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What do you do when you're stuck at a problem?
I'm pretty sure almost all mathematicians have been in a situation where they found an interesting problem; they thought of many different ideas to tackle the problem, but in all of these ideas, there was something missing—either the "middle" part of the argument or the "end" part of the argument. They were stuck and couldn't figure out what to do.

In such a situation what do you do?
Is the reason for the "missing part" the incompleteness in the theory of the topic that the problem is related to? What can be done to find the "missing part"?

For tenure-track/tenure professors, maybe this is not a big deal because they have "enough" time and can let the problem "stew" in the "back-burner" of their mind, but for limited time positions, for example, PhD, postdoc, etc., where the student/employee has to prove their capability to do "independent" research, so that they can be hired for their next position. I think for these people it is quite a bit of a problem, because they can't really afford to spend a "lot" of time thinking about the same problem.
I'm particularly interested in the answer in the realms of mathematics, but I would like hear suggestions from "non-mathematicians" as well.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/112077/why-do-academics-drink-so-much-coffee To quote, "have some coffee! If you're still stuck, have even more coffee!"

ask chatGPT ;-)

@lordy read the last sentence of the abstract - https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13867?fbclid=IwAR3Ab7jnr3IihbBV75Ccs7_EtoLePAqgJzEJp_dK5NHnSSvRi-9BxFXyncY

Cross posted - https://mathoverflow.net/q/440242/338456

@FreePawn I am currently using ChatGPT to bounce ideas off - you need to reword the problem in such a way as to accommodate its ignorance. It's a bright intern that speaks when spoken to.

Cross posting is not allowed and I'm 100% sure you know it!!

Consider successively more special cases of the problem until you find one that you can solve. Work with the typical example instead of the general case.

Consider more general cases of the problem. Yes, sometimes proving a more general statement is easier than proving a very specific one.

Change the question. Just because you set out to solve a certain problem does not mean you need to stick to this plan. If you found a plausible technique that just doesn't fit your intended application, find a different application that it does fit and pretend this was your plan all along.

Zoom out. Consider the problem in a wider context. Think about what it is that you are really trying to do when you abstract away from the details. Instead of thinking in terms of technical details, think in terms of analogies. For example: what I need in my proof is to find the correct analogue of hypermodular widgets on finite simple groups in the context of locally compact groups.

Talk to people about your problem.

Take a break.

Talk to more people about your problem.

Nice list, I would add read (I kept a bibliography of what I read so it made it easy to pop them in to my dissertation/research if needed) and keep a list of research ideas, maybe every month go through your list and add new ideas, variants, or other thoughts.

First, you need to understand that not every math problem is tractable, and many more are not going to be solvable in a fixed time period. Some aren't "ripe" enough in the general course of things for it to be likely that insight will occur, though strange things can happen.
If you work on only the Riemann Hypothesis, you are likely to fail, though you'd be famous if you succeed. The time between the statement and published proof of Fermat's Last Theorem was over 350 years.
For tractable problems, a "vacation" from the problem, even if for an hour or two (or overnight) can sometimes (sometimes!) help. But for truly difficult things, the field might even need to mature for a while and a lot of collaborative discussion might be needed.
So, what you do, when really stuck is to move on to one of your other, hopefully many, lines of inquiry that might result in something that will advance your career while the hard problem "ripens".
Keep a notebook of things that seem interesting and might be followed up in the future. It isn't quite "work in progress", but "future possibilities". Review this notebook periodically and make notations to it if you have gained any insight. Turn to it when you need to set some other project aside, or finish another project.
And, when you leave a problem for an extended period, don't forget to record any partial insights you have when you set it aside. That is, it goes into your future work notebook.

Give up and work on a different problem.
I have in my files (some paper some electronic) notes on about twice as many abandoned projects as I have papers.  And these are only the ones that got far enough for me to have extensive notes.  Counting the problems I've thought about seriously at all, I'm probably batting .050 or so.
It's generally possible to write (and publish) a survey paper on what you learned to work on the problem, or a paper on your partial results.  The survey paper can be helpful if well-written; the partial results paper probably not.  Either could be used to satisfy bureaucrats counting papers, but research mathematicians are unlikely to give either much weight.

What is "batting .050"? A cricket reference?

@PeterMortensen It’s an American baseball reference, referring to the batting average.

I usually have multiple related strands of a project going on at the same time. I will focus on most promising one, but if that stalls I switch to the next most promising. That can be difficult, especially if you already spent a lot of time on a given attempt. However, as you already mentioned, in an early career position you cannot afford to beat your head against the same wall over and over again. The reassuring part is that I found that very often the work I have done in those abandoned strands often came back as useful at a later point in time for another project.

I would break down the parts of the system or function that you are already confident in and create a visual diagram of it, see how the parts interact, and the "missing bit" might just jump out at you.
I would create a few diagrams of your function or system, and I would follow some kind of universal diagramming tool to make it easy, like UML.
Because I'm a software engineer I need to create hugely complex system with no way to hold the whole system in my head at once, I need to break it down into bitesize pieces from a high level all the way down to the minutia.  I would approach understanding a system in the same way though, whether it's software, a social system, a maths problem, they're all just "systems" that have components that interact.
That said, I would create a hierarchy of "Component" diagrams with an "Activity" diagram for each component.  The system itself is a Component so make a top level activity diagram for that too.
The point is to break down what is a huge problem into smaller parts, define how the parts interact and then you can work on one part at a time.
Hope this inspires you :)
EDIT:  Just came across "Category Theory" which looks like a mathsy flavour of UML, should help you map out your missing bits :)

Explain the problem to your dog. Sometimes the solution will jump out at you.

Generic answer, not specific to maths problems. But it should help a little.
When you are stuck on a problem, do any part you know how to do, then look at the overall problem once more.
If you run out of areas you know how to do, then go looking in "the usual sources" for possible methods to approach it. Textbooks on the subject. Also web pages, journal articles, etc. Requests for hints from colleagues.
If this cycle gets stuck, then consider alternate approaches. That is, completely different methods of solving the problem.
Sometimes a "brute force" method can give you a hint as to the more elegant results. For example, if you were doing an integral. (I know, but it's something I know how to do.) You could do things like solving a simplified version for practice. Or you could do some numerical work to get an idea what the closed form should look like. When solving differential equations you can use tricks like "solution generation" to get solutions to "nearby" versions of the equation that may give you hints. There will be similar things that can be done in your actual research work.
Some folks may not know what I mean by "solution generation." Suppose you have to solve a differential equation that looks like so.
y" = f(x,y)
Suppose that the actual f() you are working with is resisting your efforts. As a practice run, choose a different f() that is not drastically different to yours, but that has a closed form solution you already know. That may give you some hints what the answer to your problem is.

This is maybe a dangerous answer for students working on research. Basically when you are working on something like a homework set you can start with the assumptions that a) all problems in the set are solvable, b) all problems in the set are solvable with the tools introduced up to this point. With a research question, 1) the problem may not be solvable at all, 2) if solvable, it may only be solvable with some entire branch of math which hasn't been invented yet, 3) even if solvable with existing tools it may require some specialized thing that you yourself have never heard of.


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What is life like for Western-raised/trained academics who are faculty in countries with extremely tight governmental control?
There are a growing number of prominent universities in the world which are based in countries where the government exerts substantial control over its citizens in ways that are not typical in "Western" countries (Europe, US, Canada, etc.). Two examples:

KAUST, in Saudi Arabia, where alcohol is illegal and there are extremely strict dress codes.
Tsinghua University, in China, where citizens are not typically allowed to protest or congregate, and in general citizens are not entitled to, for example, free speech.

For those who are/were faculty (or postdocs/researchers) at such institutions, and who were raised/trained in Western countries with less restrictive governments, what is life like at such a research institution? In particular:

Are you bound by the restrictive laws the govern most citizens (for example, dress codes or alcohol in Saudi Arabia, or speech in China)? (Of course it's assumed that you can't just do whatever you like - I'm mostly interested in the laws that have nothing comparable in Western countries)
Did you bring a family or significant other with you? What has their experience been like?
Do you expect to stay at this institution for your career, or will you eventually try to return to your home country/a Western country?

Importantly, I am NOT passing judgement/being critical of the government of these countries. I am really just interested in how the institutions/governments of these countries treat researchers who are not citizens (and who, from my experience, have often been recruited from another western institution).

This really kind of too-broad too-specific question

Really looking forward to answers to this one. From personal observation, media tends to associate a certain set of buzzwords associated with a country or a culture, this greatly misportraits how people are actually living. From my past research outside of the freedom of north america, the biggest challenge were mosquito bites and dangerous weather, government didn't even cross my mind.

I wouldn't be so sure about your examples, given the allegations about Canadian scientists requiring government approval about what they are going to say before speaking to media... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16861468

@IllegalImmigrant media tends to associate a certain set of buzzwords [...] with a country or a culture, this greatly misportraits how people are actually living How very true. I first realized how great it was to live in the US of A when I moved there, despite what European media say.

