really end up having a beer or two. I think you can invite them for a beer in most countries in the world.

If I was the person who helped, I would indeed be very positively surprised to receive anything at all from you (unless it's something offensive). You don't have an obligation to do it and so most people would appreciate whatever time or money you spend into expressing your gratitude.
That said, for the choice I would try to avoid "objects" which are usually rather useless and tend to end up gathering dust somewhere. Food and/or drink are good choices in my opinion. My mother in law knows I like beer and I love it when she gets me four or five different styles when she makes me a present.

Another important issue is: do not overdo it. A present of value, say, 50 or 100$, can not only make the recipient uncomfortable, but it might also be against the regulations of the university. There are often anti-corruption regulations that prohibit university employees from receiving gifts, excluding very small token ones.

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text:
How very high reading/listening but low speaking/writing TOEFL scores are usually judged on graduate admission?
Can you please let me know how following TOEFL scores are usually judged on graduate (mainly master) admission if a) minimum requirement is 100 and b) minimum total requirement is 80 and minimum speaking requirement is 24?
Reading & Listening: 29
Speaking & Writing: 20
Probably I would not have the chance to provide this explanation to admission board however it may be worth mentioning here that I communicate very well in my native language and I can speak better in English without exam pressure. I have learned English on my own and I have not been able to practice speaking/writing enough.

You will likely have to explain this on your application itself, and hope that it doesn't get thrown out because the scores are too low. The problem is that if it's an institutional requirement, you probably won't be able to get around it.

Speaking ability is considered very important; the TOEFL is used to determine if you can speak well enough to teach as a TA at US universities.  Keep in mind teaching is also high pressure, like taking an exam.
These scores might do better with degree programs which do not require the graduate student to teach.
http://www.ets.org/toefl/ibt/scores/understand

This largely depends on the school. Some schools have this as strict requirement others good profile may compensate lower TOEFL scores. In either case, the department secretary/chair is the one who has the answer ( or the graduate studies office).

Besides the aspects of TA roles, there are other issues with both speaking and writing. On speaking, will you be able to participate properly in class discussions, will you be able to ask sufficient questions when stuck in a topic.
On writing, most assessment will be in written form and the inability to communicate clearly in written English can cost you a significant amount of marks.
Besides this, you need to think about your ability to listen to spoken English. Listening and reading are separate skills, and the inability to consume spoken English can entirely undermine your studies.
Based upon my experience with master students (we increased our requirements at some point, computer science is actually remarkably dependent on good English), you really do not want to skimp on the English requirement. Poor English tends to result in poor or failing results, despite the student's inherent capabilities.
Finally, most programmes want to admit foreign (profit making) students. Language requirements tend to be absolute minimums and going below them tends to be inadvisable from both sides (student and university).


text:
What should I do as a teaching assistant when I find cheating behavior from actual grading?
Update:
I found 8 students cheating in today's quiz despite stern warning and personal threatening to kick them out of the classroom if I notice cheating behavior again. 4 of them also likely cheated last time. The main reason is I left 5 minutes to fetch old quiz from last time.
I have reported this to the instructor and the two chairs of the department as well as sending the quiz sheets. I am very upset even though it "is not my fault". I have asked the professors explicitly that I do not to see these students in classroom again.

I work as a probability&statistics TA. During actual grading of the quiz papers submitted by students, I suspect some students are involved in cheating. The question is what I should do. I should note that my relationship with students is not the best judged from past experience.
The evidence that support my claim students were cheating in the quiz was follows:

During the quiz, I noticed students A, B, C, D, E, F, etc sitting very close to each other. I pulled their chairs apart and minutes later their chairs were close again. While I did not suspect cheating, I felt this is quite strange. In the end I have to pull their chairs apart three times. I also noticed they talking to each other, but I am not sure if they were borrowing the calculator or something. I simply did not suspect cheating.
During the actual grading I found the students A, B, C, D, E, F, etc all submitted work of very low quality and they made identical elementary mistakes like 1+1=3 on their exam sheets. This elementary mistake was carried through to the second part of the exam, such that a few of them did not bother to give any derivation to the wrong results in the test paper.

I have reported this to the professor, who avoided my email on any discussion with this topic. My questions are as follows:

If I want to report cheating, how do I make sure students A, B, C, D, E, F, etc all cheated? Of course there is a small chance that they all made the "stupid mistake" due to some random misunderstanding. For example, maybe students E, F did not cheat; they simply misunderstood the problem or their Casio calculator malfunctioned. Who knows?

For example, when I was an undergraduate, I was wrongly accused for cheating, and I knew such accusations makes people psychologically very uncomfortable even if turned out false in the end. While I am quite confident with what I found, I do not want to be the mean professor who treated me that way. I checked the university honor code and it says "the instructor should communicate with the students regarding the nature of the charge and the evidence...". I simply do not know what to say in this case. Should I simply say "I am suspecting you of cheating behavior, please explain yourself", or something?

More importantly, what I should do for the future to the class to prevent cheating? I put "cheating behavior means -10 points and an invitation to visit the Dean" in every exam sheet. But I could not prevent this situation from happening again in future. I felt very uncomfortable that I am preparing lecture for students who paid negative amount of input to the class material. To me a student walking out of the classroom and believe my lecture was tedious is okay; one do not need to take the class if one already knew the material.

But cheating behavior is far worse; it makes the normal Q&A process break down, and I simply do not know what feedback should I give to the students who cheated. It also makes life very unfair for students who made an huge effort but did not do as well as cheaters. I find it very difficult to prepare the lecture in the same mood again and pretend that this have not happened.

In the extreme case, if the professor took no action at all, what should I do next? Should I waste many hours coming back and forth on this "trivial" issue and facing various committees, or should I simply turn a deaf ear on it because this is first time offense? To me, this seems a black and white situation. But I am still quite confused.

"To me, this seems a black and white" - How you feel is important to you but you must consider how your school (employer) wants you to handle it. If your school/department/boss does not care then you need to ask yourself if your personal values are properly aligned with those of the organization. Don't assume the prof got/read/understood the email - grab him/her in the hallway for a 30 second chat to be clear. In my case, I would demand the students explain themselves and if I were unhappy with their explanation, I would fail them (but my school is quite clear on the issue of cheating).

Since they all submitted work of very low quality => they will get a low grade, why do you need to punish them for cheating as well? Is not a low grade enough punishment?

No, the issue is rules are rules, not just about grades. For example, comparing to an honest student who performed equally badly or even worse, the cheating student did not do any work and get a higher or equal mark. Is this fair? Is this how the system should work? Can this be justified by slogans like "great artist steal"? I think the answers are all NO.

Seat the students in alphabetical order for the next exam.

I pulled their chairs apart and minutes later their chairs were close again. — As soon as the students moved their seats closer together, you could have reasonably and fairly kicked them out and given them zeros.  A slightly less confrontational approach would have been to ask the students to switch seats with people scattered around the room.

In the extreme case, if the professor took no action at all, what should I do next? — Perhaps complain to the department head and ask to be reassigned to a different class.  But for the students you suspect are cheating?  Sorry, but your job is done; the instructor gets to decide.

I have reported this to the professor, who avoided my email on any discussion with this topic. — So you went to their office to discuss the situation in person.  Right?

You are totally right, I shall have a face to face meeting with him as soon as possible.

Not having been there, I can't say for sure; however, given points #1 and #2 in your post, I think you have a very strong case for suspicion of cheating.

I usually reserve empty seats at the corners in the room, and I would calmly ask students who I suspected cheating to move to those empty seats. I would not mention why, but they knew why and never had they argue about my request and they will move to the empty seats silently...

1), 2) ad 3) are different questions and they deserve separate question threads.

This is an old question, I know, but just to add one thing: Make sure you are 100% clear about any cheating policies from day 1.  I have found that when I spell things out I get a lot less cheating than when I don't.

Addressing (3): You should check the policies at your institution, but a common rule is that the only person who can initiate academic dishonesty proceedings is the instructor of record for the course, ie the professor. This means that you cannot prosecute the students yourself; your job is to report   what you observed to the professor, and let her handle it. (Note that references to "instructor" in university policies most likely do not include TAs.)
You say the professor is "avoiding" your emails about this, but how do you know? One possibility is that she hasn't received them, or hasn't read them; so you should contact her by some other means and ask if she got them. Once you have verified that she did, that is where your responsibility ends, unless you are asked to further explain your evidence, appear at a formal hearing, etc.
Another possibility is that she got your report and decided not to take any action. Again, policies vary, but most likely that is her prerogative. Maybe she thinks the evidence is not strong enough, or knows something about the disciplinary procedure that you do not, or simply wants to avoid conflict. Whatever. Her problem, not yours.
A third option is that she is taking steps to punish the students, but has not told you about it. Again depending on policies, she may not be allowed to do so; such proceedings are usually confidential, and you don't really have a need to know.
So in short: make your report to the professor, verify that it was received, and move on with your life.

What I meant is I sent the instructor (or professor) the email inquiring on this matter twice, and he responded to an earlier email, but not this one. I asked for his response on this one and he did not answer me.

@Bombyxmori: I agree it seems likely that he got your email, but not certain (people read emails out of order, etc), so you should make absolutely sure.    My advice still applies: contact him some other way (by phone, in person, etc), verify that he received your emails regarding this matter, and let him know you are available to provide further information or participate in formal proceedings if needed.  You don't need to ask him whether he intends to prosecute the case further; it's really not something you need to know.

Thanks a lot. I feel I avoided another possible social disaster. I am grateful for your help.

I have a discussion with the chair, the professor and some other professor. They did precisely as you suggested and the issue is off my hands. The professor (or the instructor) told me he would have a private talk with the students and see how it goes. Thanks a lot for the advice.

Disclaimers: Firstly, how cheating is treated varies a lot among different countries, so what I'm going to say might not be applicable to your case. Secondly, you actually ask several questions, and I shall concentrate just on the following one:

More importantly, what I should do for the future to the class to prevent cheating?