You say that you are not passing judgement, but the qualifier extremely tight seems judgemental to me.

Perhaps, but I think it's hard to argue that these restrictions are among the most stringent in the world - there are really just not that many world governments that a) can enforce such restrictions on their citizens and b) do.

@gerrit The OP is just defining a criterion. I think saying that disallowing free speech is a tight governmental control is simply stating a fact, not passing judgement. Saying whether that's a good or a bad thing is a judgement, however, and that is what is out of bounds.

I think you ought to distinguish between social mores (banning alcohol cannot reasonably be called “extremely tight” government control, governments everywhere ban some psychoactive substances…) and academic freedom issues (things like getting papers approved internally).

@SimonW very important to note that those were government scientists. University researchers were never subject to those restrictions.

@DannyW, as far as I know, Europe IS NOT a country.

Disclaimer:  What follows is a combination of openly-available facts and some personal opinions.  The opinion parts are my own and I don't claim to speak for anyone else.  I did not intend for this to be "the answer" to this question; it deals with only one country/university.

I was born and raised in the United States, and got all my degrees there.  I have now been a professor at KAUST for 5 years.  I certainly came here by choice; I had good competing offers at some top programs in my field in the US.

Are you bound by the restrictive laws that govern most citizens?

To a significant degree, yes.  For instance, alcohol, pork, and a number of other substances are not permitted anywhere in Saudi Arabia.  On-campus housing for single students is in separate buildings for men and for women.
However, KAUST is exempt from a number of the social customs that are in effect throughout the rest of the country. For example:

KAUST is the only university in the country where males and females learn in the same classroom together.
Women can drive on the KAUST campus (with a license).
Women do not need to wear the abaya (burkha) at KAUST, or to cover their hair, etc.  They dress as they please, within professional standards of modesty.

KAUST is not completely unique in these respects; the Aramco "compound" (which is really a small city) in the Eastern Province has similar exceptions.  The KAUST campus and the Aramco compound are also the only two places in the country with a movie theater.
Of course, we frequently leave the campus to go to Jeddah.  My wife can't drive there and wears an abaya.  Also, the university culture at KAUST is more top-down than at most US universities, which I believe is a reflection of the local culture.  But our current president is changing that to some degree.

Did you bring a family or significant other with you? What has their experience been like?

I brought a wife and two young children (my third was born here).  They are happy here -- if not, we wouldn't have stayed!  Frankly, KAUST is an ideal place to raise a family.  My children have friends from almost every imaginable culture, religion, and race.  They take lessons in things like piano, swimming, and ballet.  The schools are excellent and the community is extremely safe (I don't even lock my bike).  I'll often bike to my childrens' school and take them to the park for lunch; everything is within five minutes by bicycle here.  I live 1 block from the beach and my morning commute is a short bicycle ride through beautiful surroundings.
Life is pretty relaxed and hassle-free because the university essentially manages everything (and manages it well).  My wife doesn't work outside the home.  She participates in a number of community organizations and has time to devote to friendships, hobbies, and especially to our children.
I'll add (since most westerners find it surprising) that there are many single western women who work here very happily.

Do you expect to stay at this institution for your career, or will you eventually try to return to your home country/a western country?

I came to KAUST because it was an adventure and chance to build something new and worthwhile.  My initial plan was to spend perhaps 3-4 years at KAUST and then go back to the US.  However, I have since realized that I have the ideal academic job (by my own criteria, at least):

Extremely generous funding with no need to write grant proposals (KAUST has one of the world's largest endowments and only about 120 faculty).
Light teaching load (1 MS level course and 1 PhD level course per year), which also has allowed me the time to be bit innovative and try things like inquiry-based learning.
A relatively light administrative load, compared to what I hear from colleagues in the US.  This is largely due to having excellent and plentiful support staff.
Long-term job security with the freedom to do research along any direction I wish (university positions generally include this, but other careers I considered do not).
Essentially unlimited access to a world-class supercomputer (200 Tflops, upgrading to 5 Pflops next spring).  This is relevant to my particular field; other researchers here get similar benefits from other exceptional facilities.

Now I suppose the last bit of this post sounds like an advertisement, and I can't really help that.  In light of all this, I don't plan to leave any time soon.
I've been planning a series of retrospective posts on this topic for my blog.  I will link to that here if I get around to writing it.
Some updates in response to comments:

KAUST is committed to avoiding gender (and other types of) discrimination.  There are very many women (married and single) who work at KAUST.  There are many families in which both spouses work.  I can add that the opportunities for women to work in Saudi Arabia (outside of KAUST) have increased dramatically in the last couple of years.  As of 2016, KAUST's student body is 40% female and about 40% Saudi, so I'd guess around 16% are Saudi women.  Hundreds of Saudi women work at KAUST.  They are treated no differently from foreign (or male) students/employees.
Because most of us have close ties to groups in the US and Europe, KAUST researchers travel a lot.  We also have a large, steady stream of international visitors.  For instance, the last three presidents of my professional society have each given a seminar at KAUST.

Could you elaborate on how generous the funding is, are you saying without applying to grants you are given ,thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Thanks! This is extremely informative. ALl very interesting. KAUST seems to be a fascinating place.

Thanks for showing at least me how prejudice can be such a b*tch :) I guess this answer deserves more exposure than only on academia.

I'm surprised to see such a positive review of life in SA. In general nobody has anything good to say about it. But I guess maybe it can be different in special cases. One question: can you comment on the level of support for international travel, to attend conferences, and even short term stays in other places (e.g. the US)? How often have you been back to the US since you left?

@FaheemMitha Like I said, funding is extremely generous, so I travel as much as I want (too much, really).  I attended 6 conferences in the US and Europe just this summer.  I generally go back to the US 2-3 times per year.  It is a long and tiring trip!

@DavidKetcheson I see. That's a lot of conferences!

You compare between KAUST and religious universities in the US. Violations of many of the rules and segregations at KAUST are punishable by law. I think that's a big distinction between KAUST and a Catholic university in the US that is worth making, where (I presume!) only the university, rather than the state, has the authority to punish violations.

(I will add that this is a fantastic answer. +1000 internet points to you.)

@DavidKetcheson This isn't terribly related to the question, but as someone with a spouse, I'm curious. What are the opportunities for your wife, if she chose to work outside the home? Would that be possible?

@FaheemMitha "In general nobody has anything good to say about it" Incorrect. Many people have good things to say about SA.

@seteropere Apologies for the loose wording. I should have said - nobody I have ever spoken to has anything good to say about Saudi Arabia.

@DavidKetcheson Your answer is so much one-sided that it sound like "propaganda". Is there anything negative at-all at KAUST? What if your partner want to peruse career and do not belongs to academia? Is it possible to get job outside campus? What if you are homosexual, is it easy to get visa for partner?  What if your field of study is political science, human rights or philosophy of atheism?

I'm curious about the response to @d.putto's comment too. I have heard that "the opportunities for women to work in Saudi Arabia (outside of KAUST) have increased dramatically in the last couple of years", but a dramatic increase from an extremely small baseline is still a small amount.

@d.putto Presumably, however, since KAUST is strictly "science and technology" (mostly engineering and mathematics), I don't know if studying political science, human rights, or any forms of philosophy would even emerge as issues.

You mention that there are women who work at KAUST. I am curious, how many Saudi women either work or study at KAUST? I was wondering if they are provided the same opportunities as foreign women.

@Ryan, I tried to answer your questions in the updated second-to-last bullet.

@NajibIdrissi I really do not like going to politics nor I have the time to this: But your comment and I quote: " political opponents are routinely executed by the dozen" is an absurd LIE.  Try to count a dozen of political prisoners who were EXECUTED in SA. you will find one before 1 week and its disputable whether he was a political or a criminal.

This answer is Saudi Arabia specific
As a native of Saudi Arabia, I thought I should speak about the academic life in the country:
Life in General

Are you bound by the restrictive laws the govern most citizens (for
example, dress codes or alcohol in Saudi Arabia, or speech in China)?

The very first thing you need to be aware of: you can do (legally) whatever you want in private. That includes everything. I grew up blocks away from U.S. Military campound and I can assure you the life within the compound is just like any western lifestyle. However, in public, there are some rules you need to be aware of;
So yes, you need to follow some generic rules in public. In private no one going to question your behaviour.
Life as an academic

how the institutions/governments of these countries treat researchers
who are not citizens

In Saudi Arabia, there are public and private universities. The public universities are regulated and funded by Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE).
Most of the universities rules differentiate between citizens and non-citizens (i.e. foreigners). For western academics, this has the advantage of being able to negotiate the salary and other benefits while for citizens its fixed in advanced (based on the qualifications). Unless you are trying to make a revolution in the country, the government has nothing to do with you/your research. All the decisions related to a faculty member take place within the department/college then get approved by the university president office.

Do you expect to stay at this institution for your career, or will you
eventually try to return to your home country/a western country?