The students' behaviour you describe in point 1) should be cut off directly during the exam, and not discussed afterwards. In general, I enforce the following rules:

Students are not allowed to talk to each other. If I find two or more students trying to talk to each other, I warn them once, but the second time they're out.
Students should bring their own calculators and cannot borrow calculators from other students. If a students forgets her/his calculator, too bad, she/he can employ the good ol' pencil and paper method of calculation.
We don't have movable chairs, but, in case: if you're too close, the first time I come to pull you apart and warn you; the second time, that's the door and you're welcome to walk out of it.

An important reason to prohibit sharing calculators is that it is trivial to exchange answers through them.

Agreed.  Students talking to each other during a test?  Sharing a calculator?  Moving desks together?  This is an egregious failing of discipline.  Maybe things are different these days, but when I was a student any of these would have been grounds for having one's test put in the shredder, followed swiftly by an escort to the door.  That these students have the gall to even test those borders indicates a systemic failure to impress upon them the seriousness of cheating (and certainly a failure to enforce very normal rules that would prevent exactly this sort of thing).

This is an answer to your second question: "More importantly, what I should do for the future to the class to prevent cheating?"
I usually give different sets of exams; usually three is enough.  Make sure students sitting next to each other have different sets assigned to them.  Have the students sign an attendance sheet indicating what set they were given.  (This sheet can be distributed while they are taking the exam.  While they are filling it up, verify that the set they indicated in the sheet matches the actual set given to them.)
Let's say the sets have the following questions:
Set A: 2+5=, 6+2=, 3+3=, 0+9=  (answers: 7 8 6 9)
Set B: 2+4=, 7+2=, 4+4=, 0+7=  (answers: 6 9 8 7)
Set C: 3+5=, 5+2=, 5+5=, 0+6=  (answers: 8 7 10 6)
Let's say that students X, Y, and Z were given sets A, B, and C, respectively.  If student Y is seated in between X and Z and answers 7 8 6 9, then this is extremely strong evidence that student Y copied from student X (and not from Z).  (The example I've given has four answers copied, but if there are much more, then the evidence would be stronger.)  Keep the test papers of students X and Y (and maybe even Z) as evidence, but do return copies of the test papers to them.
Show the evidence to students X and Y.  They may or they may not admit guilt.  If they do, then obtain proof of it (a signed statement or a video).  Submit all the evidence (including the admission of guilt) to the student disciplinary body*.  There is a very good chance they will find the students guilty.
By showing the students that you report cases of cheating and that you win them, students will be less likely to cheat in your class in the future.
Note:
*I realize that my answer here is more appropriate for teachers of a course, and not for teaching assistants. If, in your institution, a teaching assistant is not supposed to go directly to the student disciplinary body, then present the evidence to the teacher. Your problem is now whether or not the teacher will act on it.

To prevent the students from accusing you of faking their test papers, have the students sign the papers before they submit them.

If I were on an academic misconduct panel hearing your charge, I would not give much credence to subjective reports of strangeness and sitting close, unless the distances were strikingly abnormal. In light of the physical constraints of the room and the typical spread of students in that space, and especially assuming that these students were close friends a.k.a. study-buddies, how far off of the norm was their spacing? [Suggestion for the future: require cheating suspects to sit in completely different areas during exams; put it on the syllabus that during exams, you will randomly move students within the room, at your discretion]. Your second basis is, potentially, clear and objective, and is the evidence that these panels require.
I am a bit confused about your second basis, that they all claimed that 1+1=3 -- that is so incredibly unlikely that I have to believe that you are speaking somewhat metaphorically. If that is really the case, then that's a key to your dilemma. Suppose, for example, that the accused all made the same elementary mistake in confusing "standard deviation" and "standard error". In a sense that's a very elementary mistake, but in another sense, it's a beginner's mistake that's likely to be propagated in an under-informed study group. However, if you are talking about a really elementary arithmetic error that is exactly repeated in the group, and you were not speaking metaphorically, that is an event of such low probability of occurrence that you could probably say why it can't be due to a non-cheating common cause. So it is crucial to carefully examine the nature of the shared error.
Typically, the instructor of record has to be the one to make the formal accusation. You should request a meeting with the professor (yes, not pleasant) to discuss the problem in person (forget email), and be prepared to suggest a three-way meeting with the chair. If pursuing the matter would not cause you severe problems (the professor hating you forever and voting to terminate your funding because you stirred the pot), I would say you should pursue the matter. If there would be negative consequences for pursuing justice, it comes down to the question of how much you care about justice. [A totally neutral way of framing the matter, of course].

Well, what they exactly claimed is 0.1+0.2+0.05=0.3. This is what confuses me when I was grading, because I tend to ignore arithmetic mistakes and looking for the ideas. I did not notice this "impossible mistake" until I decide to take a closer look because their solution for the second part of the exam has the same mistake, and I did not know where it was coming from. After double checking this I felt astounded.

@user6726 I agree with much of what you've written but I see no need to involve the department chair. In my experience these matters are typically handled by the instructor of record and the institutional committee overseeing issues of academic integrity.

"If I were on an academic misconduct panel hearing your charge, I would not give much credence to subjective reports of strangeness and sitting close" - While I agree the OP's position is by no means ideal as they seem to be the only one who consciously witnessed that, aren't "subjective reports" about any suspicious behaviour the very reason for having various proctors in the room? Whenever I proctored, I was supposed to write down any such observations (and notify other proctors in the same room to confirm!) on the seating chart, so anomalies discovered while grading can be cross-checked.

that is so incredibly unlikely that I have to believe that you are speaking somewhat metaphorically — Really? Then you haven't been teaching very long.

@JeffE, 35 years. Though not in math. Anyway, turns out it was arithmetic, but not a single-digit integer sum error, so it was a bit of a metaphor. So @ Bombyx mori, are these all and only the students who made this mistake (out of how many)? I assume that the truncation can't be explained by a shared calculator setting.

@user6726: Yes, at first I thought A, B, C, D, E, F all involved, but a closer examination revealed E, F confused problem 1 with problem 2. So they submitted the same 0.3=0.35 answer, but probably not because of copying from other people. I am quite confident that at least A, B, C, D were all involved as the same mistake carried to the second part of their computation as well.

@user6726: forgot to report the number. It is 4/30.


text:
Three papers came out on new technique at almost the same time. What order do I cite?
Three papers on a new technique came out at almost the same time. They are all similar and introduce a new method that I use in my research by providing a range of examples of that technique.
Below are the dates the journals record it as received, accepted, first available online, and then the year of the official citation.
 Paper#  Received     Accepted     Available    Citation Yr.
 P1      2011-11-29   2012-06-21   2012-08-11   2012
 P2      2011-12-12   2012-11-01   2012-11-08   2013
 P3      2012-01-09   2012-08-30   2012-09-05   2012

By order received: P1, P2, P3
By order accepted: P1, P3, P2
By citation year:  (P1 P3), P2

Q: Should I cite all of them? I assume so. In which case, which order?
I would like to cite all three, since all are in reputable journals and their submission dates were so close that I assume all three did independent work and are deserving of a proper citation. I am not sure what order to cite them in.

All of them! You can fatten your citations list by three entries in a nearly a single stroke. :)

I intend to cite all three. I'm not sure fatter citation list is always a good thing.

I would cite all three, in alphabetical order (in the text, not just in the bibliography), with the phrase "independently discovered/developed by...".

Different journals have different ways of listing multiple references. I am used to see chronological order in which case P1/P3-P2 would be the order. I write P1/P3 because usually one does not keep track of chronology within a year (although it can (now) be done). It is otherwise common to put authors alphabetically within the same year. If a journal uses aplhabetical order as a basis then the order is of course different. P1-P3-P2 is of course the most straight forward way.
I would definitely put all three in, acknowledging their work. Citing only one of them may come across as not knowing the other publications and thereby the field.

chronological order in which case P1/P3-P2 would be the order — But there are multiple chronological orders.  Arguably the order of submission (P1,P2,P3) is a better indicator of priority than the order of publication (P1,P2,P2).  And  all three papers were actually published (= made available) in the same year, so why isolate P2?

I agree, but it is not certain that all dates are known. Submission dates could of course be more representative than publication dates for the order in which ideas have grown but not even that is certain (if one wants to represent the true first thought on the matter). It really is difficult to be "correct" at this level of detail.

This could be a very delicate diplomatic issue. There might be three groups arguing over the paternity of the original idea. I strongly suggest citing all three.
As for the order, first of all check the journal guidelines. In my field, typically citations are numbered in alphabetical order in the bibliography; if it's the same in yours, then I suggest you to cite them ordered by their citation number (thus alphabetically), i.e., put them in the same bracketed list [a,b,c], with a<b<c.
Ordering the references like this is a good habit to adopt exactly because of these attribution issues.

In the bibliography it is alphabetical, but in the text it is "Author (YYYY)" I could say "Method foo [AX (YYYY), AY (YYY), AZ (YYYY)]", and the AX,AY,AZ could be any order. That is the focus of this question (now clarified).

Yes, I understand what you are saying. My suggestion is: put AX, AY, AZ in alphabetical order. In the text as well, not only in the bibliography.

You should absolutely cite all three papers, if they are all equally relevant to the work at hand. There's no logical reason to exclude one or more of them—even if there were (for instance) a flaw in the methodology, you could still say "introduced by paper X, and an improved version by paper Y" or something similar to that.
As for the actual order of citations, I don't think, in the context of a single citation, which order you pick. You could even pick alphabetical order, if that's what you thought was most appropriate.
Now, if all three were in development more or less simultaneously—which appears to be the case here—establishing "true" priority is somewhat more complicated. I would choose whichever order  best fits the "flow" of the arguments you wish to make with these papers.
The most important thing, as I mentioned at the top, though, is that you cite the papers; everything after that is "author judgment," and is unlikely to be argued (unless one of the authors ends up reviewing your paper!).

establishing "true" priority is somewhat more complicated — No, not really.  Assuming everyone acted in good faith (which we must), all three authors were first.


text:
Modify the page layout of application materials (i.e. A4 vs. Letter) when applying for jobs in multiple countries?
Most countries use A4 paper. The US and Canada use letter paper. When applying for jobs across several countries should application materials always be designed to meet the page layout norms for the particular job location? Will materials even be printed?

That's why I like writing in LaTeX..

Well, in principle yes, but if you have a strange CV format that does things with the margins, including "a4paper" or "letterpaper" will not work as it is intended.