I have never seen a western professor stay for a long term (i.e. 10+ years). Most of the people I have seen at KSU, leave after 5 to 10 years. I believe there are many reasons to this. Most importantly, the research environment, kids going to schools and I have good money by now.
KAUST
KAUST has a special consideration (I believe its not even regulated by MOHE) to the extent which makes all the above (about other universities) as incorrect. KAUST is a westernised place more than any other part of Saudi Arabia. KAUST staff, faculty members and students ,unlike most of the other universities in Saudi Arabia, are diverse and came from different cultures, countries and faiths.
That being said, I am not a western academic and I believe @David Ketcheson has a word in this

@NajibIdrissi Alcohol if its supplied by your embassy and you are drinking it in private. Then there is nothing wrong with that. All severe sanctions comes when you do it in public or invite Saudis to party with you. Same goes for homosexual.

It's an interesting question and I can give you an answer from personal experience as I studied in China for two semesters at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law.
I do not know if the rules at Tsinghua are that much stricter than there, but I didn't really experience any problems.
They checked daily if all students were in their dorms at 10pm - at least for the Chinese who would be punished upon failing to comply with this regulation (it could mean to fail an entire year or be expelled if being missing too often!). However, missing Westerners were simply ignored. The monitors would sometimes send a message to make sure everything is fine and politely request to be back soon, but that was it. Generally speaking, as a foreigner you can ignore many rules and even some laws without getting in any trouble. It may seem unfair but that's just the reality there.
Also considering other problems like privacy issues and internet censorship you are pretty free as a foreigner. The latter I circumvented by VPN and when I would hang my coat on the security camera in an internet café, nobody cared.
I once didn't register properly (actually it was the police station's fault) and when I wanted to prolongate my visa, I simply had to write down the date and address of my arrival on a slip of paper and sign it - problem solved.
I do not know what experiences others made but China was and still is easy-going in these aspects as long as you are a Westerner.
// Corrigendum:
I changed "foreigner" to "Westerner" in the last sentence as the Chinese are easy-going on white foreigners from the West. A total different story is the treatment of Indians and Africans who sadly face strong prejudices by many people (though this is changing at least in the better developed parts of the country).

It is weird that in China, you get more freedom and even privilege as a foreigner. I expect that every country should care its own citizens more, shouldn't it? (Assuming absolute fairness does not exist)

@Farticle Pilter Lesson from sociology, the dominant culture of this world is dominant in a global sense, not just a local sense. By dominant culture I really do mean the Anglo-Saxon culture which had arose during the late 19th century - why else would I be typing and speaking in English? Note that race and perception also plays as a factor in a major way. It is bitter sweet when one realize that our academic microsm has to obey the rule of the world at large no matter how insane, illogcal and unfair they sometimes are

Being a non-citizen and non-PR in the US, one has limited choices in many applications. But an American in other countries enjoy some sort of privilege. Interesting.

@IllegalImmigrant do you have examples of 'insane, illogical and unfair' rules that you think govern academia globally?

@Cape Code This is an extremely easy question, but take it with a grain of salt as nothing governs all cultures equally. One for example is a general social conservatism in academia. This is of course induced by the social conservatism of the society at large. One extreme example I can think of is the case of Belle De Jour, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_de_Jour_(writer) who was engaging in prostitution while doing academic work. Of course in this case their university is fine with it, but then again it is in a liberal state in Europe. The outcome would be vastly different elsewhere.

Of course, the race issue and gender disparity are generally well known, I think that it would be best to leave it to another thread/QA/forum entirely

It would be an interesting topic to discuss, but I didn't mean to start any debate about that here. It's merely stating the facts from my personal experience as an answer to the question asked here. Concerning Academic Conservatism: The opposite is the case. It's the academics, in the West at least, pushing new ideologies even bare of any scientific background (not going down that road now as it is a completely different topic again).

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Common name for an award given by students
How would you call an award given by students to their favourite professor/instructor by voting? "Favourite professor award"? Any other suggestions?
This is not about how a new award should be named, but about how to properly identify this type of award in, say, one's CV.
The students gave the award a particular name ('mandarine award') but, finally, the medal they prepared had the inscription 'Best Teacher [of a given degree]'.

"Favourite" in what sense? Best in teaching, or something else?

@GoodDeeds 'Favourite' in general —A mix between good teaching and rapport.

Why are you asking? Are you wondering how to list this on something like a CV?

@BryanKrause, yes, that's the motivation. But I also think it can be helpful to other people.

Well, it changes the answers considerably. If you're creating a new award and trying to decide on a name, then you want suggestions for what an award should be called. If you've received an award and want to list it on your CV, you're looking not for what the award should be called but rather about how it's appropriate to list it on your CV. Those are two very different questions. You don't get to claim on your CV the award that someone else thinks your award should be named, you get to claim the award you actually received.

@BryanKrause OK, I see. I edited my question again.

On CV I would use the name of the award, and when the name is not descriptive, I would add a short description. For example "Mandarine Award, University of XYZ, 2025. Awarded annually by students to the instructor which is most bla bla bla".

@NickS I partially agree. Maybe this would be OK for a full-length CV, but I am rather thinking of a short-version CV (for a webpage, for instance). What do you think about the answer I provided below?

@Vicent To me, changing the names of awards by nicer sounding names should be a NO in academia. And for a webpage, one can typically just link a webpage with details about the award, under the name.

@NickS, not because of nicer names, but for a better understanding. It is actually the 'best teacher' award, as they say in the medal. The particular name is 'mandarine' as a reference to orange and lemon awards, which are sometimes used for the most popular and disgusting person of a given profession, respectively. It could be also 'More popular professor'. Anyway, the name of 'mandarine' could change in future editions, but the idea would be the same. There are no other 'best professor' awards in this School, I mean.

@Vicent "Mandarine Award ('Best Teacher of Basket-Weaving', by student vote)" is quite short and descriptive and safely not misleading, and the extra characters will both have near zero cost in website bandwidth and fit easily in a single line of a printed CV.

The issue is that some universities have "Best Teacher Award," which is often/typically a University-wide award.  I would be surprised if your university does not have such an award.

@BryanKrause Would you like to post your comment as an answer?

It doesn't address the question asked, so no.

My former institute has a "Teacher Talent Award" for junior lecturers, the teachers are nominated by Faculty Student Councils. A name like this may make clear that there might be a distinction between popular, nice, and good/talented professors. If that would be something you'd like.
My former institute also has an award named after a former rector magnificus for senior teachers, for that prize they use student evaluations (as well as some other metrics), not direct voting. Still, using the name of a former professor that was exceptional at your institute might be a nice idea.

Given the extra context provided, what about this?
"Best Teacher students award"
as in "Best Actor Academy Award".

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Word for a part of a book containing introduction and background/state of the art
I am writing a book (a sort of research memoir), and it is structured like this:

PART I:

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Background, state of the art, description of research lines...

PART II: Past research (*)

Chapter 3: One research contribution
Chapter 4: Another research contribution

PART III: Present and future research (*)

Chapter 5: One future research line
Chapter 6: Another future research line

(*) It is not the real title, but this is the idea.
How would you call PART I? I am thinking of 'Preamble'. Any other idea?
If I called PART I 'Introduction', then I should change the title of Chapter 1 to... what?

EDIT
Would it make sense removing the first 'PART'?, or would it be too odd? Like this:

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Background, state of the art, description of research lines...
PART I: Past research (*)

Chapter 3: One research contribution
Chapter 4: Another research contribution

PART II: Present and future research (*)

Chapter 5: One future research line
Chapter 6: Another future research line

(*) It is not the real title, but this is the idea.

"Preamble" is fine, at least for now. When  you find a publisher you can easily change those titles. Focus on the contents.

Would something like "PART I: Setting the Stage" be too informal for your purposes?

Thank you for the answers. Yes, 'Setting the stage' would be too informal, maybe. I edited the question and added another possible approach.

I agree with "preamble". "Prologue" could also work, but it's a bit odd in an academic context to me.

(1) A "preamble" is not two chapters of a book. It is much shorter.  (2) The introduction should be before any of the parts. (3) If you only have six chapters, you don't need parts.

A possible title for that part is Preliminaries.
The second solution is, in my experience as reader, rather unusual.
But do you really need to divide your book in parts? Overall, I find the structure of your table of contents a bit confusing, e.g. why the background material is not covered in the Introduction? Maybe that Introduction is better thought as a Preface; and how the present research differs from the state of the art?
Probably, if the book is not too long, I'd avoid the division in parts, and I'd redefine slightly the structure of the chapters.

I totally agree, except that I think it is fine for background material to not be in the introduction, as the introduction might be long enough already or might contain different kinds of things. I suppose it depends what Background means.


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When you know a reference is plagiarism but you are unable to find the original source
I am writing up an essay, like a sort of project. It is not an academic paper, but it will be read and judged by some fellows.
I am trying to document or base my statements on a topic by including some proper references, and I am really in a bit of a hurry, so I do not have much time to search for 'the best' references.
Recently, I found one book (at Google Books) which seemed appropriate to me. I was somewhat suspicious because both the author and the publisher were unknown to me. I performed some additional searches at Google Books and at Google in general, and I found another book from the same publisher (and different author) which had overlapping paragraphs with the first book. And I also found some paragraphs of the first book in several websites, even Wikipedia.
I have not been able to determine whether there is an initial source or a mix of original sources.
So, this is the situation. My question: I would like to use the 'plagiarist' book as a reference. Is it appropriate to do so? Do you think I should add a sort of footnote stating that the reference is valid despite it seems to be plagiarising from other sources?

EDIT
Regarding the authorship, it seems pretty convenient to me that, in the copyright page of these two books (which happen to be included among the preview-available pages at Google Books), you can find the copyright symbol before the publisher, but not before the name of the respective authors.
On the website of the publisher, you can read a short bio for each author, but you cannot figure out which university or company they work for. They seem made-up texts to me. So, maybe, the authors are totally fake!

@AnonymousM I had not thought about that, but I can do it, I think.

@AnonymousM Librarians are the best! :-)

It’s pretty common to encounter weird issues in the academic literature (whether it’s plagiarism, incomplete material, sources that are unavailable or only partially available, sources that contradict each other, etc) when one is reading up on a research topic. The general principles that govern how to deal with this sort of situation in your own writing are:

Do not hide information that you found in your search because of fear of embarrassment or because you believe this information will make you look bad.

That means that if you want to cite a source that in your view suffers from credibility issues, you must explain what those issues are, and also explain why you still find the source appropriate to use despite those issues. Not doing so could be seen as dishonest. Adding the explanation in a footnote sounds appropriate.

Do not think you have a responsibility to completely sort out every weird issue you run into.

My understanding is that there are two sources and it appears that one of them plagiarized from the other, but you can’t be sure exactly of the extent of the plagiarism of or who copied from whom. Well, don’t worry about it too much. It’s not your job to sort it out and would seriously distract you from the actual topic you are writing about if you had to start digging deep into the issue and solve this mystery.
So basically, if you think the two references together provide the information your essay’s readers will need, cite them both, and as I said, include a note explaining the possible plagiarism issue. Lay out the facts, but don’t jump to conclusions you are not sure about. (E.g., for all you know, the two references could even be by the same author, who is a person who changed their name at some point.)

It’s okay not to have time to do a perfect job.

There are best practices for academic writing, and for example in an ideal situation you might not want to cite a source that you weren’t able to obtain a copy of and look at in full instead of just snippets on Google Books. However, if you are in a situation where time constraints are preventing you from following such ideals, that’s another thing that it’s appropriate to be transparent about. E.g., you can write in a footnote that you didn’t have time to obtain a copy of the second source but still found it credible based on the parts that were available online. I am sure your professor and other readers would not find this at all shocking or surprising or think that such an admission reflects poorly on you, assuming that in other respects your essay looks like a thoughtfully written piece that you invested the appropriate amount of time writing.

Yes. Basically, "be honest", and, although a serious, good-faith effort is always required, perfection is impossible.

Thank you for your very complete answer!

The thing you maybe encountering here is the practice of bundling a bunch of Wikipedia content and "publish" it as a print-on-demand book without much (or any editing). This typically doesn't violate Wikipedia's licensing condition, as it allows commercial use of their content as long as attribution is given. For this reason you will often find a very minimal "source: Wikipedia" somewhere in the book. (Whether that really is sufficient attribution for the licensing standard as somewhat questionable, it certainly isn't enough for academic plagiarism standards.)
If this is the case, it is probably better to stay away from this source, as you have no way of judging the reliability of this source. Even citing the Wikipedia page might be better (there at least you have access to the version history).

I think you might be right, since I found some of the paragraphs of these books at Wikipedia (but I thought that they were copied from elsewhere; I mean, I still thought that there was an original source to be found).
Concerning the authorship, I am adding extra info in my question.

The original source could very well be Wikipedia. The real fun starts, when someone adds these types of sources as references for the statements found on Wikipedia.

@TimRias citogenesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_incidents


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Can a PI take someone's idea
Lets say a member of a lab has an entirely theoretical idea like "wouldn't it be nice if we wrote software that does X?"  The member did give a talk showing how such code would work if implemented.  Due to general skepticism about the idea, nothing ever comes of it.
The member never actually writes any of the software while in the lab.
After leaving the lab, the member uses publicly available data and implements the software, as well as developing the mathematical theory.
Is the member required to acknowledge his former lab in authorship? Is this a breach of ethics?
What if the former lab member had previously agreed to letting the PI use his idea in a grant proposal, but the PI then forced him out of the lab and thus out of the grant proposal.
1. Can the former lab member write up his work for publication? 2. Does he have to make the PI a co-author if he does?
Extra Information:
The idea was documented as a presentation to the lab.  A small simulation with fake data was used to argue this could work.  There was some discussion of how it would work when the grant was written, completely the member just saying to others how this idea worked and so the idea was written up in the grant.  The PI does not have any training in this area.  However, there are plenty of emails where the PI refers to this as the former lab members idea etc.  I feel certain everybody in the lab would acknowledge this was the former lab member's idea.
The former lab member didn't actually write any of the grant as the PI claimed to want to collaborate with someone with greater mathematical expertise. So the collaborator wrote the grant, with occasional emails to ask the former lab member questions.

Was the idea ever documented in some way while the member was with the lab? Or was it only verbally communicated?

This is two separate questions.

"What if the former lab member had previously agreed to letting the PI use his idea in a grant proposal, but the PI then forced him out of the lab and thus out of the grant proposal." This is entirely too specific to your situation. I recommend removing this so the question is more applicable to the general public. Something this unique should be handled by your university.

As far as I can see "member" has developed everything from idea to finished product. There is very little sign of anyone else being involved other than possibly as a discussion partner at the lab. To allow someone to use the idea still does not take away the intellectual property held by the member unless there has been important feedback from someone. So I would not hesitate to try to move forward towards publication with the idea. I simply cannot see any ethical issues based on the details you have given.
Having given the green light, there will always be the issue of personalities. You allude to some level of conflict in terms of the move by the member. It is not inconceivable that the PI may have a different view and this view may not even be anchored in reality. So even if you do everything by the book and have all rights, that does not preclude the PI from doing all the things you express, it really depends on the PI's personality.
In the end member should think through if anyone has contributed to the work to the degree that merits co-authorship. Member can, for example, use the the post What are the minimum contributions required for co-authorship to set the authorship in perspective.

There is the possibility that rapid publication of this idea will scoop any papers coming from the grant (or the PI will probably see it that way).

The personality issue is one that will always be present but as you stated, the idea was rejected at first so if it scoop other papers, it seems a gross oversight by the PI. I do not see any simple solutions. Talking to the "enemy" or not doing sounds like "damned if you do, damned if you don't". It seems any advise would fall because I do not know the people involved and cannot in any way judge possible outcomes. So, intellectual property is what it comes down to.

There are actually at least three(3) persons involved: the member, the collaborator and the PI.
There are two parts in the work: the software and the mathematical theory.
Based on the information described in the question, the member definitely owns the software because the original idea was his and he implemented it.
The real question is, who is responsible for developing the mathematical theory? Based on the info, So the collaborator wrote the grant, with occasional emails to ask the former lab member questions., I think the collaborator plays a role. But, how much is his contribution? Anyone else contributes to the development of the theory?
There is another question, did the lab ever receive the grant? Grant proposal and the grant itself are completely two different things. Did the lab ever start to work on the grant (not the proposal)?
In my opinion, the ideal solution is for the collaborator to write the paper if he is the one who develops the mathematical theory. The member will be the co-author. Whether or not the PI is another co-author depends on how much his contribution is.
If the member develops the whole thing including the theory without much help from the collaborator and/or the PI, then the member should be the main author. Who should be the co-authors depends on the invidual contribution.
The above is my opinion based on the limited information I know.

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


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Where should be original quotations be type-set in a translation?
I'm writing a scientific manuscript in German and since I want to give the German readers the opportunity to understand everything of it, I will include translations of all foreign quotes.
How would I do this? Let's assume the following hypothetical English text, where I want to include the original German quote (Es geht nicht um ein Stück vom Kuchen; es geht um die ganze Bäckerei.):

Most politicians will happily confirm what was already pointed by Dota Kehr and million others "it's not about the cake, it's about the whole bakery." [DK 2009]

The question is: Where do I put the original quote in German and do I have to point out that I translated it?
My current solution is as follows:

Most politicians will happily confirm what was already pointed by Dota Kehr and million others "it's not about the cake, it's about the whole bakery.¹" [DK 2009]
¹Original: Es geht nicht um ein Stück vom Kuchen; es geht um die ganze Bäckerei.

There's no single answer. Every publisher will likely offer different guidance. However, you can usually acknowledge that the translations were yours in a footnote.

@aeismail I had hoped that there is at least a guide anywhere, because I haven't seen this in publications (maybe this exists more often in books). Currently, I have the translated quote included in the running text and the original as footnote.

There must be German style guides. By "style guides" I mean books, usually reprinted many times and gone through many editions, and used as a default go-to in matters of style of writing, professionally applied.