Question 1: When applying for jobs across several countries should application materials always be designed to meet the page layout norms for the particular job location?

I had never even considered doing this and I would not bother trying to change the paper format. If you do not change it, software will shrink the text to fit when it is printed. It might not look ideal but it is the content that matters. I can't imagine that anybody is going to hold the fact that you come from an A4 using country against you. If you do change it, probably nobody will notice.

Question 2: Will materials even be printed?

I was just on a search committee. Every single member of the committee brought a laptop or tablet to the meeting. No printouts. When the shortlisted candidates were forwarded to the full department, I noticed that some people on the full faculty had printed out application materials. So, maybe?


text:
Is it worth self-funding a PhD to attend a top 10 university?
What should I opt for?
Option A) very well paid PhD, around €3000 per month at a respectable university
or;
Option B) a non-paid PhD, where I have to pay €2000 per year at one of the top 10 universities of the world?
EDIT: Actually they are both UK universities, Option B  is ranked between the top 10 in the world in engineering and tech, and I do get a scholarship that pays 18000 pounds which covers the difference between international student tuition and EU tuition. In Option A, I will be doing research in a good university and will be working alongside giants in the industry.

Your second question was addressed in University rank/stature - How much does it affect one's career post-Ph.D?

Is it worth self-funding? I don't know your income.

Related: Implications of being accepted without funding?

In what field?  "Top 10 university" doesn't matter; "top 10 department" might.

Top 10 university does sound wrong here. It doesn't sound like a US or UK university (low tuition and €) and then top 10 is strange (whatever definition of top 10 you are using). I guess he is talking about top 10 department already? In addition option A sounds very much like a position at a  German university. Then it is probably 3k before taxes and you really have to work for it. How much depends on your supervisor but it is common that you have so much teaching and grading obligations that you don't have time for your PhD any more.

My knee-jerk reaction is "if they are top 10 in the world, why don't they fund their students?" I'm sure this probably varies by field, but "it's an amazing place" and "I only have to pay them X" in reference to a PhD makes me feel very skeptical. Is anyone aware of top-10s that don't fund their PhDs in some fields?

actually UK university, ranked between the first 10 in the world in engineering and tech, and i do get a scholarship that pays 18000 pounds which covers the diff between international student tuition and EU tuition

Option B to me sounds like "should I do a 4 years unpaid internship at Google? It will be great for my CV!".

exactly Davidmh :) so should i ? i mean we are talking about one of the best universities on the planet

@BrianDHall They might not fund all their students, or funding might not be guaranteed and be significantly more cut-throat. I've heard of, but thankfully not been involved with, both.

I guess the answer VERY much depends on A) what you want to do after the PhD, B) which group you can actually do your research.  In my field (Chemistry), prestige is important but nothing that you cannot fix during a strog post-doc

Congratulations on receiving these two offers from good universities, both of which offer at least some funding. I make it that the difference between your two options is about €114000 over the three-year period that UK PhDs are usually funded for. This is probably a very large difference and it might be worth trying to ask somebody within your field who knows both institutions and departments whether that would be worth it.
Certainly, self-funded students can survive PhDs in the UK, and your prospects of successfully completing are probably better than average if you are in engineering and tech. In addition, it may be a realistic prospect in the UK to receive payment for carrying out some teaching and demonstrating. I would advise asking about this possibility before you commit to option B. Look at the research council guidelines beforehand to try to gauge the best practices for salary and training.
However, there may be more important criteria than money. In one department I worked in I saw hoards of both funded and self-funding students abandoned by a particular supervisor before they quit. Don't let this be you. The (prestigious) department did nothing; it was absolutely buyer beware. So the usual advice applies: Talk to your supervisor's previous students, did they complete on time? What are they doing now? Did they see others around them succeed and being supported? Did they feel the supervisor, department and university helped them to succeed? Unfortunately, a top department is absolutely no guarantee of a non-toxic research culture in the group.
If option A is research council funded (or is funded by a high-profile UK body or another funder demanding results for their money), this would weigh heavily in my decision to take it, even if it is at a less prestigious university. There will be consequences for the group and department if a council-funded student fails to finish by the four-year deadline, and this means that both the supervisor and institution are absolutely committed to the student succeeding and solutions will have to be found if things start to go wrong.

Thank you for your answer, i will try to look up some of the supervisor's students and see what happened to their research and their careers, i guess that would be best.
And you did make a great point there, i guess if they are willing to pay me some money to do their research they would be more than ready to help me get some results

I believe the four year deadline applies to all students, not just RC funded. Of course, departments can be more creative about reporting times for non-funded students, but at my institution the 4 year deadline is a blanket policy, irrespective of funding source.

Allowing self funding also introduces a bias against socioeconomically disadvantaged students, and corrupts academic integrity of the department.  Allowing self funding is wrong.

Unless you're independently wealthy I think it is always unwise to do an unfunded Ph.D. program.  With the current academic market the way that it is, there's just no guarantee that you will get a good job with the Ph.D. that will allow you to quickly pay off your debt.  There's also no guarantee that you'll get a Ph.D. at all.  We're talking about over a hundred thousand euros!  There are some advantages to a top ranked department (as ff524 says, university ranking is irrelevant), but it's not 100K euros worth of advantage (especially since often a lot of the advantage of a top dept. is that they're better funded and so students can concentrate more on research).