Some style guides (Chicago, MLA, etc.) have rules for how to do this; if you know that you are required to follow some specific one of these, then the advice there will be authoritative. That said, there are still several different options for how the original quotation and the translation are presented: the choice is yours, and then the various manuals may give you "implementation details" about such vital matters as the placement of punctuation. (For example, the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style has extensive guidance in 13.71-13.79, but stops short of presenting the One True Method of including dual-language material.) I'm afraid I do not know which style manuals might be preferred for German-language texts.
Your basic choices are:

Whether the original, or the translation, is the primary version.
Whether the secondary version appears in the body text, in a footnote, or in an endnote.

In your case, you have decided that the translated version is primary, which makes sense if most readers don't care about the specific wording of the original, but may still want it to be available. You've also chosen to place the original text in a footnote, which makes sense for a "mid-length" quotation. If you only wanted to gloss a few words, it would be more natural to do this inline. If you had a more extensive quotation, then putting it in an endnote - or even an appendix - would avoid the problem of the gigantic multi-page footnote which can be so hostile to readers. So I think your choices are perfectly defensible.
In the case where both the original and the translation are from an external source, it is clear that both should be cited. Otherwise, you would not be giving due credit to the author and translator.
Here, the translation is your own, and in principle you should note it as "my translation" in whatever way is compatible with your citation style. For example, perhaps your footnote would say:

1 My translation; original: Es geht nicht ...

or perhaps you would write in text:

... the whole bakery." [DK 2009, my translation]

The specifics depend on which style guide you are following, if any.
Some of these "my translation" notes could be omitted, though that really depends on the quantity and variety of sources you are translating. If you have many translated quotations, some by you and some by others, then it would be clearer to retain the notes. If there is only one source which you quote repeatedly, then you could note "my translation" the first time and then not mention it again.
Another option is an explicit note early in the document, saying that all translations are your own unless indicated otherwise.

In books where I have seen a very large number of quotations with authors supplied translations a statement was made in the introduction or preface that "except as otherwise indicated all translations are mine." These were books where there were commonly three or four translated passages per page. They were mostly books written in English about medieval literature written in Old French or Latin. Even in these cases the original or translated text would be provided in a footnote since you would expect readers to want to refer to the other.
The point being that the exact choice of style might depend on the number of translated passages you will be working with.


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Researchgate and Elsevier sharing policy
We already have a similar question but it does not seem to address the issue I have. Assume I have a manuscript that is accepted for publication. When I look at the sharing policy of Elsevier, I see that I "can share my preprint anywhere at any time".
The moment my manuscript is accepted, there seems to be a different set of rules. Why is that? Can I still share my preprint wherever I like?
I would like to share something through researchgate.net. Can someone help to clear these two specific questions?

Regarding the rules of Elsevier, can I share my personal pre-print (not the final publication) at any time, no matter if my manuscript is accepted or published?
Can I upload the graphics or images from the pre-print to researchgate since they have such functionality or is this not allowed?

Take Elsevier's definition of the preprint:

This is the author's own write-up of research results and analysis that has not been peer reviewed, nor had any other value added to it by a publisher (such as formatting, copy-editing, technical enhancements, and the like).

The preprint is the manuscript version that you initially submitted to the journal, and it stays the preprint version even if later versions are being revised through peer review, are formatted by the publisher, and are the published formally. Elsevier's policy makes clear that you can share the preprint anytime. They just "encourage" authors to put the DOI link on the preprint once the final version is published.
As you're allowed to share the full preprint anywhere, I don't see what could stop you from sharing portions of it (like graphics) anywhere as well.

This is how I understood it as well, but I was unsure because of the phrasing. Thanks for your answer +1. I'll keep it unaccepted a while so that people come here and vote up.


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How to obtain average and total impact factor of publications for an academic?
For a while ResearchGate provided something called impact points. It was calculated as the sum of the impact factors of all the publications an academic had. For example, if an author had been an author on four papers with impact factors 0, 2, 4, and 3. They would have 0 + 2 + 4 + 3 = 9 impact points. They've recently stopped reporting this value because supposedly they no longer believe impact factors are valid indicators of an individual article (of course, as a side note, they continue to report their own mysterious ResearchGate points which in addition to publications also weights things largely irrelevant to the research community, but relevant to encouraging behaviour on the site that they desire).
If you also knew the number of publications someone had, you could also quickly determine their average impact factor per publication.
I found the combination of average impact factor and the sum of impact factors to be a really useful metric when getting a quick feel for an academic's publication track record. In addition, I think that impact points seemed to provide a reasonable starting point for discussing some of the trade-offs in publication strategies between quality/significance and quantity.
Given that this site includes many who are mindful of the problems with metrics for evaluating academic output, allow me to justify why I like the combination of average impact factor per paper and the sum of impact factors (i.e., impact points):

Person-specific citation based metrics (e.g., h-index, total citations, and so on), which are often cited as preferable, are heavily influenced by time. Citations accumulate over time. Thus, a young researcher a couple of years out of their PhD may have been publishing high quality work in top journals, but may have very few citations. In contrast, a researcher may have been publishing lots of publication at the mid-tier level for many years, and may have a lot of citations. This connection with time is more than the linear increase in publication output you might see given a research with consistent output each year. Instead, In a simplistic model, it is a multiplicative effect of average number of publications per year, time since first started publishing at that level, and average time between publications and now.
While journal impact factor is field dependent, you can start to adjust for this mentally, if you know your field. For example, I'm in psychology, and it tends to have lower impact factors than psychiatry due to various citation practices. As an aside, it would also be useful to use other journal impact metrics to form the average or sum that are less field dependent (e.g., the SNIP or SJR).

Probably the biggest issue with impact points is that some authors have publications with many more co-authors, or have more or less first-author papers, although this is less of an issue if you focus on average impact factor per paper.
So my question is, given that ResearchGate has stopped reporting impact points, is there an alternative provider where you can quickly obtain the sum or average impact factor of the publications of a given academic?

Incoming comments about how useless bibliographic metrics are in 3.. 2.. 1...

if an author had been an author on four papers with impact factors 0, 2, 4, and 3. — What does it mean for a paper to have an impact factor of 2?  Impact factors are usually defined as average citation counts over all publications in a particular journal in a particular time window.  By that standard definition, individual papers do not have impact factors.

@jeffE For the purposes of calculation, papers get the impact factor of the journal they are published in.

I'm sorry, but that's just silly. If you insist on counting something, why not count citations to the individual paper, using Scopus or Google Scholar, for example, instead of an aggregate statistic to which the paper only makes a minuscule contribution?

@jeffE because citations are confounded by time since the paper was released. So, an older academic automatically looks so much better. For example, you might have a new academic with 10 papers all released in the last couple of years in top journals but with only a few citations. Then you have an more established academic with 20 papers in low tier publications with 100s of citations. I agree that 10  years after a paper is released citations start to become meaningful indicator of impact/potential, and there is a sense in which total citations are measure of "achieved fame".

But if you want to get a bibliometric measure of quality then I think that in the short term, something like the impact factor of the journal (or some other indicator of quality) is more useful than citations.

You mention that IFs vary by field but that if you know your field you can adjust for that. If you know your field, though, you will know the journals the author is publishing in and have an opinion about them that is probably more meaningful than their IF, so why not just scan the authors' publication lists?

@Significance I agree partially. A few counter arguments (a) impact points is a very quick synthesis (i.e., it's a single number that means you don't have to look at the journal of 30,40,50 or more publications to get that sense); (b) there are a lot of journals in my field and even people that are kind of in your area may cross-over with other subfields; (c) at the level of a discipline like psychology, say you're trying to judge your competitiveness for promotion, job or grant, you may be comparing yourself to people who publish in quite different journals.

@JeromyAnglim I think in that case, IFs aren't very useful either. In psychology, for instance, I would bet that psychometrics journals will have quite different IFs from child development journals, regardless of the quality of the work. My field is hydroecological modelling. If I publish similar work in a good ecology journal, it should have a much higher IF than a good limnology journal, which is likely to have a higher IF than a good modelling journal.

@JeffE aggregate statistic to which the paper only makes a minuscule contribution That's not the idea here. The highest the IF of a given journal typically the higher the acceptance standards. That does not always work but in some contexts it's actually a pretty accurate proxy for individual article quality..

@CapeCode The highest the IF of a given journal typically the higher the acceptance standards — [citation needed] [data needed]

@JeffE I know you don't like the impact factor. No use chanting that gospel to me a hundredth time. I said "in some contexts" but you probably had IF rage before reaching that part of my comment. Here's an article for you: http://benthamopen.com/ABSTRACT/TOECOLJ-1-1-14 But the IF of the journal isn't that high, so apply caution.

@CapeCode Acceptance rates are not a good proxy for quality, either; an argument that bad proxy A correlates with bad proxy B is not convincing.  In theoretical computer science, first-tier conferences have acceptances rate around 25%; whereas, second- and third-tier conferences tend to have acceptance rates around 25%. The main difference is self-selection: People submit stronger papers to better venues.

@JeffE I guess you don't have citations and data to show what makes a conference first-tier or whether it's effectively self-selection that is happening? My point is you know these things because you work in that field. In my field people also do self-selection based on journals IF, and sometimes settle for lower IFs upon rejection. The rule of thumb seems to be that under 2 the IF is mostly noise.

I'm not aware of any specific tools like ResearchGate which provide an average impact factor for a researcher - maybe others know of something? However, you could fairly painlessly generate the average SJR/SNIP value for a researcher through SciVal in Scopus.
If you add a researcher in SciVal, then click on the benchmarking tab, and then click on View list of Scopus Sources for the selected Researchers and Groups this will bring up a list of journals the researcher has published in. You can then click on Export and download the list of journals, with their SJR/SNIP values into excel, where you can then just use the =AVERAGE formula to calculate the average. I just did this and it took me 3-4 mins max.
Back to your specific question, you could use InCites to follow a similar process as above to calculate a researchers average Journal Impact Factor (Thompson Reuters) however it's not as straightforward as SciVal. As far as I know, you can't generate an XLS list of journals a researcher has published in within InCites (so you would need to get this list somewhere else). You can however export a list of journals from InCites with their impact factors but you would then need to link your researchers list of journals with the incites list to collate the relevant impact factors. you could use excel VLOOKUP to do this and then calculate the average. This is a lot more effort though, so it would depend why you want this average measure of research impact in the first place and whether it might be enough to just use the scopus impact metrics.

Thanks. Yes. SciVal works. They also provide IPP which is similar to impact factor.

An alternative to looking at impact points that indexes a similar concept is citations in the last full year. This can readily be obtained for anyone with a Google Scholar profile. Author search on Scopus also shows it.
E.g., see the 2015 column below (e.g., go to this example, hold mouse over to see value):

Impact factor is essentially the mean number of citations per article per year in a given journal (where for example if the year for gathering citations was 2008, the publication years would be 2006 and 2007). But there is also a five year impact factor which extends the number of years articles are considered (e.g., 2003-2007). Depending on the life cycle of citations in a given field and journal, expanding the window of time for considering articles may alter the estimate of mean citations per year. My main point is that the underlying construct that is being measured is mean citations per article per year.
Thus, in a rough sense, the impact factor provides a rough guide to how many citations per year an author can expect from a given article published in a journal with a given impact factor. Of course, the distribution of citations in articles is positively skewed, but as we aggregate over many papers, the central limit theorem will begin to kick in.
Thus, citations per year in the previous year is in some senses addressing the same concept as impact points (i.e., the sum of the journal impact factors of the papers that an author has published in). In particular, it doesn't double load on years as an academic (i.e., total citations double loads for both the time you had to publish more articles and time that those publications have had to accrue citations). There are of course a few differences:

It is based on how much people cite the particular author rather than the journals that they publish in. In many respects this is a positive, because it is more aligned with the authors achievement.
It is typically based on a smaller sample size than journal impact factors. So there is greater scope for outliers to skew the distribution. I.e., one or two papers with hundred or thousands of citations may distort the underlying pattern.
It uses the full history of articles by the academic. Thus, depending on the citation patterns of the field and how old the authors articles are, this may introduce particular distortions. For example, older academics may have articles that have stopped being cited particularly in fast moving fields. In fields with citation half lives that are often over 10 years (like mathematics, psychology, and the social sciences), this should not be a problem for most active academics.

As an aside, all citation based metrics including impact factors are contingent on the database or articles used to specify articles and used to source citations. Google Scholar is quite inclusive. ISI Impact Factor has greater quality control and is less inclusive. So, from casual observation, It seems like  Google Scholar picks up a multiple of between 2 and 5 times more citations than ISI or Scopus. Thus, any comparisons need to be mindful of that.


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How long after submission of revisions should you wait before it is reasonable to enquire about manuscript status?
The following question asks about how long after making a submission you should wait before contacting the editor to enquire about the status of the submission. (i.e.,  When / how should I ask about a manuscript's status in review? ). Many people suggested that after around 6 months, it was reasonable to contact the editor to enquire about the status of the manuscript.
I have a manuscript where we received a positive set of first round reviews. We submitted revisions. It has now been five months. So my question is:

When is it appropriate to enquire about the status of submission of revisions?
Would you use the same rule of thumb that you use for initial submissions (e.g., 6 months or so)? Or is it reasonable to enquire about the status of the manuscript sooner? Alternatively, would you be less inclined to enquire about the status because there is more to lose by irritating the editor?

When is it appropriate to enquire about the status of submission of revisions?

At any stage of the publication process, you should feel free to check in whenever you think the referees / editors / typesetters / whoever have taken a reasonable amount of time to do the job, and you are beginning to worry that your paper is not being processed in a timely way.  I don't think that is any fixed amount of time: in particular six months was suggested by one pure mathematician for papers in pure mathematics.  It happens that I also use six months as a rough guideline (I am also a pure mathematician), but I will adjust in either direction if it seems reasonable.  For instance, if the paper is so short and easy that a qualified referee could do it one sitting then six months doesn't make any sense.  If the paper is 50 pages long and hard even for me to read, six months doesn't sound like enough time.  Of course what I think is an appropriate amount of time is a subjective judgment but informed by my own refereeing experiences.

Would you use the same rule of thumb that you use for initial submissions (e.g., 6 months or so)? Or is it reasonable to enquire about the status of the manuscript sooner?

If it seems clear to you that refereeing the revised version should take much less time than the original version then sure, inquire (or "enquire," depending upon where in the anglophone world you are) sooner.  In my experience, most referees do turn around minor revisions much faster than the original report.  The flip side of this is that the editor will of course try to get the same referee to do the revisions, and the referee might have become busier in the meantime.  Anyway, all you can do is ask.

Alternatively, would you be less inclined to enquire about the status because there is more to lose by irritating the editor?

I am feeling a bit jaded about the publication process right now -- the quality of service that an author can expect from their submission experience varies so wildly as to seem like a fairness issue -- but I am not so jaded to think that editors would allow their feelings of "irritation" at this (completely appropriate and expected) authorial behavior to influence their processing of the paper.  I have seen a lot of weird stuff happen over the years, but I've never seen that.  However, I've witnessed many, many instances of authors who don't stand up for themselves and get victimized because of it.  So I think it is much sounder strategy to "irritate" editors more rather than less often.  Either that or cultivate a kind of inner peace that allows these kind of delays to, truly, not bother you.  For that I think it helps to do a fair amount of refereeing of one's own!

Disclosure: I am frequent reviewer and a member of an editorial board of SCI-indexed journal. The clear answer would be: you MAY ask at any time, but I suggest that you wait for the period that usually takes papers in that particular journal to be accepted. This information is, AFAIK, not systematically collected, but many journals publish "Submitted on:" and "Accepted on:" dates with the accepted papers, so it is sufficient to browse few papers for the last year to get an insight how long does it usually take.
In my field (engineering) most journals give reviewers one month to complete the reviews, I have seen deadlines as short as two weeks and as long as three months.
So if you are waiting for the next iteration for five months, it is fair chance that one of the reviewers did not complete his review (yet) and the editor should really be kicking him hard to do his duty (which he may be doing it, but behind the scenes).
So: YES, do ask after waiting five months.

It also might depend on the publisher's/journal's policies. While the journal can never garantee a review time the editor can influence the time of review. In all review request's I so far received I was also questioned if I could perform in timeframe XY.
Usually I find in the author's guideline an average review time of the last three years or so. This should give you a rough hint to your question.
Apart from that I personally consider a revision review of five months a quite critical time frame already in general. The reviewers have read the manuscript before and documented critical paragraphs. It costs a lot less time to:
a) re-read the whole manuscript, the reviewer already has understood the underlying theory
b) check if the suggestions have been implemented and if not to check if the author's defending arguments are reasonable
By no means I can imagine that a friendly written email about the status can be considered as spam or unethical pressure from the authors' side. Remember despite what I said there can always be reasons for an extended review time. The reviewer can get sick for example.
To conclude: I would recommend spending again a reasonable time on the journals homepage to check if you find useful informations about the review time. If not you can check also previously published papers too see if your time is an outlier. After that prepare a well written email to the editor if you do not find any reasons not to do so.


text:
What are the most important points to emphasize while pitching for a dissertation to be published as a book?
An editor for a major publishing house is visiting our institute, and some PhD students will get the chance to have a 15 min talk with them and discuss the publication of their dissertation as a book.
I would like to pitch my dissertation (a few months from completion) as a potential book for their publishing house. I am in the social sciences in Europe and there is no tradition of the authors getting any financial benefits out of their books, indeed sometimes we have to pay the publishers. But I would like to convince this one to
a) Publish my diss
b) do it for free
What is the sort of information that this editor would be the most interested to have regarding my dissertation? What important criteria do such editors consider in coming to a decision regarding the publishability of Ph.D. dissertations?
Just to clarify, this is not a formal book proposal but only a short informal conversation, but one which I hope can be useful to both the editor and me.