This is less clear, so I haven't put it in the answer.  But I think it's unethical for school B to not fund their Ph.D. students, and you shouldn't encourage their behavior by going there.

I agee with your answer (apart from the 100k, I don't know where you got that from) but not your comment. 2000 € / years is a very reasonable tuition and I guess they have some funded and some unfunded positions (=> positions in which the student has aquired some external funding on his own, which is afair not that uncommon in some fields in the EU).

@TheAlmightyBob: I'm not sure if it's 27K, 30K or 36K a year, and whether the expected length is 3,4, or 5 years, but at a bare minimum that's 81K+6K=87K and if any of those numbers aren't the minimum it's over 100K.

@NoahSnyder I also do not understand the 27k-36k per year. The question says €2,000/year. Are you including living or other expenses?

@earthling he is including the opportunity costs of the other position. However, I guess the 3k are not really 3k € / month as mentioned in the comment to the question but the main point still stands.

While what you should opt for is clearly a personal decision, my stance is the following:
You Should Never Take An Unfunded PhD Position
There is already a decently high opportunity cost for getting a PhD - adding substantial amounts of debt (or erosion of savings to it) just makes this opportunity cost worse. It will put tremendous pressure on you coming out the other end into the job market, and generally speaking I've never encountered an institution that didn't use unfunded positions as a sort of "soft rejection" signaling mechanism.
The hope may be, of course, that you come, prove to be an outstanding researcher, and can find funding with a member of the faculty, but that's a hope, and one that's far from guaranteed.
Especially considering that your second, funded option sounds like a very decent choice of school, I wouldn't do it unless you're genuinely independently wealthy to the point that all of this is a purely theoretical discussion, but my guess is that's not the case.

Usually no, it is not worth self-funding a PhD program; in your case, however, I think it is worth it for two reasons:

Awesome top-10 school in your country
Relatively cheap (ration between cost of education to future income).

I will share my experience with you. Right now I am in-directly paying for my PhD. I was accepted in a Computer Engineering PhD program at a state school which is a fairly well known public research school, among the top 50 in the United States. I am using my company's education benefit to fund my education. For me it has been worth it but if I had to pay tuition entirely myself, I wouldn't do it since I already have masters degree and there won't be any major pay increase at my current employer.

Some calculations using the input parameters you gave.
Option A: Assuming a 3-year PhD, you are earning €36,000 a year, or €108,000 over the duration of the PhD.
Option B: Assuming a 3-year PhD, you are losing €24,000 a year, or €72,000 over the duration of the PhD.
Let's assume that if you take option A, you go on to a job that pays a discretionary income of €3,000 a month (i.e. 3000 after all taxes and basic spending are deducted). If you take option B, you instead get €3,000 + X a month, where X is a positive number. (This is an assumption, and there's no guarantee that it will indeed happen.) Further, let's assume you save the entire sum, that you graduate at age 30 and work until 65, and your monthly salary never increases faster than the rate of inflation.
Next we assume that you already have enough money saved such that if you take option B, you start your working life with €0 (no student debt). That means that if you take option A, you start with €180,000. The average return of the S&P 500 per year over the past 90 years is 9.8%. This is the rate of return at which you're increasing your savings.
Now we can use a compound interest calculator to figure out how much money you have at retirement. Given €180,000 starting principal, €36,000 annual addition, 9.8% interest rate, and 35 years to compound, Option A gives €14,978,512.10. With option B, you have €0 starting principal, unknown annual addition, 9.8% interest rate, and 35 years to compound. Fiddling with the annual addition yields the result: to get the same ~€15 million retirement fund, you need an annual addition of €52,700.
You'll need to vary the parameters to fit your situation of course, but the result of this analysis is typical. Your monthly discretionary income needs to be at least ~€4392, or X must be at least €1392, for Option B to be competitive with Option A.
Do graduates with a degree from a top 10 university earn €1392 more per month than graduates from a lower-ranked university? You can ask around, but I'm pretty confident the answer is "no" unless you are in a field where average monthly earnings are five figures or greater.
tl; dr: take the funded position.

Make sure your supervising professor is a world famous researcher in your field of choice and that they are a large research department. Check out their past students. Did they achieve research careers or leaving the country?
I did a PhD that straddled two fields; my supervisor was expert in field A, while I was interested in working in field B. The department was also based on field A. After I had successfully published a paper, a rival university tried to derail me from working in field B, because I was stepping on their toes.  I ended up having my PhD deliberately dragged out for four years.


text:
How can I express my motivation to join a Masters program if I have no experience in the area?
I am planning to apply to a specific master program in Finance. I do not have any experience in Finance and have never worked in any project related to Finance. But I am very interested to study it because I want to enlarge my research area (which is in signal processing) and have more job opportunities in the future. I really believe that I can excel in the program if I study it.
Can you please help me in writing two or three sentences that can motivate my interest to a program although that I have no work experience on it? I am trying to write a cover letter and I need your help.

Finance at the higher levels is fairly mathematical (stochastic differential equations, stochastic calculus). There's a lot of probability theory. Have you taken courses on random processes? If so, try to draw a connection between what you know and the topics covered in the masters program.