(1) If possible, invite the editor to give a short presentation answering this question to all the PhD students (and faculty) in your department.  (2) Have you asked your advisor?  (3) Have you asked the editor?

Editors need books that will have an audience, a point, impact, and a connection to their "lists".
In a conversation you should be able to briefly summarize your manuscript -- and in this summary make clear its central argument / narrative, scope / evidence base, and its what is novel, important, and exciting about it. You should also summarize the audience for the manuscript,  -- how it fits into the market: what other books are competing for this audience, and what distinguishes your manuscript. These summaries should be honest, and direct -- avoid both negativity and overstatement. Choose language to appeal to a smart, and critical, but not  specialize reader -- avoid jargon, and if you have to use specialized terms, define them briefly, in common-sense terms.
For a written prospectus, follow the same model, but expand to two pages; and include an outline of the work, list of figures/tables, and note any special features such as data, or an accompanying website.
For more details, see: Germano, From Dissertation to Book and Luey, Handbook for Academic Authors


text:
Use of first person in a PhD Thesis
Is there a non written rule to which person to use in the PhD thesis, 5 years of using "We" in the papers have brought me to the innate necessity to do it every time I describe something.
Recently, though, one of my lab-mates told me that I should use I, since it is your work, if the thesis were co-written, then it would be a different story.
Is there any standard in your universities, or do you have any preferred practice.

What does your university style guide say? What does your supervisor say?

But using we makes us feel so royal . . .

Use the first person singular for acknowledgements: ``we thank our parents'' would be distinctly odd, even if `we' are not an only child.

This one strongly objects to being forced to refer to itself in the third person, and will avoid such references completely in preference to needless circumlocution.

I suspect this is where programming discussion gets the 'we' thing from.

I generally avoid "I" in scientific texts altogether, though some authors are in fact using it if they are the sole author. I can't remember seeing it in a thesis though. In texts with a sole author, I usually understand "we" as meaning the author and the reader, and I'd suggest that it's fine to use it in places where it can have that meaning. For example something like "When substituting a by b, we get ..."
A generally useful advice would be to read into some of the theses written in your group, department, and university (in decreasing relevance), and see whether there is a common pattern.

I also personally prefer "we", though I agree with silvado that the best advice is to check what is done in your research area. That is, in principle, the audience you're writing for, and the ones that will read it for your examination.

When you discuss an experiment being done, you can hardly use “we” as “author and reader”. Compare “we can derive B from A” to “I synthesized 3 grams of product K”.

@F'x: I'm typically not writing about experiments, but reading sometimes, and I hardly see the use of either "I" or "we" in this context. To me it appears that most authors use passive voice in such descriptions. I think the reasons is that these protocols should be "de-personalized", focussing on the activity, not the person that does it.

I think we is usually meant in this way "the author and the reader" in theoretical papers where the reader and author are in essence working through the math/concepts together. It however, would be a bit odd to interpret it this way for an experimental paper.

@MHH I agree. Generally the style of experimental papers is very different from theoretical papers.

@begueradj I would still use "we" since it includes the author(s) and reader. It makes the reader feel like he/she is part of the discussion (i.e. the paper that is being read).

More often than not, people use "we/I" for stuff like "we instructed the participants to..." or "we selected this model because..." as opposed to your example ("When substituting a by b, we get ..."). Of course one may still use the passive voice instead ("the participants were instructed to...", "this model was selected because..."). However, I just wish researchers would drop that silly habit of refusing to use "I" when they  really mean "I". There is no justification for it - it is an arbitrary rule that enforces bad writing.

Summary:
Think about the habits and traditions in your field, think about the nature of your field and do not hesitate to take responsibility for your own (possibly not that great) ideas.

Now, let me elaborate more:
The question encourages personal opinions for a good reason. Various sources on writing research papers differ vastly, though it seems majority does not favor the first person "I" form. For one of the more serious in computer science not in favour of "I", see e.g., Knuth's Mathematical Writing (pg.4) - although later on, the material also discusses the opposite (pg.62 and 113).
Now to a personal position. I do make use of "I" in some contexts. Namely, when I write a paper as a single author and I did so in my PhD thesis. At the same time, you should have clear rules when to mix it with "we" and how. For the dissertation, I explained those rules very early on in the preface: I use "I" whenever the text speaks about my own decisions and choices I made and is the default voice. It means, that it's me who is to blame for whatever incorrect decisions exposed in the thesis. Only if I can show that there is an external force which would push anybody on my place to take the same route, I would use "we" to mean the (research) community, or humankind. I use "we", whenever the discourse is explanatory, such as an exposition of a proof. Therein, "we" stands for "me and the reader". I also strictly use "we", whenever I speak about an insight, or a result which was produced in a collaboration, such as developed in a joint research paper with somebody else. As a side-effect, since this voice is not the default one, occurrence of such "we" always enforces a citation to the joint work, which is a Good Thing.
My personal opinion also is that third person is very bad writing style, since it
 offloads responsibility for the presented results to some external entity. As if it wasn't me who made the stupid decision to push that other guy from the cliff, but the guy was (somehow) pushed from the cliff. In my opinion, "we" solves that problem only a little bit, because now the writer admits a bit of responsibility for the act, but still dilutes it by taking into the game somebody else (either the reader, or the abstract research community). Saying "I did this and that and by doing it I personally found this and that" for me is fully taking responsibility for my results. It's not about bragging, or so. Now in some fields, this might be inappropriate, e.g., in pure mathematics, one studies a problem and is not pushed into any arbitrary decisions (e.g., regarding experimental setup), so a style "we" = "the two of us, you, the reader, and me, the writer" is more appropriate.

I second that and would add: Think about the habits and traditions in your country respectively language area. In my case, I'm a computer scienctist from Germany, using "I" and "we" in scientific works is an absolute no-no. In contrast, I've seen quite a lot articles in English language which use "I" and "we".

@StefanSurkamp I wrote the original answer being a computer scientist who did his PhD in Germany :-).

@walkmanyi Using "I" in the contexts you outlined is absolutely appropriate for a CS PhD thesis written in the English language.

It is interesting to see what Charles Darwin did in his scientific writing.
According to Serendip Studio:

Darwin usually speaks in the first person plural when analyzing
  empirical evidence he has collected and only uses the first person
  singular when he is specifically speaking about his own actions, such
  as, "..many special facts which I have collected," or when he is
  speaking about his own qualms, such as "I am well aware that there are
  on, on this view, many cases of difficulty, some of which I am trying
  to investigate." However, when analyzing his evidence, he always uses
  "we", such as "we notice", or "we understand"(2).  Darwin's change in
  footing when he is explaining his theory places himself and the reader
  on the same level and makes him a more "humble" presenter, allowing us
  to suspend disbelief for at least the time being and trust him.

When Darwin is speaking as the scientist, he uses "we", and when he is speaking as the human being, he uses "I". I really like that distinction.
I find the forced use of "we" when you mean "I" misplaced. It is important to sound as natural as possible in your writing - just look at Richard Feynman. You don't have to use convoluted language to win a Nobel prize. Clarity is king.

The first rule, as usual, is: what is expected of you? Ask your advisor, read earlier theses from your group, etc. to get an idea of what is the established practice.
The advice I give, and which I try to follow myself, is to mix the use of “we” and “I” depending on context. Most of the experimental or simulation work is a team effort, so “we” makes a lot of sense to describe that:

From the results of the simulation, we have calculated the spatial dispersion of ∆, which is presented in Figure 42

However, a PhD thesis should show that the applicant has a clear understanding and autonomy in a given research project, and thus is capable of making technical and strategic decisions (though not always alone, of course). As such, I encourage the use of “I” to describe such decisions, orientations and reflexion. I try to give an example:

After consideration of the points discussed above, I decided to focus my effort for the most part in optimizing the gigawattage of the circuit, which I consider based on all the data gathered to be the factor with the largest potential for improvement.

Silvado gave an answer that is, in my opinion, perfectly applicable to mathematical derivations, and the discussion of results. In those cases, you can safely use “we” to mean “the author and reader”, as in “we thus derive theorem X from lemma Y”, or “we see on Figure 42 a clear correlation between A and B”.

Mixing "we" and "I" can be very confusing, particularly if they're in proximity to one another. The use of "we" can often be omitted through clever rewriting: "Using result A, X leads directly to Y." The use of "I" is probably harder to eliminate, and I would argue it shouldn't be.

Mixing “we” and “I” is confusing if you use them interchangeably, but not if there is a logic to it. I have now seen it used in quite a few theses, and it works fine. I agree with you that clarity is the one true criterion.

@aeismail That "clever rewriting", to use the passive voice, almost always makes prose harder to understanding and less clear, thereby reducing the value of the piece of writing.

The use of first person singular is essential to correctly identify in a thesis the work of the candidate and dissociate it from the work of done in collaboration.

I always view "we" as "you and the reader" and you and your reader journey through the subject together.

I think this was already covered quite well by @silvado. Also, as I noted below his answer: when you discuss an experiment being done, you can hardly use “we” as “author and reader”. Compare “we can derive B from A” to “I synthesized 3 grams of product K”.

I was told that my PhD thesis should be written in the third person. In cases where it was nessacery to reffer to ones-self the term "the author" could be used but use of this term was discoured. The theory goes that the emphasis in acadmic writing should be on what was done rather than who did it.
Personally I dislike this style. IMO it makes it much harder to be clear about what you did verses what is already common knowlage.
My PhD was in Electrical Engineering at the University of Manchester in the UK.

Third person - masculine or feminine?

I am a retired professor. I was taught, and I always required, that theses and dissertations be written in 3rd person or, on rare occasions, in 1st person plural. Towards the end of my career, I had students increasingly writing in first person singular. This grated on my nerves enormously. Why? It seemed arrogant and ignored the substantial assistance provided by the committee and the funding agency. Also, it flew in the face of unspoken tradition: that scientists did their work with humility for the betterment of society. Any recognition of the scientist should come later from society at large and the community of scientists.

We sound like a retired professor.


text:
How to skim through Phd Theses
My adviser asked me to go over some PhD theses over the weekend, and by some he meant three 200~ pages theses.
Is there an effective way to skim through theses that you have figured out, as more experienced academics. I could not go over all of them without taking most of my weekend doing so.

Go over/skim for what purpose?  To familiarize yourself with the format, the style, and the level of detail?  Or to get a brief overview of the actual results?  Or to scare you into starting to work on your own thesis already?  Or something else?

I'm already over with my thesis, but we are starting a new project, and he told me those theses were relevant

@Leonpalafox please can you edit your comment into the body of your question; together with a clarification (if possible) as to why they are relevant (if your advisor has said why) - is it the writing style, the results, the methodology, the discussion, the bibliography, the "further research"? If in doubt, ask your advisor.

They are relevant because it's a new topic that we are delving with and the theses seem to be frequently cited by most papers.

Do you know how to do this with papers?  If yes, why is a thesis harder?  Also, are you certain it's not intended that you spend most of your weekend understanding the relevant work in a new topic?  Personally I'd want to spend quite a bit more time than a weekend on that.

Of course, you can use existing theses just like you would a journal article where you extract information to guide your research. However, I'd like to focus discussion here on the role of theses as a tool for teaching you how to write your own thesis.
Choosing theses to deconstruct:
Assuming you are writing a PhD thesis yourself, it can be really helpful to find a selection of other PhD theses in order to give you a sense of what the overall product can look like. Three is a good start, but I would be aiming to find about six or seven. The best theses are probably those that are

on a similar topic or at least in the  same discipline as your thesis and with a broadly similar methodological orientation
follow a similar structural framework to your own (e.g., similar length, same in terms of whether it is a large thesis or PhD by publication)
well written

Things to learn from deconstruction: Carefully deconstructing such manuscripts can teach you a lot about both what a thesis involves and also what are some of the alternative modes of presentation. For instance you can look at things like:

How was it formatted
How many chapters were there and how was content distributed
How were aims presented and how was the importance of the thesis justified
How was literature, method,results, and discussion distributed (e.g., some in each chapter or over separate chapters)
How extensive or focussed was the literature review
What was the overall scale of the thesis (e.g., amount of data collection, sophistication of analyses, etc.)
What is the standard expected of a thesis (e.g., seeing the imperfections of  theses that have passed can be helpful should you fall victim to perfectionism)

When in candidature to spend time deconstructing:
In fact, examining and deconstructing theses can be a useful exercise at multiple stages of your PhD candidature.

At the very start of your PhD it can give you a broad feel for what it is that you are aiming to produce.
When you are moving towards setting out the overall structure of your thesis in terms of chapters and sections it can give you a feel of whether you are on track
When you are making formatting and stylistic decisions, existing theses can provide a useful frame of reference.

I would just start from the table of contents. Usually, the whole thesis is not applicable to your current research, but only a pocket full of sections are.  Identify the handful of sections that are most relevant to your research, and just read those.  Also, if your advisor specifically requested these particular theses, he/she suspects there's something in particular about them that is of value to your research.  Ask him/her what it is about these theses that is most fascinating/relevant to your research and just read that part.
Bottom line: Don't try to understand everything in it... just find the parts that most apply to you and your research and get the main idea, not the details.

This is probably field dependent. In my field tables and contain the majority of the information.

Print the abstract, table of contents, list of figures, list of tables, conclusions, and any lists of symbols/nomenclature. You will need these a lot and it is easier to be able to mark them up.
Read the abstract and table of contents. Ideally looking for the things that are interesting to you. If the thesis seems to be well written and well organized, then reading the first paragraph of each chapter might be useful.
Work you way through the figures and tables. Ideally you will only need the information in the captions, but you may need to refer to the methods for additional information. Use the printed table of contents and the search function to efficiently. Don't read the methods, only use them when you have a specific question.
Read the conclusions. Anything that you don't understand/agree with go back to the figures and tables. If you still don't get it, search the results/discussion for references to the corresponding figure/table. If you still don't get it, decide if you really need it. If so, mark it down to figure out later.

It is hard to assess.
What is your advisor's expectations? is it a detailed review of the hypothesis, methodology and results of the theses? or it is just to know thing?
For not spending too much, I would suggest going directly to the Abstract. Then there is one or two core chapters discussing the ideas. General sense of what is going on these chapters is good enough.
Again, it depends upon your advisor's expectations. This said, i'm newbie to academics.

Every PhD should at least exhibit explicit contributions and some validation of them. The devil is in the details, but you can start from those two dimensions.

I back up what Paul said, but as I had to do something similar just a few weeks back, here's what worked for me: I found most relevant publications (articles) by the same author.
Typically, there's not that much publications related to a thesis, and there's a possibility that most of the papers are just extensions to the first one. Here's what I think from a Computer Science perspective.

Read the first publication by the author related to the thesis topic
Some of the following articles are probably application focus for the (novel) technique presented in the first article, or provide a heavy math background - these are not really needed to understand the idea
There might be an article or two improving the construction algorithm (the concept stays the same, but some implementation improvements)
In the end, you'll end up reading the first + one or two other articles and that will give you a good idea of what the whole thesis is about
Now that you understand the concepts presented in the thesis, you understand the Table of Contents fully. You can easily identify chapters interesting to you, and read only the selected ones.

It is still a lengthy process, but I think faster than trying to read the whole thesis, and gives a lot result-wise: you not only understood the concepts you needed, but did literature research as well, and know exactly where to look for every type of extra details you might need.
This all said, this is the process that worked for me when I needed to understand the concept presented, the main idea (but not the details) of implementation, and wanted to be able to apply the concept "by hand" and "on paper" for small mock examples.
I think the process can be adapted for whatever goal you have in reading the thesis: you almost certainly are not interested in absolutely everything presented in the thesis on your first read-out. So, if you are, for example, interested in the application domain, you'll read the application focus articles instead, and not math profs.


text:
What should be the order of references in a research text?
In many research articles numerical values are used for citing references in the text. I have seen the numbering of such references in pretty weird orders.
In some texts, the references are sequenced as they are cited in the article. For example,
Case 1:

Statement X[1], says that the technique ABC[2] solves the problem by utilizing the Y method[3]

While in a few, they seem to follow random ordering like
Case 2:

Technique X[95,46,38] has been long used for solving the problem
  discussed in [12]

In some others
Case 3:

Technique X[56] has been used in [23] to solve Y.

Are there any standard conventions or best practice for ordering the references ?
(My field is computer science)

The order is determined by the standard applied by each journal to their publication. In some cases, references are listed alphabetically in the reference list. In this case, the order of appearance of the numbers in the text may seem random (this is equivalent to your cases 2 and 3). In some cases, references are listed in the order they appear in the text. This yields the first example you provide.
So there is no right or wrong, there are different standards and which you need to follow is given by the journal in which you aim to publish.If you are concerned with which system to use in a report or your thesis, you should simply check with your department or organization to see which they follow. If there are no guidelines, I would suggest the system you find most commonly used in journals that lie close to your subject but you could essentially select whichever one you want as long as it is consistent and logical.

In any case, the middle example would be less than ideal, since it puts the reference numbers completely out of order. That might work with "Harvard style" references which give the authors' name, but not in numerical references. So you'd want to use your bibliography software's tools to make sure you take care of issues like that (rather than trying to manually organize it yourself!).

\usepackage{cite}

@aeismail I don't understand what's wrong with the middle example. Provided reference [95] chronologically precedes [46] and [46] chronologically precedes [38], this looks OK to me (except for missing spaces).

@AndreasBlass: The issue is that people do not expect to see numbered references "out of order" like that—and there's no inherent expectation that numbered references are ordered chronologically. Harvard references, yes; numbered references, no.

@aeismail I agree that, if the references in a cluster like [95, 46, 38] are out of numerical order and also out of chronological order, then something's wrong. But I'm not at all surprised when I see such references in chronological order (and out of numerical order).