You just expressed your motivation to us. You want to enlarge your research area and improve your employability. Why not say that?

@ErikM Thank you for your comment:)

@Flyto You are right. I will also say that in my letter.

Why do you believe that you can excel? Find a good reason or two for that and put these in the letter.
Did you research the topic? You say you have no experience and never worked on it, so do you even know what it is about, or do you only know public believes (that might be really wrong)? If you didn't research it, then do. If you did and still believe you want to do it, then show in your letter that you actually know what you are getting into and explain why you want it.
You want to enlarge your research area, that is good. How would this program help? What will you be able to do, with both knowledge from signal processing and this program? If the both are totally disjoined and have no overlap, then think again why you want it. If there is something that you could do better when knowing both topics, in the letter it goes.

Thank you a lot for your words. I have edited my question. I just specified the program that I am interested in! Yes you are right. I think should first research well the program and then see what is interesting for me.

I assume that the new area isn't just a random choice. Think about what it was about that area that drew you to it and say some things about that. It would also be good to work in a bit about how your background and training makes this a natural trajectory for you. If you have read papers in the new area and find them interesting and think you can contribute to the ideas there, say something about that.
Even your statement here that you want to broaden your horizons is positive, but, alone, it is worth only a little.

Thank you for your answer. I have edited my question. I just specified the program that I am interested in!

Exactly, I think I really should read some papers related to the program and see why I am interested.


text:
What are the acceptance rates at various CS masters degree programs?
I'm an undergraduate student at a top CS school who is looking to apply for my Master's soon (in about a year or so). I am applying to my school's 5 year masters program as a backup, but I would prefer to switch schools just to get a different experience.
My first question has to do with the acceptance rates of various CS Masters degree programs. I found that it was very difficult to search for the acceptance rates for various schools that I am interested in. Some of those schools include Yale, Berkeley, Stanford, and CalTech. However, I was unable to find acceptance rates for any of these schools. Could someone point me to a resource that I could use, or just give me the acceptance rates? Also, are there any "underrated" schools that I should be aware of (and by underrated, I mean high acceptance rates and good departments)?

I'd recommend looking at the U.S. & World Report graduate school rankings (you have to pay for access).  At top schools there is probably not too much difference in the qualifications required for prospective MS or PhD students when choosing among applications.

Professional masters or research masters?

I suspect that most programs do not post their acceptance rates at the master's level. That's in part because they could be subject to wild fluctuations from year to year, as the number of applications change.
In particular, one other thing to consider: most graduate programs have a target of incoming students they want to enroll. They will generally admit only as many students as they feel they need to reach the goal. If students are accepting offers at higher-than-expected rates, they may lower the admit rate in subsequent years to compensate. Similarly, if they are under their target, they may admit a larger than expected pool.
Considering top-tier schools, my suspicion (although I don't have the numerical evidence) is that they get enough qualified applications that admissions now are partly a "lottery": if you meet the qualifications of a typical student, you may or may not get in, depending on the needs of the department in that particular year. So just do your best.

Depends on the school. Some milk the undergrads, some the grad students, some make each level pay its own way.

I found this link on Quora. It looks like top 30 programs all have nearly same acceptance rates hovering from 6% to 10%.
When you mean underrated, I understand it as underrated by public and does not trigger 'wow' to public which includes Big Ten schools like Purdue, Penn State, UMichigan, UMaryland, UMadison, and other schools like UCIrvine, UCSanDiego, UTAustin, Georgia Tech etc.
Overrated are Ivy Leagues for sure including Harvard, Columbia and revenue generator masters programs in USC, UPenn, Brown, Johns Hopkins etc. (for CS/IT)
Level (neither underrated nor overrated) are CMU, Stanford, UIUC, MIT, Caltech, Princeton etc.


text:
How to find out whether a PhD dissertation is ready to submit?
How one may know that his/her work is good and enough for getting PhD? Does it depend on the number of words, pages, number of published paper or some things else?

By definition, your work is good enough for a PhD when your thesis committee signs the paperwork.

In most situations that I've seen, a thesis is complete when the adviser says that it is.  Other members of the thesis committee or (in my department) members of the department's doctoral committee can, in principle, still raise objections, but this is very unusual.  In 45 years of teaching, I remember only two cases where the thesis committee raised a question and none in which the department's doctoral committee raised a question.

You should talk about this with your advisor and your consultant professors. You can complete your report and show it to your advisers. They will read and tell you what lacks in your report. Also, you may talk to the members of your PhD committee orally before giving them your report. They may give you some guides or some of their expectations.
Talk to the previous PhD students and see what brought them to the point that their PhD was ready to be presented.
Another important thing is your PhD proposal in which you have clarified your goals of your dissertation. If you have completed your promises in the proposal (or you have strong reasons why could not reach some of your goals), then your work is completed.
Another thing may be regulations of your department. Some departments require their students to submit one or two journal or conference papers out of their PhD project. You can check your department's regulations on what are their expectations from a complete PhD project.

@Nora I am not sure but it may be a good idea to see what are your funding provider's expectations on your final PhD dissertation.


text:
Is it ethical to ask the postdoc employer to cover my trips for visa purposes as well as my main travel fees?
I will soon start doing a postdoc in country A, and the employer says there will be a generous relocation package. My home is in country B and I did my PhD in country C.
The question is: in order to apply for the entry visa for country A, I had to first return to my home country B and apply from there, instead of applying in C, as my PhD visa for country C ran out. So the relocation involves two travels, from C to B, and then from B to A.
Would it be ethical to ask the employer to cover my flight from C to B as well? Yes, the primary reason for coming back to country B is visa application, but this can also be considered visiting family and therefore not related to work. Any suggestions?

What about asking your future university?

In the cases the I have known in the U.S., the relocation allowance is a fixed amount of money, and the university is fine with it being spent on anything reasonably related to relocation.  If this is the case with your university as well, then they'll probably be fine with it being spent on your combination of expenses---but if they combination of flights is expensive, you are likely to hit the cap and have some of the costs become your own responsibility.
The exact rules and regulations, however, can vary highly from place to place, so you really need to ask your university.

An additional wrinkle in the US is that the IRS says that reimbursements for certain specific kinds of moving expenses are tax free. That would probably include your trip from B to A, but not your trip from C to B. The university might be willing to reimburse you for the latter anyway, but you'd have to pay income tax on that part of the reimbursement.


text:
What is the responsibility of a publication board in relation to ethical subject studies?
While journals are in large part the main venue for academic publishing, conferences are heavily utilized in some other venues.  It seems from the venues I have been around, there is a separation between these two types of venues in regards to ethical review for publication.
While PLOS ONE has a specific statement about this:

Researchers submitting studies involving human participants must meet
the following requirements:
Obtain prior approval for human subjects research by an institutional
review board (IRB) or equivalent ethics committee(s)
...
All submissions describing clinical research and/or research on human
subjects will be checked by journal staff to ensure that the
requirements above are met. Failure to meet requirements may be
grounds for rejection. If issues are discovered after publication, we
may issue a correction or retraction as appropriate.

Organizations like COPE, which seem to be used by many groups (including ACM) do not seem to have ethical human subject studies under their 'Ethics' category.
Is receiving IRB approval only a matter that a university should care about? If an organization includes in proceedings or issue a paper that did not have IRB approval, is it only up to the university or author to retract this, or does the organization have a responsibility to do this?

Do you know of any reputable journal/conference that publishes human subjects research that does not have a requirement for IRB? Also COPE clearly addresses this as part of their core practices https://publicationethics.org/files/editable-bean/COPE_Core_Practices_0.pdf "Ethical oversight should include, but is not limited to, policies
on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations,
ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of
research using human subjects, handling confidential data
and of business/marketing practices"

Just browsing around COPE I'm finding many many more items on human subjects research - it almost looks like you purposefully omitted all of those. Why?

@BryanKrause I wasn't omitting them.  If you go to COPE website on the main page it says "Our Core Practices".  I click on "Ethical Oversight" then click "View All Ethical Guidelines".  That is what I put in my question.

@BryanKrause ACM  is pretty respectable, and does not require its affiliates or venues (e.g.,SIGCHI) to check for IRB. It has a general statement that authors agree they have followed their own institutes ethics, but keeps the responsibility only on the author, not a responsibility from the publisher to check.

The "guidelines" are a tiny piece of the COPE website: it's just a name they give to a certain type of article. There are only 12 total entries in that category, versus 783 total articles. "It has a general statement that authors agree they have followed their own institutes ethics" - this is the same as the standard requirement for IRB.

This question is unclear.  I think you're asking what the responsibilities of an ethics board are, and who requires it.  We can't answer this question because it depends on the location.  In addition, in most locations I'm familiar with this would be a legal question rather than an academic question.  In some countries, compliance with ethics review is a matter of criminal law.

In the US, the PHS regulations are fairly specific with respect to Research Integrity and the Responsibilities of institutions, and are found in 42 CFR Part 93.
This regulations mandates that Institutions have a published policy.  Most of the requirements for that policy involve procedures for holding data, investigations, whistleblowers, and doing what they can to protect the reputations of charged individuals who are not found to have committed misconduct.  There are also reporting requiments to ORI and funding institutions.
There are no specific requirements for requesting retractions from journals.  I looked at my own institution's policy, and it does not mention retraction requests.
That said, institutions tend to do whatever they are legally required to, and whatever they can do to protect their reputations.  They are also reticent to do things that they are not required to do that might result in lawsuits.  Put all that together, with appropriate weighting, and I suppose in some cases institutions would request retractions, and in others, they would not.

I know in the US there is the federal law, but that covers the institute, not the publisher.


text:
Do you know if Science/Nature/PNAS accept review articles that are not invited and do not contain original research?
I cannot find any policy on the matter through their websites.

What do their guides for authors say?

It couldn't hurt to write them an email and ask if they would be interested.

Nature Review articles do not need to be invited. And review articles are often not "original research". Nature Reviews http://www.nature.com/reviews/index.html accepts these. So the answers to your questions are "yes" and "yes"

In addition to @mankoff's answer, be aware that it is possible, and indeed common in some fields, to email an editor with an idea, or draft, of a review paper and ask if they'd like to "invite".